Inlander 03/20/2025 by The Inlander

Page 12

NOTE

t’s hard to believe five years have already passed since COVID-19 changed our modern lives practically overnight.

There are plenty of things I remember too clearly about that period of time — too many sleepless nights worrying about the safety of loved ones, my job; heck, the future of this very newspaper! — but I’ve also been surprised at how fuzzy other memories have become. Going through the Inlander’s archived coverage of the shutdowns, variant surges, public health orders and all else that took place from March 2020 to summer 2022 (when life mostly returned to “normal”) was a real whirlwind as we put together this week’s FIVE YEARS LATER issue — and a good reminder of how far we’ve come. Social distancing and masking may be something we’d all like to never experience again, yet perhaps the most important takeaway from it all is how we banded together in support of one another to stay safe and make it through to the other side. Read our full recap starting on page 12.

— CHEY SCOTT, Editor

COMMENT

STAFF

ADVERTISING

Tamara McGregor (x233)

ADVERTISING & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Carolyn Padgham (x214), Kristi Gotzian (x215), Autumn Potts (x251) SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES

Tracy Menasco (x260), Stephanie Grinols (x216), Toby Rose (x239), Alanna Spencer (x241) 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 WAS THE HARDEST PART OF THE PANDEMIC FOR YOU?

SELAH BONNER

I would say the isolation and the political stigma surrounding it. There was just so much.

ABI LAZAR

Doing online school was hard for me and just being in my room by myself.

KIM BURSON

Trying to keep other people calm around me, I think.

HANNA FAUGHT

Probably not being able to see anyone. I was 15 and didn’t have a job or in-person school.

RYLEE KINCAID

Not seeing my friends and being separated from them.

INTERVIEWS BY HANNAH HIGENS 3/13/2025, LITTLE GARDEN CAFE

A TRULY UNIQUE WHISKEY & RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE A TRULY UNIQUE WHISKEY & RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE

OUR WHISKEY CLUB

524 W Main Ave, Downtown Spokane thepurgatory.com Sun-Thu 12pm-11pm  Fri-Sat 12pm - 12:30am

JOIN US

“I want everybody to know the great work that happens at the Heart Institute and know they can be part of making it even better.”

– Rick Hosmer, grateful patient and donor

JOIN

STA’s on a Roll

Especially in times like these, the bus system serves a crucial need; Spokane Transit needs to keep its foot on the (increasingly zeroemission) accelerator

BY ANDY BILLIG

It happens 34,000 times every day around Spokane. One of your fellow community members gets on and off a bus. That’s 34,000 trips each day efficiently on their way to school, work, play, a date or a medical appointment because of STA. Without STA, many of those people would be homebound, and/or tens of thousands more cars would be clogging streets, vying for parking spots and polluting our air.

With such a focus on affordability for families right now, transit is especially helpful. Riding transit keeps transportation costs low for many in our community, especially compared to the cost of driving a car, which comes with an annual cost of $12,300, according to AAA.

STA is rolling right now, with a lot of momentum from several recent successes. One of the most impactful programs I worked on in the Legislature was the youth ride free initiative, which is funded by the Climate Commitment Act. This program provides free transit (bus, rail and ferries)

for every Washingtonian 18 years old and younger. Youth ride free has been a success throughout the state, and Spokane has been a particular bright spot. I triple-checked these numbers because the ridership is so big it is hard to believe… This January, there were 173,000 free youth trips provided by STA. That’s remarkable when you think about the mobility we are providing to young people in our city and the money that is being saved by families and the school district through this program.

The youth ride free program led to an STA/ Spokane Public Schools partnership where SPS provides almost no yellow school buses for high schools because STA can accommodate those students on their regular routes. Instead of providing high school buses, SPS can divert these saved funds to other important educational priorities.

Another major recent success is the City Line. The City Line had more than 750,000 passenger trips last year. This service makes visiting Downtown Spokane more convenient and is a particular boost for the students and staff who travel to the U-District and Spokane Community College.

I was recently talking with a Gonzaga student who told me that the opening of the City Line was a revelation for her and her friends because

Two of the seven new double-decker, 108-person capacity buses STA purchased to handle the growing traffic between Spokane, the West Plains, Cheney and EWU; 75% of the cost was covered by state and federal grants. STA PHOTO

suddenly downtown Spokane became such a convenient destination for shopping, eating and nightlife. Bonus: It’s also a lot safer and smarter to take a bus home from a bar after drinking rather than driving.

Amidst all the success, it’s also important to recognize there is still definitely room to improve, and this is a pivotal time for STA as they continue their search for a new CEO. As we look forward to the completion of that CEO search, here is some advice for the new CEO.

Keep focused on the Division Street Bus Rapid Transit project. This will be a transformative project for Spokane as we work to keep up with growth in Spokane. Division BRT is a key piece of the overall North Spokane transportation plan and is directly tied to the North Spokane Corridor project.

Look for collaborations with other organizations that may be as productive as the Spokane Public Schools partnership. Other potential partners could include additional school districts, the Parks Department, Public Facilities District, major events and area employers.

“The City Line had more than 750,000 passenger trips last year.”

Don’t listen to critics who never ride the bus. Would you trust a restaurant critic who never goes out to eat? It is tiresome to hear rants about transit from people who have never witnessed firsthand the cross-section of Spokane that rides every day. When I ride the 4 to or from work, I am struck by the range of people I see… businesspeople, families, students, seniors. It feels like someone from every segment of our city. When you ride the bus, even just once in a while, it’s easy to see that it is an indispensable lifeline for many and an economic engine for our community. It’s an essential perspective for anyone who wants to be taken seriously when discussing transit policy.

Keep STA Plaza where it is. Every so often, there are whispers or shouts to move STA Plaza. Moving the Plaza continues to be a bad idea. STA should always be looking for ways to improve STA Plaza, but it is crucial that it remain located in Central Downtown, which increases the convenience for the many people who start or end a trip at the plaza. We need to be looking for ways to make it easier and more convenient to ride the bus, not more inconvenient. And we should be looking for ways to get more people downtown, not funneling people away from the heart of our city.

5 Continue STA’s progress to convert fully to zero-emission vehicles. In addition to improving air quality and reducing emissions, zero-emission vehicles provide a 32% reduction in fuel and maintenance costs compared to diesel buses.

