Tag: carsoncity

Even small towns like Carson City aren't safe from shooting sprees. Of course, ours involve pellet guns, not rifles, and shooting at windows, not people. But still.

Yesterday afternoon a couple of guys got it in their heads to go joyriding up and down Carson Street, shooting out windows along the way. They shot about a dozen windows, then an hour later came back and shot a dozen more. They were finally stopped in the Ranchos after one of the victims called in their license plate number. Amazingly, only the driver was arrested. His passenger was free to go. I'd love to hear what evidence the police have to convince them he wasn't involved.

The driver, who was arrested, is a convicted arsonist who was just paroled from prison last August. So much for rehabilitation, I guess. I suppose we're just lucky he decided to only go after windows this time, and not return to his firestarting ways.

Update: I posted a few photos of the broken windows.

Ever heard of Mr. Pickle's Sandwich Shop? Me neither, at least until last Christmas when we drove over to Sacramento and saw them everywhere. But the Sacramento area has plenty of restaurants I've never heard of, so I really didn't give Mr. Pickle's a second thought. Looked like just another sandwich place.

So we got home to Carson City, and within a week I heard about what new restaurant opening up in town? That's right, a Mr. Pickle's. The place we had never heard of. So of course we had to travel over there for lunch and check them out.

And you know what? It's really pretty good. You'd never know it by looking at the inside of the place. You'd never even know it was a chain restaurant. The inside is so bland and the sign almost looks homemade, so if I hadn't seem them in Sacramento I would have thought it was just some local operation.

The food is super good and super filling, though. My wife got a turkey sandwich, and she was only able to eat about a third of it. I had a #16 - "The Cousin", basically a chicken parmesan sandwich. I chowed down the whole thing, and now I'm thinking I might have to skip dinner.

So Mr. Pickle's has been added to our list of good eats, if you're in the mood for a filling sandwich. If you want to go try it out yourself, it's located in the North Carson Crossing shopping center, right next to the new College Parkway Wal*Mart. I added it to the Around Carson Dining Guide, and the Carson City store also apparently has its own website at www.mrpicklescc.com, but it doesn't seem to be working now.

And don't forget to get a "Giant Pickle" to go!

It's been months and months, but I've finally published another update to the Ormsby House Renovation Gallery.

This update is so far reaching I couldn't even assign it to just one month. So I called it the Winter 2006 Update because there are pictures in there from November, December and January. And yet it's still only one page, because there really wasn't a lot of exciting stuff going on. The new sidewalk got laid down, and the pool's sunroom was built on the roof.

Go check it out.

Bob Moore wrote yesterday about this article in the Las Vegas Sun. The whole gist of the article is basically that we here in Carson City are a bunch of small town yokels with white picket fences in our front yards, and the legislators from Las Vegas can't wait to go home. Underlying the whole thing is a thinly-veiled "Vegas should be the Capital" vibe. There aren't even any metal detectors in the Legislature Building, for god's sake! How do you live?

Basically it's just more big-city-vs-small-town crap, easy to ignore. That the newspaper prints this kind of garbage just shows you why blogs are so popular. People are looking for an antidote to this kind of writing.

The South Carson construction projects just keep on trucking along. The two big ones that I can see during my daily commute are the Oasis Trailer Park, and the Casino Fandango's movie theater.

The Oasis Trailer park has been completely wiped out. They've been working for the last year to move all the trailers out, but ever since the bulldozers moved in several weeks ago they've been knocking down trees and the few buildings that were left. Now they've even ripped up the streets, and it's just a big empty dirt lot.

What's going in here is another retail/office complex from the Ribeiro Corp. It will be called the Carson-Tahoe Quail Park, to follow the Ribeiro tradition of putting the word "quail" in all their properties.

And just up the street, the Fandango movie theater is coming together nicely. The four walls are up, and now they're working on the roof. It's supposed to be open by this summer, in time for the next Harry Potter movie, and for once I can actually believe a construction estimate when I see one. What a shock!

Curry Street is reopen too, at least from Clearview north to the Fandango's parking garage. It's still a really rough dirt road; I guess they're putting off paving it until later. But at least you can drive along it and get a closer look at the movie theater. And the top floor of the parking garage is open again. Since the only access to it is from Curry Street, it's been closed for months.

