Heat slows Carson City Wine Walk Saturday, but businesses saw hundreds of participants during peak summer months
The Carson City Wine Walk was back for another warm afternoon on Saturday with plenty of patrons wandering the downtown streets.
Every month on the first Saturday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., downtown Carson City hosts a wine walk during which people have a chance to discover new places in the capital city to fill their wine glasses.
Wine walk participants walked through the town, jumped from business to business, filled up their glasses and overall enjoyed a hot, windy day as the summer season comes to an end.
However, a lot of owners around town said it’s a bit of a slow day, probably due to the heat.
“It’s slow today,” a volunteer at Aunt B’s Antique Store stated. “I think the heat has a lot to do with it.”
Aunt B’s said that during a normal wine walk, they’ve had up to 700 or 800 people come through the shop. On top of the heat though, people are elsewhere, running around at Burning Man and the Reno Rib Cookoff, so today's Wine Walk was expected to be slow.
However, Jeff Landry of Scoups Ice Cream and Soup bar said things have improved for local businesses since more things have opened up after the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This year overall: good. Today, it’s hot and it’s slow,” said Landry at the beginning of the wine walk Saturday. “(But) they’ll be in, I assume, soon. We’ll get several hundred people here.”
Stephanie Cordoba of Pure Platinum Salon agreed with Landry's sentiments.
“We’ve already got about a dozen or so people,” said Cordoba at the beginning of the wine walk. “I hope more (people) come through. This is my first time hosting, so hopefully.”
Even though a lot of businesses have outside tables and booths, like Pure Platinum Salon, there’s plenty of stopping places along the way for the walkers to cool down.
The Brewery Arts Center, for example, is where the participants get their tickets. Many wine walkers were able to stop inside before the walk began to see the new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Pinball exhibit that the BAC is currently hosting.
Even though the pandemic was a tough time for the BAC not getting a lot of people in, it gave them time to rebuild their business.
“While we were shut down, we got a lot of work done," said Michael Wiencek, Director of Operations at the Brewery Arts Center. "Now that people can come back, they’re coming back.”
Not only is the wine walk a fun way to socialize with the folks around town, but it also supports the local Carson City business community.
To learn more about the Wine Walk, please visit https://www.downtowncarson.org/carson-city-wine-walk.