Lead a robust public process to figure out what’s next for STA. Can transit be the solution to the transportation problems in the Latah Valley? Will monitored bike parking at park-and-rides create a meaningful increase in bike-bus connections? Is it possible to provide high-frequency and extended-hour service on all routes? Is it time to reconsider light rail from the airport to Coeur d’Alene? But, a word of caution as well: While considering big new ideas, keep focused on the core mission: efficient, effective, affordable and frequent service that is so vital to so many in our community. See you on the bus! 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.

PUBLIC HEALTH

Opioid Options

The Spokane region is expanding opioid treatment and facilities

BY ELIZA BILLINGHAM

More than two decades since OxyContin and other prescription opioids were heavily marketed as safe and nonaddictive, a million people in the United States have died from opioidrelated overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Starting in 2017, state and local governments brought lawsuits against various pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies for misleading the public on the dangers of prescription opioids.

National settlements in these cases required about a dozen companies to pay out billions of dollars over the next two decades. These dollars started flowing in 2021 and are being distributed back to local governments to be used for opioid abatement services like training addiction counselors or distributing naloxone, a lifesaving overdose-reversal drug.

Opioid settlement funds were first distributed to the Spokane region in 2024. The city of Spokane expects to receive about $13.3 million over the next 17 years, and Spokane County expects to receive about $27 million over the same time.

Last week, both the city and county proposed their next slate of investments from these opioid settlement dollars. Many are joint investments to expand on existing, successful services, including sobering and withdrawal management at Spokane Treatment and Recovery Services, or STARS, and medication-assisted treatment at the Spokane Regional Health District.

“I think our citizens want and expect us to work together on some of these common challenges that we have because the opioid crisis does not respect city or county barriers or lines,” says County Commissioner 8 INLANDER MARCH 20, 2025

Chris Jordan. “It’s affecting all of us.”

But these advancements come at the same time that threats to cut Medicaid loom at the federal level. Cuts to the public insurance program for low-income people could make these services inaccessible for those who need it most.

VOLUNTARY VERSUS INVOLUNTARY

While some community leaders are calling on the city and county to force people addicted to fentanyl into treatment, the proposed investments are all for expansions to treat those voluntarily seeking substance use treatments.

For those who don’t voluntarily seek treatment for addiction, Washington has a legal pathway for a judge to put someone in treatment involuntarily, which was created in 2018. But the bar to do so is very high.

“When we remove someone’s rights, literally any right to care for themselves, or make decisions for their care and well-being, that’s a heavy, heavy lift,” says Justin Johnson, director of the Spokane County Community Services Department.

To put someone in involuntary treatment, designated crisis responders have to decide whether someone is an immediate risk to themselves or others. That immediate risk is legally termed a “grave disability.”

“If you are psychotic and you currently have no ability to make a determination for yourself, because your symptomology is so severe — that would be grave disability,” Johnson says. “If you are wanting to stay homeless and you have a behavioral condition, [like] major depressive disorder … that’s not a qualifying grave disability.”

In other words, chronic homelessness or drug use

itself isn’t a legal pathway to involuntary treatment.

If someone does reach the criteria for involuntary treatment, they need to be taken to a secure withdrawal facility, that is, a place that can lock people in to ensure they stay for treatment. There are currently no secure withdrawal facilities in Eastern Washington.

“They usually take them to the hospital first, while they’re assessed and they’re given medical clearance,” Johnson says. “They usually withdraw there at the hospital while they’re waiting, because we have to call around the state to find a bed. Then, getting transportation is nigh impossible.”

SPOKANE REGIONAL HEALTH DISTRICT

But for someone who decides to enter treatment for addiction, providers know it’s important to get them in right away and to keep them in treatment by building trust and momentum. Getting turned away at the door, facing a delay in appointments or switching providers are all common ways to “lose people,” Johnson says.

In a report to the Spokane regional health board a few months ago, the Opioid Treatment Program at the health district reported asking at least 20 people a month to come back later or schedule a later appointment because they weren’t able to be seen that same day. The program offers services including methadone to manage withdrawal symptoms, plus on-site mental health counseling.

The treatment program’s main shortage is staff. Specialists are needed to conduct extensive biophysical exams to determine someone’s level of need, and licensed clinicians are needed to run specialized treatment.

Last Friday, Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown and City Council President Betsy Wilkerson proposed investing $350,000 of the city’s opioid settlement dollars in medication-assisted treatment at the health district’s treatment program, with the understanding that the county would match those dollars.

STARS Senior Accountant Shallon Crossley, Executive Director Ryan Kent and Clinical Director of substance use disorder services Eric Deno are glad the nonprofit will be able to purchase its building, as they plan to expand services.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

bloomsday IV therapy treatments

Schedule your pre and post treatments

(buy two get third 50% o )

“OPIOID

OPTIONS,” CONTINUED...

The matching investments would come close to the health district’s estimation that it needs roughly $800,000 to expand its staff to meet the current demand from walk-ins as well as be a reliable drop-off location for police.

Addiction Medicine just released a new edition of its criteria for providing treatment, which is “kind of like the Bible for behavioral health treatment,” Kent says.

“If we increase that availability, then we would be able to have more individuals deflected at that early stage,” Johnson says. “If you have to schedule an appointment, it could be another week or two out. We want to remove that and allow them to have that immediate service.”

STARS

Last May, the county announced it would invest more than $5 million of its opioid settlement dollars to expand the Spokane Regional Crisis Stabilization Center by building a 23-hour crisis relief and sobering center. More space for people in crisis and withdrawal could help divert people away from jail and the emergency room. But that project is currently scheduled to be completed around spring 2027, at least two years from now.

To provide more immediate relief, Spokane County also partnered with the state Department of Commerce to help STARS buy the Cowley Street building it currently rents to provide withdrawal management, which should enhance the nonprofit’s stability and free up immediate savings to reinvest in new services.

“As soon as we started leasing the building, it was my priority to one day purchase it,” says Ryan Kent, executive director of STARS.

The county provided $775,000 as a 25% match to state funding. The purchase will most likely go through this May, Kent says.

