Publisher’s note: This editorial first appeared in Reno Gazette-Journal on Aug. 5, 2010.

We love Hot August Nights. We’re glad it’s here again. We hope it will be around for many years to come.

That’s the message that officials of the annual celebration of classic cars and rock ‘n’ roll should take from the uproar in Reno that interrupted their preparations for this year’s event, now under way at a variety of locations around the Truckee Meadows.

The anger that followed an interview with executive director Bruce Walter published in the Los Angeles Business Journal, in which Walter was quoted as saying the event would be held exclusively in Long Beach, Calif., in 2012, surely was difficult, even painful, for everyone associated with the event.

But it was an indication of just how important the event has become to the community in which it was founded a quarter-century ago, how much it has become a part of the fabric of life in the Truckee Meadows and how protective the community is of an event that they feel belongs to everyone here, not just those who work in Hot August Nights’ headquarters.

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