Nevada
How long do you have to be in Reno to be considered ‘local’?
14 Midtown buildings get plaques describing their unique history
The Midtown Historical Plaque project, put together by local historian Alicia Barber, highlights the unique history of specially selected buildings in Midtown Reno.
How long does someone have to be in Nevada to be a “local?”
A lot of locals argue that being born here is the only thing that matters. That’s an increasingly narrow scope, because Nevada by far has the fewest born-in-state residents at just 27%.
In contrast, California-born Nevada residents make up 46% of the population. The odds are pretty good that if you hear someone complaining about new arrivals, they only showed up here from Palo Alto in 2021. (“I moved here five years ago for the wide-open vistas over my back fence,” they say. “Now there’s a whole new housing development behind me, ruining the entire vibe! What gives?”)
Yes, we all see the guy in the ski googles and dust-covered fur coat, just ignore him
I’d argue that people are local when they start ignoring weird Reno stuff.
Last week, I asked readers what their “Reno-est” experiences were, and Laura Briscoe talked about flying out of Reno-Tahoe right after Burning Man.
“The airport was full of scruffy, unwashed-looking characters dressed in black with lots of metallic adornments, women in torn fishnet stockings and heavy black boots, and they were all coated in white dust,” Briscoe wrote. “The only people looking askance at them were obviously not from Reno.”
We might mutter to ourselves about Burners, but after more than three decades of Burning Man shenanigans, at least we’ve stopped gawking at them like idiots.
Of course, that’s not the only thing we’re successfully ignoring — like, say, slot machines in grocery stores. The outsiders are probably right; that’s kind of weird.
Blood, sweat and tears. Tears from wildfire smoke, that is
Or maybe local-ness is something that must be earned.
Living through at least one boom-and-bust cycle — and sticking it out anyway — would be a good place to start. That would mean nobody’s really local if they weren’t here before the housing market bottomed out in 2012.
At minimum, someone should live through a big snow year or a rough wildfire year, right? Our last big winter was 2022-23, when snow collapsed roofs in the Sierra; our most recent wildfire year was 2024, when the Davis Fire destroyed 12 homes, threatened hundreds more and canceled several days of school.
Seems like that kind of suffering should bring some sort of solidarity to everyone who experienced it, right?
What’s the ‘tell’ that someone’s not local?
What’s your personal tell that someone isn’t from around here? Is it mispronouncing Kietzke or Kuenzli? Or talking about the UNR Wolf Pack game? Is it asking dumb questions like whether or not Lake Tahoe is manmade? Or referring to the freeways as “the 80” or “the 580”? (Or, for that matter, calling the north-south freeway “580” instead of “395”?) Let me know at bmcginness@rgj.com, and vote in the poll below as to what makes someone a legitimate local.
Brett McGinness is the engagement editor for the Reno Gazette Journal. He’s also the writer of The Reno Memo — a free newsletter about news in the Biggest Little City.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom won’t admit it, but a move by President Donald Trump is especially helpful to drivers in California — and Nevada.
Gasoline prices are pressuring consumers around the country. On Friday, the average U.S. price was $4.55 a gallon. In California, that would be a bargain. The average there was $6.16 a gallon. Nevada’s average was $5.23 a gallon, the result of around 88 percent of the state’s gasoline coming from California.
It might be getting worse — regardless of what happens in Iran.
In recent months, two major California refineries have shut down. That represented a 17 percent reduction in California’s refining capacity. Their closures weren’t caused by the Iran war, but by Gov. Newsom and California’s relentless attacks on fossil fuels.
To make up for the fuel it won’t extract or refine in-state, California depends on imports from foreign countries.
“We are importing 30 percent of our crude oil from the Middle East,” Mike Ariza, a former control board supervisor at the Valero Benicia Refinery, said in an interview. He has been warning the public about California’s potential fuel shortage. “There are not very many ships left on the way that have fuel,” he said last month.
Last week, KCRA-TV in Sacramento reported that “about 2 million barrels of oil are in the process of being unloaded in Long Beach off of the last California-bound tanker that got through the Strait of Hormuz.”
At a California legislative hearing Tuesday, Siva Gunda, the vice chairman of the California Energy Commission, said the state has enough gasoline to accommodate demand for the next six weeks. That’s not a very long time, especially given that it takes weeks or months for oil to travel from the Middle East to California. And that process won’t begin until the Strait of Hormuz reopens.
There is a region, however, with abundant oil available for sale and safe passage — the southeastern United States. Unfortunately, the Jones Act, an antiquated 1920 law, mandates that only U.S.-flagged ships may move cargo between U.S. ports. But only 55 of the more than 7,000 oil tankers worldwide comply with this requirement.
This is where Mr. Trump rode to the rescue. Late last month, the White House announced Mr. Trump would suspend the Jones Act for another 90 days. In March, he originally waived it for 60 days. This will make it easier for California and Nevada to obtain domestic product.
If only Mr. Trump could also suspend the destructive energy policies imposed by Gov. Newsom and California Democrats.
LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — An adoptable pet is in the spotlight for “Furever Home Friday,” with Amy from the Nevada SPCA featured in a segment highlighting an animal available for adoption today.
The Nevada SPCA encouraged viewers looking to add a pet to their family to consider adopting.
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