The Cowley Street facility currently sees an average of 265 clients each month in both its sobering and withdrawal management services. Counselors also assess about 120 people every month to help those seeking treatment decide what level of care, program or facility works for them.

The city of Spokane is also proposing to invest $500,000 in STARS. With the new investments and a newly owned building, Kent says STARS will also be able to renovate the facility to include a new 16-bed inpatient treatment wing. A 30-day inpatient program is the only level of care STARS currently lacks, and the new beds could change that.

“If we do provide that, we would effectively be able to have everything in one building,” Kent says. “People would be able to get a warm handoff from sobering to withdrawal management to a 30-day inpatient [program] to then the Karen’s House or Cub House,” which are residential treatment programs for women and men, respectively. STARS also coordinates intensive outpatient care for those who graduate from residential treatment.

The renovation will probably take a couple years, but it won’t impact current operations.

Kent also hopes that STARS will be able to create a new, highly specialized medically managed withdrawal program, a tailored treatment plan the region now lacks.

Under medically managed withdrawal, nurses and licensed health care professionals can manage the pain of withdrawal symptoms with on-call care. Kent says other withdrawal management programs like methadone aren’t required to be overseen by the same level of medical expertise.

The caveat is that the American Society of

The new edition is very different from previous versions and could spell chaos for providers. There’s legislation awaiting approval by Congress to delay its implementation until 2027 or 2028, but until that is certain, Kent wants to be clear that STARS’ plans are subject to change.

THE FUTURE

This is a moment of somewhat rare unity and cooperation between the city and the county, whose relationship has “ebbed and flowed” in the past, Jordan says.

“The ideas for this program have come primarily from staff,” the commissioner says.

“[Justin Johnson’s] been having conversations with city staff who’ve got a lot of experience in this area, and it certainly originated from their wisdom in terms of the needs of the community.”

In addition to the joint projects, the city has a few initiatives of its own. The mayor’s proposal includes $139,000 for a dedicated project employee to track the performance of opioid settlement dollars, and $500,000 to research and launch culturally appropriate behavioral health treatments.

As the region expands opioid treatment services, one big threat looms large. Nearly everyone seeking addiction treatment relies on Medicaid, Johnson says.

But to finance President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportations, increased military spending, and cutting federal spending by at least $1.5 trillion and taxes by $4.5 trillion over the next decade, the House of Representatives just passed a plan to cut $880 billion from the health care and energy sectors over the next 10 years. Some in Congress don’t believe this is possible without cuts to Medicaid.

“Any cuts [to Medicaid] will have downstream effects and will affect care and quality of care throughout the state,” Johnson says. “Our longterm planning with these projects was not to do it alone or with one infusion of funds and be done with it. It was to look long term and weather different changes and patterns and funding.”

Kent feels the threat more acutely.

“It’s definitely something that has kept me awake at night quite often,” he says.

If people aren’t able to access the services STARS offers, they’ll end up getting the help they need from other places, like emergency departments and first responders.

“You’d see a lot longer wait if the average person is having an emergency,” Kent says. “The cost to the city and the county would increase significantly due to police officers, firefighters, AMR ambulances responding to a lot more calls — which equates to a lot more money, which equates to more taxes.”

Commissioner Jordan says it’s too early to tell how potential cuts to Medicaid would affect opioid treatments, but it’s something he’s tracking closely.

“Depending on how cuts are implemented, it could be a big deal,” he says. “I think we are assuming when we set up this crisis stabilization center expansion that Medicaid dollars will help fund the ongoing operation of that facility, for example. I haven’t seen a specific proposal that would threaten that, but we might get there, and I’m very concerned about it.” n

Post (Falls) Docs

Kootenai County will get a new microhospital. Plus, Mead schools turn to the feds on pronouns; and Hope House will no longer be a women’s shelter

BY INLANDER STAFF

Kootenai Health and MultiCare have announced the development of a new 30-acre Prairie Medical Campus at the edge of Post Falls on Highway 41 and Prairie Avenue. Construction is expected to begin this year, and the project’s first phase will take two to three years to complete, according to a joint press release. The first phase will consist of a microhospital with a 12-room emergency department staffed with physicians who are board certified in emergency medicine. Imaging center services will provide MRI, CT scans, ultrasound and X-ray screenings. The medical campus will have room for further expansion to meet the growing demand in Kootenai County. “It is our mission to serve this rapidly growing part of our community,” Kootenai Health CEO Jamie Smith said in the press release. “It allows us to create something bigger, faster and better in the Post Falls to Liberty Lake corridor than either of us could alone.” Kootenai Health will maintain operational control as the managing partner of the campus.

(VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ)

PRONOUN PREDICAMENT

The Mead School Board wants more local control, and to get that it’s asking the (not so local) federal government to intervene. In February, the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction notified the Mead School District that its gender-inclusive schools policy does not adhere to state requirements. For example, the state requires teachers to use students’ preferred pronouns while Mead’s policy requires teachers to “refrain from the use of gender pronouns and refer to the student by name.” Last week, the Mead School Board sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education, claiming that adhering to state law would put the district at odds with President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive orders that threaten to cut funds for noncompliant schools. “Not only is the school board facing a legal dilemma (not of its own making), but it has also been put in the untenable position of being ‘unable to win’ with its stakeholders,” the letter states. In response, community organization Trans Spokane stated, “Asking the federal government for assistance overturning state directives sets a dangerous precedent that all schools in Washington can decide which state laws they choose to follow.”

(COLTON RASANEN)

HOPE REIMAGINED

As the city of Spokane transitions to a 30-bed scattered site model for homeless shelters, other organizations are being forced to transition, too. Hope House, previously a 100-bed low-barrier shelter for women, will become a 44-bed medical respite site on July 1 for anyone vulnerable to homelessness. “Hope House does not fit the city’s new model and cannot scale the cost of a 30-bed shelter to be cost-effective,” said Bridget Cannon, senior vice president of program operations for Volunteers of America, to the Spokane City Council members on Feb. 10. Medical providers will be able to refer clients to the new Hope House, which will operate 24/7. Hope House was started in 1997 as a response to serial murders of women on the streets of Spokane. Many of Hope House’s current clients have survived assault or domestic violence. “This will greatly reduce the number of places that women feel safe — not that they wouldn’t be safe, but they just don’t feel safe and comfortable going to mixed gender shelters,” Cannon said.

