KIDS HAVE FEWER BEDS, BUT NEED IS GROWING PAGE 8 REMEMBERING
ROAST HOUSE’S FOUNDER LOST TO CANCER PAGE 48 BRUTAL IS BEAUTIFUL
rowing up, one of my favorite places on earth was my Gramma Scott’s “Fabric Room.” In the small southeast-facing bedroom of her and Papa’s house, an entire wall was filled with shelves loaded with fabric in every color, weight and texture. Cabinet drawers nearby were bursting with ribbon, buttons, lace, thread, yarn and more — anything a crafty kid like me could imagine using to create something wonderful. And over the years we did make many wonderful things together: quilts, dolls, scarves, clothes and more. There was nothing Gramma couldn’t whip up with her masterful sewing and crafting skills. She was a true artist, not unlike those featured in this week’s FIBER ARTS ISSUE, a celebration of the multifaceted medium that involves fabric, of course, but also the raw materials that come together to make it beautiful, like the leaf-dyed silk made by Nan Drye or the raw wool that Elyse Hochstadt felts into sculptural wonders. Read all about it starting on page 20.
— CHEY SCOTT, Editor
JANUARY 21
MARCH 4
JANUARY 23
MARCH 11 SPOKAnE
JANUARY 27
MARCH 16
COMMENT
STAFF DIRECTORY
PHONE: 509-325-0634
Ted S. McGregor Jr. (tedm@inlander.com) PUBLISHER
Jer McGregor (x224) GENERAL MANAGER EDITORIAL
Chey Scott (x225) EDITOR
Samantha Wohlfeil (x234) NEWS EDITOR
Seth Sommerfeld (x250)
MUSIC & SCREEN EDITOR
Madison Pearson (x218)
LISTINGS EDITOR, DIGITAL LEAD
Eliza Billingham (x222), Colton Rasanen (x263), Victor Corral Martinez (x235), Dora Scott (x282)
STAFF WRITERS
Chris Frisella
COPY CHIEF
Young Kwak, Erick Doxey PHOTOGRAPHERS
Andy Billig, Whitney Bryen, Chase Hutchinson, E.J. Iannelli, MaryAnn Johanson, Bob Johnson, Will Maupin, Kaylee Tornay
Tracy Menasco (x260), Stephanie Grinols (x216), Toby Rose (x239)
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES
Colleen Bell-Craig (x212), Raja Bejjani (x242)
ADVERTISING COORDINATORS
PRODUCTION
Ali Blackwood (x228)
PRODUCTION TEAM MANAGER, CREATIVE, DIGITAL & MARKETING
Tom Stover (x265)
PRINT PRODUCTION & IT MANAGER
Derrick King (x238)
SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER, EDITORIAL DESIGN LEAD
Leslie Douglas (x231)
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
OPERATIONS
Dee Ann Cook (x211)
BUSINESS MANAGER
Amanda Bodie (x210)
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE SPECIALIST
CIRCULATION
Frank DeCaro (x226)
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Travis Beck (x237)
CIRCULATION SUPERVISOR
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT AI BEING USED IN THE ARTS?
MICHELLE PAPPAS
I think we already know that it’s stealing from a lot of artists’ work, and artists already make so little that it’s really disheartening to watch us as a society move toward a model like that.
DAWSON IRIZARRY
AI is not real art because art has to come organically. It has to come from somebody’s actual mind versus, like, AI just takes everything that’s out there on the internet and then just spits out something similar to it. You tell it what to make, and it spits something out, it’s not real art.
ERIKA SYMONEAKO
I think that art is a form of expression, and AI is not something that is requiring expression. Because it’s for us, it’s a communication skill, and AI doesn’t need to communicate. It’s just there to assist us, so it’s really pointless. It can help us to create art, but it shouldn’t. It’s not creating art because it’s not expressing, it doesn’t have the need to express that sort of thing.
TED McDERMOTT
I think that the fact that a computer can make so much art is a good reason for humans to think about whether it’s more important what you make or why you’re making it.
BRIAN SIMMONS
I think it takes away from the talent of the artists. I think it’s pulling from a lot of their skills, and it’s giving credit to people who don’t necessarily deserve it. I think that it’s cool tech, but it doesn’t really have room in the art industry.
1/10/25, SARANAC COMMONS INTERVIEWS BY DORA SCOTT
Across the Aisle
Citizens may think bipartisanship is nothing but a pipe dream, but on the front lines in Olympia it’s standard operating procedure
BY ANDY BILLIG
As my career in the Washington State Legislature wrapped up this month, I have spent time reflecting on what it was like when I arrived in Olympia as a newly minted state representative and political novice 14 years ago. One of my most enduring memories was a conflicting but overwhelming feeling that the Legislature was both more partisan — and more bipartisan — than I expected. Let me explain.
That party/caucus team aspect of the Legislature was a surprise. So too was the extent to which we worked together with members of the other party, especially in the Senate where there is a tradition of working across the aisle. Working in a bipartisan manner was always the first and most preferred way to work.
We would work together across the aisle on crafting bills, passing amendments and general planning. If you ever watch the Senate floor when in session, you’ll see a constant movement of Senators of both parties going from desk to desk or chatting in the back of the chamber, working on amendments, discussing bills or just catching up.
It is more partisan than I expected because we conduct so much of our business within our caucuses. There are four caucuses (Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, House Democrats and House Republicans). Each caucus has a leadership team and a dedicated staff of very smart people to help with both policy and communications.
In many ways, working in the Legislature is a team sport, and your caucus is your team. We obviously share similar values, so it makes sense that we would work together, but I did not understand the extent to which we would be together. The caucuses spend hours and hours together getting briefed on bills, debating strategy and trying to figure out the best path forward. Each legislator certainly has the freedom to vote how they want — with the majority of the caucus or go their own way — but the organizational structure is by party.
This bipartisanship is so prevalent that it is fair to say that party-line votes are a rare exception. This may be a surprise to many, but 96% of the bills we passed in the 2024 session had some kind of bipartisanship and over 80% were significantly bipartisan. Only 16 of the 381 sent to Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk from the Legislature were party-line.
While bipartisanship is standard operating procedure, that does not mean that we would forgo our values and priorities just for the sake of bipartisanship. The people of Washington had elected a Democratic majority, and we were not going to stop working on issues that we knew the overwhelming majority of Washingtonians wanted us to address, even if we could not garner bipartisan support. This was particularly true on issues like reproductive rights, climate action and gun violence prevention.
Former Senate Majority Leader Andy Billig in Olympia: “The system breaks down if each side retreats to its corners and never comes together to try to find a middle ground.”
I credit the founders of our state for coming up with a highly productive partisan system. The system is designed for friction and, when all is working well, that friction serves an important purpose of creating new ideas and compromise. The system breaks down if each side retreats to its corners and never comes together to try to find a middle ground. But, in the majority of cases, the system of friction and bipartisanship functions as designed and leads to bills that benefit the people of our state.
One of the biggest bills we passed in recent years was the legislation that reinstated drug possession laws after the state Supreme Court struck down the long-standing previous law. Immediately after the court’s decision in 2022, the Legislature passed a quick fix to try to address the situation. We were pressed for time because of the timing of the court decision, and I think everyone agreed that stop-gap bill was not adequate.
So we came back in the 2023 session with the passage of a “Blake Bill” (so named because the Blake Supreme Court case that triggered this crisis) as a “must-do” before we adjourned for the year. We all knew that the Blake Bill was the biggest bill of the session. This bill would impact every community in our state, and it would be hard to find a version of the bill that could capture that magical 50-25-1 (50 votes in the House, 25 votes in the Senate and one signature from the governor) minimum support required for a bill to become a law.
We spent all session trying to find a solution. We were losing the far right who wanted the toughest possible penalties for drug possession, and we were losing the far left who wanted to focus all on treatment without criminalization of drug possession. If we didn’t pass a bill, the stop-gap bill from the prior year would expire and all drug possession would be legal.
We needed to find a path in the middle.
As the regular session came to close, the Senate passed a middle-ground bill with 14 Democratic and 14 Republican votes (as bipartisan as you can get), but it died in the House on the last day of the session. We were headed to a special session. On the day after the regular session, I stopped by my office just off the Senate floor to pick up a few items before driving home to Spokane for a few days. As I walked by the Senate floor, I saw my Republican counterpart, Minority Leader John Braun, walking by on the other side. We connected on the floor, just the two of us in an otherwise empty Senate chamber and both dressed in our drivehome clothes (he lives outside Centralia).
Sen. Braun and I lamented that the Blake Bill had died. Right there we hammered out what a Blake Bill that the two of us and a majority of the full Legislature could support. We spent the next few weeks working on the details of the plan and getting valuable input from the House and Senate committee chairs, other legislators and various stakeholders like drug treatment professionals and law enforcement.
When we reconvened for the vote in special session, Sen. Braun and I met on the Senate floor just before the final bill was to be briefed in each caucus. He asked, “How many votes do you need from me?” I thought we had at least 18 Democrats, so we would need at least seven Republicans, but I hoped there would be at least 10 so we could show strong bipartisanship. After caucus, we reconnected just before the bill was headed to the floor for a vote, and we both thought we would have enough votes. Indeed, it passed 42-6, with both Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the vote tally.
The Blake Bill was particularly bipartisan, but in some form, bipartisanship exists on most days in the Washington State Legislature. And, whatever may be happening in the other Washington, I am optimistic about Washington state’s future because we continue to collaborate as we work on behalf of the people of this state. n
Andy Billig represented the 3rd District, covering much of Spokane, in the Washington State Legislature starting in 2011 as a state representative. He became a state senator in 2013 and Senate majority leader in 2018; he did not run for reelection in 2024. Billig is the CEO of Brett Sports.
un
OPTING FOR OUTPATIENT
As youth mental health concerns continue to grow, some question Providence’s decision to shutter Sacred Heart’s inpatient youth psychiatric unit
BY KAYLEE TORNAY AND WHITNEY BRYEN, INVESTIGATEWEST
Early last year, Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane painted a bleak picture of what would happen without its Psychiatric Center for Children and Adolescents.
As children’s mental health needs escalate, teens in the area would lose access to lifesaving treatment. And other nearby facilities would struggle to fill the gap, Sacred Heart executives wrote in an application for a state Department of Commerce grant in February 2024, obtained by InvestigateWest in a records request.
“If this unit downsized or closed, this would cause even less access in an under-resourced area resulting in patients and families having to travel several hours for inpatient care,” hospital leaders wrote.
Sacred Heart asked the state for $1.8 million to pay for facility upgrades to make the unit safer and “ensure that every child has access to high-quality, affordable and culturally competent mental health care.”
The pitch worked. The state awarded Sacred Heart the full amount it requested.
But Sacred Heart turned the grant down in April. In September, it closed the Psychiatric Center for Children and Adolescents anyway.
The grant application, which said the youth psychiatric unit was operating at an annual $2 million loss, underscores why former employees and health care experts are critical of Sacred Heart and its parent network, Providence, in the wake of the decision. In interviews with InvestigateWest, they cast it as one more step by one of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital systems to improve its bottom line instead of meeting the needs of an escalating mental health crisis among children.
In the last decade, Sacred Heart repeatedly reduced services and long-term resources in the unit, according to internal emails, public records and interviews. Yet as Sacred Heart cuts youth services in Spokane, the Providence system is pouring more than $1 billion into a hospital expansion in Seattle that sees fewer Medicaid patients. And its executives are making millions.
“If you’re complaining you’re so broke, why are you
able to pay these people so much?” said Dr. Cory Alexander, a child and adolescent psychiatrist who resigned from Sacred Heart around the time of the closure. She joined nursing staff and former patients at protests last summer decrying the closure and sounding the alarm about diminishing options for teens in crisis.
It’s part of a nationwide trend of hospitals shutting down costly pediatric inpatient services, even in nonprofit systems that receive billions in annual tax breaks in exchange for providing charity care and meeting community needs. Hospitals closed nearly 30% of pediatric inpatient units from 2008 to 2022, while adult inpatient units shrank by only 4%, an American Medical Association study found.
Susan Stacey, CEO of Sacred Heart, downplayed the role of finances in her decision to close the inpatient unit. She said she moved forward only after careful consideration of stakeholder feedback, and grappling with staffing challenges that reduced the number of available beds over the years.
...continued on page 10
Austin Turley draws on his smartphone at home in Cheney while holding his stuffed axolotl, which he’s kept since his first inpatient stay.
ERICK DOXEY FOR INVESTIGATEWEST
“OPTING FOR OUTPATIENT,” CONTINUED...
“We do not go into these decisions lightly at all,” she said. “We had been struggling with physician recruitment for the last few years. This had been an ongoing struggle.”
Today, Stacey minimizes the dire impacts of the closure that the hospital predicted in its grant application back in February. Then, Sacred Heart executives said nearby facilities including Inland Northwest Behavioral Health, a for-profit center that treats youth, were “nearly always at capacity.” Now, the hospital says Inland Northwest Behavioral Health is ready to meet the demand for adolescent inpatient treatment.
But families say Sacred Heart got it right the first time: Kids with acute mental health needs will be stuck in the emergency room while they wait for treatment somewhere else.
Jessica Turley went to Inland Northwest Behavioral Health for help in the fall of 2023 when her son threatened to harm himself. But staff refused to admit the teenager after he said he had thoughts about hurting others. Months later, Sacred Heart admitted him when he again became suicidal.
She worries that other children will also face longer waits, farther drives and fewer options for care.
“If anything, we need more places like that, not less,” said Turley. “It’s so needed right now, and I credit them with saving his life. If something were to happen, Inland has already said no, so that’s not an option.”
A STEADY DECLINE
Current and former employees of Sacred Heart told InvestigateWest that they were hardly surprised when hospital executives informed them that the 40-year-old youth psychiatric center would close.
“We had suspected they were moving in that direction for quite a while,” said Kaili Timperley, a nurse who worked in the unit from August 2022 until it closed.
Staff recounted the dwindling capacity of beds within the unit, declining morale and rising concerns about safety. Some who remained there until the end said they felt overworked and unable to provide the quality of care that they wanted to, due to the hospital’s failure to hire and retain highly trained providers such as psychiatrists and nurse practitioners. Leadership promised new plans to plug the holes.
For years, hospital leaders indicated that finances played a role in the decisions it made for the unit. In 2022, for example, when Sacred Heart terminated all of its psychiatrists, its medical director described the savings as “a significant chunk” that would help sustain the hospital’s mental health care services, which he called “an imperative need.”
The hospital said it would hire back four doctors as faculty within the hospital’s psychiatry residency and a child psychiatry fellowship. Residents and fellows would work in the adult and youth inpatient units under supervision of the licensed psychiatrists, and newly hired nurse practitioners would take over other work.
Sacred Heart’s decision did not play out as it said it would, however. None of the doctors returned to fill the redesigned positions, according to staff, and the hospital wound up relying on more expensive traveling doctors to fill the gaps. The number of fellows dwindled, and the psychiatry residents were not required to do rotations in the children’s unit, leaving more staffing holes. Multiple nurse practitioners who were hired left within a year or two. Today, hospital leaders minimize the role that finances played in its staffing shortages, contradicting what they said in 2022.
In a recent interview with InvestigateWest, Stacey said the decision to terminate psychiatrists was not made to save money. Instead, she described it as a move “to fully invest
in our psychiatric faculty and residents … with the goal of increasing the number of psychiatrists that we were helping to produce in the community.”
All four staff members who spoke with InvestigateWest said Sacred Heart’s own decisions had contributed to its inability to keep the psychiatric unit staffed since then. Compared to other local hospitals and inpatient units, Sacred Heart’s salaries were not competitive enough to attract child and adolescent psychiatrists who otherwise showed interest, they said.
Infrastructure posed other problems: The unit was becoming dilapidated after 40 years. When Sacred Heart leaders applied for the Department of Commerce Closure Prevention grant, they cited safety concerns that they said they had little ability to address without help.
That included replacing old plumbing fixtures with versions resistant to self-harm attempts, a critical need in a psychiatric unit. They also planned to replace windows, countertops and flooring, and reinforce walls to prevent damage from thrown items or punches.
“Once the space is renovated, Providence is committed to maintenance and upkeep to ensure it can be utilized for another 30-40 years,” the application stated.
Now, however, a spokesperson said the staffing challenges posed a bigger threat to the unit’s future than its building needs. Accepting the $1.8 million from the state would have required a commitment to stay open for another 10 years.
“Even if we used the funding for physical updates to the unit, we still would not have the adequate staff,” said Beth Hegde, spokesperson for the hospital.
Though the unit was accepting fewer children, staff grew more concerned about those patients’ safety and their own.
Alexander, the psychiatrist hired in 2023 to work in youth and adolescent outpatient programs, was frequently asked to work in the inpatient unit due to staffing shortages. She said she repeatedly had to push back against proposed moves and patient admissions that she felt the staff were not prepared to handle.
“We didn’t have the backing and support,” she said. “When we said, ‘We’re concerned about staffing, we don’t know if we can handle this,’ we were ignored.”
Often, the most complicated cases involved children in crisis who are also profoundly impacted by autism or developmental disabilities. Sacred Heart’s treatment of these teens was a double-edged sword: While the unit was frequently the only place that accepted such children for treatment, the lack of resources, personnel and training made their care more difficult on workers and less effective for the children, staff said.
Other challenges were tied up in Washington’s statewide shortage of long-term psychiatric resources. While the hospital unit aimed to stabilize kids in crisis on a short-term basis, many children were there longer, simply because they had no other place to go.
Jack Johansen was one of those kids. He entered the Psychiatric Center for Children and Adolescents in September 2022 after experiencing suicidal ideation and catatonic episodes. But with no safe housing option to return to, he stayed in the unit for around a year. He went to school online, attended group and individual counseling, and participated in other therapeutic activities such as yoga.
Johansen, now 18, knew the unit wasn’t designed to care for him for so long. Even so, he said that access to inpatient care was critical to his ongoing recovery and health.
“They were willing to do more for these kids than any other place would,” Johansen said. “They all made it so clear to me that they wanted me to go back into a circumstance where I could be successful, so that I wouldn’t have to come back.”
NATIONWIDE CLOSURES
When hospitals face financial strain, children’s mental health services are among the first to go — in for-profit and nonprofit systems alike.
Seven months before Sacred Heart laid off its psychiatrists in 2022, Washington’s largest private psychiatric hospital, Fairfax Behavioral Health, shuttered its adolescent
Dr. Cory Alexander, a former child and adolescent psychiatrist at Providence Sacred Heart, is concerned about the closure of an inpatient unit. ERICK DOXEY FOR INVESTIGATEWEST
inpatient unit after state health officials discovered unsafe conditions and halted new youth admissions.
The following year, in 2023, Cadence Child and Adolescent Therapy closed without explanation in another Seattle suburb, further depleting outpatient mental health services.
Those closures came as the U.S. Surgeon General warned of alarming increases in anxiety, depression, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts and mental illness among youth compounded by the pandemic. In May 2024, the nation’s top physician called the youth mental health crisis the “defining public health issue of our time.”
Since at least 2012, increased access to mental health care has been a critical need in Eastern Washington too, according to Sacred Heart’s community needs assessments.
