Posted on 05/19/2020 2:52:04 PM PDT by Kaslin
More and more, from Virginia's beaches to the mountains up north to right here right now, people are coming to a consensus: Their governors' shutdowns are over.
The story below is the first in a series on Americas small businesses, their struggles under the shutdowns, and what theyre doing to survive. Names and locations below have been obscured to protect the people who spoke with us from government retaliation. Over two weeks, The Federalist is traveling the country to tell more stories like this one.
THE NEVADA DESERT Sonny moved to this little mining town to work the oil rigs in the 90s, leaving the timber regions of northern Idaho Panhandle behind cause the pay was sh-t up there.
My Uncle Frank had a trailer house down there that hes living in and I showed up at his place, he tells The Federalist. But he wasnt there he was up in Montana hunting elk so I just broke into his house and stayed there for a couple of days. Pretty soon, he shows up, driving up along the street and hes got his Jeep and his trailer, and I just opened up the door and say, Hey Frank, you want a beer?' He stayed with Frank a few months, but has made the town his home ever since.
At a healthy and hearty 60, hes been a stone-cutter, a trucker, a landlord, a hotelier, and now he and his family own a bar. In fact, its the same bar they met at. We were married in 16 weeks, owned this place four years later.
Sonny had never spent much time in bars and certainly was never behind one, but she had. It was a total dump, overrun by open drug use of every kind, fights every night the kind of place a single girl would never walk into.
More than 10 years later, theyve cleaned the place up, kicked the violent men and addicts out, put in pool tables and a jukebox, opened a cafe, and became one of two bars left in a town of just over 2,000, catering to miners, contractors, construction workers, and passing travelers. Single girls walk in here just fine, he smiles. Its pretty nice. Hes right.
They employ four people but were shut down by Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak for two months, working hard and doing everything possible to keep the wolves from the door. They applied for a Paycheck Protection Program loan and got a little of what we asked for, but it wasnt nearly enough. They applied for the second round too, but no more luck.
Sonny asked longtime bartender Christine to pour me a shot and proudly said hes not taking it anymore.
We were shutdown for almost two months and we had people that had been with us for years, and we kept them employed. So finally, I said to the [bar owner] next door, Were gonna open this up. You going to open up? The man down the road agreed to, so Sonny told the sheriff, who said they werent going to enforce the order and keep him closed.
Do the townspeople know? How does word get out?
Were a town of [a little over 2,000 people], Sonny tells me. People knew the day we opened and they came down. Theyre just happy to have the bar back.
A committeeman swung by next, Sonny recounts. And he said, Thank you for opening up.'
Sonnys family are entrepreneurs. His wife handles much of the business side, his daughter, who used to work the bar, swung by to supervise us with her husband, who works at the mine, and the handsome family puppy, Jack. Nowadays, Sonny says, laughing over a Budweiser, hes his own favorite regular.
An open bar flouting the governors seemingly unending closure order doesnt advertise itself on Google. Sonny sure would like to, but his wife and daughter counsel against it.
We found it by lucky chance, pulling off the road a few hours ahead of Mondays cold desert rain and a few hours shy of the hot desert dust storms, in the heart of Nevadas gold country. We were looking for wings and hoping for a beer, but the woman at the kitchen counter, whod been working there since they opened it, said it was takeout only.
How would I socially distance these tables? she asks, gesturing to a small, diner-like seating space for about 40 in normal times.
Do you sell beers to go?
Right through there she might, she gestured toward a door on the side.
Through those doors lies the first functioning, serviced, old-fashioned bar Ive seen outside an airport. (Funny how the governors of Virginia, Illinois and California closed every establishment but those serving to sweatpants-and-mask-clad travelers about to pack into a plane and share recycled air for a few hours. Flyers anxiety, I guess.)
For most, lunch is over and its hours til dinner. The bar isnt filled, but the few folks whod pulled up greeted us with waves and big smiles. Its the perfect place to crack a couple of icy, long-neck bottles. Well have a few.
Antonio is a local and a regular. Hes got to head home to get groceries and settle down before work in the morning, but before he leaves he wants to tell us his story.
He moved from Mexico 37 years ago, and to Nevada two years after that. He was an illegal alien, but hes legal now, settling in this little town with his family, including a now-grown son and two daughters. I work hard, he says, work very hard. I have a message for our president.
He looks around nervously and a little buzzed, though he knows and trusts everyone but the Washington reporter with a camera hes speaking to right now.
