Muggy. Hot. Uncomfortable. Kind of stinky.
That describes the night of June 28th, 2008 in downtown Reno.
What a perfect night to go and visit a pseudo-word-of-mouth art event in a 77 year old art deco hotel with little air circulation and questionable sewer lines.
You guessed it, your’s truly ended up at the “Nada Motel” event at the El Cortez downtown.
I had been hearing snippets of this shin-dig going to occur for about a couple of weeks. No one could tell me anything except that it was these four days (June 26, 27, 28 and 29) and was from noon until midnight. Basically artists would rent out motel rooms and… do whatever it is they do. No one had any real solid events, there was no, “Oh, such and such will be there! These people will be performing!” I was skeptical, and very, very curious. At most it would be something avant garde, great art and exhibitors sweeping me into inspiration and brushing elbows with artists, and the least it could be was a flop, with just Renoites being social parasites and looking for a reason to hang out and act like ass-stains.
Fortunately, it was neither. And, well, it was a little of both. It did destroy a few preconceived notions I had going in, one because I had one, name it, one event that I could commit to. Some martial arts demonstrations and a no-holds-barred pillow fight called the “Cockfight.” That was kind of starting around 9:00pm. I think.
When I walk into the El Cortez lobby, I was all too happy to hold the door open for the owner of the Saigon Pearl, a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant tucked into the right side of the hotel. He’s a nice man that makes good, cheap Pho soup. He recognized me and probably hoped I was coming to patronize his place of business, but to no avail. Sorry Mr. Pho Soup Man, next time. He’ll get over it, I’m sure.
Brazen as always, I walk to the front desk man, who also has probably seen me briefly pass through the lobby for soup. I ask him where the event is, and he gruffly responded, “…upstairs… floors two and three…” I ask him where the pillow fight was happening, and he stared at me gruffly too. He responds with nothing but stares. He’s completely unamused. He eyes artists, hipsters, drunks and what can only be described as “Burners,” (Burning Man attendees as a social scene and class), with detest. I thank him kindly and plod upstairs.
Losing myself in the faux-mezzanine, I make it up to the second floor. There are drunks and high people. Everywhere. Clinging to the banister. Each other. Art. The ground. A smashed girl demands of me as I excuse myself past, “Gimme a hug,” she blabbers, and she smells like feet.
“Um, no. I’m trying to find an event. Thank you though.” I respond.
“Gim…*hic*… me a HUG, dammit.”
I repeat myself, thanking her as before. I keep moving past her, trying to find room 303.
“What an… as…ass…hole what the FUCK he couldn’t give me a hug…” et-cetera, et-cetera. To which another girl says something unintelligible to her and they get angry at each other. I’m… baffled. Sweaty. Confused. Still on floor two. Looking for 303.
Luckily, I pushed my way through people in hallways, staircases (these staircases are built by 1931 standards, so they’re about one person wide…period.) and doorways. I do manage to find art. And artists.
A nice collection of what only looks like santaria on a bed. There are dolls having a tea party. One has a disco ball, puncture wounds from some beast, and an erect plush penis. In a closet, is a porcelain catholic prayer box. The lady artist is quite nice, and seemingly sober. I didn’t have any pen and paper or I’d tell you her name.
The second room proves, at least for my taste in art, folks and fun, a bit more friendly. Here we have the sculptor of some diabolical wind instrument blowing into his art. He was a fine man, and was helping to show off some other art that is featured in some local restaurants. He evidently sculpts metal and wood media together, and it’s pretty neat to look at. I had a good conversation about his works and he was probably the most friendly of the bunch I came across at the event upstairs. The last picture shows a barnyard scene that took up a whole motel room that I found pretty interesting, which was made by the nice man. He explained that was the reason for the overalls. Hooray! It had me wondering who had to clean it all up, but then again, it was completely self-contained. It also reeked of hay. Well done!
