Reno Street Audio

Heather Goulding, running for District 27 of the Nevada State Assembly, rides bikes whenever and wherever she can, including on her commutes, and with big tires, she handles all weather and steep inclines.

Goulding, currently a senior project manager in utility energy efficiency programs, is bringing that can do spirit to her campaign to become a representative for a district encompassing portions of the North Valleys including Panther Valley and Sun Valley.

Listen to her reasons for running in our latest in a series of political episodes ahead of 2024 voting.

With two fourth place finishes in previous citywide mayoral elections, William Mantle, a raw data person who likes to ask questions, is now running for Ward 6, the new ward in South Reno with about 40,000 residents, high home prices, wild horses and plenty of new multi-unit apartment complexes. Listen to his interview as part of an Our Town Reno podcast 2024 local election series.

Erica Roth, a civil rights attorney now running for Nevada Assembly seat District 24, traces back her willingness to serve in elected office to help she gave as a public defender to a now incarcerated man. Listen to her make her case as part of our series of episodes looking ahead to 2024 elections.

Sparks-based Nevada Forward Party chair Cesar Marquez explains how he went from Tesla employee to operative for the Andrew Yang led Forward Party in the Silver State, as well as strategies for the 2024 election, including a final push for ranked choice voting and open primaries to pass.

It’s the end of an era here, the end of our weeklies, we’ve consistently produced over the past two years for podcast platforms and for KWNK.

We’ve interviewed people struggling on the streets and volunteers who do good to help them out, as well as movers and shakers, artists and illuminaries of our community, radical thinkers, doers and promoters.

As we’ve gone independent, we no longer have the reporter bandwidth to be able to produce one episode every week.

Going forward we will have occasional episodes. We are thinking of new types of interviews such as reporter’s notebooks with prominent journalists in the community, looking into cold cases or having audio mini documentaries as we once did at our beginnings.

Thank you for being faithful listeners and keep us in your subscription as pretty soon a new episode here and there will pop up, not as a regular feature anymore but as an occasional bonus, to inform, to enlighten, to give sounds of our Reno, Our Town Reno, the biggest little streets, still rad, still getting better, growing, but in need of tlc, of vintage, of keeping public spaces public and of helping each other out.

We will continue our regular postings on the BiggestLittleStreets Instagram which we are proud to say for a hyperlocal initiative has over 17k followers, on the Our Town Reno Facebook which has over 11k followers, on our Twitter/X, TikTok where one video got over 600 thousand views, on the Our Town Reno threads and Reddit where we need more followers to continue.

We also have a weekly Our Town Reno Substack which you can get by email every week.

If you’d like to contribute to this hyperlocal reporting endeavor you can subscribe via our Facebook for three dollars a month, via our Substack for whatever amount you choose with your credit card, and if you have Venmo via the ourtownreno account.

This is an archive episode of people of living on the streets in Reno, Nevada, with serious health challenges and how they cope as best they can. Marcus is nearly blind and has other complications due to albinism.Tex has been given a timeline to die from cancer. Ian suffers from mental health challenges.

While the yearly point in time count in late January establishes data for the locally unhoused, many avoid the process, preferring to live in the shadows, along the river or in their car and just try to survive, rather than going to a shelter or being counted as an unhoused person. That’s why at Our Town Reno we find official numbers released by officials and repeated by media as unreliable. We will first hear from Paul from an archive interview with Michelle Baker and then from Kyle, who tries to protect himself and others living on the streets.

Clayton Posey interviews members of four promising up and coming Reno bands, Worm Shot, Aftrprty, Wyatt Ziegler and Frank Futility.

“Opening a door for someone and smiling could literally save their life,” local chaplain and single dad Chaz Blackburn, 34, says.  

Blackburn knows what he’s talking about, as in addition to being the Spiritual Care and Director of Volunteer Services at the Circle of Life Hospice, he helps with many other worthy organizations in town including in the teen suicide realm, with organizations such as Forever 14 and The Solace Tree among many.  He’s also lost too many close people to suicide. 

Blackburn describes his current work as being that of an “emotional spiritual paramedic,”  to support those in crisis and provide grief support. “A chaplain is a bridge to resources like a social worker and those different resources that a social worker would provide,” he explained during a recent podcast interview, in between taking calls and preparing community events. “We're a bridge to other people's faith. So no matter your faith or walk, we're not there to judge you or evangelize or push our beliefs. We're there to serve you wherever you're at… I’m here to support and love everybody and be that presence through those difficult times.”

Reno is home to some extremely creative individuals and among those is the precocious Jack Barrington. A 20-year-old audio engineer and music producer who has been learning about sound for the last seven years. Host Lauren Juillerat interviews him more on how he acquired the skills he has today and how he utilizes them to elevate music in the Biggest Little City.