I love Trump. I love the president.
Its an unpopular opinion among the Mexican-American community, he knows. One or maybe two Budweisers later, I take a picture of Antonio as he lifts his up beer in a toast.
Viva Trump!
Its not an unpopular opinion out here. At all. But he isnt the only one who should be worried, as its still legal to like the president but it probably isnt legal to go against the governors explicit order against serving patrons at your bar.
So out here, people are pretty independent, Sonny explains. Then, you have to be independent out here because its not like being in a bigger town you have to just figure stuff out, you have to be self-reliant, you cant just go out to get it fixed, you have to be an independent people. Ive got a couple of [commercial] trucks and when things break down, have to figure out how to get it going. A lot of times youve just got to find some iron and start welding.
Gesturing to the long and beautiful wooden bar, he beams. We just built this two weeks ago, three weeks ago. We just built it because we needed a new bar.
The governors reopening is in phase one, which includes some restaurants, like the one we ate at the night before, but not bars. Main Street business in most states, particularly Democratic ones, is at a near standstill. Christine behind the bar says she was supposed to be flying out that night to celebrate her 60th birthday with her brother back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where shes from, but its indefinitely delayed. Theres just no telling anymore.
Sonny started buying up property during the 2001 financial crisis when gold dropped to $260 an ounce and real estate in the area plummeted. He started with a couple of properties, later expanding to a rundown hotel he now runs as a boarding house for vising miners and contractors. The government initially tried to shut that down as well, he says.
When they first started shutting everything down, I told my wife, Im not, Im not kicking out people, Im not shutting that down Thats my way. I said, If they want to come down there, kick these people out, they have nowhere to go, [nowhere] theyre going to go.
Its not easy. Sonny is eager to let the world know hes open and tell them about his little country bar, but its dangerous to cross the governor. More and more, though, from Virginias beaches to the mountains up north to right here right now, people are coming to a consensus: Their governors shutdowns are over. This isnt surprising. In the United States, the shutdowns would always end when the citizens said they did.
My uncle, he had a bar up on Montana, retired in the 70s he says. Montanas Democratic governor, Steve Bullock, has been one of the most draconian despite the low population density and low level of coronavirus. Our governor is the biggest -sshole of them all, one large Montana land-owner messaged me Monday.
I just talked to my uncle this morning, Sonny continues. Hes in a little cowboy town, and he just told me theyre open too. Of course theyre open. Theyre old school.
The local sheriff isnt enforcing there, either.
Holy crap! Really? In America? The Leftists have just gone too far...
Wont be too much longer until we have a Bunker Hill reduex someplace.
Love it. Thanks for posting it Kaslin.
Im guessing Eureka, Nevada. Strong hunch, in fact.
Not a bad guess. It’s a long time (more than 30 years) since I worked in Eureka, and I don’t have perfect memory, but the pictures do look like what I recall of one of the bars there. I won’t name the place.
A population of ~2000 is about a factor of 10x too large for Eureka. I’m thinking maybe Lovelock instead.
I have always hoped that that would never happen. That we could avoid it.
I’m wavering.
Frontier mindset. What America used to be like.
One of these days; a few thousand Richard Dreyfuss types are going to remove their masks...
41 | Washoe Valley | 2,651 |
42 | Hawthorne | 2,613 |
43 | Tonopah | 2,211 |
44 | Kingsbury | 2,122 |
45 | Carlin | 2,023 |
46 | Mogul | 2,005 |
47 | Stagecoach | 1,961 |
48 | Sandy Valley | 1,831 |
49 | Lovelock | 1,806 |
Washoe Valley doesn’t have any nearby mining.
Hawthorne has some mining nearby, but I think it still has more than two bars.
Tonopah has nearby mining, but definitely has more than two bars.
Kingsbury is Lake Tahoe.
Carlin is a possibility, but I’d guess it has more than a couple of bars.
Mogul is a bedroom suburb of Reno.
Stagecoach isn’t near mining.
Sandy Valley is near Vegas and without nearby mining.
Lovelock has nearby mines and is mostly a farming/ranching/county seat community.
It’s a great article, but I hope that it does not bring trouble to this business, which is serving their community.
Thanks for researching and adding the additional data.
Sorry for the late reply. Your list was very helpful. I haven’t been to some of those mining towns for over 20 years, so those many bars I knew they had then, might be closed.
Lovelock was never really known as a mining town in the historical past, but there are major open pit mines near there since the 80s.
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