How I Fell in Love with Reno during the Pandemic
At Cave Rock on Lake Tahoe’s eastshore October 2020. Photo/Claudia Cruz.
Posing with one of the many art murals dedicated to Reno along Virginia Street in February 2019. Photo courtesy of Claudia Cruz
By Claudia Cruz
This past year I have reflected on how the stars aligned so that a New Yorker such as myself lived through the COVID-19 pandemic, not in the Big Apple with my family, but instead in the Biggest Little City by myself.
Well the joke’s on you, universe, because now “I ❤️Reno.”
I moved to northern Nevada in July 2019 via the San Francisco Bay Area, but I’m from Inwood and Washington Heights, the two northernmost neighborhoods of the island of Manhattan. Reno does feel like a real city, which is partly why I feel at home here. I love a place that’s awake 24/7, with vibrant nightlife, great restaurants, walkable streets, and access to a river or another source of water. One with a sense of history, arts and culture, sports, outdoor music events and of course, plenty of opportunities to just plain ol’ people watch.
I loved watching all kinds of people enjoy the Truckee River in 2020. I’m sure it made many feel a sense of normalcy. It also encouraged me to spend many hazy afternoons on its shores.
I knew that Reno was famous for its fun downtown summer festivals, and during my first few weeks here I could feel the vibrations of the vintage cars and motorcycles from my apartment. Thankfully I also managed to venture to Carson City for Nevada Day, and I spent Veterans Day both in Reno and Virginia City in fall 2019. However, because I didn’t want to live under a stack of boxes, I spent most weeks unpacking, sorting, and styling my first roommate-free dwelling in almost nine years. I was finally a real adult—and I had a crush on Reno.
Battletorn
To understand how I fell in love with Reno during one of the worst moments in world history, you need to understand that I’m an old soul. You don’t have to take it from me, but from my own mami.
When I was a young child I remember my mom tell a bewildered man, with whom I was deeply engrossed in conversation, that my brain was made for the year 2000. “Esa niña tiene una mente del año dos mil.” It was circa 1982.
Precocious by nature, by the age of four or five years old, I would engage with anyone that would talk back. I used my gift of gab to learn as much from people, especially teachers and school advisors, to earn scholarships to attend schools where I could listen to more stories about people from all over the United States and the world. My mother’s prophecy came true. By the end of the year 2000, I had already traveled to more than a dozen countries and even many more cities, oftentimes on my own and driven by my own curiosity.
My southwest facing windows in Reno motivated me to have houseplants for the first time in years. During the pandemic I planted a few thai pepper seeds and for the first time ever I harvested fruit. Not bad for a city girl! Photo/Claudia Cruz.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of things went wrong along the way. By the millennium I had been battle tested, torn, and beaten. Had it not been for my single mother’s work ethic and resilience during the height of the crack epidemic, I would not have had the stamina and awareness to stay en la lucha. I should have been less hard on myself along the way. But I’ve always been fiercely independent and that freedom comes with great sacrifice. I totally felt like I fit in with the battleborn spirit of Nevada.
Many of the students I teach at the University of Nevada, Reno, are the age I was in 2000. Even though I am a reporter by trade, I don’t pry into their lives, unless they volunteer the information or I learn it as I try to advise them. When I look at pictures of myself during that period and notice a common thread. I was doing amazing things with amazing people in amazing places—but I was not smiling in the majority of the photos. I wasn’t happy because I had not dealt with my childhood traumas. If you look carefully, you’ll see some of today’s young people don’t smile either.
Still, I had survived New York City so therefore Reno during the pandemic should be “no sweat,” right?
A walk through the White Aspen grove in South Lake Tahoe near the Stateline in late October 2020. Photo/Claudia Cruz.
Battleworn
By early March 2020, I had hit a groove at work and had a weekly Tuesday trivia, Friday karaoke, and Sunday brunch routine. Slowly, day-by-day, my friend circle grew as I engaged with sorority sisters and colleagues at work. I thought to myself that Reno was indeed a little city with a “big” personality. It obviously couldn’t ever be confused with the whole of New York CIty itself; instead it reminded me of neighborhoods in Queens, an area I knew well from my time as a bilingual news editor there after graduate school.
