Reno 411! A summer guide to the Biggest Little City in America

If everything you cognize astir nan Biggest Little City (pop: 275K) you learned from a definite “Cops” parody connected Comedy Central, here’s a clang people connected doing nan assemblage municipality right, post-ski rat season.

Triple play

Beautifully backdropped by nan High Eastern Sierra foothills, Reno’s nan Row is hardly of nan “skid” variety. It’s a troika of massive, hustling-n-bustling fancyish hotel-casinos cleanable for america all-poker, no-powder types.

The Eldorado, nan Silver Legacy and Circus Circus span six blocks wholly owned by Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (what Eldorado Resorts rebranded itself arsenic aft acquiring old Caesars and each its properties). Each has its ain unsocial charms: Eldorado skews much upscale and sophisticated, Circus Circus has a elephantine arcade for kids.

But we ended up astatine nan dining- and nighttime life-focused, 1,720-roomed Silver Legacy, location to a mood-lit Ramsay’s Kitchen (warning vegans: champion to debar his delicious, had-parents return connected “lollipops”) and nan ever queued- and gussied-up Aura Ultra Lounge.

Dromophobic? Not a problem. Enter immoderate 1 of nan 3 and you tin easy sojourn nan different 2 without ever stepping ft extracurricular via nan Row’s skyways.

Bonus: While nan overly smokey, stale-smelling floors of nan dizzying beep-booping, ding-a-linging casinos of yore could make non-gamers consciousness a definite benignant of way, these days, nan aged rolled cigaret smog facet has been considerably reduced acknowledgment to vape converts. Much obliged!

Fin city

Two 100 and 50 cardinal years ago, Reno’s scariest animal wasn’t that angsty, 127-foot-tall clown named Topsy struggling to clasp up nan Circus Circus sign. It was nan bowling lane-length prehistoric dino dolphin, er, oversea reptile, called nan ichthyosaur. Fitting, since backmost then, what is now nan desertic Silver State was wholly underwater (some yearn for those days complete nan summer).

Reno’s groovy Nevada Art Museum has devoted 9,000 quadrate feet — its full 3rd level — to these lovingly nicknamed “sea dragons” successful an grounds moving done mid-January of adjacent twelvemonth called Deep Time.

It features nan world’s largest postulation of ichthyosaur fossils including a 33-foot Triassic Period skeleton of one, nan astir complete successful nan world, on pinch a life-size, e-wall-simulated oversea dragon to swim-walk with, nary trunks needed.

Kiddos will particularly emotion (and possibly effort to outdo — sorry, parents) nan exhibit’s room filled wholly pinch a monolithic postulation of dinosaur toys; different room (possibly for less-sober grown-ups) lets you spot nan world, arsenic an ichthy would spot it, “underwater.” GA is $15.

The mural of nan story

Game respects game, and obscurity other is that amended connected show than successful Reno’s unusually cordial thoroughfare creation scene.

Get utilized to nan sanction Erik Burke, aliases alternatively his initials E.B., arsenic you’ll beryllium seeing a batch of it connected Pineapple Pedicab’s creation tours of downtown wherever nan world-renowned and Reno-born E.B. has painted elephantine murals connected nan sides of respective multi-storied buildings, including 1 of his woman (awww) and besides signs them pinch his property astatine their clip of completion. Best part: Local graffiti taggers respectfully time off them beryllium and (mostly) undefiled, according to my no-fear pedaler guideline Taz.

You’ll besides travel crossed different artists’ trippy useful for illustration a flying autobus formerly driven IRL, trim successful half past glued backmost together connected a rising stand, positive different sculptures and installations fortunate capable to person been spared dismantling aft a gig astatine adjacent Burning Man specified arsenic nan Space Whale (a 40-foot, stained-glass mommy cetacean and her calf).

The hour-long circuit of Reno’s other nickname they dream to 1 time make instrumentality — Art Town — is $55 per person, pinch each pedicab sitting up to three.

Vroom pinch a view

Listen here, buddy, driblet nan spray overgarment and backmost distant from nan electrical cars — these are non-Elon creations you’ve stumbled crossed astatine Reno’s National Automobile Museum. In fact, nan very first cars ever marketed were all electric, preceding gas-powered ones by years and years.

You’ll study this and mucho mas astatine nan multi-zoned (classic, title cars, personage mobiles, etc.) NAM, conscionable a five-minute locomotion from nan Row. Its exhibits travel successful ample portion acknowledgment to nan precocious William Fisk Harrah. There was only 1 point nan precocious hotel-casino magnate loved much than gamblizing nan state, and that was cars (he owned 1,400 of them). He had an service of scouts scour nan state for unsocial and classical ones, immoderate virtually uncovered beneath tarps and stashed distant successful barns successful nan mediate of nowhere.

Once Harrah kicked nan tin successful 1978, his monolithic postulation changed hands (mostly into those of then-hospitality elephantine Holiday Inn) but aft nationalist demand, backstage sales, auctions and nan like, galore recovered their measurement to this place, opened successful 1989, now location to immoderate 240-plus uncommon and restored vehicles from nan precocious 19th period up until today.

Ford Model T? Check. Elvis’s Caddy Eldorado Coupe? Yep. That vehicular Frankenstein Jay Leno stitched together from 2 wrecks that’s half-Jeep, half-Ferrari dubbed nan Jerrari? Heck yes. And do you for illustration nan trim of that Doc Brown-worthy DeLorean’s jib complete yonder? “Adopt” it, aliases immoderate of nan different cars connected show (meaning, donate money to thief support it successful tip-top information and onshore your sanction connected a plaque correct adjacent to it). Just nary existent fiddling astir pinch said foster.

Tix are $15 for adults, $10 for kids.