By Lauren Huneycutt

According to Alon Bar, Morris Burner Hotel manager, he and the crew believe the Goddess Room, pictured above, will be the most highly requested room. The room was designed, painted and decorated by volunteer artists Carole Anne Ricketts and Jill Marlene
Alex Knaak /Nevada Sagebrush

In the midst of East Fourth Street, the old Morris Hotel is taking a new form. On July 25, 2013 “Jungle Jim” Gibson and Don Gibson purchased the hotel with the intention of turning it into the Morris Burner Hotel, a local business and gift to the Burning Man community.

According to their Facebook page, the brothers chose the Morris Hotel because it is a “classic, iconic, loving, wonderful piece of Reno history.”

Alon Bar, also known as Vision with his few long pink dread locks and uniquely shaved mustache and beard, is the hotel manager. Originally from Israel, he moved to the United States seven years ago and began religiously attending Burning Man five years ago.

“Burning Man guided me to Reno,” Bar said. “I love the community here, and that’s how I knew it was home.”

With volunteers to help clean and tweak the hotel, the project has been moving at a steady pace. Thus far, the volunteers have scrubbed clean a majority of the yellow, smoke-stained walls in bedrooms, replaced the old furniture and refurbished hallways, walls and floors.

“We want to keep the original look of the hotel, like the tin ceilings and such,” Bar said, “but we have also had to make it inviting and a family place, because it wasn’t before.”

Lauren Huneycutt /Nevada Sagebrush
The Desert Room was the first room open to the public. It was designed by Cindy Gunn and based off of the mosaic directly left of the window. The painting above the bed was a gift from an anonymous artist, who left it on the doorstep of the hotel.

The hotel has 19 rooms on the third floor, which will be the long-term floor. The permanent residents who run the hotel now live there, and they will be joined by guests who plan to stay longer than two weeks at the hotel. Any persons staying less than two weeks will stay in one of the 13 rooms on the second floor.

“People coming in can get a room on first-come first-serve basis,” Bar said, “or they can request one of our themed rooms like the goddess room, the desert room, the rock n’ roll room or the sparkle-pony room.”

Artists from around the community who wish to volunteer their time and get involved can submit their ideas for a themed room, and the Morris crew looks through the proposals to decide which fit the best. The themed rooms are covered top to bottom with full, intricate paint jobs, decorations, wall art and appropriate knickknacks.

“We want everything to be interactive,” Bar said, “so rooms like the rock n’ roll room will have sheet music on the walls and instruments, so people can write music and leave it for someone else to work on too.”

While doing their best to keep everything originally from the hotel intact, there have been some layout changes. The lobby is now mainly a common area with a stage and community dining quarters. Each floor has multiple community rooms that were designed in an effort to give guests the ability to interact with one another and have somewhere besides their 10 by 10 bedrooms to relax.

“We will have a participatory environment,” Bar said, “like the way it is at Burning Man. We want to embody the 10 principles of Burning Man.”

The official Burning Man website states the 10 principles: Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-reliance, Radical Self-expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation and Immediacy.

According to the project’s website, the space was purchased with this idea in mind. All of the rooms face a main hallway, and the bathrooms are community style. There are two small rooms with toilets, a small room with a bathtub and a room with a shower and changing area. The layout of the hotel is designed to fit the burner mentality of community.

Guests of the hotel will be expected to help with activities, and put on events, as well as help keep the hotel clean. The backyard of the property is a half-acre lot where many of the events will be held once it is fully functional.

“During Burning Man, the Black Rock Rangers will be out here patrolling around the hotel making sure everything and everyone is safe,” Bar said. “I think the crew will go in shifts because the hotel still has to run 24/7.”

The hotel is located right next to the Record Street homeless campus. In an effort to become involved with their neighbors, the Morris Burner Hotel has started a clothing drive.

“We do a coat drive every week,” Bar said. “On a daily basis people bring us whatever they can—coats, shoes, gloves—because they want to help. We set up a table outside every Sunday and give everything out to the homeless community. We just want to get to know the people, and they want to get to know us.”

With their grand opening set for March 8, the burner hotel is still under construction. The sounds of saws and music fill the halls during the days. The sweat and effort put into making this hotel come together is apparent to visitors upon walking through the front door. No detail has been left out.

“We wanted to create a Burning Man community all year round,” Bar said. “This hotel is a gift to people in the burner community in Reno and all around the world.”

Lauren Huneycutt can be reached at lhuneycutt@unr.edu.