Nonprofit hospitals, including those under the Providence umbrella, receive federal and state tax breaks in exchange for charitable work in their communities. But federal and state laws dictating that spending are vague. The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t define community benefits but gives examples including using surplus funds to improve facilities, care and medical training. That leaves hospitals to decide how much to give back and communities shortchanged, said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, which advocates for ethical health care.
Sacred Heart’s most recent needs report stated that “the rate of suicide attempts by Spokane County youth has been sharply increasing since 2015.” Yet there is no mention of its inpatient psychiatric unit in the hospital’s community improvement plan.
Providence is one of the largest nonprofit hospital systems in the country, with 51 hospitals across the West. The system spends $1 billion less annually on community investments than it receives in tax exemptions, a disparity that is the second-worst in the country, according to a 2024 Lown Institute analysis. In 2023, Providence spent $2.1 billion on community benefit, with the largest portion going to unpaid costs of Medicaid and other government programs, according to its annual report.
Providence began cutting children’s behavioral health services at one of its hospitals in an underserved Washington, D.C., community in 2017. Within two years, the entire hospital was shut down. In 2020, Trinity Health of New England shut down an inpatient behavioral health center in Massachusetts for adults and youth, attributing the closure to a provider shortage. And in 2023, Waco, Texas, lost a children’s behavioral health center run by Ascension Healthcare, which cited an inability to make building renovations needed to keep patients safe amid a rising demand for care.
A shortage of beds has forced families to seek help hours away or even across state lines. Some never get the help they need. Access to care is more elusive for low-income families or those in rural areas, said Dr. Jennifer Hoffmann, who oversaw a national study that found children’s inpatient services are not keeping up with the need for care.
Even before Sacred Heart closed its doors this fall, there weren’t enough psychiatric beds to care for Washington youth, according to the study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Yet as child advocates and families in Eastern Washington push for more local treatment options, Providence is pouring resources into a hospital expansion across the state: a new $1.3 billion Seattle tower that includes emergency room suites designed for mental health patients. No psychiatric inpatient beds for children or adults are mentioned in the plans. Saini said these high-tech, state-of-theart facilities often pop up in affluent cities where private insurance pours in and covers the shortfalls of government insurance.
In 2020, Washington had only seven pediatric behavioral health beds per 100,000 kids, researchers found. That’s well below the national average of 19 beds, ranking Washington 43rd nationally.
Difficulties recruiting and retaining psychiatrists willing to work the grueling, on-call shifts left Sacred Heart unable to care for youth who need round-the-clock care, said Stacey, the Sacred Heart CEO. The best option: close the unit and increase investments in day treatments.
“Do we get ahead of the mental health crisis instead of fixing the hospitalization side?” she said. “Let’s address it upstream so we ...continued on page 12
JAMES LOWE CONDUCTOR
Remix your Valentine’s Day with the Spokane Symphony in Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed. Richter’s cool hypnotic minimalism combines with rosethow’s electronica and visuals to give a new spin to Vivaldi’s famous Four Season’s in a version that will enthrall, enrapture and surprise.
Join us for an afterparty with rosenthrow spinning tunes and delicious bites. Afterparty is included with ticket.
DOORS 6:30PM | SHOW 7:30PM by MAX RICHTER:
ELECTRONICA AND VISUAL ARTIST
YVETTE KRAFT VIOLIN
Sponsored by:
Michael Sharapata
prevent someone from getting to the point where they need a hospitalization.”
Hoffmann, a pediatric emergency physician, said a growing number of kids in crisis are flooding emergency rooms as investments shift to outpatient care.
“I agree that more investment is needed in outpatient mental health care, but not at the expense of children today who have real mental health needs that require intensive services,” Hoffmann said. “Some children have an acute safety risk either to harm themselves or others, and they’re getting stuck in emergency rooms for days or weeks waiting for a bed without receiving the psychiatric treatment they need.”
LITTLE RELIEF FROM THE STATE
In many ways, Washington hospitals face particular difficulties in sustaining a unit like Sacred Heart’s.
Hospitals rely on Medicaid reimbursement to cover many patient costs, including the exorbitant expense of providing inpatient psychiatric care for children. More than 25% of Sacred Heart patients were covered by Medicaid in 2023, according to its most recent annual report. But hospitals typically get back about $0.75 to $0.85 for every dollar they spend.
In recent years, research has shown Washington hospitals receive even less for mental health services. One comparison of 2022 Medicaid rates revealed Washington’s reimbursement for mental health services was below the national average, with only 12 states ranking lower. And only two states pay lower reimbursement rates for specialists like child psychiatrists when compared to other government health care subsidies, according to the Washington State Medical Association.
Despite significant tax benefits, 85% of Washington hospitals lost money in 2023, according to financial reports submitted to the State Hospital Association. Sacred Heart finance reports show operating losses dating back to 2016. Another financial hit came last February when the Washington attorney general ordered Providence to forgive $137 million in medical debt and refund another $20 million for deceiving patients who likely qualified for free or discounted care, which is part of the charitable hospital’s community obligations. It was the largest penalty of its kind in the country.
The Providence system is reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in net income in the first half of 2024, its first profitable quarters in two years. Amid profit losses and criticism about its deceptive billing practices, nonprofit executives made millions. Providence’s north division chief received $6.1 million in compensation and benefits while its chief executive and administrative officers were paid more than $5 million each, according to 2023 tax reports. Providence spokespeople declined to answer questions from InvestigateWest about its investment in Seattle, finances and executive pay.
“For-profit, nonprofit, it doesn’t matter,” Saini said. “They’re all operating like for-profits now.”
Recognizing providers’ need for more support, state legislators have increased Washington’s Medicaid rates in recent years. In 2023, behavioral health care providers of all kinds received an increase of 15%. Inpatient units such as Sacred Heart’s were excluded — but only because they received a boost to the daily rate of pay for each patient. At Sacred Heart, Washington went from paying $1,087 a day per patient in 2023 to $2,001 in 2024.
In the wake of such increases, Eric Lewis, chief financial officer for the Washington State Hospital Association, said Washington’s Medicaid rates have moved closer to the national average.
“But average is not very good,” he said.
Rep. Lauren Davis, D-Shoreline, sits on the state’s
Children and Youth Behavioral Health Workgroup. She said health care providers have primarily raised concerns with the workgroup about staff shortages, which are tied to the reimbursement rates.
“Rates are a factor with just about everything, honestly,” she said. “If you back into what is driving the workforce crisis, ultimately, part of that is rates, because you can’t pay staff adequately to recruit or retain. So they’re interrelated.”
WHERE SPOKANE GOES FROM HERE
Sacred Heart leaders say the hospitals’ outpatient programs will continue to support youth. For those who need inpatient care, they point to a private psychiatric hospital just down the road with 27 beds.
Inland Northwest Behavioral Health opened its adolescent wing in 2020, with funding help from Providence. Jamie Valdez, business development director for the private psychiatric hospital, said the adolescent unit serves about 20 to 22 youth from in and around Spokane each day.
“I think we’ve been absolutely prepared for this, and it’s been a smooth transition,” she said.
In some ways, the private unit is like Sacred Heart’s: Youth in crisis who are at risk of harming themselves can generally walk in and receive stabilizing care for several days. Inland Northwest Behavioral Health also offers outpatient services to youth.
But in other ways, the private psychiatric facility is less accessible. Teens with autism, chronic medical conditions, serious mental illness or violent tendencies are sometimes turned away, which leaves many of them cycling in and out of local ERs.
That’s what happened to the kids at Youth Educational Services, a group home for youth with disabilities and behavioral challenges in Spokane.
There are no mental health providers at the group home, so it’s not unusual for residents to seek care at
Sacred Heart, said Jeremy Maginnis, an administrator who oversees the home. But the quality of care and length of stay has diminished since the hospital began dwindling its inpatient resources, he said, resulting in more visits to the ER.
“In the ER department they’re trying to get people in and out as quick as possible, and sometimes the kids are barely stabilized before they call us to come get them,” Maginnis said. “They may meet the criteria for discharge, but they’re not necessarily stabilized to come back into the least restrictive environment. But we can’t refuse to pick them up, so we do, and then they end up back in the ER again.”
Maginnis said Inland Northwest Behavioral Health has refused to treat some of the home’s residents who struggle with psychosis. They had previously been admitted to Sacred Heart’s shuttered unit, but now have nowhere to go, he said.
Amid its overall shortage of mental health resources, Washington leaders are trying to balance prioritizing outpatient and inpatient investments. But mental health experts raise alarms about cutting intensive inpatient resources in order to increase outpatient services.
State leaders who spoke to InvestigateWest, including state Sen. Marcus Riccelli, D-Spokane, said they were reluctant to see that trade-off, too.
“It definitely feels like moving in the wrong direction,” Riccelli said. n
InvestigateWest is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center and newsrooms in select states across the country.
Austin Turley and his mother Jessica Turley pose for a photo with their cat Honey outside their home in Cheney. ERICK DOXEY FOR INVESTIGATEWEST
Rest & Recover
Medical respite opens downtown. Plus, Spokane County receives $44M to rebuild after wildfires; and a new early learning center starts construction
BY INLANDER STAFF
At the busy corner of Washington Street and Fourth Avenue sits Westminster United Church of Christ, which now doubles as a medical respite center. Taking up most of the church’s second floor, the Healing Hearts Medical Respite Facility was built in partnership with the city of Spokane, Providence, Jewels Helping Hands and Empire Health Foundation. According to the city, the 30-bed facility will offer “medically-supported respite and recuperative care to achieve stability for people with chronic and acute ailments” who are experiencing homelessness. It is part of Spokane’s new scattered site homeless response model. “By bringing together partners with a variety of resources and expertise, we will now be able to provide streamlined, tailored medical services to meet the unique needs of the individuals we serve,” Mayor Lisa Brown stated. A popular Spokane business email group shared opposition to the facility’s proximity to Lewis & Clark High School and critiqued the lack of communication with neighbors before it was built. According to the city, this is not a walk-in shelter: Patients must be admitted through the Providence Community Clinic and pass a background check. (COLTON RASANEN)
WILDFIRE RECOVERY
On Aug. 18, 2023, a wildfire started burning off of Gray Road in Medical Lake around noon, followed by another fire off of Oregon Road near Elk just four hours later. Over the next few days, each fire burned more than 10,000 acres and together destroyed over 700 structures. On Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development presented Spokane County with a check for more than $44 million to rebuild the communities affected by the Gray and Oregon wildfires. “This represents a promise, a promise that HUD is here to stand with you as you rebuild,” said HUD Northwest Regional Administrator Andrew Lofton at a press event last Friday. County Commissioner Al French said “it could take several months to devise a plan that meets the muster and the requirements for HUD before we can actually cash the check.” The funds can be used for rebuilding more resilient affordable housing, repairing and improving infrastructure, revitalizing the economy through small business and job creation, or implementing disaster mitigation strategies. (ELIZA BILLINGHAM)
RAZE THE NARRATIVE
Just before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, sledgehammers will be swinging in celebration of the new Raze Early Learning & Development Center, which will start renovation at an existing building on Friday, Jan 17. Ultimately, the goal is for Raze to open two child care facilities in Spokane neighborhoods considered child care deserts. Serving children up to 12 years old, the hope is to provide 180 child care slots, including 35 for evening child care. Raze founder Kerra Bower currently operates the Little Scholars Development Center, which takes a holistic approach to students’ and educators’ behavioral and mental health needs. Bower says she hopes Raze provides Spokane with “accessible quality child care, and extended hours that support working families.” Raze will provide a rich learning experience through diverse student demographics, with an understanding of the contributions of Black Americans in Spokane and nationally, Bower says. Raze’s mission is to highlight the importance of Black student success and demolish the current divisive and traumatic narrative about Black students in education. The construction kickoff starts at 9 am Friday at 6519 N. Lidgerwood St. (VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ)
CORRECTION
In the Jan. 2 story “Support from the State?” we inaccurately described the generating capacity of the Waste to Energy Facility, which is 22 megawatts. We also included a quote inaccurately describing the timeline of Spokane County Commissioner Al French’s work to address PFAS with state and federal partners, which publicly ramped up early last year.
Spreading the Wealth
Spokane Valley will fund capital and entertainment projects with lodging tax funds
BY VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ
The city of Spokane Valley continues to promote city-centric tourism projects through grant opportunities funded in collaboration with hoteliers in the city. On Jan. 7, Spokane Valley City Council unanimously approved the most recent allocation of nearly $3 million from lodging taxes to fund various tourism-related projects.
The City Council received recommendations for which projects to fund from the Lodging Tax Allocation Committee, or LTAC. The five-person committee is led by City Council member Rod Higgins, with two hotelier representatives and two representatives who were recipients of grants funded by the tax.
The committee makes recommendations on money collected from a 3.3% lodging tax on overnight stays at hotels within Spokane Valley. The lodging tax is typically split, with 2% designated for projects such as yearly events and 1.3% going toward capital projects.
Priority for the money goes to tourism marketing, operating costs for events and festivals, and tourism-focused facilities operated by nonprofit organizations.
Higgins says the goal is to fund projects with impact, and replenish the lodging tax funding purse by supporting projects that draw people to the region to stay at local hotels.
“The revenue that’s received comes from
those heads in beds and is recycled, so to speak,” Higgins says. “As tourism grows, that gives us more money to spend, and right now, tourism has been on an upswing, but it’s starting to level off.”
During a Nov. 4 meeting, the Lodging Tax Allocation Committee reviewed presentations from 21 applicants who requested funding for various events and projects within Spokane Valley. At the meeting, the committee prioritized 11 projects, through a ranked voting system, to recommend for funding, Higgins says. The results were presented to the City Council and approved last week.
This year, thanks in part to savings in previous years and a transfer of $500,000 from the non-capital projects fund, there was $2.5 million available for capital projects. This left $393,000 available for non-capital projects, with requests to that fund surpassing $733,000.
Projects not funded this year included Spokane County’s $1.5 million capital expenditure request for Plante’s Ferry Sports Complex renovations, and non-capital applications from the Spokane Valley Farmers Market, Spokane Pride, and the Diwali Celebration of Lights festival.
Among the capital projects that were funded is a $2.5 million request for a new cross country course for running competitions and training in Spokane Valley; it could also host cyclocross
events. It is expected to cost $7 million to complete phase 1 of the Spokane Valley Cross Course, including the construction of permanent trails. Phase 2’s price tag is not yet known, but will see the construction of facilities like a clubhouse.
The roughly 62 acres of land designated for the new course is owned by Spokane Valley and Washington State Parks, which owns 16 acres. The cross country course is expected to be ready for use this fall, after phase 1 is completed, and is scheduled to host the NCAA 2027 Division I Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Regional.
The course is also expected to accommodate local school districts’ cross country competitions, sports clinics, and training.
Higgins says funding the cross country course was the most reasonable project, even with the steep price, because it will be one of the region’s only dedicated cross country courses and require people to lodge in the city for events.
“Cross country is probably the best thing for bringing people to the area that are going to be staying for more than the afternoon,” Higgins says. “They’re going to be here for at least one night, but usually more than one day.”
Among other notable applications that were funded, the Spokane Valley Summer Theatre received the entire $35,000 it requested for marketing the organization’s 10th anniversary. The summer theatre’s future home, the Idaho Central Spokane Valley Performing Arts Center, is still under construction and is expected to be completed in 2026.
“Spokane Valley Summer Theatre is most grateful to receive Spokane Valley LTAC funds this year,” says theater representative Susanna Baylon.
The theater group has used University High School and Central Valley High School to host programming for past productions.
Other events that were funded include the 21st USA West Square Dance Convention, the annual Washington State Quilters show, the Spokane Corvette Club show, and events at the HUB Sports Center. The HUB held 54 sporting events in 2024 and is expected to host more events that drive tourism to the region.
Higgins says supporting sports and cultural events helps Spokane Valley stand out.
“We’d like to have our own identity, as opposed to downtown Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, or Post Falls,” Higgins says. “As we gain exposure and experience, we’ll do better, and we will grow.” n victorc@inlander.com
Check out the Discovery Den, our newest gaming area which is the first and only testing room in the Inland Northwest. Featuring an ever-changing variety of video gaming machines from the world’s leading manufacturers, you won’t find these video gaming machines being tested anywhere else in the Inland Northwest—or possibly even in the US. Play them first and help decide which ones stay and which ones go.
Spokane Valley leaders hope a new cross country course will draw guests to the city. RENDERING COURTESY OF SPOKANE VALLEY
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which ran last week in Las Vegas, artificial intelligence was inescapable.
Device manufacturers from around the world used the annual trade show to spotlight the AI capabilities they had integrated into products like cars, kids’ toys, mirrors, vacuums and refrigerators, with novelty often trumping necessity.
The buzz over AI isn’t limited to technophiles and companies hungry for the next big sales driver. As much reverence as it has for its centuries-old canon, the classical music world also feels the lure of the cutting-edge — not least because of how advancements like AI can enhance and reinvigorate that canon.
by drawing on Beethoven’s musical sketches, he pieced together a hypothetical first movement for the symphony. Anything beyond that, he said at the time, involved too much conjecture.
But more than three decades later, thanks to interim advances in computational power and programming, Beethoven X: The AI Project sought to overcome that deficit by using AI to write speculative third and fourth movements. A team of musicians and scientists led by the
Code to Joy
Can AI channel the best of human creativity? The Spokane Symphony teams up with a local tech firm to pose that question.
BY E.J. IANNELLI
ute opening movement followed by the much shorter AI-generated scherzo.
According to Music Director James Lowe, the juxtaposition of human and computer renderings of a beloved composer’s ideas is meant to tap into some of the ambivalence around AI.
“Obviously, artificial intelligence has become a huge topic in our culture. It’s something that has been lurking around for years, but then all of a sudden it’s here, it’s arrived,” he says. “And I think the way we react to it is of course varied. We all feel, certainly as artists, a little threatened by it. So I thought that rather than hiding our head in the sand on this, we should confront this straight on.”
“We all feel, certainly as artists, a little threatened by it. So I thought that rather than hiding our head in the sand on this, we should confront this straight on.”
Case in point: Ludwig van Beethoven’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. At the time of the composer’s death in 1827, it existed only in a few dozen fragments and mentions that Beethoven himself made in correspondence. The prospect of ever holding a completed score was the stuff of fiction.
That elusive goal may have motivated the contemporary composer and musicologist Barry Cooper. In 1988,
composer Walter Werzowa fed Beethoven’s body of work into an AI model and trained it to predict the unwritten notes.
Audiences will get a taste of those differently derived results at the Spokane Symphony’s Masterworks concert this weekend when, as part of a larger all-Beethoven program, the orchestra performs Cooper’s roughly 20-min-
That sense of confrontation is evident in the concert’s adversarial title, “Beethoven vs. AI.” Allusions to some of the thornier aspects of AI are also sprinkled throughout the rest of the program, most notably in the overture to Creatures of Prometheus, the only full-length ballet that Beethoven wrote.
“Prometheus is the Greek god who stole fire from the gods to give to humans. He essentially provided a dangerous technology to humans that allowed us to evolve
past a certain point of our development, and he was punished horribly for it. The not-so-coded message, really, is that technology is great, but fire burns as well as cooks,” Lowe says.
