Common Ground
Gathering together in the "before times": an open house at The Depot on Reno's East 4th Street in January 2020. Photo/Megan Berner.
By Alicia Barber
I keep returning in my mind to a cold night in January of 2020, exactly one year ago. We were gathered together at The Depot, a restaurant in downtown Reno, and the place was packed, echoing with the chaotic hubbub of voices and laughter. We spent hours there, eating and drinking, listening to live music, and—most of all—talking, late into the evening. I vividly remember having one great conversation after another until finally making my way home.
For me, this pandemic year has spurred a kind of accelerated nostalgia, a longing for moments in time that weren’t so long ago chronologically but feel irretrievably distant. Like everyone, I ache for the company of friends and family, but this night last January wasn’t a gathering with loved ones. It was a community open house, to talk about a proposed new public art piece to be installed on East 4th Street this coming year. I was there to share historical images and stories of the neighborhood with neighbors, business owners, and other residents, who chatted about what they’d like to see. Most of those great conversations I had were with people I’d just met.
It might sound odd to reminisce about a public open house through the haze of nostalgia. But amid everything else that we are missing out on in this pandemic year, there’s a particular loss that for me strikes right at the intersection of the personal and the professional. It’s that shared sense of community that happens when people—friends, acquaintances, and strangers—spend time in a room together, talking about a place they love.
My life’s work revolves around places: cities, neighborhoods, buildings, and public spaces. I think and write about what they mean to people, and why. I research them, interpret them, and try to preserve them. I promote public discussion of what happens to them. In the process, I hope to help strengthen our collective relationship to them, and by extension, to others who care about them, too.
As with so many other aspects of our lives, 2020 has knocked our relationships with places off kilter. Whether by necessity or choice, our personal geographies have inexorably shifted. Most of us aren’t frequenting places we once visited regularly, even daily. Whether it’s schools, libraries, offices, stores, theaters, restaurants, or the homes of friends and relatives, many places that have meant something to us have essentially disappeared from our lives.
The absence may feel like a hiatus, a presence we fully expect to be restored once this moment has passed. For some, it tragically may be a permanent displacement—from a favorite restaurant gone out of business, a home or workplace we can no longer call our own, a space bereft of a person we loved.
If and when we do return, those places may themselves be transformed. Change is inevitable, of course, but on our everyday landscapes, it generally occurs at what feels like a slower pace, as we witness those changes gradually unfolding over time. These days, however, driving a once-familiar route after a long absence can have the effect of returning to a childhood home after years spent away—the jarring sight of high-rise apartments where houses once stood, regular haunts razed to the ground.
Ceol Irish Pub, in Reno’s Midtown District, announced its closure early in the pandemic. Its owners have announced their hopes to reopen later at a new location. Photo/Alicia Barber.
I’ve taken to jumping in my car and driving around Reno at random times, just to take stock of a terrain I once knew by heart. Spaces once teeming with laughter and chatter and music now sit silent, their darkened windows staring vacant at the street: the venerable Santa Fe Hotel, site of generations of family-style Basque dinners and celebrations; Ceol Irish Pub, where we swapped stories and songs (and pints) during the 2019 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl; The Little Nugget on Virginia Street, home of the legendary Awful Awful burger; Jub Jub’s Thirst Parlor, where bands from Reno and points far beyond rocked late into the night. Some are gone for good, swept unceremoniously into the corridors of memory, some vow to reopen elsewhere at a more auspicious time.
There’s a sorrowful suddenness about their departures, most occurring with little or no warning. Far removed from our sight, their owners and operators no doubt spent hours, days, or months staring grimly at unforgiving spreadsheets, weighing risk and debt and profit margins before making the gut-wrenching decision to close their doors. But to those on the outside—poof. Gone in an instant.
Newly cleared of blocks of historic buildings, the Gateway area on the south side of the UNR campus now provides an unobstructed view of the university’s oldest building, Morrill Hall. Photo/Alicia Barber.
The forces of change continue to wash over our public landscapes, too—our streets, parks, and plazas. Some have been transformed radically since we all took shelter last spring. Drive to the southern edge of the University of Nevada, Reno campus and you face a startling sight: blocks of vacant lots where century-old Victorian houses, motels, apartment buildings, and storefronts once stood. Over the summer and fall all were demolished, their familiar forms replaced by empty patches of dirt and chain-link fences.
In recent months, private landowners have proposed or suggested that the City of Reno permanently close city streets adjacent to their holdings so they can build over the top of them. I pass Stevenson Street and Ralston Street and Riverside Drive on the west side of downtown and wonder what those closures would mean for our community. City leaders debate whether to keep or remove the Space Whale, the giant Burning Man sculpture installed years ago in front of Reno City Hall. Blocks to the north, others have decided that the lids that cover the railroad trench near the Reno Arch, where the tracks were lowered years ago, will finally be covered with landscaping and murals.