(ELIZA BILLINGHAM)

TAKING MUSIC TO THE NEXT LEVEL

SHOWS ELEVATED BY THE SPOKANE SYMPHONY

SATURDAY MARCH 22 7:30PM THE MARK WOOD TRANS-SIBERIAN SYMPHONY EXPERIENCE

Mark Wood brings his Trans-Siberian Orchestra hits arranged for the Spokane Symphony

PINK MARTINI

The fun of Pink Martini –backed by a full orchestra.

SATURDAY APRIL 5 7:30 PM SUNDAY APRIL 6 3:00 PM

BENEFIT CONCERT FOR THE SPOKANE SYMPHONY

TINA TURNER

Tina Turner’s classics go symphonic!

SATURDAY MAY 17 7:30 PM

PANDEMIC

From the time COVID-19 started spreading in late 2019 through the few years we collectively remember as “the pandemic,” the novel coronavirus killed millions, sickened many more and dramatically changed life as we know it.

By mid-2023, Washington state had 15,972 COVID deaths, while Idaho had 5,513, according to data compiled by USAfacts.org. According to the data set, here were the Inland Northwest COVID death tolls by county: Spokane: 1,666; Stevens: 191; Pend Oreille: 49; Ferry: 35; Whitman: 98; Kootenai: 686; Bonner: 205; Boundary: 70; Benewah: 47; Shoshone: 82; Latah: 62; and Nez Perce: 163.

The pandemic turned into an endemic, and COVID vaccines are now seasonally updated. It’s recommended that people get regular boosters to build immunity against new variants, as people continue to be hospitalized and die, though thankfully at a much smaller rate than during the pandemic.

Still, the toll has been great. As of last month, the New York Times reported that more than 20 million people globally have died from COVID, including at least 1.2 million people in the United States. Just five years after our daily activities were first shuttered and officials asked everyone to do their part to slow the spread of the virus, it’s important to examine the lessons from this time as we continue to recover.

— SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL, SECTION EDITOR

Righting the Ship

Health care workers battled a raging storm during the pandemic, but some parts of the health system have changed for the better

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

It’s hard to remember just how little health care workers understood about the COVID-19 virus when it first made its way to the United States.

In February 2020, Spokane became one of the first U.S. cities to knowingly take in patients with the virus, as Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center’s special pathogens unit — one of only about a dozen in the country — was specifically designed to handle highly contagious infectious diseases. Initially starting out with staff in what were nearly spacesuits while four patients infected on a cruise were quarantined here, the learning curve was steep, says Dr. Dan Getz, who started as Providence’s chief medical officer for the Inland Northwest just as the pandemic began.

“We had patients kept for weeks behind glass because we weren’t quite sure what to do with them,” Getz says.

Jan. 21

A Washington man becomes the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States. He returned to Western Washington from a trip to Wuhan, China.

The best practices for COVID patients evolved throughout the course of the pandemic, particularly as places that were hit worst first, such as New York City, shared what appeared to work and what didn’t work to save the lives of those who landed in intensive care units, or ICUs. Quickly, physicians shared advice to “prone” patients on ventilators, or have them lay on their stomachs. It also appeared it might be better to wait as long as possible before putting someone on a ventilator, Getz says.

Washington took the risk extremely seriously early on, halting all “elective” surgeries — up to and including things like tumor removals — so hospitals would have enough staff and supplies when the influx of patients hit.

“In retrospect, I think we played a hurry up and wait game,” Getz says. “We were very aggressive in Washington state in preparing for what we knew was going to

Feb. 20

Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center’s special pathogens unit, which is designed to isolate and treat patients with highly infectious diseases such as Ebola, accepts four American COVID patients who were infected on a cruise ship.

Feb. 29

Washington reports its first COVID-19 death — the country’s first official COVID death (though we later learned Americans had died from the virus a month or more earlier).

come in terms of the volume of patients.”

But we perhaps underestimated how long it might take for that to occur, he says.

“We paused a lot of surgeries that people were waiting for, and I think that impacted a lot of people negatively in terms of their health care,” Getz says. “It was our first pandemic, right? So we did the best that we could.”

The worst wave of patients would arrive a year and a half after the first shutdowns started, when the delta variant of the virus hit the Inland Northwest the hardest. While the earliest groups to be hit hard by the virus included the elderly and those in assisted living facilities, this wave was different. Providence, MultiCare and Kootenai Health all saw a massive influx of younger patients in their 20s, 30s and 40s arriving in the ICU in August, September and October of 2021. Many of the patients had few co-morbidities (conditions that make death more likely), but there were few success stories where people survived the ICU.

Getz recalls that rationing of things such as face masks, disposable gowns and other “personal protective equipment” was effective. While Providence thankfully escaped shortages in Spokane, at one point staff members needed to load up supplies to help a Providence fa-

March 11

The World Health Organization declares a global pandemic. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee limits gatherings of more than 250 in three Puget Sound counties.

March 12

The NCAA cancels the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the latter of which would’ve been hosted in Spokane.

Dr. Ben Arthurs checks on an ICU patient at MultiCare Deaconess Hospital in September 2021 during the delta variant’s surge. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

cility in Everett that was down to about a day’s worth of materials.

Similarly, Alex Jackson, the chief executive and senior vice president for MultiCare Inland Northwest, says that Deaconess and Rockwood facilities never experienced significant shortages of supplies, but conservation continues to this day.

“I think our teams are trying to conserve our supplies better now than, if you will, B.C. — before COVID,” Jackson says.

Once vaccines became available, MultiCare was particularly focused on getting its employees and the community vaccinated.

“While those first couple vaccine clinics were good, we also recognized at the scale we were doing it, we would not be able to vaccinate as many employees and high risk people as we wanted,” Jackson says. “We had to look at how to do it more effectively and efficiently. Those early days we were doing maybe 25 or 50 in a day, and a few weeks later we were doing 800, 900, 1,000 vaccinations a day.”

HEALTH CARE CHANGES

While the pandemic was traumatic for just about everybody, health care workers in particular were negatively affected.

Jackson says that MultiCare focused on three guiding principles from the early days of the pandemic: how to serve patients, how to serve employees, and how to serve the community.