Here is a picture of the end of the hallway on floor 2.
Then there’s the lounge hotel room. It was done-up dark and funky, a tinge of swank, with lively talk and less completely intoxicated people, that actually seemed somewhat irritated that I was taking pictures like a shitty tourist. I did explain to them what I was doing, and who I was doing it for, but that didn’t matter. I was some fan boy. Okay, fine. Unfortunately, test-running a new cheap camera proved interesting, since the light was very low and flickery. Exposed shots proved… well, artful, or just the result of a crappy camera, you be the judge.
Lastly, I found a photographer that graciously let me take pictures of her setup, and was all-too happy to let me take pictures of her too. She also, was seemingly inebriated. I signed her guest book as she requested and found other things to go do.
Which pretty much meant going upstairs. What was irritating on the second floor with the hallways of people was worse upstairs. There was seemingly less art, more people, and the attitudes of some of the people as you looked inside was, “Who are you, what do you want?” I’m sure they were hoping I had a sack of marijuana or some beer, and found me a useless cog by just producing a camera. I finally locate room 303, where I was looking for a friend of mine, to which only one of the four people really knew who he was. They were nearly naked with interesting tattoos. I did not photograph them.
I managed to end up in a room with a gal named Jaquelyn, and a cute young guy pretty much hanging out by themselves. There was a web of orange lights weaved at the head of the bed, and a curious back-lit art piece at the foot of the bed. I ended up talking with both of them for a bit, being very nice people, enjoying one of the best downtown views there was, and suddenly remembering I had to go and find the event downstairs. (Jaqueline, if you read this, I stupidly lost that piece of paper with your email, but you can contact me here with it and I’ll send you larger pictures of what I took below!!!)
Crap, the event. I’m on the third floor. Time for this claustrophobifest to end. I need air. I push my way back through the maw of people. Artists, drunkards, fan boys and girls, social parasites, what have you. I quickly escape to the front doors. There’s a fire truck. Evidently, there’s too many hippies clogging the stairways, and in an 1931 building with grandfathered fire codes (meaning, well… none), that was a problem. Fortunately, that meant the passageways upstairs were to be clear!
“Did you hear there’s a pillow fight and some martial arts inside?!” Exclaimed someone from the crowd.
Golly! The thing I came to see. “Where is it?” I asked. Someone told me to follow them.
Through a back hallway system that reminds me of finding bathrooms around Chinese shops and restaurants in San Francisco (a veritable maze of stink and mustiness) I end up in a long stage hall that looks more fit for a church than an old hotel. There’s plastic, orange traffic guard mesh, feathers, feathers everywhere, pillows, and a pretty girl urging people to bash each other with pillows. There’s a red ring of tape which I learn later is, “out of bounds.”
Pretty girl or not, the folks aren’t having it. It’s about 85′F in the room, it smells vaguely like old poo, and people are lazy and drunk. Which kind of sucked, considering I thought it was kind of a fascinating idea and I walked a good two miles to see it… There were, however, some satisfyingly notable exceptions. A few good fights did break out in the times I hung out. Evidently if you lost, there were some real chicken feet someone plucked out of a jar that got hung on the “…wall of shame…” with a quick twist of a power drill and a screw. Macabre! There are also clever, huge chicken feet on the globe lights above the arena.
This one made me laugh, because I encouraged two hippies to just give up the love and beat the shit out of each other. Male hippie wins by cheap shot! Smack! Good show, sir!
As a bonus side-show, or a distraction if you will, there was an excellent demonstration from some of the boys at Aikido of Reno (on Wells Ave). Joey M, uchi-deshi of the dojo, practices with Aric, also uchi-deshi (that means they’re hardcore students and live at the dojo). They made neat sounds hitting the floor, bashing bokken (wooden swords) and making the guttural “ki-ai” noises, basically yelling like samurai. Good stuff. It was the most artful samurai battle ever, surrounded by colorful feathers inebriated visitors and fallen pillow warriors. Nice job gents.