These discussions aren’t happening entirely in private, of course, but I worry it can feel that way, when the usual venues where our public bodies meet have closed, forcing deliberations online where not everyone can view them, if they even know how.
And so we adjust. Instead of workshops and in-person meetings and packed open houses, we Zoom and videoconference and live stream. Like many other developments, the East 4th Street public art project moved forward, with finalists presenting their proposals remotely to the proper city committees and commissions, allowing the public to watch from home. But there was no group visit to the site, no public receptions or presentations, no informal chats with the artists, no spontaneous conversations among residents to discuss their preferences, no people in a room together, talking about a place they love.
That absence of presence has an undeniable impact on our ability to engage, with decision makers and with each other, about the landscapes we share, particularly when the subject turns difficult. Some of the more divisive topics that have emerged in Reno during this pandemic year involve our commemorative landscapes, questions of what and who we choose to honor and name in public space. This past summer, a private group pursued the installation of a 19-ton monument to the Charters of Freedom on the grounds of the Washoe County Courthouse. Others demanded the removal of the Newlands name from the landscape of the Old Southwest neighborhood due to Senator Francis G. Newlands’ racist political views.
These are difficult conversations to have under any circumstances, straddling the intersections of memory and place, politics and power. But they’re especially challenging when we can’t gather together in person to share our thoughts and feelings, unimpeded by “unstable connections” and video lags.
I’ve been a part of several virtual conversations about the future of public places, spaces, and sites over the past few months—remote workshops, talks, and live-streaming panels, where discussion with an invisible audience only happens via written “chat.” I’ve joined ad hoc committees, where participants take turns speaking and listening, with the disconcerting knowledge that a person who appears to be looking straight at you may actually be gazing at their own projected image. I’ve viewed online meetings with public officials represented by a static square where a human face should be. And I worry how accountable any of us can be for our actions and words without looking directly into the eyes of those they affect.
In the end, although these tech-enabled events can get the ball rolling, they are ultimately limited in achieving the level and extent of participation our public spaces deserve. Our shared landscapes belong to all of us, and our conversations about them accordingly need to be larger, and longer, and infinitely more inclusive than can be accomplished remotely. It’s imperative that everyone who wants to participate in these discussions can do so. Otherwise, we risk subjecting wide swaths of our community to the unwelcome shock of encountering a once-beloved space forever altered while they weren’t looking.
The forced separations of this year have shown me, like never before, how important for us to gather in places together, not just with our friends and family, but with our neighbors, our fellow residents, and our elected officials, to assert our irrefutable presence, to share our stories and our truths, to shake hands, to share a smile or tears or frustrations, to strive toward some degree of mutual understanding. We need to be in a room, together, whether that room is the Council chambers in City Hall, or a school auditorium, or a bustling restaurant, whether the topic is a park, a monument, a city street, a public building, or public memory.
For me, that night last January on East 4th Street retains its luster because of what we accomplished that evening, together in a room, literally embodying what a community should be, and what I know we can be again—a group of people of all different backgrounds, ages, and perspectives, celebrating, inhabiting, and striving toward common ground.
Photo/Alicia Barber.
Alicia Barber is a public historian, educator, and writer working at the intersections of public memory, historic landscapes, and community identity. Through her Reno-based historical consulting firm, Stories in Place, she creates interpretive exhibits, oral histories, digital features, and installations throughout the state of Nevada. She is the creator of the KUNR public radio series Time & Place, manager of the website/app Reno Historical, and the author of Reno’s Big Gamble: Image and Reputation in the Biggest Little City and The Barber Brief, a free newsletter promoting civic engagement in local development. Dr. Barber serves on the Nevada Board of Museums and History and holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
Thank you for visiting Humanities Heart to Heart, a program of Nevada Humanities. Any views or opinions represented in posts or content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage are personal and belong solely to the author or contributor and do not represent those of Nevada Humanities, its staff, or any donor, partner, or affiliated organization, unless explicitly stated. At no time are these posts understood to promote particular political, religious, or ideological points of view; advocate for a particular program or social or political action; or support specific public policies or legislation on behalf of Nevada Humanities, its staff, any donor, partner, or affiliated organization. Omissions, errors, or mistakes are entirely unintentional. Nevada Humanities makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on these posts or found by following any link embedded in these posts. Nevada Humanities reserves the right to alter, update, or remove content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage at any time.