MultiCare/Rockwood started a program called “code lavender” to provide mental health and support services to its employees who were struggling, and has expanded its mental and behavioral health offerings for the community. Multiple primary care facilities now have embedded behavioral health professionals on site, so patients can get referred just down the hall from their doctor, says Kevin Maloney, a MultiCare spokesman.

Getz says that while there has certainly been turnover among health care professionals, including some early retirements or career changes, he’s noticed that those who’ve stayed in the field have more of a focus on a healthy work-life balance.

“We’ve been very fortunate. We’re seeing more people come into the professions that we have openings for,” Getz says. “What you’ve seen also is a shift in the people who’ve stayed in the profession, they’re valuing their personal time, they’re valuing their mental health, they’re maybe working a little bit less because they want to have time to spend pursuing other activities or spending time with their loved ones. I think collectively that’s going to be a good change moving forward.”

In some cases, patients have been arriving at health care facilities sicker, because they didn’t seek care or screening tests over the last few years. But the good news is that many health care systems have more than caught up in their ability to offer surgery and care at even higher rates than before the pandemic, Getz says.

Now, the focus is on how to economically recover from the aftermath of the pandemic, Getz says. Reimbursement rates from insurance companies and Medicaid and Medicare don’t keep pace with the cost of wage increases and expenses.

“We lost a lot of money as a result of what we had to do in the pandemic, and we’re still struggling economically,” Getz says. “We need to be very good stewards of our resources so we can continue to deliver care for the poor for another 160-plus years.”

Jackson similarly says MultiCare continues to be focused on its mission to serve the community despite the current financial outlook in the health care field.

“MultiCare was founded in 1882,” Jackson says. “I’m really proud of how MultiCare rose to the challenges during COVID, and I’m really confident that we’ll continue to rise to the challenges in 2025 and beyond as well.” n

March 13

Washington announces a sixweek statewide school closure.

Idaho announces its first COVID case. President Donald Trump declares a national emergency.

March 14

Spokane Regional Health District confirms the first three cases locally.

A Bad Aftertaste

Restaurants and bars across the Inland Northwest are still living in the shadow of COVID-19

BY DORA SCOTT

Though we can now happily dine out without worrying about social distancing or masks, pandemic impacts still linger for many locally owned restaurants and bars. From closures and staff shortages to increased expenses and forced adaptability, it’s likely going to take far more than five years for the restaurant industry to recover from the fallout.

TAKEOUT TAKEOVER

When then-Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued an emergency proclamation on March 15, 2020, shutting down

COVID 2020

March 16

Panhandle Health District confirms the first case in North Idaho.

dine-in services and bars statewide, businesses had to pivot to takeout or temporarily close. A week later, the stay-at-home order for virtually everyone was issued, and only food was initially allowed to be sold to-go.

Delivery platforms like DoorDash and GrubHub, as well as local meal delivery services, boomed and are still commonly used today.

Washington’s initial stay-home order was extended, and a four-phase reopening plan for public spaces, including restaurants, was announced in May 2020, with each phase to be determined by current infection levels.

March 17: Shutdown

Following his shutdown announcement on March 15, Inslee temporarily shuts down bars, restaurants, entertainment and recreational facilities. All gatherings with 50+ people are prohibited. Anything smaller needs to follow social distancing of at least 6 feet apart. The shutdown is expected to last for two weeks.

March 18

Over time, as cases improved, restaurants were able to open at 25% or 50% capacity with social distancing between parties.

“[Statewide] we saw roughly 3,400 closures [of restaurants and bars] in that first round of the pandemic and people losing everything,” says Anthony Anton, president and CEO of the Washington Hospitality Association.

Smaller restaurants that didn’t have space to uphold the social distancing requirements were particularly affected, he notes.

“Most of those are probably the ones that got wiped out because they just didn’t own a business where 6 feet between tables was a viable option,” Anton says.

To support struggling businesses, the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board temporarily allowed restaurants with a spirits, beer and wine license to sell to-go cocktails starting in April 2020, provided they were sealed in approved containers and purchased with a full meal. Some to-go alcohol options became a permanent fixture after the July 2023 passage of state Senate Bill 5448.

Local chef and restaurateur Adam Hegsted, owner of Eat Good Group, permanently closed his flagship eatery,

Inslee announces a 30-day moratorium on evictions due to the impacts of immediate job/wage losses. Federally, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announce foreclosures are suspended for at least 60 days due to the pandemic.

March 23: Stay Home

Inslee issues the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order, mandating everyone stay home for two weeks. All nonessential businesses close or shift to remote work, in-person gatherings of any size are banned, churches close, and weddings and funerals are not allowed. It was originally expected to last through April 8; A year later, things still hadn’t fully reopened.

Longhorn Barbecue’s Zac Smith packages delivery meals in August 2020. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

the Wandering Table in Kendall Yards, and replaced it with Baba in 2021. He also closed Incrediburger in downtown Spokane, citing the downturn of foot traffic during the pandemic. However, his Idaho-based restaurants like Honey Eatery and Republic Kitchen + Taphouse, fared better due to fewer restrictions.

“We were doing really well in Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene. Like it was twice as busy. So that really did save us,” Hegsted says.

Amid these challenges, the community rallied to support local restaurants and hospitality workers. Rick Clark, the founder of Giving Back Spokane, launched a fundraising campaign that raised $250,000 during 112 nights of nearly consecutive Facebook livestreams. Those funds were used to buy food at full price from struggling restaurants, which was then donated to homeless shelters and others in need.

“When people were giving that much money to help those restaurants during that scary time, I realized that this world is a beautiful place, and it really has shifted our mission,” Clark says. “It’s literally changed the way our nonprofit is because we got to see the best during the worst times.”

Big Table, a local nonprofit that supports restaurant and hospitality workers, saw an exponential increase in referrals during the pandemic. Suddenly unemployed restaurant workers turned to Big Table for help paying rent, buying food and other expenses.

“Right before COVID, we were looking at 10 to 15 new referrals a month on top of all the ongoing other support we were doing,” says Chris Deitz, Big Table’s city director. “The minute COVID hit, we were looking at 15 new referrals a day.”