Motifs from Creatures of Prometheus also crop up in another program piece, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, titled “Eroica.” Originally dedicated to Napoleon, whose despotic and imperial ambitions Beethoven later denounced, the work represents a monumental milestone in musical history. In terms of its structure and ideas, it’s often cited as the threshold to the entire Romantic era.
“The music is so direct and so fresh, but it’s still surprising. He does things that you really don’t expect,” Lowe says. “I mean, there’s famously one very dissonant chord right in the middle that is so ahead of its time. It’s just astonishing. And it really feels to me like this is Beethoven breaking the mold of what a symphony could do.”
For Lowe, including an ambitious and wholly original work like Beethoven’s Third was intended as a testament to the unique power of human creativity.
All the same, this Masterworks concert isn’t meant to be an extended musical polemic against AI. Local technology firm IntelliTect is not only sponsoring the concert but has also created a high-tech software platform to engage the audience.
“Initially we just said, how can we do something a little interactive? And then we had this idea. What would it be like if you could actually be expressive with your device, and it had a list of emotive words that then could form a word cloud? So we built a thing to do that,” says IntelliTect CEO Grant Erickson. Their Audience Interactive System, or AIS, features a smartphone app that will ask the audience to describe their emotional response to the music during the concert. The collective answers will be displayed in real time with complementary AI-generated backdrops.
Erickson explains that the interactive experience should highlight a different side of AI. Amid valid concerns that it could ultimately supplant humankind altogether, there’s also an argument to be made for AI as a catalyst and enabler of human creativity.
“There wasn’t just some magic layout that popped out of nothing that wrote the rest of the pieces [for Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony], right? There were people behind that who put an incredible amount of knowledge and design into that system to do the thing that it did,” he says.
That, Lowe argues, is why Beethoven makes the perfect soundtrack to the fraught cultural conversation that underpins this concert.
“There’s an internal conflict constantly in Beethoven. His manuscripts are full of crossings out and arrows and bits of torn paper and notes. He struggled with his material,” he says.
“And I think that’s why it’s such great music. Because it reminds us as humans that it’s not supposed to be easy. It’s through our human engagement with our fallibilities, that’s where our potential greatness lies.” n
Masterworks 4: Beethoven vs. AI • Sat, Jan. 18 at 7:30 pm and Sun, Jan. 19 at 3 pm • $24-$83 • The Fox Theater • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • foxtheaterspokane.org • 509-624-1200
Audiences can interact with the concert via a custom app. IMAGES COURTESY INTELLITECT
Hitting the Jim
Aussie stand-up comedian Jim Jefferies is fine being a bit of an arse
BY SETH SOMMERFELD
While stand-up comedians come in a plethora of styles, it’s often the ones who feel like they’re putting on the least amount of airs who resonate. If you’re watching an observational comic and you don’t feel like they authentically believe what they’re saying, it’s hard to laugh along. But authenticity has never been an issue for Australian Jim Jefferies.
When he’s on stage with a mic in his hand, Jefferies almost comes across as the slightly surly guy at the end of the bar who has a ton of stories and opinions but you actually want to hear them. He’s the cheeky crank who might somehow segue effortlessly from a rant about gun control laws to a story about an old one-night stand without missing a beat. Jefferies’ blunt point of view has led him to co-create and star in the FX sitcom Legit and the Comedy Central late-night show The Jim Jefferies Show in addition to putting out 10 stand-up specials (most recently 2023’s High and Dry, his sixth special for Netflix).
Jefferies heads back to Spokane for a Jan. 23 show at First Interstate Center for the Arts as part of his “Son of a Carpenter” tour — named thusly because “it’s obviously taking the piss out of Jesus” and the comedian literally is the son of a carpenter.
Ahead of Jefferies’ return to town, we caught up with him to chat about trying to be an adult, connecting with fans and musical theater.
INLANDER: What sort of topics are you comedically exploring with your new material?
JEFFERIES: Look, with me it’s always going to be some social issues, some sex jokes and then some stuff about me life. You’re just following a soap opera of a person, aren’t ya?
When I was younger, you were watching a guy who was dealing with addiction and having problems there. And now you’re dealing with a guy who’s doing the same as everyone my age — struggling to be an adult whilst having to be a parent, you know what? So there’s stuff about married life. There’s no more stories of one-night stands or anything like that. It’s tales of being, being an adult, I guess.
But in saying that it’s still the same as all my other shows that I’ve ever done — it’s still just grubby jokes. I always write the show that I want to watch. Every comedian who’s worth their salt should really think that they’re the best comedian in the world, because they’re doing a show that is designed just for them. So I hope other people relate to it, and I hope other people can see themselves in me and they take something away from that.
A thing I enjoy about your approach is that your comedy has that cynical bluntness to it, but it’s not punching at people in a way that’s devoid of empathy.
I think my stage persona can come across as a bit of an asshole, but I think people can relate to that. Because aren’t we all just a little bit of an asshole?
For sure. And everyone has an asshole friend or two where they sort of acknowledge, “Ehh... they’re kind of an ass-
Noted rambunctious raconteur, Jim Jefferies. ART STREIBER PHOTO
hole, but they’re my asshole.”
Yeah, exactly. I always have people come to me afterwards and go, “You say the things I think, but I’m too afraid to say.” So that means that people are agreeing with you.
And that’s a little fun thing with stand-up comedy — a release that you get. You get to hear opinions that you’re not going to hear in your schools or your churches or from your politicians or from co-workers or whatever. You get to hear little tiny opinions that you go, “Yeah, I agree with that” or “I don’t agree with that,” but I don’t think anything that extreme that you’re going to be angry. But people still find a way.
Your demeanor as a stand-up always struck me as sort of the talkative guy at the end of the bar whose rantings and stories you actually want to hear.
That’s what I’m hoping. Some comedians, you can see them and you may have had a great time and had a big laugh, but when you leave, you know no more about them. But with me, I do think people at the end of it think they know me a little bit better.
I know because when people meet me, people always speak to me with familiarity. People sometimes come up and talk to me in the street, and they ask, “How’s your kids? How’s this and how’s that?” And I think, “Do I know this person?” And then I start asking personal questions about themselves, because I assume I’ve met them before and I already know them, when I don’t know them at all.
I do like to make the show be an experience where it’s like we’re all just a group of friends having a chat or having a discussion or even having a little tiny argument. You know what I mean? My points, I don’t think, are that egregious that you kind of hate me at the end of it. I hope whatever dark points that I make, at least you can sort of see my point of view.
In your most recent special High and Dry, you mention you studied musical theater at university. Do you think a musical theater background has helped with being a stand-up at all?
I did that before stand-up comedy, but I do think it helped me in many ways. I think it helped me hit the ground running when I started doing stand-up comedy, because I didn’t have stage fright, because I’d already been through stage fright in another art form.
I do a lot of acting on stage. I think more than people actually really give credit for. There’s a lot of more animated comedians who really move around the stage and play things out, but I do faces and impersonations. And I’m not very good at impersonations! But I think the musical theaterness in me helped me know more about how to build character on stage.
When I perform, I hope that I paint a bit of a picture. And musical theater does that a lot more than stand-up comedy does. Musical theater is the most extreme and overdone bit of acting you can do. It’s pantomime, almost.
What’s your musical theater wheelhouse?
My mother used to take me to see musicals. I like West Side Story, My Fair Lady and all the old ones. I have fond memories from my childhood watching those ones. I would listen to Stephen Sondheim. I like the classic old musicals.
Besides the obvious of it being your job, what keeps you energized and wanting to do stand-up?
Every day that I have a stand-up gig, the stand-up gig is the highlight of my day. So if a show is happening, that’s the thing I’m looking forward to the most.
I won’t lie to you, I’m not a big fan of traveling. And my job is traveling, you know? I get paid to be on airplanes, not to be on stage. And I still get a kick out of it when I enter a country and I have to write my occupation on a customs form. That still makes me feel like I’m a 17-year-old kid who wants to do an open mic spot. I mean, I get to write “comedian,” and I’m not bullshitting. I’m not an aspiring comedian, I’m a f---ing comedian. That’s awesome, man. n
Jim Jefferies • Thu, Jan. 23 at 7 pm • $50-$216 • All ages • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd • firstinterstatecenter.org • 509-279-7000
Hooked on Fiber
From the clothes that keep us warm in frigid Inland Northwest winters to ornate tapestries that adorn living room walls and bring simple joy to our daily lives, fiber art surrounds us with its intricate beauty.
Textile is among the most ancient human endeavors — we’ve always found ways to stay warm using materials provided by the Earth. Over millennia, fiber art has transformed from the creation of functional items to pieces of art that showcase the beauty of the material itself and tell diverse stories.
From the more pragmatic crafts of knitting and quilting that many of us associate with our grandmothers to the lesser-known techniques of wet felting and eco-printing, the world of fiber arts is vast, familiar and yet full of surprises.
Fiber art has long existed in a limbo between “art” and “craft,” never quite neatly fitting into one category or the other. Fiber artists spend hours creating stunning textiles with complex patterns and becoming masters at their craft, so why shouldn’t their creations be considered at the same level as a painting or sculpture?
Within the next few pages, meet a selection of artists making fantastical fiber creations here in the Inland Northwest, and keep an eye out for their work at local galleries and art markets across the region as the fiber arts scene continues to grow.
— MADISON PEARSON
Scarves made by members of the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild.
LESLIE DOUGLAS PHOTO
Fi��� ARTS
“What people are doing with fiber now has really taken off, and it’s really becoming recognized as an art form rather than your grandmother’s knitting and crocheting.”
The Contemporary:Kimber Follevaag
To be a ballet dancer, one must also be a seamstress. Once graduated to pointe shoes, a ballerina also takes on the routine task of preparing her shoes, a responsibility given only to the most dedicated dancers. The breaking of the hard, wooden shank, the crushing of the stiff toe box and, of course, the sewing of elastic and ribbon into the perfectly pastel pink satin of the shoe.
Kimber Follevaag had an advantage back when she graduated from flat to pointe shoes as her mother ran a fabric store right next to her ballet studio. After growing up alongside fabric and sewing, Follevaag’s transition from dancer to business student to fiber artist came naturally over the years.
“I still needed a creative lifestyle after ballet ended,” she says. “I just transitioned to what I knew: fabric, fibers and things of that nature.”
After moving to Coeur d’Alene in 1999 and eventually making her way to Spokane after her husband retired, Follevaag began taking art seriously, yet it took her some trial and error to discover her preferred medium.
“I used to poke holes through photographs and embroider those,” she says. “That turned into these acrylics that I did for a long time and then that went into punching holes through paper for a while. It was a process.”
Over the years, she’s developed a signature style of fiber art that involves wrapping and weaving thread or yarn around a metal or
wooden frame to create bold patterns. She winds and weaves the fiber around and through itself, making entirely unique colorblocked fiber patterns. No two are alike because Follevaag lets her hands and mind take over.
“It’s a very intuitive process,” she says. “I get my muscle memory going, feel confident and just take off.”
Follevaag, who shares her work on Instagram, @kimber_follevaag, continues to use her environment as artistic inspiration, pulling from the clean lines and details of the midcentury modern house she lives in. She’s also dabbled in old-style cottage patterns, checkered patterns and more. To her, fiber presents endless possibilities.
“The fiber scene is getting some momentum,” Follevaag says. “I think people back in the day would regard it as craft rather than art. What people are doing with fiber now has really taken off, and it’s really becoming recognized as an art form rather than your grandmother’s knitting and crocheting. I think we’re really going to see it explode as an art form because of what you can do with it and how you can manipulate it.”
Follevaag’s creations make age-old materials feel fresh, new and exciting again.
“It’s something at your core,” she says. “People gravitate to textiles or painting or ballet or gardening. Mine just happened to be fiber, and it’s what I love.” n
Kimber Follevaag’s woven art pieces are one-of-a-kind.
YOUNG KWAK PHOTOS
ABOVE: Follevaag weaves yarn around a frame to create intricate geometric patterns.
The Felter: Elyse Hochstadt
Elyse Hochstadt works with her hands and her head, but also her heart.
Serving as the executive director of the nonprofit Spokane Zero Waste for the past two years, Hochstadt is constantly thinking about the planet and how humans can reduce their environmental impact.
When she began graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002, she quickly became invested in efforts to address the plastic pollution crisis, abandoning her ceramics practice.
“I was really grappling with questioning why I was making art when the world is falling apart,” Hochstadt says. “I felt like I needed to be doing something significant. Now I understand that art is hugely significant in so many ways.”
After living in the Bay Area for over a decade, Hochstadt moved to Spokane right as COVID hit. She found herself needing a creative outlet and picked up needle felting after taking an online course. It wasn’t until taking another course from a Danish artist that she found her calling in the medium of wet felting.
“My mind was blown,” she says. “I could not believe what you could do with this material. It was a pivotal moment in my way of thinking about felt as a sculptural material, and it really changed everything.”
The wet felting process begins by laying out sections of wool roving — unspun wool fibers — on top of one another to form a thick layer that can then be formed into a larger piece of felt using friction, soapy water and heat. The wool fibers interlock and can form 2D or 3D designs depending on the artist’s vision.
“I tend to be somebody who works based on my passion,” Hochstadt says. “Right now that’s the relationship humans have to the natural world and helping people build that relationship back to being part of the natural world and respecting what that means. We are so interconnected with the land, resources, air, water — all of it.”
Last March, Hochstadt held an event at Shotgun Studios in Peaceful Valley using wet felting as a way to deal with feelings associated with climate grief. Each participant crafted a wet felt teardrop while sharing and listening to others talk about their climate-related anxieties. The felt art became a wool sculpture titled “River of Tears.”
Hochstadt says there’s something special about using natural fibers to create organic shapes and sculptures.
“This material is from nature,” she says. “If it’s not heavily dyed with chemical dyes, you can bring it right back to nature. It will compost in the future.”
Along with wet felting, Hochstadt incorporates stitching, hand embroidery and needle felting to tell stories in her work. She’s created wool flowers, seed pods, mushrooms, rabbits, birds, words and more. She combines the felt with other objects to create critters and structures that express her passions. (See examples of this work on Instagram, @tangledwoolstudio.)
“I imagine myself as a distillery,” she says. “There’s all of this information coming in, and then there’s this moment of transformation. It all comes out in some manner. The pieces tell stories, but the stitch work really adds this element that I think is so of the hand and of the body, it feels like you can communicate in a different way.”
As part of her job at Spokane Zero Waste (learn more
“The pieces tell stories, but the stitch work really adds this element that I think is so of the hand and of the body, it feels like you can communicate in a different way.”
workshop Hochstadt led last year.
at spokanezerowaste.org), Hochstadt is in the process of starting a “regional fiber industry” based on the model of a nonprofit organization called Fibershed.
“We have a ton of fiber artists in this region,” she says. “We have weavers, knitters, dyers, spinners, the whole thing. The idea is to create a soil-to-soil system starting with the people that are grazing the sheep to the people processing the fiber to the people making the textiles.”
Hochstadt also hopes to aid the region in moving away from fast fashion toward a mindset of buying garments made to last a decade or longer, and only a few new pieces a year.
“We are at a really fragile point in human history right now,” she says. “So all of my work, art and other, is inspired by that. I want to have my hands in it, poised to help and ready for that transformation.” n
TOP LEFT: “The River of Tears” was collaboratively created in an art
PHOTOS
The Weavers: Spokane Handweavers’ Guild
On May 23, 1948, 15 women and men came together to form the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild.
In the guild’s early days, aspiring members had to submit three work samples demonstrating their skill for consideration. Now, nearly 77 years later, anyone interested in handweaving is welcome to join, and the guild is 88 members strong.
“We have a vast range of skill levels,” member Candace Brown says. “We have members who have been around for the long history of it, and we have some people who don’t even yet own a loom but are interested.”
Getting into handweaving can be difficult due to the need for an expensive loom as well as copious amounts of fiber. Because of this, the guild regularly hosts workshops to increase access to craft to as many people as possible.
Its members meet monthly, except for a short break in the summer. Among them are weavers, textile enthusiasts and even fiber-related businesses in the Spokane area, along with others from throughout Eastern Washington, North Idaho and even southern British Columbia. Yearly membership is $30 per individual, and $60 for businesses. (For more information, visit spokaneweavers.org.)
The Handweavers’ Guild is a nonprofit, funded by those dues and an annual show at Barrister Winery each November. The show features one-of-a-kind, handwoven items made by its members — anything from simple scarves and lace doilies to table linens and kitchen towels.
Each item is made on a loom, which holds fibers taut to allow for the weaving of textiles of various sizes. Advanced and creative weavers often create stunning, colorful tapestries featuring elaborate patterns and ornate details.
“It’s a very uplifting group,” Brown says. “Our membership is staying at a real healthy level.”
She says a big reason membership has been so stable over the years is due to a heightened interest in fiber arts around this part of the country.
“There’s a long history of people around here being creative with fiber,” Brown says. “In rural areas, especially, there are people who are raising animals whose wool can be made into weaving or knitting fiber.”
Guild members are also intentional in supporting local businesses that help them create their work. Brown mentions Paradise Fibers on West Indiana Avenue and The Hook & Needle Nook in the Garland District, plus a new fiber store called the Applewood Yarn Barn in Green Bluff.
“They’re gathering spots,” Brown says. “We go there and revel in community and knit or weave or what have you. It’s a very symbiotic relationship between the people doing the fiber arts and the people who support them making their living.”
In a few more years, 2028, the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild will celebrate 80 years of creating handwoven items for the community. In the next three years, Brown hopes the group continues to grow.
“We just want to share the joy of weaving,” she says. “Nothing makes us happier.” n
A selection of handwoven items — scarves, kitchen towels, lanyards, table runners and more — made by members of the Spokane Handweavers’ Guild.
LESLIE DOUGLAS PHOTOS
ODC DANCE: MIXED REPERTORY
Season
Rigorous Athleticism and Onstage Audacity
7:30 P.M. | Friday, January 31
Coughlin Theater
Tickets: $38 - $50
Presenting Partner:
Tickets On Sale Now
Visit gonzaga.edu/TicketCenter
Learn more at myrtlewoldsoncenter.org
Photo Credit: ODC Dance
The Ecoprinter: Nan Drye
The natural world and fiber arts have always been intrinsically tied. Before the introduction of synthetic materials such as polyester and acrylic, all fiber was made using plant or animal sources: wool from sheep hair, cotton from cotton seed pods or silk from the cocoons of silkworms.
Early cave paintings from 8000 BC suggest evidence of clothing in the Paleolithic period, showing that from our earliest days on Earth, humans have been taking natural resources and creating functional items out of fiber.
Nan Drye has been drawn to this intimate connection since she was a child living in Missouri.
“When I was a kid we lived on the farthest north street of Kansas City, right on the edge
of the woods,” she says. “I played out there and would go pick up leaves along the way.”
She found the leaves fascinating and would keep them to admire until her next outing. Decades later and in a different state, Drye continues this practice in her adult life through the process of ecoprinting, a natural textile dyeing technique she discovered after attending a paper-making workshop in the late 2000s and reading Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles by India Flint.
The book details several methods for dyeing textiles using plants rather than chemically laden synthetic dyes. Flint’s goal is to show how to do the “least possible harm to the dyer, the end user of the object, and the environment.”
The walls of Drye’s Spokane Valley studio
are draped with flowing silk scarves while the countertops are home to boxes of dried leaves waiting to be used in her next project.
