Reno Riverwalk District, Sunset

Posted on September 7, 2007

What is beauty? A sunset over easy waters? A comely display of hair and teeth? Or is it when everything’s askew but somehow melds together in ways we find surprising? Is it humble? A Mona Lisa smile? Or is it a bold flourish in the face of lengthy odds? It could be all of the above. That’s the beauty of beauty. It’s alternative and conventional, accidental and hard-fought. It’s the Freya floating through our dreams, but it’s also hard luck Cendrillon—the servant girl whose clothes are rags and hair is splintered, who somehow finds a midnight miracle and becomes belle of the ball. You probably know her Disney story, that sad house girl named Cinderella.

Reno isn’t beautiful. It lacks the grit of Virginia City or the brilliance of Lake Tahoe. Reno is the homely child, the one neither exciting nor arresting to the eye. It sits in the center of a high desert pan, surrounded by brown and thirsty mountains. During the summer, the heat index scorches and when those desert hills flare up, the temperature, dryness, and smokestack brume of swirling fires is enough to make you feel like you’ve approached the mouth of hell itself.

It would be easy to give up on Reno, to view it as little more than a way station between Lake Tahoe and Salt Lake City. Most of its historic buildings are gone, its old time saloons and general stores faded from its urban story. First, they were replaced by casinos, and when those old hulls started crumbling, the land was filled with big box stores. On Virginia Street, I begin to see why postcards here are all shot after dark. The casinos are bunkers during the day, and there’s little but pawn shops and rag motels to hastily fill the margins. I’m ready to call it a day on Reno. I’ve come to take pictures but who wants to mythologize parking lots? I walk down the 1st Street Riverwalk as it seems within these few small blocks are the last of the city’s old-time charms. As the sun begins to set, neon lights infuse the air with a staid and weary electricity. The Truckee River runs through the center.  I cross a bridge and look back toward Virginia Street, searching for something, anything, to improbably catch my eye.

That’s when I see this, enmeshed in the center of all that is ordinary. Birds congregate on small gray rocks as though having one last conversation before retreating into the dark. A zephyr blows off of the mountains, cooling the air and rippling the water. The sun—so merciless during the day—reaches a point in the tangerine sky where it fills the river with flecks of gold. For a moment, Reno is breathtakingly beautiful. Briefly, around seven o’clock.

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