Reno moves to New York City a year before her trip back to Nevada. She wants to film with a Bolex Pro, the camera she borrowed from her university for a project and never returned. Her apartment is sparse with a borrowed mattress and a towel. The walls are bare, but Reno doesn’t want to decorate or furnish the blankness of the space. She frequents a coffee shop near her apartment where she makes friends with Giddle, an attractive waitress. 

Two weeks into her move to New York, Reno strolls through the streets alone to take in the pace of the city. She hears a Nina Simone song coming from a bar. She enters and finds only two people at the bar, a beautiful woman named Nadine with her wealthy and eccentric husband Thurman. The woman invites Reno to join them.

Reno’s neighborhood around Mulberry Street is diverse, artistic, and strange. Young Italian boys, sons of Mafia men, fight with Puerto Rican kids while performances abound in the background. Although Reno has a particular desire to experience films, she finds more art and dance performances, some of them difficult to interpret. A man named Henri-Jean, for example, carries a barbershop pole around the neighborhood over his shoulder.