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The Most Underrated Cities in all 50 States

Thrillist | Sam Eiffling | February 2018

By many measures, Reno is already properly rated as a quintessentially funky Western gold-rush berg that made its fortunes by pioneering easy divorces and legal gambling. It feels shaggy and weird and warped, like a version of Vegas that sells plasma to buy scratch-off tickets. The town still rocks $9.99 surf-and-turf specials and $5 minimum blackjack tables and a pop culture identity rooted in Reno 911 and "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die."

Yet you can definitely roll upscale here; the Peppermill resort in town boasts one of the biggest, plushest casinos in the country. Or tilt avant-garde bohemian. Three decades of Burning Man getting lit in the nearby Black Rock Desert has allowed Reno to bank a wealth of artistic talent and works that now permeate the downtown and Nevada Museum of Art with fierce urban beauty. Scope the proliferation of world-class murals, many on such humble canvases as pay-by-the-week motels and downtown parking garages and 24-hour bars. Less than an hour's drive from America’s largest alpine lake in Tahoe, set in the high desert, flanked by the Sierra Nevada, Reno and its art celebrate themes of nature, native peoples, cowboys, and psychedelics. The place is a flat-out trip. -- Sam Eifling

Original Article