Beloved Reno coffee house finds new life in cyberspace

Deux Gros Nez closed last Thursday gone as a coffee house but continuing to live on the Web.

Known for quirky decor and a whole foods menu, the California Avenue coffee house and restaurant was a popular hangout for the bicycling crowd.

And that's who's expected to keep the memory of Deux Gros Nez alive at the Web site, Adieu to the Deux, at deuxgrosnez.com.

Customers such as David LaPlante, chief executive officer of Reno-based Twelve Horses.

"They have been a long time customer of Twelve Horses," he says, "and we've decided to continue to host their website as well as add a small place where people can add their memories as a kind of legacy."

At the site, coffee house owner Tim Healion says, "We opened our doors as Nevada's first full-blown coffee house in 1985 when most people in Reno had no idea what espresso was, let alone how to spell it."

LaPlante was an early customer.

"I've been a customer of Deux Gros Nez since I came to college here in 1988 from Crested Butte, Colorado. Most mountain resort towns have a bicycle culture. You can ride your bike anywhere. You can tell the popularity of places by the number of bikes piles up in front of it. Here, Deux Gros Nez was the closest thing I could find."

The cache was not the coffee, but the bike culture.

"Tim Healion has been the catalyst of a creative bicycle community," says LaPlante. "We bought a home specifically to live within walking distance of Deux Gros Nez."

But with the annual bicycle race and festival, Tour Gros Nez, taking off as a regional event, he adds, Healion is going to focus on that.

But why post eulogies to a coffee house?

"Any culture wants to memorialize itself," says LaPlante. While the Web site will be hosted on the servers at Twelve Horses, he says, "We expect the bicycling community to carry the torch."