Here are some more of those aerial photos I found of Carson City. These are pretty fantastic, being shots of downtown from sometime around 1981-1984. You can see how far we've come in 25 years.

Click on any picture for a supersize version. And I like the last picture so much I pulled out a bunch of closeups and put those on their own page. Check it out.

Remember to look at that page of closeups.

I'm not sure if I knew that fantasy author David Eddings lived in Carson City. I mean, if you had asked me last week I would have had no idea, but when I saw him on the front page of the paper today, there was a faint recognition in the back of my mind, like I wasn't surprised. So maybe I did know at one time.

But anyway, it's got to be embarrassing to get on the front page of the paper for accidentally burning down your own garage and office, like Eddings did. But it's even more embarrassing to show up on the front page still wearing your robe and slippers.

Copyright Nevada Appeal

Ouch. If I ever do anything stupid enough to make the paper, I'll have to remember to get dressed first.

Construction is really taking off on the First Presbyterian Church on Nevada Street this week. This is the church that was in danger of being demolished because it was too old, too small, and too unstable to hold services in. But the community spoke out and convinced the congregation to save the church, at least the historic sanctuary which is the oldest part. Their plan now involves demolishing only part of the church complex, a part that was built in the mid 20th century, and then building a brand-new extension that melds with the old section.
Demolition on that mid-century part of the church started in earnest today.

The heavy equipment was brought in, and within a matter of hours that middle-aged portion was reduced to rubble.

These walls are part of the church's first expansion, which was built in 1890. In the 1940s another expansion was tacked onto it, the one that was destroyed today. So these walls are seeing the light of day for the first time in 60 years.

In the long view you can make out the outline of where the old building used to be by following where the naked brick meets the painted brick. In my opinion, part of the project should be to strip off all that white paint and let the bricks be natural again.

These fellows were finishing up the day's work by boarding up doorways and windows so the cold January air won't get in the church.

As soon as this rubble is cleared, the foundation for the new sanctuary should start being laid.

In the Reno Gazette Journal: Carson River project rolls forward. It's a story all about the plans to tame the Carson River as it runs along the edge of Carson City, and make it friendly to boaters and kayakers. Right now there are some definite hazards out there in the water, like sharp rocks, old dams, rusted cars, and who knows what else. The plan would be to clean all that stuff up and improve access so it's easier to park and get to the water's edge.

A map of the Carson River and specific places that will be improved. A larger version can be found here.

The company I work for, Resource Concepts, is playing a huge part in bringing this plan to reality. Lynn Zonge specifically, who is quoted in the RGJ article, is a big part of making this happen. She's a former Grand Canyon river guide, so she knows her stuff. And she was also one of the designers on the Truckee River project in downtown Reno. She'll be giving several public presentations on the Carson River so any of you can show up, see the details, and ask questions or make comments. Here's the schedule:

* January 16, 5:30 p.m., Carson City Community Center
* January 17, 6 p.m., Community Center
* January 22, 6 p.m., Community Center
* February 5, 6 p.m. Carson City Hall
* February 7, 5:30 p.m., Community Center
* February 28, 3:30 p.m., Community Center
* March 15, 8:30 a.m., Community Center

The Carson River isn't huge, and it doesn't cut through downtown like the Truckee does in Reno, but it still has a lot of unused potential, and this project should hopefully raise awareness and get a few more people out there to the riverbanks.

I couldn't help myself. A few pictures of new stuff happening around the area.

Some more new signalheads have been installed at Stephanie Way. A sign assures us that the signal will go live in "2 weeks".

I think there's only one more new pole to install, the one that will rise out of the center island and contain the left turn signals.

The Presbyterian Church in Carson City is gathering heavy equipment. I think this is all part of their project to tear down part of the church, renovate and reinforce the historic central sanctuary, which dates back to before Nevada became a state, and build a larger building to hold services in.

And lastly, this is something I've been saying was necessary for years. They've finally put up a monument sign for Clear Creek Plaza. This has been needed ever since the new Wal*Mart opened, because it's nearly impossible to see the store from the highway. Particularly when it first opened, nobody knew exactly where it was or where to turn. I once ran into a lady in the Target parking lot asking me how to get to Wal*mart. She had completely missed the turn because there was no sign. So now, she won't have to worry about getting lost. And once they get a Trader Joe's sign installed in there, people won't have trouble finding that store either.