The process is simple: A silk textile is dunked in a mixture of vinegar and water, and then leaves (either dried or fresh, depending on the time of year) are laid out in a pattern across the fabric. Drye then lays a twig vertically across the leaves to keep everything in place as she rolls and rubberbands the bundle. The fabric is then taken outside and placed in a steaming pot, where it’ll stay for about an hour as the natural dyes inside the leaves do their thing. Once Drye’s timer goes off, she unrolls the fabric, removes the plant pieces and hangs the textile up to dry for a few days.
What results is a rustic and completely unique textile made of natural fiber and natural dye. On some items, outlines of the leaves or flower petals used are evident. On others, the dyes bleed together creating an earthy amalgamation of colors and patterns. Each item is eventually sold via her Etsy shop, DryeGoods, or at a local art market like 33 Artists Market
or the Manito Park Art Festival.
“Everything is green to start with, but then you get this crazy array of color and patterns once it’s done,” Drye says of the leaves. “Every plant reacts differently to the ecoprinting process.”
Nearly every plant Drye uses is locally sourced. The artist often walks the Centennial Trail near her home or visits area parks to collect vegetation off the ground. It’s harder to use naturally foraged plants during the cold Inland Northwest winters, though, so she occasionally uses outsourced material.
Drye’s favorite plant to use is the invasive and plentiful spotted knapweed as well as balsam root and oak leaves. Her husband helps out, too, by growing candy sweet onions. Drye uses the onion skins to add pink or red bursts of color to scarves, shirts, wall hangings and other items.
“Not every plant works,” she says. “You have to experiment around and see what you’re going to get out of things. But in the end, it’s this magical thing that nature can do.” n
Nan Drye poses uses naturally foraged materials to make her eco-printed textiles.
YOUNG KWAK PHOTOS
IN THE TRACKS OF CHAMPS
In Deer Valley Utah, you can spend a day out on the slopes with some living legends
STORY AND PHOTOS BY BOB LEGASA
As a kid, many of us had sports heroes or people we idolized for their amazing skills and accomplishments — whether it be a hockey player like the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, or Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. We were fans, their posters covered our bedroom walls, and we knew all their stats and tried to mimic their style.
I think having an athlete or mentor to look up to can be a good thing in many ways. Studying their technique and training routines, for example, can help young athletes elevate their game so they can achieve higher goals.
As a young wannabe freestyle skier, I had several ski idols I looked up to over my career, like Airborne Eddie Ferguson, Wayne Wong and three-time world champion Bob Howard to name just a few. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to personally get to know them. Those first introductions and the time I was able to spend with each of them gave me an even greater appreciation for them as athletes but even more so as people. You spend a few hours with someone in their element, such as skiing, and you get to know the real person.
...continued on next page
Olympians Jillian Vogtli and Kris “Fuzz” Feddersen will lead you around Deer Valley in Utah with behind-the-scenes tales of what competing at the highest level is really like.
“IN THE TRACK OF CHAMPS,” CONTINUED...
Last winter I was fortunate enough to spend a half of a day skiing with three Winter Olympians at Deer Valley in Park City, Utah. This is through a program called Ski with Champions, which three-time Olympian Kris “Fuzz” Feddersen created and runs.
Fuzz competed in freestyle skiing-aerials at three Winter Olympics — the 1988, ’92 and the ’94 Games. He was a member of the U.S. Freestyle Ski Team for 16 years and had over 30 podiums on the World Cup circuit. After he retired from competition, Feddersen went into coaching, once again representing the U.S. at the ’98 Nagano Olympics as the aerial coach, where the U.S. men’s and women’s teams each brought home gold medals.
After his competitive days, Feddersen started getting requests by corporations to give talks or ski with groups. That’s when he got the idea for Ski with a Champion.
“At first, I started doing it solo, bringing in some of my Olympic friends into corporate gigs and skiing with groups,” says Feddersen.
Seven years ago, Ski with a Champion integrated into the Deer Valley program. According to Feddersen, “It’s not really a ski lesson, it’s more for people that just want to hear the Olympic stories, your experiences and ski with an Olympian.”
There are six other Olympic athletes in the program who you can request to ski with for a full or half day: Jillian Vogtli, Kaylin Richardson, Shannon Bahrke, Chris Waddell, Trace
Worthington and the latest addition to the squad, Ashley Caldwell.
On the morning I was there, two-time Olympians Worthington and Vogtli joined Feddersen and I as we explored the mountain. Deer Valley is home to Vogtli as well as where she competed in her first Winter Olympics in 2002. The freestyle skiing disciplines of moguls and aerials were both held here at Deer Valley.
As we were riding the Empire Express Chair, Vogtli explained the Ski with a Champion program: “It’s a unique experience to see the mountain through our eyes. I aim to meet the needs of the individuals so that they walk away feeling a little taller in themselves and feeling a little more improved in who they are as a person and as a skier. I love what I do,” she said with a smile. “We give you a fun and memorable experience that hopefully you’ll be talking about for years to come.”
Our first run was off the Northside Express chair, where we warmed up with some nice cruising runs on beautifully manicured corduroy. After a few laps off there, we ventured over to the Empire Express, where we had a variety of terrain and conditions from moguls, groomers and some soft crud. These three Olympians who’ve been out of the competitive limelight for quite some time still have impressive skiing skills as you could see from the deep trenches they left in the corduroy and in their rhythm skiing the bumps.
...continued on next page
Whitewater Snowlander Ad - January
Trace Worthington channels the old days by throwing up some air in the skies above Park City, Utah.
LIVING LEGENDS
They even got a little air!
I don’t know what I liked better, skiing the manicured runs that Deer Valley is known for or listening to all the stories on the chair lift rides.
Trace Worthington has an interesting background outside of competing in two Olympics, having 79 World Cup podiums, 39 of those being first place. In addition to the Ski with a Champions program, Worthington works in television broadcasting as a sports commentator. He’s done the play-by-play role for NBC at seven Olympics, and in the summertime, Worthington commentates for the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series. What I find interesting and funny is that Worthington also calls dog shows, and he’s going on his 18th season hosting the Incredible Dog Challenge presented by Purina. According to Worthington, it’s one of the highest-rated programs he does.
Worthington, who’s been skiing at Deer Valley for over 25 years, had this to say: “The Olympic background is nice to have, but that’s not necessarily the primary
reason. It’s also about embracing and understanding the Deer Valley culture. My resort knowledge along with the other champions is super important to the program. All those little tricks I’ve learned over 25-plus years of skiing at Deer Valley come into play. You need to know the mountain, the secret stashes, what runs are groomed daily, and when and where to slide into lunch before the crowds get there.”
One thing I found spending the morning with these three is their willingness to show you a good time while skiing at Deer Valley, but it may be their banter with one another that’s the most fun to listen in on.
I asked Vogtli about the two guys, and she said with a laugh: “They’re always entertaining and make me laugh. I watched them compete before I was on the ski team, and for the first few years — they wouldn’t know this now — but I was too nervous to even speak to them!” n
To reserve your own champion for groups up to six people, visit deervalley.com/things-to-do.
“We give you a fun and memorable experience that hopefully you’ll be talking about for years to come,”
says Jillian Vogtli.
MOUNTAINS
GETTING THERE
From Spokane: 160 miles
From Bridgeport: 40 miles
From Winthrop: 25 miles skitheloup.org
A HIDDEN GEM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PNW
Loup
Ski Bowl between Okanogan and Winthrop is small but thriving as a nonprofit
BY VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ
Loup Loup Ski Bowl is a hidden gem in the Pacific Northwest, offering 300 acres of diverse terrain for Alpine and Nordic skiing. The picturesque ski bowl offers memorable and family-friendly recreational activities in the Okanogan Highlands and Methow Valley.
The ski bowl features 1,200 feet of vert, 5 miles of Nordic ski trails, and a quad lift serving 12 runs. Terrain grooming partnerships with Washington State Parks offer additional access to 29 miles of Nordic skiing adventures.
The Loup Loup Ski Education Foundation operates the community ski hill, a nonprofit organization emphasizing community and family. Executive Director Jon Brown says the focus on community is highlighted through the affordability offered at Loup Loup.
“For a family of two parents and two kids that are 12 or under, to ski at the loop, it’s $150 a day for everybody,”
Brown says.
Those who envision themselves consistently visiting and mastering the many winter recreational activities can also buy a lifetime membership for $6,000. The Loup Loup Legacy Pass allows you to utilize the amenities, contribute to a nonprofit and ensure its continued operation.
Brown says the convenience is a significant draw for many patrons of Loup Loup because you won’t have to worry about long lines and crowds delaying your winter fun. When you park at Loup Loup, within 50 yards is a ski rental shop with staff readily available to answer your questions and guide you. Being a smaller ski hill operation allows for that direct and community-driven experience.
“The benefit to the Loup is there aren’t so many barriers to human interaction to help solve your issues,”
Brown says. “When you walk into our rental shop, you know our rental staff is right there and ready to help you.”
Skiing and snowboarding require different levels of experience. Thankfully, Loup Loup has you covered with first-timer lesson packages, including all-day equipment rental use and a lower-mountain lift ticket for just $100 a person. There are various training opportunities to teach young children with their parents or lessons for the more experienced skiers.
Ultimately, Brown and the Loup Loup team want people to know that their goal is to provide access to outdoor winter recreational opportunities to as many people as possible. He says recreating outside can significantly benefit our mental health and hopes more families can enjoy places like Loup Loup Ski Bowl. n
Scenes from the resort on the side of Little Buck Mountain in the Okanogan Highlands.
LOUP LOUP SKI
BOWL PHOTOS
Loup
MITCHELL PHOTO
MITCHELL PHOTO
TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT
There are so many new, innovative ways to ride down the mountains, from powder surfing to ski bikes to adaptive riding
BY JOHN GROLLMUS
When most of us who grew up to be skiers or snowboarders were kids, we wasted countless hours of snowy afternoons and weekends scheming up new ways to slide around on the snow. We would jump on a garbage can lid, an old skateboard deck with the trucks removed, a sled of any kind or really anything else that would allow us to enjoy even a few seconds of the freedom we feel every time we let gravity take over and just ride. The point is that back then it didn’t matter what we slid around on but just simply that we slid.
After a while we inevitably picked up skiing, snowboarding or both and started to discover the ultimate feeling of freedom and exhilaration that we could find in the mountains. Chairlifts became our magic carpets to unlock a world we had only dreamt about.
These days there exists a whole group of people who still seek out that simple pleasure we all remember without allowing themselves to become confined by the preexisting notion of what it means to ride in the mountains. There’s a growing movement of people who are looking at riding in the mountains the same way we all did as kids, however it feels good. Who are these folks and just what are they up to? Well, stay tuned as we take a tour around a few of these less mainstream approaches to shredding — it figures to be a blast.
SKI BIKES
While the history of ski bikes dates back over 100 years, more recent technological developments have brought them into the mix on the modern ski slopes. With more tech and safety features, ski bikes, which were once heavily frowned upon, if not outrightly banned, are now allowed at hundreds of ski resorts across North America.
In fact, in 2015, longtime Beaver Creek ski patroller Addy McCord suffered an injury inhibiting her ability to ski, which she thought would end her career. Instead, she discovered the Sno-Go, one of the modern ski bikes now being manufactured; it took the strain off her injury and enabled her to continue patrolling. Local Sno-Go enthusiast Jill Fried tried ski biking after watching her boyfriend Jeff take it up following a knee injury and seeing how much fun he was having.
Not only do the modern snow bikes provide relief for people with long-term injuries, but they are intuitive and easy to learn, not to mention fun. As Fried states, “It’s just a lot of fun, pure joy.”
Jeff Pensiero is surfing the snow, connected only by gravity.
COURTESY OF JEFF PENSIERO
Jill Fried on her Sno-Go ski bike. COURTESY OF JILL FRIED
POWDER
SURFING
I have a friend who it would be easy to argue is a major force in the snowboarding world, and he has fallen head over heels, literally, and more than once, for the ever-growing movement known as powder surfing. With roots going back to the early days of snowboarding, pow surfing is essentially just that, surfing the powder. The boards are free of bindings and create a sensation which is akin to what surfers feel riding waves.
With ever increasing numbers of riders powder surfing, boards are now being made far and wide. There are pow surfers being made in Japan, the U.S., Austria and all over the globe.
One U.S. company who has been making boards since 2007, Grassroots Powder Surfing, sums up the sport about as succinctly as anyone can: “Simply a rider, board, mountain and gravity working together in perfect harmony.”
Keep your eyes open for these free-spirited riders on a mountain near you.
SUNRISE STARLIGHT
ENJOY 12-HOUR SKI DAYS 1,700+ACRES•SKISCHOOL•EPICTERRAINPARK•NIGHTSKI•SNOWTUBING
...continued on next page
Mt. Spokane offers night skiing four nights a week. With one ticket, you can ski for 12 hours. All-day tickets include night skiing. A night ticket is available from 3PM to 9PM for six hours at just $39.
What do you do when you love skateboarding but you live someplace where winter snow makes it hard to skate year round? You go snowskating, of course.
While powder surfing essentially puts you in the snow on a surfboard, snowskating uses a two tier elevated deck to provide better leverage on firmer surfaces. While much of snowskating is akin to skateboarding with riders taking advantage of the lack of bindings to complete tricks off ramps and rails, larger platform decks also allow snowskaters to get out and slay powder.
Local backcountry snowskater Mark Edmundson, who used to build snow skates under the moniker of Chiller Decks, can often be found carving fresh turns in the North Idaho backcountry with his friends Cole Thompson and Eric Nelson. Another local snow skate enthusiast, Bryce Rich, is still creating and selling snow skates under the name Boyd Hill snowskates. However much fun these guys had skateboarding as kids, they are having maybe even more fun snowskating as adults.
“TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT,” CONTINUED... ...continued on next page
Dropping In, Taphouse Edition
Alot of folks remember the day that the No-Li Mountain Taphouse went ying. It was the early fall of 2023, and Mt. Spokane crews spontaneously took advantage of a helicopter that happened to be working in the area. With the container bar dangling on a harness far beneath it, the chopper moved the popular hangout from Lodge 2, which sits low on the mountain, to the top of Parkway Express just above the Terrain Park.
Mt. Spokane and No-Li both shared a video of the airlift on their Facebook and Instagram feeds.
“It went nuts on social media,” says No-Li founder and owner John Bryant.
We hope you enjoy the On Tap 2025 Series featuring stories about our local Inland Northwest community. New stories will debut about once a month right here in the Inlander
approachable and easy to work with. Plus, they have awesome beer!”
For John’s son, Jack, the partnership was the realization of multiple ambitions. He remembers skiing on Mt. Spokane in high school and wanting to be more involved with such a community xture.
“NO-LIHASALWAYSBEENA GREATMOUNTAINPARTNER”
“It was like one of those timber races on the Discovery Channel. People loved it because their brewery was being carried through the air above Mt. Spokane.”
Even before it took to the sky, the Mountain Taphouse was a hit. Wrapped in the familiar logo of No-Li’s Cascade Fog Hazy IPA, it naturally caught the eye of skiers and snowboarders who were looking for a place to chill between runs.
at’s exactly what the team at Mt. Spokane had envisioned when they approached No-Li with the idea of being the pop-up bar’s permanent tenant.
“I always thought it would be super cool if we were able to be a part of the mountain in some way,” Jack says. “It’s part of the culture and the fabric of the city, just like we want No-Li to be.” e change in elevation has made a great thing even better. Its current location has turned the Mountain Taphouse into a destination in its own right, thanks to stunning views, convenient access from a nearby tow lift and a prime spot next to a heated yurt.
“We’ve put a huge focus on having the best terrain park in the region,” says Kayler. “And the Taphouse really just ties it all together.”
“No-Li has always been a great mountain partner,” says the resort’s head of marketing, Jodi Kayler. “ eir emphasis on community is apparent, and they have a reputation for being
SQUATCH SEZ!
Choose from 6+ brews on tap or in 12-ounce cans at No-Li Mountain Taphouse. Find it on top of Parkway Express (Chair 3); open on weekends and holidays throughout the ski season.
WAYS TO RIDE
The slopes are open to more people than ever with the advent of adaptive “sitand-ski” options, like the one Trevor Kennison uses at Schweitzer.
“TRY
IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT,” CONTINUED...
ADAPTIVE RIDING
Sometimes snow sports enthusiasts end up with injuries so severe that they can no longer walk, but in some cases that doesn’t stop them from still hitting the slopes. Advances in technology have enabled adaptive skiers to continue to enjoy that gravitational pull alongside all the other snow riders on the slopes. In fact, in some cases, adaptive skiers are doing things most of us would never even consider.
Not too long-ago legendary sit ski athlete Trevor Kennison became the first sit-skier to complete a double backflip. Spend just a few minutes on his Instagram page and you will not only see stunts that will blow your mind, but you’ll also realize that that childish fever to seek out fun in the snow is hard to keep down.
Of course, there’s many more ways people choose to get out and have fun on the slopes as well. There’s a couple of guys I see regularly who ski on something called the Scorpian, which is essentially a ski with the back half just behind the binding cut off enabling them to ski tight trees and bumps with ease. Scorpians must be a blast because I never see those two not having a great time.
There are ski blades, ski skates, something that looks like a snowboard cut into two pieces and who knows what else. Many of the ways to ride I’ve discussed here are either still not allowed at some resorts or were previously not allowed, but where there’s a will there’s a way. Besides, we can all remember a time not that long ago when people thought snowboarding was an insane and dangerous idea that would never catch on.
The point of all these different ways to shred is to just have fun and isn’t that what we all started out trying to do in the snow way back when? After all, yesterday’s garbage can lid might just become today’s snowskate, or snow bike, pow surfer or really anything else as long as it’s a good time. Here’s to getting out there and getting after it no matter how you choose to ride. n
John Grollmus is a lifetime resident of the Inland Northwest, local restaurateur and backcountry ski guide. He loves all things outdoors, food of every kind and, more than almost anything, skiing. John can currently be found living with his wife and favorite human, Kim, near Hope, Idaho, and at johngrollmus.com.
SCHWEITZER PHOTO
REELING IN THE DECADES
Micah Genteman, the third-generation owner of Spokane Valley’s Sports Creel outdoor supplier, reflects on the shop’s 70-year legacy
BY LUCY KLEBECK
Growing up, Micah Genteman heard customers come into his family’s store, The Sports Creel, and say thanks for the services and sense of community provided. Seeing this impact is what eventually led him to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and father.
The Sports Creel, Spokane’s oldest specialty ski shop, celebrated 70 years in business last year with Genteman and his family at the helm. We caught up with Genteman to learn the secrets of their success — and Spokane’s enduring power as an outdoor recreation sports wonderland.
INLANDER: What allows the Sports Creel to thrive in an era of online shopping and big-name stores?
GENTEMAN: I think it’s probably a collection of things, the service that we provide probably being at the top of it. You hear pretty routinely, you can witness it in person.
Facebook Marketplace is a spot where people tend to find homes for all of the things that didn’t work, and nine out of 10 times they include links to the places where they bought them online. In the interest of getting ski boots that fit, finding all of the different levels of gear and equipment that the industry has that a lot of people don’t necessarily know about or aren’t aware of how important they are and how they all work — I think that being able to provide the same goods at often a similar price point but with immeasurably better service is what helps us.