MASKED BEFORE MEALS

Starting May 22, 2020, Spokane restaurants and bars were allowed to reopen at 50% capacity with limited table seating (no more than five people), no bar seating and single-use menus. QR codes quickly replaced paper menus and are still common today.

Over the next several months, restrictions fluctuated as COVID-19 infections surged and declined. Inslee implemented a statewide mask mandate on June 26, 2020, requiring diners to wear a mask indoors except when eating or drinking. Soon after, restaurants and bars were required to refuse service to noncompliant customers or risk fines and business license revocation.

In July 2020, Washington closed bars, breweries, taverns and wineries for indoor services, even if they had a full food menu, with Inslee citing the different “social behaviours” at these establishments for the stricter regulations. Restaurants’ dine-in services were limited to tables with only members of the same household. Restaurants and bars could continue outdoor dining at 50% capacity, but alcohol service had to stop at 10 pm.

By fall 2020, after some loosening of regulations, COVID-19 cases surged again, leading Inslee to reinstate tighter restrictions on Nov. 15. Restaurants and bars were closed again for indoor dining, but could seat customers outdoors (limited to five people per table) and offer takeout services.

Some places like the Davenport Grand, Luna and the Coeur d’Alene Resort, got creative with outdoor seating and introduced transparent “igloos” for terrace dining, which were a game changer for the winter season and are still being used, especially during the holidays.

Spokane reentered Phase 2 of Washington’s reopening plan on Feb. 14, 2021, permitting indoor dining at 25% capacity and

...continued on next page

March 25

Idaho Gov. Brad Little announces a 21-day stay home order.

March 26

Idaho announces its first three COVID deaths. Congress passes the CARES Act with $2 trillion in economic relief.

PANDEMIC

extending the sale of alcohol to 11 pm.

The state progressed to Phase 3 in March of that year, increasing indoor dining capacity to 50%. Tables could seat up to 10 people, and alcohol could be sold until midnight. However, bars with nightclub liquor licenses, like Berserk in downtown Spokane, weren’t allowed to reopen until Phase 4. Regulations were eventually revised so such venues could open by adding food service and banning dancing.

In lieu of Inlander Restaurant Week 2021, the Inlander coordinated The Great Dine Out with community partners. From March 11-17, 120 participating restaurants highlighted three signature dishes for takeout.

In May 2021, federal aid from the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund became available. However, the pool of money was quickly exhausted and awarded to roughly only 105,000 applicants nationwide, as demand

March 27

TIMELINE

Spokane County reports its first COVID death.

surpassed $75 billion. Grant awards were determined by calculating a business’s gross revenue losses in 2020, excluding funding received from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.

The summer of 2021 took a brighter turn when restrictions were finally fully lifted on June 30, after the first round of COVID vaccines became available. Restaurants and bars could operate at full capacity without social distancing requirements or party size caps. Bar seating was also permitted, and alcohol could again be served until 2 am.

Even so, Spokane’s end-of-summer food festival Pig Out in the Park was canceled again that year due to a spike in the delta variant of the virus.

In light of the delta variant’s surge, Inslee reinstated the mask mandate on Aug. 23 for most indoor public spaces, including in restaurants and bars when not ac-

April 2

Inslee extends “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” through May 4.

April 15

Little extends Idaho’s stay home order through April 30.

April 23

Little announces a four-stage reopening plan.

May 1

tively eating or drinking. The statewide mandate was not lifted until March 2022.

ENDURING IMPACTS

Food businesses that survived the pandemic are still grappling with long-lasting financial impacts. Many restaurants accumulated debt and are now operating with even thinner margins, averaging 1.5% profit (compared with a 3% average pre-pandemic) in Washington, according to the Washington Hospitality Association.

“The average restaurant left the COVID period with about $160,000 in debt,” Anton says. “In 2023, the average restaurant did $1.1 million in sales. That 1.5% on $1.1 million means they took home roughly $16,000 in income. That’s not sustainable.”

Even though many restaurants received federal relief grants, others also had to take out loans, which they are

May 20: LOCAL MASK MANDATE

Inslee extends “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” through May 31 and releases a four-phase plan with specific metrics to meet in order for things to reopen. At least three weeks were expected between each phase.

Spokane Regional Health District directs everyone to wear masks in public.

“A BAD AFTERTASTE,” CONTINUED...

Volunteer Mindy Howard helps load meals during an April 2020 Spokane Food Fighters distribution event to support local residents who requested emergency meals.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Shutdown Stories

As an introvert, I felt like I was experiencing the pandemic differently from everyone else.

The beginning of 2020 brought a lot of change for me. A woman I’d been seeing dumped me. I had to put down a beloved cat I’d had for 17 years. And I started a job that ended a year and a half of underemployment. All in the first three months of 2020.

Of course, I felt the same fears as everyone else during the lockdowns. What was going to happen? Where can I find toilet paper? Will my senior parents be OK?

But my new job was deemed essential, so financially, I was doing better than I had in several years. When I let myself relax enough to accept that the pandemic was going to be more “staycation” than “nuclear winter” for me, I treated myself to marathon sessions of books, movies and video games. I ran laps at the Shadle High School track. I cleaned parts of my home I hadn’t gotten to in years. My joy of solitude finally served me. A small part of me felt shame for having it good and feeling more myself during COVID, while so many others were struggling.

I have this memory from the end of 2020. I hadn’t put up a Christmas tree in years and decided this was the time to renew the tradition. I unboxed the new tree, and as I struggled somewhat to assemble it, out of nowhere I found myself sobbing. I mourned lost time with friends and family. I mourned the pet who would have given me so much company during lockdown. My 50th birthday came and went with little fanfare. I found myself in a complicated emotional state that both recognized the joy in the year I’d experienced and felt empathy for what so many others had lost in 2020. Turns out, I needed some connection and was still human after all.

— TREVOR T., SUBMITTED BY EMAIL

now paying back.

“The amount [of debt] that I took during COVID years is going to take me like 10 years to pay off,” restaurateur Hegsted says. “So like all of that profit that I’m getting right now is literally going to the debts I got during COVID to keep the business operational.”

As the restaurant and bar industry continues to rebuild, not just locally but across the U.S., many establishments are reevaluating their business models, whether that be adjusting operating hours and menus or implementing new technology.

