Drift Project

During my drift through downtown Reno on Wednesday October the 6^th, it became unavoidable for me to notice the massive, vacant casinos and buildings that seem to overwhelm certain parts of the area. Many of these buildings were once thriving but due to decline in business and other possible factors, they have become completely silent. One casino on the Virginia Street strip in particular has been vacant since 1997! There is a website you can visit, http://www.nevadamax.com/page4/tl1.html, which lists both the surviving and fallen casinos in the Reno area. All of these abandoned buildings made me think of Reno’s ‘Tent City’, located off of 4^th street that is occupied by numerous homeless people and exists in close proximity to the local homeless shelter. It is apparent that this ‘City” exists because there is not enough room in the shelter. This reminds me of an available building in San Francisco I saw on a visit there are few years ago. Someone had tagged in large letters on its front, “House the Homeless Here!”…