Right before I left, smelling the return of the evil fire smoke inundating the Truckee Meadows from afar, a man brought something in the room that looks like a gun. A gun? Count me in! But this is no ordinary rifle, it has some thingamajig and some wires… it’s… a neon rifle! The sculptor (like most artists, I didn’t catch their names) was a super-cool guy, and I helped him plug in the curiosity. Lit up, it was indeed impressive. A good closing to an odd night!
Overall, I have to say, the Nada Motel idea is a GREAT one. It’s an ideal setting with people basically wandering around wherever they want to, strange art, alluring signs saying “come inside…” sometimes interesting people and great views of Reno outside of the hotel windows of the exhibitors. Sometimes there was great art. Sometimes someone was vomiting in a corner.
The parts I liked was how social it was. You wouldn’t guess it by the way I described it, but something that people probably weren’t thinking about was, the history of the hotel. Hotels were once bustling apartments, for either a few days, a few weeks or a month, where there were no televisions or telephones, and you were probably lucky to have a radio (in a few decades, I suppose.) What did people do? They ate out. They socialized in parlors or lobbies. They held events in theater-like rooms. They talked to one another. They mingled and marauded about. They stood outside. They stood inside. They just… were there. The windows were probably always open, it might have been hot in the summer, and the sounds of Reno nightlife kind of crept inside amongst the people. That’s how it was tonight, in a modern, odd incarnation of sorts.
I also enjoyed the spirit of the event. It was basically open to anyone, and people treated it like a three-day art getaway. There really was no one that said “no.” It made everyone happy there, even if it was being taken advantage of a little. The event itself didn’t produce hardly any jerks, besides hug-girl and the grumbling desk attendant. It was overall pretty fun.
What I didn’t like was light to moderate abuse of an unwritten code of “art ethics” that I like to see in events like this. Not everyone was disrespectful, but a handful were. You don’t play with people’s art, you ask people’s permission to take pictures, you respect the premises you walk that isn’t your own, and you try and control yourself if you decide to indulge in a little of whatever it is you do. I also wasn’t thrilled that there were definitely people there just just taking, consuming, basking in someone else’s hard work, meanwhile, emptying any dignity as they emptied their stomachs on the carpet a few times. I’ve witnessed many instances these handful, fringe few ruining future endeavors of events like this and similar.
Granted, I was there on a Friday night, and the event was from noon until midnight, technically. I can’t give a fair shake to an event that I only spent a few hours randomly at the end-time. Then again, I’m just a casual Renoite. I go where I’m interested, and I trust that event will have a good a chance as any to say to me, “Hey, I suck,” or “Hey, I’m rad,” or “Hey, I really don’t know what the hell I am.”
I will go back to Nada Motel in the future, just because this is only the second year of the event, and perhaps it’ll have a little more attendance by a few more artists than party goers. Maybe there’ll be a schedule of events made more public to the right people and thus, more interest.
I’m easy-going on infant events, because people are trying to do something. Something that isn’t a $20 cover charge at a bullshit show or club, something that isn’t Artown, something that isn’t Sparks Farmer’s Market. It may not be something great now, endure a lot of questions and criticism, but the spirit is there, and sure, it has to evolve.
Nada Motel, even in my critique, have quite a few things in common with many projects in Reno. Local websites, basement shows, youth projects, DIY, local publishers, store owners, etc. It’s a long, hard road to get something going. The event IS this town we call Reno.
Reno has a tendency, as we well know, to make some fascinating things happen. They may not be perfect, clean or predictable, but that’s why some of us stay here, create here, live here, work here, raise families here and enjoy it here.
If you read this in enough time, go check the event out, perhaps come back, comment and let me know if I just caught a bad night, or the best night. At the time of this writing, it’s only half over, that means Saturday and Sunday are still on.
- Gay Rodeo
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