Anton, speaking on behalf of the restaurant industry, asks for patience and grace from customers as businesses experiment while facing rising costs for labor and supplies.

“The industry is really, really hurting. And we’re probably at a point where we’ve got a short amount of time to figure out how we can change to be profitable and then I think the clock is just going to run out,” Anton says. n

May 27

The U.S. surpasses 100,000 COVID deaths.

June 13

Idaho moves to Phase 4 of its plan and fully reopens.

June 15

Panhandle Health reports North Idaho’s first COVID death.

Surviving the Silence

How the pandemic made us appreciate live music, and proved to the industry we’re willing to pay

BY SETH SOMMERFELD

Few sectors were as shaken to their core by COVID as the live music industry. When the lifeblood of your enterprise involves cramming people into a room together for a concert, social distancing wasn’t in the cards in a safe, realistic manner. It was a brutal period for the Spokane music scene, but there were lessons learned over the bizarre stretch when venues went silent — ones that are still shaping how we interact with live music today.

Early in the lockdown when it seemed like things might be back to normal within weeks or months, the first trend to emerge was artists doing isolated livestream performances on Instagram or Facebook Live. (Personally, I got through plenty of days watching livestreams by Washingtonian artists like Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Pedro the Lion’s David Bazan and Seattle rock band Deep Sea Diver.) The fad soon spread to Spokane as local singer-songwriters like Lucas Brookbank Brown, Just Plain Darin and Jenny Anne Mannan began crooning to their camera lenses for digital audiences.

But as the months passed and the concert cancellations started coming in droves, people’s appetite for livestreamed concerts waned, as it began to feel like a

COVID

bummer reminder that real concerts weren’t happening anytime soon. Later in 2020, some Spokane entities like Lucky You, Neato Burrito, Hoffman Music and the new local video series Live From Somewhere started delivering more professional digital concert options.

It wasn’t easy for institutions to keep the lights on during these times, but the restraints did breed creativity. Spokane Symphony Music Director James Lowe had barely begun the post he took over in summer 2019 when COVID hit and forced him to improvise a digital season on the fly, including mapping out how many musicians could fit distanced on The Fox’s stage.

“I think it’s probably the work I’m most proud of than anything I’ve ever done,” Lowe says. “What struck me was that COVID was kind of a catalyst. It fast forwarded us about a decade. Classical music is always kind of struggling to maintain relevancy. But I think the fact [was] that suddenly everybody was used to an online life, so it encouraged me to be a little bit more innovative in programming and take a few more kind of calculated risks, which are now paying off.”

The pandemic was a bleak time for shuttered venues, but Spokane did surprisingly well surviving the lockdown compared to many places. The major casualty

June 23: WA STATEWIDE MASK MANDATE

Inslee announces a statewide mask mandate to take effect on June 26. The order requires people to wear masks when out in public.

Also, since May 22, Spokane has been in “Phase 2,” meaning restaurants and bars are allowed to be open at 50% capacity with seating for groups of five or less, retail stores and hair salons are open.

July 23

during that stretch came with the closure of The Pin, the eclectic all-ages downtown music spot that had only been going a few years before shuttering its doors.

As the proverb goes, absence makes the heart grow fonder. And that was certainly the case when live music eventually returned. Concert attendance boomed to new heights after returning, as each of the past few years have shattered industry records for ticket sales.

“I try to be a glass-half-full kind of guy,” says Ryan Leavy, who was booking concerts with Monumental Shows when COVID arrived and who took charge of The Big Dipper in 2023. “I think a lot of showgoers realized what they’re missing out on. And so coming back from the pandemic, it’s been an upswing, and it’s been great. So in terms of shows, new artists, new bands… I mean, to me? It’s all been positive.”

“I think what COVID did was allow the industry to reset,” says Matt Meyer, director of entertainment for the Spokane Public Facilities District, which manages the Spokane Arena and First Interstate Center for the Arts. The PFD spent the shutdown developing a series of safety protocols with the State of Washington they

Sept. 28

Panhandle Health District mandates masks in public in North Idaho counties.

The world hits more than 1 million COVID deaths.

Ryan Tucker (right) and Andy Rumsey (seated) perform during a live-streamed show at Neato Burrito on Oct. 9, 2020.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

called “Rock the Reopening” and was ready to go when Inslee announced the music could start again on June 30, 2021. Meyer cites changes like venues going cashless and gaining a better understanding of the secondary market as positives for large venues.

But have you wondered why concert ticket prices — especially for bigger touring acts — have skyrocketed way faster than inflation in the past couple years? Basically, venues and artists saw how much people were willing to pay for tickets on secondary market resale websites, and they realized they could raise things to those prices. The positive spin is that more of those dollars are going to the artists, but the industry hasn’t done much of anything to combat resale — so now the base tickets are way pricier and scalped ticket costs have jumped up alongside those rates. Couple that with dynamic ticket pricing — where costs go up for major shows based on demand and only go down for unpopular ones — and we’ve arrived at the post-COVID concert sticker shock era.

The truth is that even as things become more expensive, people are going to pay, largely because COVID helped recontextualize the communal importance of live music. When you are stuck in forced silence for so long, sound becomes a cherished treasure. n

Shutdown Stories

Oct. 29

Let’s Stay In

Led by mega-blockbuster Avengers: Endgame, movies grossed over $11.3 billion in 2019. Box office receipts for the next two years nosedived to $6.5 billion combined

While streaming sites like Netflix had been successfully converting moviegoers into at-home streamers and cutting into theatrical draws for years, COVID expedited the process as home viewings were pretty much the only option (unless you happened to live by one of the country’s few remaining drive-in theaters). While most studios held major releases until theaters reopened in late 2021, there were experiments with films like Trolls World Tour being released as a $19.99 streaming rental and Disney just giving away the new Pixar movie Luca to its subscribers.

On a regional level, independent movie theaters like the Magic Lantern and Kenworthy Theatre in Moscow offered smaller new releases for digital rental. For a while, Colville’s Auto Vue Drive-In

Iwas a freshman at Lakeside High School in Nine Mile Falls when COVID forced everyone into lockdown. I remember so vividly being told to go home by my head track coach as we were preparing for the first meet of the season, and questioning whether I would actually be able to race at any meets at all (the season ended up being canceled entirely). For the next six months, I spent more time reading books with my cat on my lap than interacting with real humans.

