Born and raised in Ely, Nevada, Gaye Canepa moved to Reno after completing high school. At the time of her interview, she and her husband, Fred Canepa, owned and operated Fred’s Auto Repair and Supply at 500 East Sixth Street. She was the longtime president of the Reno-Sparks Business Corridor Association (RSCBA), spearheading community efforts to promote redevelopment and resist efforts by the City of Reno to locate a new homeless shelter along East 4th Street. Photo by Patrick Cummings
Full Oral History TranscriptInterviewed in 2011, Gaye Canepa explains the impact of the construction of Interstate 80 on the businesses along Reno's East 4th Street corridor. Recorded by Alicia Barber.
Interview in 2011, Gaye Canepa recalls learning of plans to locate a homeless shelter in the East 4th Street area, which prompted the founding of the Reno Sparks Business Corridor Association. Recorded by Alicia Barber.
A Reno native, Sally Loux has worked for twenty years at the Coney Island Bar, located at the Reno-Sparks border where 4th Street becomes Prater Way. She describes the longstanding establishment’s welcoming environment and some of its regular customers, and explains what has made it such a popular gathering place for the entire community for so many decades.
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Ed Scalzo and his wife, Susan, own Forever Yours Fine Furniture, located in the historic Flanigan Warehouse building at 701 East Fourth Street. They started the business in 1976 in Kings Beach, Lake Tahoe, moving to an old Ford dealership building on Virginia and Fourth Streets in Reno in 1980. Around 1982 they began to lease the historic IXL Laundry building at 601 East Fourth Street, operating there until 1998, when they purchased the Flanigan building.
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Doug Quilici is owner of the Copenhagen Bar at 2140 Prater Way in Sparks. The bar was previously located several blocks to the west, and run by Doug’s father, Gino “Bear” Quilici. That location was demolished in 1966 to make way for Interstate 80. Doug became his father’s business partner even before Bear passed away in 1997. Longtime customer and bartender Ray Maldonado also chimes in with his memories of Bear and the popular bar.
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