What’s it like being a small-business owner in the Spokane area today?
It’s a largely positive experience. I think every single business category still has struggles. Getting to do what we do, getting to go forward and sell fun and sell comfort and sell something that gets people a
chance to get into the mountains or out onto the water and do so safely, do so with their families, I think that’s the part that becomes the value part that gets you through some of the “Boy, that was a rough year to get through on this.”
What plans do you have for Sports Creel’s future?
We will continue to work ourselves to the bone. We’re kind of a small family and know how fortunately blessed we are to have the best staff in place that we’ve ever had and so at this point my plans going forward are to do our best to keep our existing customers happy, keep our staff operating the spectacular way they have been. Also of importance is all of the wonderful people who continue to refer our business, working diligently to make sure we treat those people right because there’s nothing worse than sending somebody somewhere and then having that place not show up the way that they should’ve. Our plans are to continue doing what we’ve been doing here for 70 years straight.
What do you think makes the Inland Northwest such a good spot for outdoor activities?
I think in a four-season world, we have arguably some of the best options. You have millions of rideable trails and mountains and options that are constantly evolving and getting better in both the summer and the winter. You’ve got seemingly endless holes of golf that can be played, seemingly endless bodies of water that can be accessed. We have relatively consistent weather, we have a lack of overall natural disasters. In my younger years, I went out to different areas and certainly tried to find other places to be and fall in love with… the magnet of Spokane and the shop and the people in it and the people shopping here are what always bring me home. n
Comfortable boots are a key part of happy skiing, and Micah Genteman at the Sports Creel can fix you up.
ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
for your mid-winter getaway.
20% ON
& LIFT TICKETS*
*Valid for mid-week stays 1/5–2/6/25 Restrictions apply, see website for details.
| 877-SKI- FISH
BACKCOUNTRY FILM FESTIVAL
Step off the slopes for a day and join the University of Idaho Outdoor Program for the Backcountry Film Festival at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the exhilarating festival, and they’ve pulled out all of the stops in order to feature the best films from the past 20 years. Expect short films full of snowy slopes, icecapped trees and thrilling stunts performed by some of the world’s most impressive snow sport athletes. In addition to the exciting films and gear raffles, proceeds from the festival benefit local avalanche centers like the Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center and the Wallowa Avalanche Center.
— MADISON
PEARSON
Backcountry Film Festival • Wed, Jan. 29 at 7 pm • $12 • Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre • 508 S. Main St., Moscow • kenworthy.org
LINES OF SIGHT
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to drop into untouched, remote terrain from a helicopter? In the 1950s, Canadian geologist Art Patterson and experienced mountain guide Hans Gmoser had the same thought. So they decided to try it out! Now, because of the many risks and costs that have become associated with the extreme sport, SMH Heli-Skiing is holding virtual reality heli-skiing sessions at Schweitzer so people can experience the thrill of heli-skiing from the safety of Schweitzer Village. This experience is perfect for thrill seekers or timid snow sport enthusiasts looking for a quick adventure.
— MADISON PEARSON
Lines of Sight • Feb. 7-9, all day • Free • Schweitzer • 10000 Schweitzer Mountain Road • schweitzer.com
CLUB SHRED Kids learn ski skills and participate in fun activities Every Friday from 5-8 pm through March 14. Ages 4-10. $49. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. mtspokane.com
DJ NIGHT ON THE ICE Skate with music, lights, contests and more. Every Friday at 6 pm through Jan. 24. $7-$10. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. riverfrontspokane.com (509-625-6600)
JUNIOR RACE SERIES A low-cost race series for young snow athletes with instruction and NASTAR runs. Every Friday at 5 pm through Jan. 31. $35-$45. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain. schweitzer.com
NIGHT RIDERS An opportunity for snow athletes guided by instructors. Ages 8-17. Registration required. Every Friday from 5-8 pm through March 14. $25-$45. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park. mtspokane.com
SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. PRINCE
GEORGE COUGARS Regular season game. Promotional schedule: Gold Seal Plumbing Princesses and Heroes night. Jan. 17, 7:05 pm. $12-$40. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com
ICE SKATING LESSONS Members of the Spokane Figure Skating Club host group lessons for children and adults featuring the fundamentals of ice skating. Skate rentals included in price. Jan. 18, 25 and Feb. 1 & 8, 10-11 am. $160$240. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W.
Spokane Falls Blvd. riverfrontspokane. com (509-625-6600)
SCHWEITZER TORCHLIGHT PARADE & FIREWORKS The annual Torchlight Parade and fireworks show with activities for the whole family. Jan. 18. Free. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555)
SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. LETHBRIDGE HURRICANES Regular season game. Promotional schedule: Military Appreciation Night. Jan. 18, 6:05 pm. $12$40. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com
SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. EVERETT SILVERTIPS Regular season game. Promotional schedule: TicketsWest player magnet giveaway (Jan. 22 and March 12), Delta Hotels by Marriott Night (March 12) and Special Olympics Night (March 16). Jan. 22 $ March 12, 7:05 pm and March 16, 5:05 pm. $12-$40. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com (509-279-7000) Also: Vs. Medicine Hat on Jan. 24 at 7:05 pm.
TOYOTA FREE SKI FRIDAY Bring your Toyota, Scion or Lexus to Schweitzer and get a free lift ticket for the day.
One free lift ticket will be given for each Toyota vehicle driven to the resort. Jan. 24, 9 am-3:30 pm. Free. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555)
COACHES CORNER Coaches from Spokane Figure Skating Club offer valuable tips and guidance to emerging skaters. Regular skate admission is required. Jan. 25 & Feb. 8, 11 am-1 pm. $7-$10. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. riverfrontspokane.org
CROSS COUNTRY SKI LESSON Learn to cross-country ski and tour the trails
of Mt. Spokane. Learn the basics from Spokane Nordic Ski Association P.S.I.A certified instructors. Equipment and lunch provided. Meet at the Mt. Spokane Selkirk Nordic Area. Jan. 25, Feb. 1 & 22, 10 am-noon. $77. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. spokanerec.org
BACKCOUNTRY FILM FESTIVAL Look back at 20 years of winter sports films to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Backcountry Film Festival. Jan. 29, 7 pm. $12. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
GIRLS WITH GRIT SKI CLINIC This ski clinic focuses on improving skiing abilities like moguls, steeps, power slides, trees and confidence. Jan. 30, 9 am2:30 pm. $375. Schweitzer, schweitzer. com (208-263-9555)
LADIES’ DAY CLINIC A ladies-only clinic led by mountain instructors. The day-long event also features a morning stretch, coffee, lunch and a social hour. Ages 18+. Feb. 7, 8:30 am-3 pm and March 7, 8:30 am-3 pm. $149. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, mtspokane.com (509-238-2220)
LINES OF SIGHT An immersive virtual reality experience featuring a heli-skiing adventure. Ages 13+. Feb. 7-9, all day. Free. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Road. schweitzer. com (208-263-9555)
CHEWELAH RAIL JAM A one-day competition including categories like men’s ski, women’s ski, and women’s snowboard. Feb. 8, time TBA. Downtown Chewelah, ski49n.com
GIRLS ON SHRED An event focused on building community through free adventure sports events for all youth,
women, trans and nonbinary folk. Feb. 23. Free. Lookout Pass I-90 Exit 0, Mullan. skilookout.com (208-744-1301)
MEGADEMO DAY Over 20 brands will bring over 400 total pairs of 20242025 skis and snowboards so you can try before anyone else in the market. All proceeds benefit the Panhandle Alliance for Education. March 1, 7:30 am-3 pm. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com
MT. SPO SKIMO Complete two laps up and down Mt. Spokane totaling 3,000 ft of gain at Mt. Spokane’s first ski
touring and splitboarding race. March 1, 8 am-noon. $45. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. ponderosaracing.com
DOUG E. FRESH BANKED SLALOM
Race your snowboard through a course in the terrain park. All proceeds benefit the Doug Johnson Memorial Fund. March 1, 7 am-3:30 pm. Silver Mountain Resort, 610 Bunker Ave., Kellogg. ponderosaracing.com
IFSA JUNIOR REGIONAL 2 LAKESIDE
CHUTE-OUT Freeskiers will take on steep and challenging terrain in this
race. March 8-9. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain. schweitzer.com
SCHWEITZER COMMUNITY DAY A discounted day of skiing with $20 lift tickets. All proceeds benefit Community Cancer Services. March 28. $20. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555)
SNOW GHOST BANKED SLALOM A traditional banked slalom competition. All proceeds will go directly back into the Bonner County Skatepark Association expansion plans. March 29-30. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555) n
BOWLED FLAVORS
Wisconsinburger has offered authentic ambience and cuisine of its namesake state for 10 years and counting
BY BOB JOHNSON
One football season before COVID-19 took hold, six Burger King franchises near Lambeau Field introduced a limited-time special to their menus: the Green Bay Burger. It utilized the standard BK Whopper recipe, except that it included not one but eight slices of American cheese.
According to a reliable local source, many visitors from out of state saw the signs promoting the burger in the restaurant windows, gravitated to the drive-thrus, washed down each cheesy bite with a big gulp of soda and returned home believing they had experienced true Wisconsin burger culture. Meanwhile, the source added, the locals just rolled their eyes.
On Packers Game Days — yes, they capitalize the first letter of each word — the roads in Wisconsin are eerily empty because everyone has a place to be. If not among the 81,441 fans in attendance at Lambeau, they’re jammed into one of Wisconsin’s 2,700-plus bars or 200-plus bowling alleys that have screens beaming the telecast.
have been in operation for decades, conventional wisdom being that a grill imparts its own unique flavors over time.
For the past decade in Spokane, that burger joint of choice for many has been Wisconsinburger, the recipient of 10 “Best Burgers” awards from Inlander readers. As with all things culinary, the idea of the “best” is highly subjective, but here’s what can be said about Wisconsinburger: It’s authentic.
Unlike at those aforementioned Burger King locations, virtually all of the cheese used at Wisconsinburger comes from... wait for it... Wisconsin, which has been proudly promoted as “America’s Dairyland” since 1940. The menu also includes another Wisconsin favorite: frozen custard.
WISCONSINBURGER
916 S. Hatch St. Open daily 11 am-9 pm wisconsinburger.com, 509-241-3083
And no matter where they are, chances are good they’re chomping on a burger — appropriate since Wisconsin is one of the alleged birthplaces of the sandwich (along with Connecticut, New York and Hamburg, Germany).
Every Wisconsinite has their favorite “burger joint,” and many — be they restaurants, bars or bowling alleys —
And in a nod to the state’s deep bowling heritage, virtually all of Wisconsinburger’s furniture is repurposed from a 1950s-era bowling alley, from its bar and table tops to its curved benches, yellow stacked lockers and “form-fitting” orange chairs. There’s also a bowling ball rack behind the front bar and a “Tel-E-Score” projection ensemble that functions as a check-in desk. It came from a former Airway Heights center known at various times as Airway Bowl, Baghdad Bowl and Matt Surina’s Bowlers World, that last incarnation operated by a three-time champion on the Professional Bowlers Association tour.
Wisconsinburger chef Tim Ahern doesn’t claim to be much of a bowler, but there are some aspects of his background that may inform how he ended up being a star chef of Spokane’s burger scene in a restaurant that uses retro bowling chic as its design theme and cheese in a vast majority of its menu items.
Take, for instance, his place of birth: Heidelberg, Germany, where monks practiced a version of the game around 300 BC as a way of cleansing themselves of sin. Ahern’s parents were stationed there as members of the U.S. military, and Ahern says his father had a strong affection for two delicacies of the Rhine-Neckar region: chocolate and cheese.
“Growing up, there was always Muenster and Gouda in the house,” he recalls.
Most of the growing up, however, took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which exposed Ahern to a vastly different spectrum of flavors, including those imparted by the ubiquitous hatch chiles.
“I started out doing the fast-food thing, but got into restaurants as soon as I could,” he says. “At the first place, I was waiting tables, and then I’d cover the kitchen for two or three hours during the afternoon when it was slower and the cooks took their breaks. I cut my teeth running tables and plating food at the same time.”
For much of his 20s, Ahern “bounced around from place to place, almost always starting in the front of the
Wisconsinburger’s Spooner burger is loaded with sharp Wisconsin cheddar cheese, two onion rings and bacon jam.
ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
house and ending up in the kitchen,” he says. “I tried culinary school at one point, but it wasn’t my thing. I seemed to be learning more about flavor profiles and getting the [ingredient] ratios right just by doing it.”
If he hadn’t figured it out already, Ahern knew that overseeing a kitchen would be his profession once he spent time at Albuquer que’s acclaimed Slate Street Café and its sister venue, Slate at the (Albuquerque) Museum.
“That was so much fun because it gave me an opportunity to experiment and even make some mistakes — as long as those mis takes stayed in the kitchen,” he says with a smile.
At Wisconsinburger, Ahern has long been given free rein in concocting what’s called the “Grind of the Week.” Those weekly specials, he says, are “an outlet for me artistically. It’s been 10 years of running something different almost every week. I wish I would have written them all down.”
Among his past favorites are a patty topped with an apricot Stilton cheese, white balsamic reduction and bacon; a ham and brie burger with a blueberry-sage glaze; and one topped with carne adovada, a nod to his New Mexico days, with slow-cooked pork in a red chile sauce.
Expectations are high for Wisconsinburger’s new-year menu additions, which Ahern says have been developed “to keep things fresh.”
The popularity of the recently added roasted garlic bites ($9), fried in Miller High Life beer batter and topped with lemon horseradish aioli, influenced the restaurant’s decision to add two more “Goodies” (Wisconsinburger-speak for appetizers) and two new burgers.
The bacon and Asiago fries ($9.50) are just as the name suggests — an order of fries topped with Asiago sauce and bacon. A chip na chos basket ($9.50) begins with a stack of house-made chips that are topped with melted cheddar cheese and pico de gallo, then finished with a drizzle of green onion sauce. That green onion drizzle also tops a new burger featuring a curry chickpea patty ($15), which is replacing the veggie bean patty.
“It’s a blend of some lighter flavors, including cucumber, with just a hint of curry,” Ahern says.
Wisconsinburger’s first double burger ($22) includes raw cheese curds pressed into the patties, topped with cheddar and Swiss cheese, candied jalapeños, bacon, fried red onion and a South Carolina-style mustard and barbecue sauce.
As for Wisconsinburger’s ongoing success, Ahern says he’s perfectly fine with the restaurant getting top billing over the man in the kitchen.
“I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, but I like my anonymity,” he says. “I like that I’m not a celebrity chef; I can go out in public and not be recognized.”
Being surrounded by retro bowling alley furniture apparently helps keep even the most honored of chefs grounded.
Bob Johnson has written about bowling throughout his career in journalism, and experienced Wisconsin’s burger culture numerous times on trips to visit aunts, uncles and cousins in his father’s native Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
This bench seating at Wisconsinburger was pulled from a bowling alley.
The ‘Coffee Queen’
Roast House founder Deborah Di Bernardo dies at 70
BY DORA SCOTT
The Spokane community and coffee scene are still mourning the death last month of local coffee entrepreneur Deborah “Deb” Di Bernardo. Di Bernardo, 70, had been battling breast cancer that, after a first round of treatment, went into remission but returned in 2020. She died Dec. 15, 2024.
Di Bernardo founded Spokane’s Roast House Coffee (423 E. Cleveland Ave.) and downtown’s First Avenue Coffee (1011 W. First Ave.) and practiced what she preached in her business practice by buying only organic, fair-trade coffee beans that were also grown under a natural shade canopy as opposed to clear-cut groves.
“Deb started the company with really ‘the vision was the values,’ and that was it,” says Aaron Jordan, a longtime friend and colleague. “It was sourcing organic coffee, paying premiums for women-produced coffees, working to create sustainable, livable situations for the team, for the producers that we work with, and being a local company — being committed to our community here in Spokane.”
Di Bernardo’s hard work paid off as Roast House won 20-plus awards over the years including the Golden Bean and numerous Good Food Awards.
Jordan first met Di Bernardo in 2012 when he was 19 years old and inquired about work or an internship at Roast House.
“I think the first thing that she said
to me was, ‘F--- off,’ and the second thing she asked me was, ‘Where’s your mother?’ Because she genuinely actually thought — I found this out years later — that I was 12,” Jordan says.
He didn’t give up, though, and eventually Di Bernardo gave Jordan a chance to learn the ins and outs of the industry from the “coffee queen” of Spokane herself, teaching him core values not just in the business, but all areas of life.
Di Bernardo was known for her blunt and colorful language, which inspired the name of Roast House and First Avenue Coffee’s signature F-Bomb cold brew.
“Most Deb stories don’t come without some F-bombs,” Jordan says. “They’re always key aspects of interactions with her, but she always said it with joy. That was the best part about it. I don’t think I ever heard her say it out of anger or rage. She was a very unique person to be able to pull that off.”
Di Bernardo sold First Avenue Coffee to Doyle and Carri Wheeler in 2023, while Jordan and his wife, Allison, became Roast House Coffee’s owners after her death, having worked alongside Di Bernardo as managing partners for the past several years.
“She involved us so much into the business and what was built,” he says. “Yes, we don’t have her physically anymore — she was bigger than life, so her existence will always be a presence for us.” n
Cooking Up Change
Gordy’s closes, Skyway Cafe burns, plus new eateries
BY DORA SCOTT
Change is a ceaseless force particularly visible in the local food industry. Here are some recent closings, openings and other foodie news to get you up to speed.
CLOSINGS
Gordy’s Sichuan Cafe on South Hill has been a local favorite for over 30 years. The Asian restaurant won its fair share of accolades, including multiple Inlander Best Of Readers’ Poll awards for its top-notch Sichuan-style Chinese food. Regulars of Gordy’s were sad to see the business close its doors in the beginning of January.
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce the closing of Gordy’s Sichuan Cafe, a place that has been part of our family and community for so many years. From the first plate served to the last, we’ve been honored to welcome you all into our restaurant, share in your celebrations and be a small part of your lives,” its owners wrote on Instagram.
Tai Chi Bubble Tea closed its Kendall Yards location, but is relocating its boba drinks and ramen to North Spokane, at 1715 E. Francis Ave.
The Skyway Cafe at Felts Field is temporarily closed after a fire broke out in the building’s grease vent on Jan. 9. The century-old cafe sustained extensive smoke damage, but owner Sandra Melter has said she aims to get the cafe fixed up and back open hopefully within a few months.
OPENINGS
Adding to its regional portfolio of restaurants in Spokane and Kennewick, Boiada Brazilian Grill opened a new location in Coeur d’Alene. The all-you-can-eat steakhouse features traditional
dishes from Brazil, fresh from the grill. Farmhouse Sweets & Eats celebrated its grand opening on Dec. 14 at East Sherman Food Trucks (2002 E. Sherman Ave.) in Coeur d’Alene. The food truck rolls up to the park to serve fresh sweets like cinnamon rolls and bundt cake and homemade-style meals like an all-American cheeseburger.
Uno Más Taco Shop opened a new location at 2020 N. Monroe St., behind the newish Indaba Coffee cafe. Get your fill of hefty tacos, handmade chips and dips, and non-alcoholic or alcoholic beverages.
