I’ve been studing a lot of Reno history lately and wanted to orient myself to the old places like Harolds, the Palace and Bank Clubs, Golden Hotel and New China club. Found a good display of historic photos on the skybridge over the tracks at Fitzgerald’s. You could look at old photos of Commercial Row and look right out the window at their location. The largest casino in the world at one time is a concrete walkway to Harrahs now. Of course the Horseshoe is easily indentifiable but only hobbiests would recognise which building was the Primadonna. I kept running into older dealers who had worked in some of the not-too-old but gone clubs and remembered the old places. Never had a real opportunity to bs about the days with them though.
Too bad there is isn’t a display like Steve Cutler’s Las Vegas collection in Reno. There was a letter-to-the-editor suggesting such a feature while I was visiting.

I did discover the National Automobile Museum while in Reno, housing rementants of William Harrah’s colossal collection. www.automuseum.org a very enjoyable 2 hours for me. I visited his collection in it’s heyday and consider it a national resource destroyed by corporate greed. You could wander not only the display areas (50 Lincolns in a row!) but also poke around in sheds containing cars awaiting restoration. I stood gape-mouthed with others in a theatre there watching a movie filmed from a camera mounted low on the front bumper of a 12 cylinder Ferrari sans mufflers blasting full throttle through the early morning streets of Paris. Sliding over cobblestones and barreling down century old streets to a lakeside park where the driver meets a pretty girl, they kiss and walk away down a path. This legendary (to gear-heads) short is titled “Rendevous” and is hard to find and quite pricey. I’m still impressed by the movie and Harrah’s cars 25 years later.

I visited the antique shops at the defunct Comstock casino. A few chips at top TCR prices and casino glassware, ashtrays and such. You’d do better on eBay I believe. I did find a very nice copy of Leon Mandel’s William Fisk Harrah for $10. No bargain but not an easy to find book either. I’m more interested in what Mandel had to say about Harrah than Harrah himself and had been casually looking for this book.