Week of Jan. 11, 2023

From the editor’s desk

The Reno Gazette-Journal, which is owned by Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, is begging readers for donations to cover the salary of a local-issues reporter. In his publisher’s note, RN&R owner Jimmy Boegle points out that while Gannett pleads poverty, its executives rake in millions in compensation—even as the company guts its news-gathering operations and slashes employee benefits. Having worked for the RGJ for 25 years, I can testify that if the Gannett corporation were a person, it would be the kind of guy who would steal the pennies off his dead grandmother’s eyes.

In our Liquid Conversations column, Michael Moberly explores what Reno bar owners and employees are doing to help stem the unexpected rise in late-night violence that often spills on to downtown streets in a city that has no closing time.

Meditation, one of the world’s oldest forms of self therapy, doesn’t have to be practiced in the lotus position. Reporter Taylor Harker visited two local meditation mentors who use sound stimulation and breathing techniques in their practices.

Then, donning her foodie cap, Ms. Harker swings by Chickie’s & Pete’s, a new eatery at the Grand Sierra Resort that brings a Philadelphia flavor to the Truckee Meadows and illustrates the national trend toward upscale sports bars.

Kris Vagner, meanwhile, rounds up local arts news in this month’s Art of the State, including a virtual reality museum of basketry at Pyramid Lake, and reports on the 14 nonprofit groups that will receive more than $76,000 in Reno arts grants.

Movies about sentient, killer dolls and the hapless kids who own them is a shopworn horror film plot, but Bob Grimm reports that M3GAN, directed by Gerard Johnstone, is a refreshing twist on the genre. The film, he writes, “manages to be quite an interesting horror riff on A.I., while also being a decent sci-fi effort and family drama.”  

Hollywood discovered Nevada locations in the silent-film era; movie cameras have rolled in the sagebrush ocean and the Sierra Nevada ever since. In my story about flicks that were shot in—or are about—Northern Nevada, I narrow the field to 11 “essential” films from the 1930s to the present, and note a dozen other movies that had Reno, Lake Tahoe or the high desert as their costars.

These and many more local stories also are featured in our January print issue, available free at some 700 markets, shops, restaurants and other venues across Northern Nevada.

I’ll see you in the funny papers.

Take care,

—Frank X. Mullen, Editor