Night life

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

RN&R editor D. Brian Burghart is still on vacation so you readers get to be greeted by me again this week. More specifically, y'all get to be greeted by Mike Grimm's drawing of me from circa 2008. I've got a shorter beard, longer hair and better glasses now. Brian, on the other hand, has looked exactly the same for as long as I've known him. He's been rocking that Mr. Clean look for at least a decade and a half, probably longer.

One of the things I like about filling in for him on this column is that I often use it to give shout-outs to people, places and things I like around the community. Most of our arts coverage is geared toward upcoming events, but this column seems like a good space to discuss events that have already happened. For example, last week I wrote about the Holland Project's annual Halloween cover show.

This week I wanted to mention a really great event I attended last Friday, Oct. 30. It was a Halloween-themed fundraiser for the Truckee Meadows Parks Foundation called A Night With Nosferatu. It was held out at the Bartley Ranch park and the highlight was a screening of the classic 1922 silent film Nosferatu with an original live score accompaniment from an ensemble of local musicians.

The film is basically a loose, unlicensed adaptation of Dracula, and the musicians did a nice job invoking a classic horror vibe with a score that sometimes sounded like Black Sabbath with sax and violins instead of Ozzy Osbourne.

Saturday evening, my girlfriend, Margot, and I took our kids up for trick or treating in Virginia City. Walking up and down the crowded wooden plank sidewalks, checking out the various costumes, sending the kids into weird old saloons to ask for candy, it struck me that VC was the perfect place to celebrate the Oct. 31 twofer holiday—equal parts Halloween and Nevada Day.