Friday Foto Finish Fiesta - My Reno

It's Friday and it's a Fiesta !! At least it is, thanks to Candid Carrie ! :-)

I have a love/hate relationship with the little city that I currently live in.

There are parts of the city that I love and enjoy spending time in. The Truckee River is one such area.

There is a trail beside the river, that enables you to walk or bike from Reno through to Sparks and beyond. Eventually, they are hoping to extend the trail from Pyramid Lake through to Lake Tahoe. That will make for a wonderful ride or hike..

The river in downtown Reno, also has a Kayak park and there are areas for people to picnic and swim. In Summer. it's a very popular place..


This is a view along the Truckee River, looking towards downtown Reno.

It's from a roll of black & white film I shot a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure what the camera shop did to it, when they were developing it, but the originals ended up all washed out. You could not make out the mountains in the background or the details of the clouds..

I played around with the photo, with some editing software and ended up with a sort of blue-grey tint to the photo. I rather like it, as it sort of gives a moody look to the photo, illustrating the transition from late winter to early spring..


Part of the River walk in downtown Reno.

Clicking on any of the photos in this post, will give you clearer detail. In this one, partially hidden by the trees, are a couple of the homeless characters that spend their days along the river, waiting for the shelter to open at night. When I walked past, they were sharing their food with some of the myriad bird life that also live along the river..


Reno is a city of contrasts in other ways. At one end of a street you can have a million dollar house and at the other end you can find a mobile home park..


Another thing that has always fascinated and repelled, at the same time, me about Reno
is the way that you can very quickly move from a very pretty area to a drab, dirty, run down stretch.

Our city fathers have been wondering why we are losing conventions and why the tourist trade is dropping.

This photo might be one of the answers.

This is an old motel and bar, directly across from one of our big Casinos. It's been in various states of disrepair for years. At one point, many years ago, it was a well known motel, where some of the rich and famous were rumoured to have stayed while waiting for their quickie Reno divorces.

Then it became one of the 'weekly' motels for the homeless and the bar became a biker type hang out.

In more recent years it has been boarded up. There was a tragic fire there about two years ago, in which two homeless men, who had broken into it seeking shelter, died.

They finally pulled it down last week, but the resulting vacant lot is almost just as much an eyesore..

So many contrasts, this city has...