In East Central Spokane, Arabian Palace debuted on Jan. 11. at 4902 E. Sprague Ave. Owner Abdulkareem Mohammad fled from Syria to Spokane in 2015. Mohammad formerly shared his Middle Eastern cuisine with local diners out of Feast World Kitchen and will be dishing out his much-loved shawarma and savory pastries at the new establishment.
EVENTS
Chowderhead on North Monroe is hosting a Jan. 16 benefit for Cup of Cool Water, a nonprofit that supports youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. A portion of Chowderhead’s proceeds from that day will go to the organization, so fill your belly and your heart with your patronage.
As a part of the Shadle Park Library’s Lunar New Year festivities, community members can learn how to make the traditional Filipino dish lumpia during a class on Jan. 25 from 2:30 to 3:30 pm. Lumpia is the Filipino version of a spring roll, with savory fillings like ground pork, carrots, onions and cabbage. n
Gordy’s co-owners (from left): Daniel Burns, Casey Riendeau and Leigh Riendeau, photographed in 2021. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
Aaron Jordan, left, and Deborah Di Bernardo. COURTESY ROAST HOUSE COFFEE
AMERICA THE BRUTAL-FUL
The Brutalist is cinematic masterpiece of artistic creation in the face of life’s unending strife
BY MARYANN JOHANSON
The Brutalist is a film as stubborn and as challenging as its protagonist. Adrien Brody’s László Tóth is a Hungarian-Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and rebuilds his life in postwar America. And the movie mirrors his journey, one centered on trauma fueling inspiration and the creative struggle between artistic vision and the practicalities of patronage. The film and László’s creations are a rebuke to a collapse of customs and traditions. And both are monumental.
Rated R
refugees excited to have reached their destination. It sets a disquieting tone for all that is to come in László’s tale, when we’re frequently as on edge as he is.
After a brief, lonely interlude in New York City, László — separated by war from his wife and teenage niece — arrives in Philadelphia to settle in with seemingly the only other family he has left: his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola). Once there, he begins to work as part of his cousin’s furniture business. Corbet — who wrote the screenplay with his regular writing (and life) partner, Mona Fastvold — is unhurried in depicting László’s yearslong climb back to creating the massive architectural works for which he was celebrated in prewar Europe. Eventually wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) commissions László to build a community center in honor of Van Buren’s deceased mother.
The Brutalist
This is a story of immigration that lets us know from the get-go that it will not gently handle, as so many movies do, one the greatest upheavals a person can experience: starting over in a new culture far from home. One of the first images director Brady Corbet gives us — the first of many with a similar starkness and lack of sentimentality — is a dizzying, upside-down look at the Statue of Liberty as Brody’s Tóth arrives on a refugee ship in New York harbor. It’s an unsettling upending of a cinematic cliché, one that comes on the heels of the film’s opening moments: the screen black, loud noises and bangs amid shouts. I thought at first that we were hearing the scene of a bomb shelter, with the cries being ones of fear, but we’re merely in the below decks with
Directed by Brady Corbet
Starring Adrien Brody, Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones
This job is the canvas upon which the great trials of László’s new life will take place, as he eventually must battle Van Buren to maintain his artistic vision, which incurs some violent pushback. At the same time, László also falls prey to the hedonistic life in America and the messy joy that sheer survival prompts while also enduring bigotry as an immigrant. That ramps up once his wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) are finally able to join him in Pennsylvania. Brody’s performance is extraordinary, full of flinty anger, palpable melancholy and repressed sorrow.
Harsh realities of American culture simmer in László’s story and also in the meta reality of The Brutalist. We so rarely see films like this one anymore. Uncomfortable, complex adult dramas, where they exist at all nowadays, have retreated to streaming services, often as series to be snacked upon or binged at home. But Corbet
ALSO OPENING
AUTUMN AND THE BLACK JAGUAR
A teen girl who grew up in the Amazon before moving to New York City discovers letters to her father detailing the destruction of the rainforest and animal trafficking. So she runs away to the jungle on an adventure to save the jaguar she befriended as a kid. Rated PG
ONE OF THEM DAYS
Two broke roommates and best friends (Keke Palmer and SZA) find out one of their idiot boyfriends blew their rent money, so they have to buddy comedy scramble to secure the funds by the end of the day to avoid eviction. Rated R
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR
The first English-language film from renowned Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar finds two old friends (Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore) reconnecting and retreating to a country home as one lives out their final days with terminal cancer. Rated PG-13
WOLF MAN
A family’s move to remote Oregon gets upended when a monster attacks under the full moon and claws the father. His wife and daughter must figure out what to do as he slowly begins transforming into a horrifying werewolf. Rated R
— with his third feature, following 2015’s The Childhood of a Leader and 2018’s Vox Lux — has pulled out all the stops to remind us what cinema used to be and (one senses the desperate urgency of subliminal appeal) could be again.
Lol Crawley’s austere cinematography is gorgeously showcased in a high-resolution widescreen format called VistaVision, a precursor to IMAX developed in the 1950s to better compete then with television and doing the same job again now. It lends an extra sensation of the epic to the three-and-a-half-hour runtime. Every minute feels justified and zips by — the retro presentation even comes complete with a musical overture opening and a 15-minute intermission at a satisfying point.
All this is possible because Corbet independently financed the film — there were no studio bosses with their fingers in the pie, meddling to make it more commercial — and produced it on a budget of under $10 million, which is shockingly little for a historical drama (for comparison last year’s Oscar-nominated historical dramas Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon respectively cost about $100 million and $200 million). Nothing here feels as minimalist as László’s concrete brutalism — except maybe the careful parsimony with which Corbet reveals László’s secrets — but spending what amounts to only Hollywood pocket change was certainly key to getting this daringly original film made in the form we got it in.
The Brutalist, then, demands our full attention as a moviegoing experience. It demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible: IMAX, 70mm, etc. It feels like a reprimand for how we as a culture have let serious movies be diminished, a trend that COVID stay-at-home orders only exacerbated, with their concomitant rush to make movies available to watch at home. The Brutalist reminds us what we have lost in our subdued traumatized present that, in many ways, echoes László’s world of the past. n
The Brutalist delivers a modern American epic.
Remember, Remember, the 5th of September
September 5 is a tense yet empty thriller that doesn’t do justice to its tragic true story of the 1972 Olympics
BY CHASE HUTCHINSON
It feels like many lifetimes ago now, but my beginning in journalism came in covering sports. In many regards, it was the best way to enter
MOVIE TIMES
into this struggling industry as I gained a great respect for those who are often seen as somehow lesser than journalists covering “hard news” despite doing what is equally thankless work with the same sense of care and commitment. All of this is to say that my background should make me the exact person who would love a film like September 5, where a group of scrappy sports journalists are swept up in a news story that will put them all to the test. But I came away perplexed by the prevailing emptiness of this film, which fails to do justice to its subject. Rather than mirror the work of good journalism and get into the complexities of its true
story, it’s little more than a slick act of recreation that leaves a far better work on the cutting room floor. Few films bury the lede as deeply as September 5 does.
Directed by Tim Fehlbaum, a filmmaker who previously mostly made sci-fi films like Hell and The Colony, it drops us into a dimly lit TV control room in 1972 as a small group of ABC Sports journalists covering the Summer Olympics in Munich suddenly find that they are smack in the middle of a massive story. The Palestinian militant group Black September has taken a group of Israeli athletes hostage right in the Olympic village. They are threatening to kill them all unless Israel releases 200 Palestinian prisoners. This leaves the inexperienced TV producer Geoffrey Mason, played by the always great John Magaro of outstanding films like Past Lives and First Cow, in over his head. Yet it doesn’t deter the no-nonsense ABC Sports President Roone Arledge, played by a solid Peter Sarsgaard of the far better journalism film Shattered Glass, who doggedly insists that they hold onto the story and not let the ABC News team take over remotely.
The film then traces the sports team, an ensemble cast who are mostly underserved by the script, doing exactly that. They attempt to do all they can to get cameras in the right place to see the action, get information about the rapidly evolving situation, and put a more human face on the crisis unfolding before them. It’s all a rather aspirational portrait of the work of journalism, capturing how hard choices can be under stress, while also briefly raising questions about ethics. The live coverage was viewed by millions, but was this more for the grim entertainment they created?
September 5
Rated R Directed by Tim Fehlbaum
Starring Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch
Alas, the movie rarely sinks its teeth into this story beyond largely superficial and neatly resolved conversations. When a discussion arises about whether they should use the word “terrorist” to describe the militant group in coverage, concerns are raised and then glossed over so we can get to what is essentially a clock-ticking thriller. This creates an unshakeable distance from what the film does well in terms of ratcheting up the tension as it borders on a fantasy where most of the choices being made feel easy and the real-world complexities all get smoothed over. It’s about a single moment in time, yes, but the camera zooms in so far that it loses sight of the full picture.
Great journalism and cinema is about grappling with the painful parts of the world. September 5 doesn’t ultimately shy away from pain — as anyone aware of the real story knows there is no triumph awaiting in the conclusion — but it remains averse to grappling with the factors that led to this tragedy. The history surrounding the attack and the way this violence can be traced to our present moment with the horrors unfolding every day in Gaza are all connected as these cycles of death only continue if not confronted head-on. The job of journalism and filmmaking when exploring these situations is not to narrow our understanding, but to expand it. In the end, the failure of September 5 is the same failure of far too much modern 24-hour live news: prioritizing empty entertainment at the heavy cost of not excavating necessary, complicated truths. n
Nuestras Raíces INVITES YOU TO OUR 19TH ANNUAL
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY, 22 AT 5 PM
SPOKANE TRIBE CASINO 14300 US-2, AIRWAY HEIGHTS, WA 99001
COCKTAIL
SOFT SHOEING
Atari Ferrari’s Matthew Joseph Hughes expands his solo sound on Automatic Shoes’ Remember When We Were All Lovers
BY SETH SOMMERFELD
This solo project Automatic Shoes (Inlander readers’ choice for Best Singer-Songwriter in 2023).
While Atari Ferrari was long Hughes’ primary concern, the band retreated a bit from the local stages in recent years in part because of burnout from playing so much locally. Things started to shift further a few years ago when Atari Ferrari’s bassist moved away, and Hughes began to rethink the songs he’d been compiling.
he archetype of a swaggering, braggadocious, borderline-obnoxious rock star has been embedded in our cultural DNA since what’s now considered classic rock was the cool new loud sound. But the Spokanite who makes music that often feels most in touch with the classic rock spirit also feels like the polar opposite of the rock star mythos.
Matthew Joseph Hughes is a soft-spoken soul almost to the point of coming across as bashful. The tenderhearted troubadour has been a local standout for years, garnering the most attention while fronting the group Atari Ferrari (Inlander readers’ choice for Best Band in 2023), while also creating well over a dozen albums for
“Basically, since pre-COVID, almost all of my writings were sketches of what would possibly be Atari Ferrari stuff. And then I kind of realized, maybe none of these are going to turn into Atari Ferrari songs, and I have to find out what they sound like on my own again,” Hughes says. “It’s kind of weird to be in a band, and then go back to trying to figure out what you sound like on your own.”
While Atari Ferrari boasts a bigger energetic rock sound, left to his own devices, Hughes tends to favor more contemplative slow burns — closer to singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann than something you’d hear on classic rock radio. While he didn’t consciously differentiate which songs were Atari Ferrari tracks and which were Automatic Shoes songs, there was a slight pressure to
keep his bandmates happy.
“If I wrote a song I liked, I was like, ‘Oh, I hope the band wants to play this,’” he says. “I realized some of the guys are gonna be like, ‘Can we get a rock song?’ They’re not going to follow me into every depressing ballad I want to play. [Laughs] But I think that is pretty much where I exist most of the time.”
Hughes’ explorations in that melancholy realm can be heard across Automatic Shoes’ new album Remember When We Were All Lovers, which dropped last September. Home recorded over the course of years with Hughes playing every part, the 12-song collection offers up an inviting mix of genres and styles while still feeling cohesive throughout.
Hughes has a knack for synthesizing his influences across the record without ever sounding like he’s trying to derivatively parrot the past. There’s an overarching dream folk feel to the proceedings, with certain moments evoking singer-songwriters like Sufjan Stevens and Bob Dylan. He also dips into classic rock (“23 Guru”), groovy pop rock (“Desire”) and even Donovan-esque madrigal territories (“Legend”).
The caption goes here. FULL NAME PHOTO
“I’m gonna say [the album is] a melting pot,” Hughes says. “I was definitely thinking about Bob Dylan a lot. Like [when writing] ‘Desire,’ even though ‘Desire’ sounds nothing like Dylan. With ‘This Car,’ I was thinking a little about Taylor Swift. ‘Who I Was’ was me trying to write an Al Stewart song, but I don’t think it sounds like that. The Black Sabbath one I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this song, but what if Beach House did it.’”
Starting the album during COVID times — “This Car” and the aforementioned invitingly warm cover of Black Sabbath’s “Changes” were pandemic projects — gave Hughes more time than usual to reimagine the songs once their cores were written.
“It was a lot more patient than I have been before,” Hughes says. “Usually I write a song, record it within a couple of days, and usually the first take or maybe second take is the one. But this one I really spent a lot more time with, seeing how different versions of the song would sound and which one would come out the best. And if I wasn’t feeling it, I’d even come back to it a
couple weeks later, which I had never really done before.”
Thematically, Remember When We Were All Lovers offers up introspective songwriting that wrestles with love and being a musician in a manner that’s both kind-hearted and unafraid of being self-critical.
“There is a running theme of performing — whether you’re performing in a relationship or musically for people,” Hughes says. “Like ‘After the Show’ and ‘Show Up’ kind of go together. That also brings in the idea of authenticity, which runs through [the album]. Trying to figure out how to be your authentic self, as well as a performer. And sometimes the lines can get a little blurry. Do I try and maintain the mystique in my personal relationship or do I let this person in? Do they even care about the rock star kind of bullshit? So I think that runs through a lot of the songs.”
Hughes also made the album art for Remember When We Were All Lovers, a golden portrait of a beloved feline. There are layers to the path that led to this LP cover tribute, too.
“My cat Bowman is the album cover art,” Hughes says. “The day after Bowman died, I went to the Goodwill bin, and there was a book on top of everything called P.S. Your Cat is Dead And it’s the story of this guy who ties up this home invader, and he’s going to interrogate him, and then they end up falling in love through this interrogation. It’s a really weird book, but they bond over this made-up novel called Remember When We Were All Lovers?. And it doesn’t exist in real life, but that’s when I clicked in my head, ‘Oh, there’s the album title.’ And on the center label of the vinyl, there’s a cat with a bow and arrow, like she’s Cupid. That tied the whole theme together for me.”
With a new album ready, the slightly hermitic Hughes decided he should probably book an Automatic Shoes gig. He set up a date at J Bones Musicland for a sort of unofficial delayed album release show alongside fellow Spokanites Karli Fairbanks and Timeworm. Since Hughes has often found playing solo shows dissatisfying, this time around he’s not doing Automatic Shoes all on his own, enlisting his Atari Ferrari bandmates to back him up.
“This is like Automatic Shoes with the full band, which I don’t think that’s ever happened before,” says Hughes, who jokes he’s looking forward to not having to project his voice over rock drums. “It’s exciting, because I have played Automatic Shoes solo before, but it never really sounds the way I want it to. It’s just been me and a guitar, and it doesn’t have all the little elements that I get to put on top of it at home. And I didn’t want to be one of those loopy pedal [performers].”
For now, Hughes seems perfectly content to have music no longer feel like a grind. Automatic Shoes and Atari Ferrari might pop up for a show here and there when asked, but there’s a contentment that can be heard in his voice when talking about it. When asked if he’s just done with that whole hustle, he laughs with a zen-like calm.
“I’m not hustling for anything.” n
Karli Fairbanks, Automatic Shoes, Timeworm • Sat, Jan. 25 at 7 pm • $16-$20 • All ages • J Bones Musicland • 2204 E. Mallon Ave. • theautomaticshoes.com
Hughes preps for Automatic Shoes’ first full band show. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
ALTERNATIVE CABARET MADELINE McNEILL
J = THE INLANDER RECOMMENDS THIS SHOW
J = ALL AGES SHOW
Thursday, 1/16
BOLO’S BAR & GRILL, Bolo’s Blues & Brews CHECKERBOARD TAPROOM, Weathered Shepherds
J COEUR D’ALENE CASINO, Moses Snow as Elvis
J LUNARIUM, Starlite Open Mic
J MIKEY’S GYROS, Old Timey Music Jam Sessions
J QQ SUSHI & KITCHEN, Just Plain Darin ZOLA, Mason Van Stone Band
Friday, 1/17
ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS, Ron Criscione BARREL 33, Son of Brad
J THE BIG DIPPER, Hitlist, Willing Hands, It’s A Setup, Screwchugger, Reeferstick BULLHEAD SALOON, Neon Interstate
J THE DISTRICT BAR, Broadway Rave
J THE GRAIN SHED, Haywire
J HAMILTON STUDIO, God’s Away On Business: The Music of Tom Waits
Performed by Madeline McNeill
J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, The Writer’s Room: Lucas Brookbank Brown, Garrett Zanol, Jojo Dodge, BRADEN ALL CAPS, handsigns
J KNITTING FACTORY, Red NOT Chili Peppers NIGHT OWL, DJ Felon
J THE BIG DIPPER, Digress, Taki.Taki, Joshua Belliardo, Ethermortal
J BING CROSBY THEATER, MANIA: The ABBA Tribute
J BLUEBIRD BAKERY, Dario Ré, The Dirty Birds
BULLHEAD SALOON, Neon Interstate THE CHAMELEON, Sleaze Freaks
COEUR D’ALENE CELLARS, Son of Brad
J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Water Monster, Karli Fairbanks, Scott Ryan Ingersoll
J KNITTING FACTORY, Gimme Gimme Disco NIGHT OWL, Priestess
NOAH’S CANTEEN, Hunny Soup
Tom Waits, a burlesque dancer and an opera singer walk into a church. That may sound like the start of a joke, but it’s the core of a show that local opera soprano Madeline McNeill put together back in 2023 at the West Central Abbey. Backed by a four-piece band and with visual support from burlesque dancer Miss Nickie B, the performance brought unique life to Waits’ hardscrabble dark musical poetry. That performance was recorded for the documentary God’s Away on Business, which hopes to make the film festival rounds this year. If you want to get a taste of the experience live, McNeill and Co. are running things back for a concert at Hamilton Studio. While this round might lack some of the locational religious overtones, don’t expect any drop off in musical gusto.
— SETH SOMMERFELD
God’s Away On Business: The Music of Tom Waits Performed by Madeline McNeill • Fri, Jan. 17 at 7 pm • $30 • 18+ • Hamilton Studio • 1427 W. Dean Ave. • hamilton.live
Mike Sherm has cemented his legacy in the Bay Area rap scene, with anthems like “Add Me Up” and “Blue Faces” still being blasted through speakers across California and beyond. It was 2017 when I first witnessed the opening piano chords of “Asshole” act as a magnetizing song, pulling everyone onto the dance floor to sing every ratchet verse word for word. Sherm isn’t gangaffiliated, but he’s about that life, and his flow and lyrics showcase his pursuit of money and street respect. Sherm claims he’s just talking and not rapping, but his style is consistent with the current Cali rap sound, featuring resonating piano chords and explosive bass that will rattle and clip your audio devices.
— VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ
Mike Sherm • Thu, Jan. 23 at 8 pm • $40-$70 • All
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Ben Vogel
RED ROOM LOUNGE, Live DJs
ZOLA, Blake Braley, Frances Browne
Sunday, 1/19
219 LOUNGE, Float Like A Buffalo
J J FIRST INTERSTATE CENTER, Colter Wall and Friends
HOGFISH, Open Mic
Monday, 1/20
RED ROOM LOUNGE, Open Mic Night
ZOLA, Red Hot Kitten Stompers
Tuesday, 1/21
SWING LOUNGE, Swing Lounge Live Music Tuesdays ZOLA, The Zola All Star Jam
Since it was published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451, the dystopian novel detailing the ills of a society where books are illegal, has been widely taught in high school English. Yet, in recent years book banning has somehow become more common. For example, PEN America, an organization dedicated to protecting free expression in literature, found more than 10,000 instances of book banning during the 2023-24 school year. That’s why films like Banned Together, showing at the Coeur d’Alene Public Library a day before the presidential inauguration, are important to view. The 90-minute documentary details the story of students in Beaufort, South Carolina, who fight to reinstate books removed from their school’s library. Throughout the film, their work against censorship reveals the “dark forces behind the accelerating wave of book bans in the U.S.”
— COLTON RASANEN
Banned Together Screening • Sun, Jan. 19 from 2-4 pm • Free • Ages 12+ • Coeur d’Alene Public Library • 702 E. Front Ave., Coeur d’Alene • cdalibrary.org
FOOD SAY CHEESE!
If mac and cheese is your go-to comfort food, then you’re in luck. The annual Mac & Cheese Festival returns to Coeur d’Alene to celebrate the childhood favorite, with 22 local chefs going head to head to compete for the Golden Noodle Award, as decided by a sixperson judging panel. Each chef will prepare their own variation, and attendees can sample to get their fill of cheese before voting for their favorite in the contest for the People’s Choice Trophy. Some past years’ favorites include mac and cheese tacos, waffle cones and cheesy gelato! While there isn’t such a thing as too much cheese, there will also be craft beer for a great pairing and palate cleanser.
— DORA SCOTT
Mac & Cheese Festival • Sat, Jan. 18 from noon-6 pm • Sold out (waitlist opportunities available) • Downtown Coeur d’Alene • cdadowntown.com
MUSIC DANCING THROUGH LIFE
I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel superior for my decade-pluslong obsession with the Wicked stage musical amid all the buzz coming from the Wicked movie. We musical theater nerds have been here at Shiz for a long time! But I digress, please join us at the most swankified place in town — the District Bar— this Friday as the Broadway Rave comes to Spokane for one night only. Sing and dance to musical theater favorites from Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, Heathers, Wicked and more with fellow theater nerds. Get dressed up in your most scandalocious, thrillifying Ozian outfit, and hit the dance floor at Spokane’s version of the Ozdust Ballroom. You’ll be happy to be there…
— MADISON
PEARSON
Broadway Rave • Fri, Jan. 17 at 8:30 pm • $15-$17 • District Bar • 916 W. First Ave. • sp.knittingfactory.com
GET LISTED!
Submit events online at Inlander.com/getlisted or email relevant details to getlisted@inlander.com. We need the details one week prior to our publication date.
MUSIC BAYOU BANGERS
Mardi Gras may still be a couple months away, but music lovers can get an early taste of sultry sounds when Jazz at Lincoln Center stops by Gonzaga to play some of New Orleans’ signature jazz standards. The leading New York City jazz ensemble will bring a 10-piece band that includes pianist Luther S. Allison and singers Quiana Lynell (pictured) and Milton Suggs to fully explore the soulful Black beauty of one of America’s signature art forms via tunes from Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Ellis Marsalis and more. For at least one night, Gonzaga’s strongest association with jazz won’t be John Stockton’s NBA team…
— SETH SOMMERFELD
Jazz at Lincoln Center Presents: New Orleans Songbook • Wed, Jan. 22 at 7:30 pm • $42-$66 • Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center • 211 E. Desmet Ave. • gonzagaperformingarts.evenue.net
WORDS BOOKISH BISTRO
As far as I’m concerned, cities can always use more independently owned bookstores. New bookstores mean new places to browse and find books that fit your niche and support small businesses. Jupiter’s Eye Book Cafe celebrates its grand opening this Friday with festivities featuring food, drinks, a special guest appearance and book signing by Legends & Lattes author Travis Baldree (pictured), and, of course, plenty of tomes to peruse. Jupiter’s Eye specializes in mystery, sci-fi and fantasy books, but also offers a selection of beer, wine, coffee and tea. I see many cozy bookstore weekends in the future for all of Spokane’s bookworms!
— MADISON PEARSON
Jupiter’s Eye Book Cafe Grand Opening • Fri, Jan. 17 from 10 am-8 pm • Free • Jupiter’s Eye Book Cafe • 411 W. First Ave. • jupiterseyebookcafe.com
I SAW YOU
GARLAND BREW WERKS TRIVIA BEAUTY
Your team made it to the Jack Black tie breaker round, and you were the team representative. You’re as effortlessly gorgeous as you are sharp, it seems. I didn’t get a chance to say anything then, but if you’re ever up for another round of trivia—or just a drink to chat about anything but Jack Black, I’d love to connect sometime. -The other brunette trivia beauty in the room.
MET YOU AT WORK LAST YEAR Met you when I used to work at a grocery store downtown. This guy had really sick style (big goth boots, jeans. And really cool Hoodie, always with a face mask. You seemed cool when we talked briefly and I wanted to be friends but I never got a chance to get your info or anything. If you’re interested in talking you should
3 YEARS LATER STILL FALLING FOR YOU
Three years ago, you swept me off my feet—literally, since I got a concussion ice skating on our first date. Smooth start, right? But somehow, you stuck around, proving you’re braver than I thought— both on the job and with me. Over the years, you’ve become my partner, my best friend, and, much to my dismay, my dog’s favorite human. I mean, I feed her, walk her, and she still looks at you like you hung the moon. I’m so grateful for the love, laughs, and adventures we share. You’re the calm to my chaos, and give me a reason to smile every day. Here’s to many more years of love, laughter, and me occasionally embarrassing myself in front of you. I love you more than words—or bad skating skills—can express.
BOB? ROB? I think I misheard your name at Neato, but hopefully I can get it from you again at the Winter Formal. We can share some snacks since food is good.;)
YOU SAW ME
CROSSING Fellow pedestrians, cyclists, runners, dasher-dropper-offers, hikers: It is OUR responsibility to be SEEN. PLEASE: Be reflective, lighted, neon-ed, or all. Even when it’s not this dark, we are not easy to see, especially with the increased volume and pace of street/road traffic. Rainy roads complicate this, exponentially. We don’t win the “race” with vehicles. Ever. WAVE your arms if you are walking a cross-walk. Fellow drivers, as the light changes, check the road. When you turn right on reds, there is likely a pedestrian crossing from your left (that you can’t see given the vehicle next to you.) It’s scary for all of us, and especially dangerous as everyone hurries. You don’t NEED to
acknowledgment from a driver that you are visible!! Sincere condolences to the most recent pedestrians who’ve been hit, and the drivers, also. Life changes in a few
PETS Cheers to our pets! Our calming fish are exciting. Parakeets. That crazy! Gecko-eyed lizard that your cousin takes everywhere he goes. The warm little
shoot me an email at Specsop6980@ gmail.com
QUANTUM FIBER SALES REP You landed on my doorstep and captured my heart. I’m not sure how to contact you but I hope you find your way back into my life.
“be there.” Slow. Down! Pedestrians, NEVER believe that the driver sees you, just because you have a right of way or a signal to go. The lights are confusing, at best. A go to walk and then a stop hand? Vehicles turning as crossers are crossing. It’s a mess. Be. SEEN! Take the initiative and don’t presume. Wait until you have
seconds. Wait! It’s worth your future. Be safer. Be smarter. Get there.
CHEERS
THANK YOU 49 STAFF! Had an interesting time on the mountain last Friday. Thought I would adjust the bindings on my rental board myself. In the process I detached the bindings from the board! Didn’t find out until I was getting off of the lift. Thanks to Nate and William and everyone else on Ski Patrol and in the shop for getting me down the mountain and back out to ride in no time at all. I really appreciate it!
THANK YOU, CLINKERDAGGER PATRON! Cheers to the patron at Clinkerdagger who picked up dinner for my friends on 1/6/25! The “good samaritan” overheard another customer making awful, homophobic comments about my friends (a cute gay couple minding their own business, just trying to enjoy a nice birthday dinner!) Not only did the patron alert staff, but they even paid for the couple’s meal. Kudos to you for being an ally and making it clear that bigoted and hateful speech will not be tolerated!
RE: PEOPLE VS. MEDIA Exactly! I think the media is worsening the polarization. I have wonderful, daily interactions with my fellow citizens. We joke, smile, laugh and engage in each other’s lives. The media needs to get off its pity pot and quit being so negative. How about promoting what’s good about our relationships?
INDEPENDENT SURVEY After conducting a year-long non independent survey, I have found the most effective and easiest way to upset many folks is to drive at exactly the posted speed limit, and observe safe driving behavior at all times...I was even called one of “those people”... had I been quick witted, I would of responded...oh, a law abiding citizen? Cheers!!
SOUND OFF 1. Visit Inlander.com/isawyou by 3 pm Monday. 2. Pick a category (I Saw You, You Saw Me, Cheers or Jeers). 3. Provide basic info: your name and email (so we know you’re real). 4. To connect via I Saw You, provide a non-identifying email to be included with your submission — like “petals327@yahoo.com,” not “j.smith@comcast.net.”
Princesses and Heroes Night
Fri. 1/17 vs. Prince George Cougars
puppy that you cuddle with or the cute little kitten that you so want to adopt and of course the faithful old friend who sleeps at our feet or on our laps. They give us so much in so many ways, companionship, service, health, happiness, and of course love. They deserve our best. Cheers to them all!
IT’S ABOUT THE FOLLOW-THROUGH You can do anything with just an idea!
JEERS
GREENLAND The last time the U.S. bought an island from the Kingdom of Denmark it was the 133 sq. miles of the Virgin Islands. The price in 1917 was $25,000,000. However, being Danes the payment had to be in Gold Coins. We paid in $20 Double Eagles - 1,250,000 of them all minted before 1917. Greenland is 836,330 sq. miles at today’s comparison that would be 1,714 metric tons of gold. We have that don’t we or at least the Billionaires in the Big party have this.
DRUG HOUSE Jeers to the drug house on N Standard. Its bad enough youre a drug house, and have little children there with a constant parade of tweekers/junkies coming and going. But its disgusting you have young pups, which you let run loose all the time. A couple weeks ago, the beautiful brindle pit pup was loose in the middle of the night. It not only got hit, but whoever hit it at high speed, then shot it. But pieces of the car trace it to a black 2011-2013 Hyundai Sonata. Hopefully this vehicle is tracked down, and just know all your neighbors are watching, and sending what is seen to SPD.
Take photos with your favorite princesses and heroes throughout the night on the main concourse, courtesy of Gold Seal Plumbing. 7pm Game Time: Sponsored By: Sponsored By: 6pm Game Time: LET’S HEAR THE LOVE! In the New Year, we want to hear your CHEERS about the LOCAL community! Submit a Cheer or I Saw You at Inlander.com/ISawYou
that brick smashed our passenger sideview mirror, causing hundreds in damage, and with no chance to find you and hold you responsible. If that brick had hit us six inches to the left, it would’ve shattered our front windshield and probably would’ve caused a giant pileup and serious injuries. Even when the snow doesn’t freeze, it blows off and blinds other drivers. Take the damn 30 seconds of your life it takes to brush off your cars!!
GROSS NEGLIGENCE Tree equity????
Are you high? Only the special folks in Spokane’s city government could come up with some progressive Marxist BS like that and spend $6 million on it! How about investing that money in enforcing traffic laws, so my insurance doesn’t jump another 20% next year? This is just complete mismanagement of taxpayers’ money.
REGISTER THIS Wow, you pay your registration renewal fee on time?! How nice for you, congrats! You win at life. I hate to burst your condescending bubble, but are you aware that people who are late paying their renewal fee end up paying more than the folks who pay their fee on time? If they continue to not pay then they lose their license. Don’t tell me you actually believe that if everybody paid their fee that the roads over here would be fixed.. that is laughable. Can it Karen, mind your own business, nobody cares.
DEADLY DRIVERS I live on a quiet street but frequently see cars speeding by 40 - 50 mph. A person or pet could easily lose their life by just crossing the street. I propose anyone driving twice the limit should get 30 days in jail. 50 in a 25 zone? 70 in a 35 zone? Jail time. No exceptions. Is that excessive? Ask someone who’s lost a loved one to a maniac driver. n
WIPE THE SNOW OFF YOUR CARS, PEOPLE!!! Jeers to the lazy jackass who left a solid brick of snow and ice on the top of their truck that came flying off on Highway 395. We were traveling in opposing directions and
NOTE: I Saw You/Cheers & Jeers is for adults 18 or older. The Inlander reserves the right to edit or reject any posting at any time at its sole discretion and assumes no responsibility for the content.
Tickets: spokanechiefs.com • Call: 509-535-PUCK Military Appreciation & Family Feast Night Sat. 1/18 vs. Lethbridge Hurricanes
Military themed jerseys to be auctioned off during the game to benefit the Washington State Fallen Heroes Project. Plus enjoy discounted hotdogs, Coca-Cola products and more all game long.
CUP OF COOL WATER CHARITY BENEFIT Chowderhead is hosting a benefit for Cup of Cool Water and is donating a portion of its day’s proceeds to the nonprofit. Jan. 16, 10 am-8 pm. Chowderhead, 825 N. Monroe St. instagram.com/ chowderhead.spokane (509-315-5318)
WISHES & WINE: A TASTE OF SPOKANE Taste the best the region has to offer in food, beer, wine, cider and spirits while supporting Wishing Star’s mission to provide hope for children and families facing life threatening illness. Cocktail attire recommended. Ages 21+. Jan. 25, 6-10 pm. $125. The Centennial Hotel, 303 W. North River Dr. wishingstar.org
COMEDY
INTRODUCTION TO IMPROV An eightweek class for improv veterans and beginners alike featuring skill-building practice and improv games. Jan. 16-March 6, Thu from 6-8 pm. $200. Blue Door Theatre, 319 S. Cedar St. bluedoortheatre.org (509-747-7045)
CHOOSE TO LOSE A one-of-a-kind improvised game show where the audience calls the shots by choosing the players and games. Fridays at 7:30 pm through Jan. 31. $9. Blue Door Theatre, 319 S. Cedar St. bluedoortheatre.org
TRAE CROWDER Crowder is a stand up comedian who co-hosts the WellRed and Puttin’ On Airs podcasts. Jan. 17, 7 & 9:45 pm and Jan. 18, 6 & 8:45 pm. $25-$35. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com
EXPEDITION: AN IMPROV ADVENTURE
A family-friendly edition of the popular Safari show featuring unscripted comedy skits and games. Saturdays at 7:30 pm through Jan. 25. $9. Blue Door Theatre, 319 S. Cedar St. bluedoortheatre.org
JIM JEFFERIES Jefferies has been voted Stand-Up Comedian of the Year at the Just for Laughs Festival and currently hosts his own podcast, I Don’t Know About That with Jim Jefferies. Jan. 23, 7-9 pm. $50-$90. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. firstinterstatecenter.org
COMMUNITY
AMERICAN GIRL OF THE MONTH CLUB
Each month’s meeting features one of American Girl’s historical dolls and includes fun activities that are inspired by her era and heritage. Every third Thursday at 1 pm and 4 pm. Free. Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave. cdalibrary.org (208-769-2315)
DISNEY LORCANA THURSDAYS Play Disney Lorcana with others and receive a pack and 15% off other packs. Every Thursday from 6-9 pm. $7.99. The Comic Book Shop (NorthTown), 4750 N. Division St. thecomicbookshop.net
IT HAPPENED HERE: EXPO ‘74 FIFTY
YEARS LATER This 50th anniversary exhibition revisits the historical roots of Expo ’74’s legacy. It incorporates recognizable elements from Expo’s built environment with museum artifacts and archival materials. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through Jan. 26. $7-$12. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org
LILAC CITY LIVE! Spokane’s version of a late-night talk show with special guests each month. This month’s guests are Kiantha Duncan, Wilma Dargen and Dissonance. Jan. 16, 8-10 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main. spokanelibrary.org
THE EXPANSE WITH LITTLES Connect with yourself, your inner child and others through somatic touch, sound healing, meditation and movement. Third Friday of each month from 9:30-11 am. $55. Harmony Woods Retreat Center, 11507 S. Keeney Rd. iamalliance.me
JUPITER’S EYE BOOK CAFE GRAND
OPENING This grand opening celebration featuring food, drinks, books and a special guest appearance by author Travis Baldree from 4-7 pm. Jan. 17, 10 am-8 pm. Free. Jupiter’s Eye Book Cafe, 411 W. First Ave. jupiterseyebookcafe.com
DISCOVERY SATURDAY: COSMIC KIDS A monthly event featuring themed-activities for kids pre-K to fifth grade impacted by autism, rare disorders or developmental delays. Each session includes a sensory project and arts and crafts in a safe, welcoming environment. Third Saturday of each month from 3-4:30 pm. $30. The ISAAC Foundation, 606 W. Sharp Ave. theisaacfoundation.org
FROSTED FRAMES: A WINTER WINDOW MURAL Children and teens are invited to design a frosty, winter-themed mural on the library windows. Work together to create a display that will brighten the space throughout January and February. Ages 9-18 and 4-8 with an adult. Jan. 18, 10:30 am-noon. Free. Liberty Park Library, 402 S. Pittsburgh St. spokanelibrary.org
INDOOR PLANT SWAP Bring an indoor plant to share and pick up one left by another houseplant enthusiasts. Jan. 18, 2-4 pm. Free. North Spokane Library, 44 E. Hawthorne Rd. scld.org
PAINT NIGHT MURDER MYSTERY For this mystery, the murder has already happened and all participants are undercover detectives. There are no predetermined characters. You’ll be going undercover as a customer of an at-home painting company. Jan. 18, 6-10 pm. $59. Crime Scene Entertainment, 2775 N. Howard St. crimesceneentertainment.com
PODCAST PUBLISHING Learn the essentials for podcasting in a home-recording studio or at the library. Jan. 18, 4-5:30 pm. Free. Spokane Valley Library, 22 N. Herald Rd. scld.org (509-893-8400)
UIDAHO ESPORTS: MARIO KART 8 & SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE
TOURNAMENT A Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros Ultimate tournament with staggered start times. Bring your own controllers and play competitively or casually. Pre-registration required. Jan. 18, 12-5 pm. $10. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
MLK COMMUNITY FIRESIDE: JAIME
STACY OF THE NAACP A performance of spirituals by Alethea Dumas and a fireside speech by Jaime Stacy of the Spokane NAACP. Jan. 19, 6 am-7 pm. Free. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 401 W. Regina Ave.
