1. Reno
January 2026
When your job sends you to a conference at a ski resort at Lake Tahoe but won’t pay more than $131 per night for a hotel, you end up an hour away in Reno. And when your very new hotel has a plaque proudly declaring itself as Reno’s first smoke-free and non-casino lodging, you have to suspect that this is less a brag and more a warning.
I came to Reno expecting Las Vegas on a smaller scale, but it is its own entity altogether. With its neon lights and dusty sleaze, Reno is certainly a time capsule of a bygone era, but not exactly in the chainsmoking way the plaque would suggest. After a few nights of walking around with my camera—days were spent at the conference or skiing (set #2)—under the looming glow of the Silver Legacy and El Dorado, Reno felt less like a Western city stuck in the 1980s and more like a contemporary space opera’s interpretation of one. Think Tijuana as portrayed in Cowboy Bebop.
I had little time to do anything but take pictures near the hotel and eat dinner. Our best dining experience, though certainly not the best food (an award shared by locals’ favorites Kwok’s and Los 4 Vientos), was at Louis Basque Corner. Communal seating is no new concept to us, but the Corner’s communal plating was a first. Choose only your main dishes, then await massive bowls of beans, salad, and chicken stew to share with your neighbors, the social awkwardness lubricated by free-flowing and perfectly palatable house wine.
We had the fantastic fortune of being seated next to two women representing the Australian lamb industry, in Reno for the American Sheep Industry Association’s annual convention. Our pipe dream is to retire in Australia or New Zealand and become sheep herders, and we have planned vacations specifically around sheep, so the Louis Corner maître d’ could not have planned a better seating chart.
The four of us talked all night about raising, slaughtering, selling, and marketing lamb. We bemoaned lamb’s low position on the American protein hierarchy and the American aversion to meat that actually tastes like something. We shared notes on the lamb dishes, our new friends correctly identifying the origin as Coloradan by taste alone. And most importantly, we were promised a tour of Australian lamb operations when we next find ourselves down under.
Our friends reaffirmed the old truism that America’s largest export (for now, at least) is its culture. To our shock, they had indeed heard of the world's biggest little city before traveling to the sheep conference because they had watched Reno 911!. In retrospect, the penetration of our lowbrow comedy into the Australian zeitgeist should not have been surprising given the similarities between the rednecks mockumented on the series and their own Bogans.
On another night I stumbled into a lowrider meetup. I was nervous to ask permission to shoot their cars, but they greeted me with huge smiles and seemed quite pleased that I’d care to do so. They posed the cars, popping trunks and opening doors, pride radiating from the wax and chrome.
Reno revealed itself as much through its people as through its landmarks, each encounter warmer than expected. Between shared bowls of beans, lessons in lamb terroir, and cars gleaming under neon lights, the city was generous with its stories. I stayed in Reno only by necessity, but I left with an appreciation for yet another unique slice of Americana.
Recipes: Reggie’s Portra, Classic Cuban Negative
Reno/Northstar Photosets:
Reno
Northstar
