Back in the day, I used to report on both large projects and/or cool projects that reside outside of my normal reporting zone. The series was named Beyond Downtown, and I figure it’s high time I get back to doing that. Also thanks to Hagen Sandoval for helping me put this together.
I’ve been meaning to write about the opening of OTC for a while now, not just because of that particular business opening, but because that building has a personal history for me. It’s not very often in this town that a building is home to a series of bars and clubs dating all the way back to the early 1990s, but that is the case with OTC. I remember going to ‘Monday Night Rave Nights’ at Visions when I first moved to Reno, and it was walkable from my downtown apartment. I loved Monday nights at Visions so much I even braved walking in snow storms in the winter, as I did not have a car at the time. The club, though a gay bar, at the time was so much more than that, it was a hub for some of the best music in Reno at the time.
The location carries a long history in Reno nightlife. Over the years, the property has operated under several well-known names, including Splash, Visions, and Tronix, each representing different eras of the city’s entertainment scene. For many locals, the building has long served as a gathering place, making its latest transformation a continuation of that legacy rather than a new beginning…