DROP IN & ZINE Learn how to make your very own mini-zine using a piece of paper and art supplies. Every Tuesday from 5-7 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org
MONTVALE EVENT CENTER OPEN
HOUSE An open house featuring vendors, catering samples, live entertainment, wine tastings, giveaways and more. Jan. 23, 4-8 pm. Free. Montvale Event Center, 1019 W. First. Ave. montvaleeventcenter.com (509-844-5672)
SHIBARI AND FLOW: BLIZZARD Local dancers perform a winter-themed shibari burlesque show. Jan. 23, 7 pm. $30. The Chameleon, 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. chameleonspokane.com
THE BLUE ZONES: A MODEL FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH Learn about five places in the world where people consistently live to over 100 years old with David Milliken fron Hutton Settlement Children’s Home. Jan. 24, 6-8 pm. Free. Millwood Masonic Center, 3219 N. Argonne Rd. meetup.com/friday-nights-at-the-lodge FILIPINO FASHION SHOW: A LUNAR NEW YEAR CELEBRATION Celebrate the Lunar New Year with a unique fashion show presented by the Filipino-American Association of the Inland Empire. Jan. 25, 2-2:30 pm. Free. Shadle Library, 2111 W. Wellesley Ave. spokanelibrary.org
FILM
MOSCOW FILM SOCIETY: HEREDITARY
A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences. Jan. 16, 7 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
BABYGIRL A CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins an affair with her much-younger intern. Jan. 17-19, 7 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
EVENTS | CALENDAR
BANNED TOGETHER SCREENING A 90-minute documentary about the current wave of book bans in the United States. Registration required. Ages 12+. Jan. 19, 2-4 pm. Free. Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave. cdalibrary. org (208-769-2315)
NEW RESTORATIONS: SE7EN Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives. Jan. 22, 7 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy. org (208-882-4127)
MOSCOW FILM SOCIETY: FANTASTIC
MR. FOX An urbane fox cannot resist returning to his farm-raiding ways and then must help his community survive the farmers’ retaliation. Jan. 23, 7 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
MET LIVE IN HD: AIDA American soprano Angel Blue headlines as the Ethiopian princess torn between love and country in a new production by Michael Mayer that brings audiences inside the towering pyramids and tombs of ancient Egypt. Jan. 25, 9:30 am-1 pm. $20. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org
NAPOLEON DYNAMITE LIVE A full screening of Napoleon Dynamite followed by a moderated discussion with fan-favorite cast members; Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite), Efren Ramirez (Pedro) and Jon Gries (Uncle Rico). Jan. 25, 7:30 pm. $46-$77. The Fox Theater, 1001 W. Sprague. foxtheaterspokane.org
FOOD & DRINK
NORTH IDAHO WINE SOCIETY: WINES
OF SOUTH AFRICA Taste wines from the region of South Africa with Jack Chase, regional sales director. Tasting is paired with light appetizers. Jan. 17, 7-9:30 pm. $30-$35. Lake City Center, 1916 N. Lakewood Dr. northidahowinesociety.org
BIRTHDAY DINNER A special brisket dinner celebrating the birthdays of German-American society members. The dinner features a birthday cake for every birthday month. Email or call to make a reservation. Jan. 18, 5:30-11 pm. $20. German American Hall, 25 W. Third Ave. germanamericansociety-spokane.org
MAC & CHEESE FESTIVAL Try variations of mac and cheese prepared by local chefs competing for the Golden Noodle Award. Vote for your favorite to win the People’s Choice Trophy. Jan. 18, 12-6 pm. Sold out. Downtown Coeur d’Alene, Sherman Ave. cdadowntown.com
SOURDOUGH CINNAMON ROLL BAK-
ING CLASS Jeff guides attendees stepby-step as you roll out the dough, prepare a velvety cream cheese frosting and bake your very own batch of rolls. Jan. 19, 4-6 pm. $85. The Kitchen Engine, 621 W. Mallon Ave. thekitchenengine.com
PIZZA DOUGH CLASS Join Chef Kristi for this hands-on class where participants learn (and eat) three dough-based recipes. Jan. 21, 5:45-8 pm. $85. The Kitchen Engine, 621 W. Mallon Ave. thekitchenengine.com (509-328-3335)
WORLD COOKING: FILIPINO FOOD
Chefs Jackie and Vee of the Filipino American Northwest Association demonstrate the preparation of a traditional Filipino dish in an online presentation while you follow along in your home kitchen. Jan. 22, 6:30-7:30 pm. Free. scld.org
LEARN TO MAKE LUMPIA The beloved Filipino dish lumpia is a staple at Fili-
pino gatherings and celebrations. Learn how to create this dish yourself. Jan. 25, 2:30-3 pm. Free. Shadle Library, 2111 W. Wellesley Ave. spokanelibrary.or
MUSIC
SATURDAY WITH THE SYMPHONY The Coeur d’Alene Symphony performs, puts on an interactive activity, and a book is read by the children’s librarian. Every third Saturday at 11 am. Free. Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave. cdalibrary.org (208-769-2315)
SPOKANE SYMPHONY MASTERSWORKS 4: BEETHOVEN VS. A.I. Can artificial intelligence compose as well as humans? Find out when you hear AI’s completion of the third movement of Beethoven’s unfinished 10th Symphony. Jan. 18, 7:30 pm and Jan. 19, 3 pm. $21$72. The Fox Theater, 1001 W. Sprague Ave. foxtheaterspokane.org
NEW ORLEANS SONGBOOK Jazz at Lincoln Center performs a program celebrating legendary composers and timeless songs that define New Orleans as a city. Jan. 22, 7:30 pm. $10-$66. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/mwpac
TRADITIONAL BLUEGRASS JAM Jam with a group of bluegrass musicians. Open to musicians and listeners. Every month on the second and fourth Wednesday at 5:30 pm. Free. The Jacklin Arts & Cultural Center, 405 N. William St. thejacklincenter.org (208-457-8950)
CELEBRATING FAMILY A concert by the North Idaho Youth Symphony with selections under the theme of “family.” Jan. 25, 7 pm. Schuler Performing Arts Center, 880 W. Garden Ave. niymusic.org
SPORTS & OUTDOORS
LILAC CITY KENDO CLUB Classes for beginner and long-time kendo practicers. Every Monday and Thursday from 6:308:30 pm. West Valley City School, 8920 E. Valleyway Ave. lilaccitykendo.org
NATIONAL RV SHOW Browse RVs, trailers, fifth wheels, motorhomes and more at this show featuring live music, beverages and activities for kids. Jan. 16-20; Thu-Sat from 9 am-8 pm, Sun from 10 am-7 pm and Mon from 9 am-7 pm. Free. Spokane Convention Center, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. bretzrv.com/sales/ national-rv-show (253-973-0122)
CLUB SHRED Kids learn and practice ski skills with instructors and participate in fun activities like snow fort building, movies and more. Every Friday from 5-8 pm through March 14. Advance registration required. Ages 4-10. $49. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. mtspokane.com
DJ NIGHT ON THE ICE Skate with music, lights, contests and more. Every Friday at 6 pm through Jan. 24. $7-$10. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. riverfrontspokane.com (509-625-6600)
NIGHT RIDERS A nighttime ski/snowboard opportunity for intermediate athletes guided by instructors. Ages 8-17. Registration required. Every Friday from 5-8 pm through March 14. $25-$45. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. mtspokane.com
SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. PRINCE GEORGE
COUGARS Regular season game. Promotional schedule: Gold Seal Plumbing Princesses and Heroes night. Jan. 17, 7:05 pm.
$12-$40. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com (509-279-7000)
SPOKANE INDOOR CHALLENGE An indoor track and field meet featuring a diverse range of events showcasing the talent of athletes across the region. See website for full schedule. Jan. 17-18. The Podium, 511 W. Joe Albi Way. spokanesports.org (509-279-7000)
SCHWEITZER TORCHLIGHT PARADE & FIREWORKS The annual Torchlight Parade and fireworks show with activities for the whole family. Jan. 18. Free. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com (208-263-9555)
SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. LETHBRIDGE
HURRICANES Regular season game. Promo schedule: Military Appreciation Night. Jan. 18, 6:05 pm. $12-$40. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com
COCOA AT VISTA HOUSE Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day with free cocoa at the Vista House. Jan. 20, 10 am-3 pm. Free. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park, 29500 N. Mt. Spokane Park Dr. mtspokane.com (509-238-2220)
TOYOTA FREE SKI FRIDAY Bring your Toyota, Scion or Lexus to Schweitzer and get a free lift ticket for the day. One free lift ticket will be given for each Toyota vehicle driven to the resort. Jan. 24, 9 am-3:30 pm. Free. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com
THEATER & DANCE
SWEAT From the politically charged opening scene to its conclusion, Sweat boldly confronts issues of race, immigration, deindustrialization and the everslipping grip on middle-class life. Jan. 17-Feb. 2; Wed-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. $15-$29. Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St. spokanecivictheatre. com (509-325-2507)
FOURTH FRIDAY CONTRA DANCE All of the dances are taught and called by Susan Dankovich. The event features live music from Reel Friends. No experience is required. Fourth Friday of every month from 7-10 pm. $6. Sinto Activity Center, 1124 W. Sinto Ave. sintocenter.org
MUSICAL THEATRE DANCE REVUE A compilation of student choreographed and student produced musical theatre numbers. Jan. 24-25, 7-8:30 pm. $8-$15. Gonzaga University Magnuson Theatre, 502 E. Boone Ave. gonzaga.edu/dance =
VISUAL ARTS
FINN POND: TURBULENCE & FLOW This exhibition features paintings that attempt to capture what is at the heart of natural phenomena and beauty. Daily from 11 am-6 pm through Jan. 28. Free. Entropy, 101 N. Stevens St. explodingstars.com (509-414-3226)
THE ART OF FOOD: FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF JORDAN D. SCHNITZER AND HIS FAMILY FOUNDATION A collection of work showcasing how prominent artists depict food beyond mere sustenance and how food connects us through shared experiences and societal issues. Tue-Sat from 10 am-4 pm through March 8. Free. Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU, 1535 NE Wilson. museum.wsu.edu
CONNECTIVE STRANDS OF SPIRIT A group exhibition featuring works by Joe, Carly and Ryan Feddersen, William Passmore, Emma Noyes, Michael Holloman,
Britt Rynearson, Michelle Jack and Frank Andrews honoring the Plateau people’s past, present and future. Thu-Sat from 4-7 pm through Feb. 1. Free. Terrain Gallery, 628 N. Monroe. terrainspokane.com
EMANATIONS: JOHN DEROULET, KAREN MOBLEY, DENNIS SMITH, CAT TRUONG A multimedia group art show featuring oil paintings by John DeRoulet and Karen Mobley, ceramics by Dennis Smith and sculpture by Cat Truong. Daily by appointment through Jan. 31. Free. Kolva-Sullivan Gallery, 115 S. Adams St. mobile.kolva.comcastbiz.net
JUAQUETTA HOLCOMB Juaquetta Holcomb uses locally grown alpaca and other wool to spin yarn and create fiber art. Daily from 11 am-7 pm through Jan. 26. Free. Pottery Place Plus, 203 N. Washington St. potteryplaceplus.com
JOSHUA HOBSON Joshua Hobson displays abstract photography. Mon-Thu from 10 am-4 pm, Fri from 10 am-2:30 pm through Jan. 31. Free. Boswell Corner Gallery at NIC, 1000 W. Garden Ave., Building 22. nic.edu/cornergallery
MEET YOUR MAKER Meet the artists behind all of the items in From Here. Daily from 11 am-6 pm. See website for artist schedule. Free. From Here, 808 W. Main Ave. fromherespokane.com
PORTRAY A POEM A group show of local artists who turn words into images to portray the heart and soul of a favorite poem. Daily from 9 am-5 pm through Jan. 25. Free. Liberty Building, 203 N. Washington St. potteryplaceplus.com
WHITWORTH ART & DESIGN DEPARTMENT FACULTY EXHIBIT An exhibit featuring art and work by Whitworth University faculty from the Art and Design department. Mon-Fri from 10 am-4:30 pm, Sat from 10 am-2 pm through Jan. 24. Free. Bryan Oliver Gallery, Whitworth, 300 W. Hawthorne Ave. whitworth.edu
ART CLUB Youth and families are invited to create together and explore the world of art. Use everything Spark Central has to offer to craft, write or build a piece of art for yourself. Every Friday from 4-6 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org (509-279-0299)
SARANAC ART PROJECTS FRIENDS SHOW Saranac members invite a friens to exhibit up to two works in the gallery. Featured artists include Carl Richardson, Robin Nelson Wicks, Olivia Evans and more. Fri-Sat from noon-8 pm through Jan. 31. Free. Saranac Art Projects, 25 W. Main Ave. sapgallery.com
KNIT A LOG-CABIN BLANKET Learn how to knit a log-cabin-designed blanket using leftover yarn with instructor Nance Van Winckel. You’ll receive in-person instructions and be sent home with a paper copy. Bring your own needles. Jan. 18, 2:30-3:30 pm. Free. Shadle Library, 2111 W. Wellesley Ave. spokanelibrary.org
START WITH A CIRCLE: STYLIZING ANY ANIMAL Using several methods, including rounding out, elongating, and simplifying from reference, students find their own unique way of drawing recognizable animals without the box of accurate anatomy. Ages 11+. Jan. 19, 10 am-2 pm. $61. Spokane Art School, 503 E. Second Ave., Ste. B. spokaneartschool.net
HEARTISTRY: ARTISTIC WELLBEING An environment for self-discovery. Participate in basic art concepts and activities or respond to a prompt. Every Tuesday from 3-5 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org
DROP IN & DRAW Join a creative com-
munity for this weekly free-form drawing program. Explore different artistic mediums, develop skills and ideas and cultivate imaginative thinking through art. All skill levels are welcome. Supplies and projects provided. Wednesdays from 5:30-7 pm Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org
OPEN STUDIO Stop by The Hive to see what current Artists-In-Residence are up to, and tour the building. Every Wednesday from 4-7 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. spokanelibrary.org
PAPER ART NIGHT Bring your collage and paper projects in progress or something new. Fourth Wednesday of each month from 6-8 pm. Free. Lunarium, 1925 N. Monroe. lunariumspokane.com
SPINNERS WORKSHOP Bring your spinning wheel or current projects to work on. Every Wednesday from 10 am-12 pm. Free. Create Arts Center, 900 Fourth St. createarts.org (509-447-9277)
PAPER MACHE BIRD WORKSHOP A one-day workshop with Tabitha Wellsandt in which kids are invited to create paper mache hanging birds. Jan. 24, 4-6 pm. $35. Emerge, 119 N. Second St. emergecda.com (208-930-1876)
ART U.S.A.: ONE HUNDRED AMERICAN WORKS ON PAPER A collection of 100 pieces of art from the Jundt’s permanent collection depicting an expanse of American life from the years 1925-1950. Jan. 25-May 10, Mon-Sat from 10 am-4 pm. Free. Jundt Art Museum, 200 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/jundt (509-313-6843)
WORDS
DR. BRIAN BUCHANAN: HOW WE FIND ARCHAEOLOGY, AND WHY WE DO SO Dr. Buchanan guides the audience through the basics of archaeological investigation techniques and how the legal frameworks that are critical to preserving cultural heritage and guiding responsible research practices help guide these practices. Jan. 16, 6:30-8 pm. Free. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. spokaneaia.com (509-456-3931)
DROP IN & WRITE Aspiring writers are invited to be a part of a supportive writers’ community. Bring works in progress to share, get inspired with creative prompts and spend some focused time writing. Thursdays from 5:30-7 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org (509-279-0299)
WRITE TOGETHER: A COMMUNITY WRITING SESSION Bring a project you’re working on and experience the joy and inspiration found in a community writing session with local novelist and Writing Education Specialist Sharma Shields. Jan. 17, 10 am-noon. Free. Shadle Library, 2111 W. Wellesley Ave. spokanelibrary.org (509-444-5390)
TEEN WRITE CLUB Teen writers are invited to get feedback on their work and explore all things prose and poetry. Every Tuesday from 5:30-7 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. sparkcentral.org (509-279-0299)
BROKEN MIC A weekly open mic reading series. Wednesdays at 6:30 pm; sign-ups at 6 pm. Free. Neato Burrito, 827 W. First Ave. bit.ly/2ZAbugD (509-847-1234)
CREATIVE WRITING CLUB Stretch your writing skills with fun prompts, character creation, world building and more. Every Wednesday from 3:30-4:30 pm. Ages 8-12. Free. Moscow Public Library, 110 S. Jefferson St. latahlibrary.org n
Idaho Eyes Fines
For the second year, an Idaho legislator has introduced a bill proposing mandatory minimum fines for cannabis possession
BY WILL MAUPIN
When it comes to cannabis reform in Idaho, if you think there’s been one step forward there is certain to be a step back soon to come.
Last week, Idaho state Rep. Bruce Skaug, a Republican from Nampa, introduced a bill that would establish a minimum fine of $300 for misdemeanor possession of cannabis.
This comes just two months after a reform-minded group, Kind Idaho, submitted a proposal to the Secretary of State’s office that, if approved, would put the question of legalizing cannabis to the voters on the 2026 ballot.
“We don’t want Idaho to become a marijuana state,”
Skaug told the state House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee, according to reporting from the Idaho Capital Sun
Skaug’s bill would set a mandatory minimum fine for adults found guilty of possession of up to three ounces of cannabis. In Idaho, possession up to that level is considered a misdemeanor.
Washington, by comparison, considers possession under one ounce to be legal, however beyond that the Evergreen State’s rules are arguably more stringent than Idaho’s. Possession of 40 or more grams, or just shy of 1.5 ounces, is a misdemeanor in Washington.
Skaug is something of a notorious figure in cannabis circles, best known for his 2024 proposal to establish a $420 mandatory minimum fine for misdemeanor possession. Obviously a play on the number venerated by cannabis enthusiasts, Skaug’s previous proposal failed to make it through the Idaho Legislature.
His current proposal appears to be more of a good faith effort to change the state’s possession laws.
In comments to the committee on Thursday last week, Skaug noted that there is a wide discrepancy between individual fines issued for misdemeanor possession of cannabis in Idaho. He stated that there is one Idaho judge who issues fines of just $2.50 while others reach $500.
Under Skaug’s current proposal, judges would still have the discretion to issue fines above his $300 mandatory minimum. The state’s current maximum fine for misdemeanor cannabis possession is $1,000.
According to FBI data, there were 5,178 arrests for cannabis possession in Idaho in 2023. Because of the state’s complete prohibition on cannabis, each of those arrests could result in at least a misdemeanor conviction.
There is a well established body of study that shows cannabis possession arrests disproportionately impact communities of color and those of lower socioeconomic status. n
NOTE TO READERS
Be aware of the differences in the law between Idaho and Washington. It is illegal to possess, sell or transport cannabis in the State of Idaho. Possessing up to an ounce is a misdemeanor and can get you a year in jail and up to a $1,000 fine; more than three ounces is a felony that can carry a five-year sentence and fine of up to $10,000. Transporting marijuana across state lines, like from Washington into Idaho, is a felony under federal law.
Idaho lawmakers could consider mandatory fines for cannabis possession.