I wasn’t all together surprised nor unprepared for the shutdown. Funny enough, I bought my first emergency kit the afternoon of September 11, 2001, scared that more attacks were imminent. I recall we lived under the menace of bomb threats for weeks afterward. When I moved to California in 2010, I upped the ante and learned earthquake preparedness when I became certified with my community’s emergency response team. I knew I wanted to be ready for the “big one.” I learned to camp both near my car and in the backcountry, sleeping many overnight miles from the nearest highway. I also like to watch natural disaster documentaries and movies, so I had imagined all sorts of worst-case scenarios. In my “to go” kits, I already had N95 masks, propane, and even biodegradable toilet paper prior to the pandemic.
Celebrating Juneteenth in 2020 at the City Plaza in Reno, just two weeks after the renewed Black Lives Matter demonstrations after the death of George Floyd. Photo/Claudia Cruz.
But my emotions surely weren’t prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. The first several months I couldn’t stop crying from the news of the dying in and near my hometown.
My heart also wasn’t prepared for the rage I felt after the murder of George Floyd. I couldn’t stop crying at the senseless killing of Black men and women in the United States.
Finally, and most recently, capping years of misinformation campaigns, my eyes now can’t unsee January 6, 2021. I hope I never have to cry at the fall of our Republic.
I experienced all of this mostly by myself in Reno, and I am tired of crying in isolation. However, I will always appreciate that most every single day of 2020 I felt safe and stable, and I had the foresight to get the emotional support of rescue dogs from the Nevada Humane Society, who kept me “out-of-my-head” even as the world seemed to fall apart around me.
Battle-reborn
In New York City it is hard to see the stars. It was even more so when your fourth story apartment window faced the brick wall of another building a mere feet away.
My views have changed significantly since then. Today I look out my window and see a horizon full of mountain peaks, which I hope are a metaphor that I should continue to rise to new heights. At night, I’m greeted by the constellations, planets, and our magical moon as they crisscross the nighttime sky.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Reno I quenched my desires for social interaction with walks to the dog park where I could safely talk to strangers at a distance. Photo/Claudia Cruz.
If hindsight is going to be 2020, like everything else in my life, I was meant to be in Reno during the pandemic.
In a year that highlighted the health, economic and social inequities among the Black and Brown population of this country, I feel beyond blessed to be alive and employed. I am an Afro Latina with the ability to work from home. As of this writing, I am fully vaccinated. I also have shelter, food, and the warm company of my pandemic foster pup, Scruffy.
At the same time, I feel the weight of my privilege as thousands of Renoites continue to worry about rent payments, feeding and educating their kids, and avoiding this potentially deadly virus. In the disaster movie of today, I am the lucky person with the prized ticket who gets on the “ship.” Still, while I’ve always wanted to be on the list of survivors, I will always question and fight for the right for more folks to also have the opportunity to live. The death toll of more than 500,000 souls lost in the nation and more than 600 in Washoe County will weigh on me for years to come.
In these past 12 months, I have often thought that if I had still been in college during this pandemic my mother, my brother, and I would have been on a different list. My mom, who used to work at the airport cleaning the insides of airplanes, would have been laid off. My brother would have been in high school, and I would have had to focus not only on my courses but also on his classes. “How is it that my world is so different now? And, why Reno of all places?”
Whatever the universe has in store with me, I thank it for letting me spend the last year here. When I look out at Peavine Peak, Mount Rose, and other local summits, I realize that while I’m a long way from home, I am grateful for the friends I have made in Reno in 2020—whether at the dog park, beer gardens, and even over Zoom and social media.
It was easy to fall in love with Reno, and I’ve tried to show it my appreciation. I have actively contributed money, food, and time to the community that I’ve gotten to know walking miles of its streets and trails with my dog. Now I’m actively making plans to revisit my favorite spots along the river this summer and explore more of the far corners of Rancho San Rafael regional park.
Thank you, Reno, for teaching me that I am prepared for the battles life will throw my way.
My foster dog Scruffy takes me out for a walk in downtown Reno. Photo/Claudia Cruz.
Claudia Cruz is the director of internships and experiential learning at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. She also serves as editor of the Reynolds School’s NoticieroMóvil bilingual news service. Prior to that, she worked as a technology reporter for CNET en Español where she covered the industry and corporations like Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook in Silicon Valley. Before joining CNET, she served as editor of the local news site Mountain View Patch, which she launched. Cruz also served a successful three-year term as president of the Bay Area chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. In New York, Claudia served as editor of El Correo de Queens, staff writer for the Queens Courier, and local reporter for The Manhattan Times. She received a Master of Arts from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, a Juris Doctor from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Latin American Studies from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
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