School eventually started back up in a hybrid format, where we went into school on some days, and our teachers taught the other days through Zoom, but it wasn’t the same. I struggled to pay attention and felt lost. In the classroom, we all wore masks, and no one really talked to each other. When sports started back up, we also wore masks. I remember racing against Freeman and Deer Park high schools at our home cross-country course, and we all complained at the starting line about how hard it is to run with masks on.

Spokane Regional Health District Administrative Officer Amelia Clark fires Health Officer Dr. Bob Lutz, as confirmed by an email from the Board of Health’s attorney to board members that evening.

Under state law, the district’s Board of Health is required to sign off on the firing, which they later do on Nov. 5. Public outcry ensues, with people claiming the firing was political in nature, due to Lutz’s push to

maintain closures to prevent the spread of the virus. Clark and the district point to internal disciplinary actions against Lutz related to his interactions with coworkers. As of March 2025, Lutz is still pursuing a wrongful termination lawsuit against the district, while Clark resigned from the district in September 2022, amid a state investigation into her actions related to Lutz’s termination.

How COVID put a dent in the cinematic world

SETH SOMMERFELD

was the only place within a couple hours of Spokane that was actually screening new films (although the Kenworthy did fashion a popup drive-in at a University of Idaho parking lot). Laxer pandemic restrictions saw theaters in Coeur d’Alene reopen in July 2020 to coincide with the release of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Washington state theaters didn’t begin reopening with limited capacity until three months later in October.

While the years following the lockdown have seen a few tentpole blockbusters like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and Barbie help keep theaters afloat, things still haven’t — and may never — fully recover, with the 2024 domestic box office raking in just over $8.5 billion. On the bright side, indie movie theaters like the Magic Lantern, Kenworthy and Garland Theater made it through the tough times and still offer big-screen options for the diminished audience that remains. n

By my junior year, my high school returned to a normal schedule, but I opted to do Running Start through Spokane Falls Community College. It felt like a smart decision at the time because outbreaks were beginning to pop up again, but in hindsight, it made me more isolated from my high school peers.

Looking back at the pandemic, COVID helped me understand the negative reality of isolating yourself from human interactions. I’ve always considered myself an introvert, but because I became a hermit during the lockdown and spent more time with book characters than my real life friends, I almost forgot how to have normal conversations. Today, I’ve become very appreciative of the friendships that I’ve gained, especially now that I’m a junior at Whitworth University, and I value the conversations that I have with people every day.

— HANNAH

HIGENS, INLANDER INTERN

Nov. 15

Inslee again closes bars and restaurants to in-person dining. Gyms/ indoor recreation also closes again; churches are limited to the smaller of 25% capacity or 200 people.

Dec. 11: FIRST VACCINE

U.S. approves the first COVID vaccine with emergency use authorization.

The

The Magic Lantern Theatre’s manager Joe Sheehan, photographed in November 2020 when the theater was only open for private group rentals. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Comfort Clothes and Collectibles

Some COVID-era pivots and trends outlasted the pandemic. But have small businesses recovered enough to weather looming economic instability?

BY E.J. IANNELLI

As recently as a week ago, after-hours callers to Fringe & Fray would be met with a recorded message.

“We are open Monday through Saturday, 12 pm to 6 pm,” it stated. “And masks are required.”

The downtown resale boutique’s masking policy ended in 2022 along with the official statewide mandate, but the voicemail greeting — since updated — shows how certain vestiges of the COVID era persist even now, five turbulent years after the pandemic first erupted. The

March 3

Washington hits 5,000 COVID deaths. Some schoolchildren return to in-person instruction. Mead schools have had in-person instruction all school year.

Resurrection Records owner Mike House. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

ways society rearranged itself in response to that highly contagious and potentially fatal disease are still playing out to different degrees.

Of all the problems COVID produced, the “hot-button issue” of masking was one of the most fraught, recalls Grace Johnson, who owns and operates Fringe & Fray with her husband, Ryan.

“Once we reopened, I think we were challenged by navigating the pandemic as a small business, just how to implement safety protocols so our customers felt safe and still welcome here when they came in,” she says.

Today, Fringe & Fray is still reclaiming the space it once cleared for social distancing. Removing four clothing racks from the floor had the unfortunate side-effect of reducing the store’s maximum available inventory, and Johnson says that they’ve slowly been trying to add more merchandise as they work to restore the lost racks.

lockdown, and I saw a lot of record stores across the country doing the same thing. I’ve been selling records online for 21 years now, so it was really no issue for me to just go to online only,” says Resurrection Records owner Mike House.

But House didn’t quite anticipate the sharp rise in demand for vinyl, which may have been driven by concert-starved music lovers wanting to connect with artists and albums in a tangible way.

Social distancing wasn’t the only “pivot” — the pervasive pandemic buzzword to describe rapid changes in business models and practices — that the boutique made. Shortly after lockdowns began, the Johnsons joined many other businesses in launching an online counterpart to their brickand-mortar store.

“There was definitely an uptick in online shopping, but we saw that people weren’t buying, say, a pencil skirt anymore. They would buy some leggings because they were working from home and [on video calls] you could just see them from the waist up,” Johnson says.

Based on her anecdotal experience, that trend for comfort clothing has endured, even if many professionals have since returned to the office. By contrast, partly because of the attention it required from their small staff, Fringe & Fray wound down its online shop after lockdowns were lifted.

THE NEW NORMAL?

Given that online marketplaces have long been a part of buying and selling collectibles, Spokane’s Resurrection Records didn’t have to pivot in the same way as clothing and home décor businesses like Fringe & Fray.

“I closed way before there was any sort of

March 11

Inslee announces Washington will move to Phase 3 of the reopening plan on March 22, with some outdoor events allowed again for the first time in a year, with caps on capacity. Businesses including restaurants and gyms are allowed to operate at 50% capacity. President Joe Biden signs the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA.

“Once those [stimulus] checks started coming out, it was crazy,” House says. “I’ve never been busier online before. The morning that those checks would come out, I just had to turn off my online store. I’d turn it on once every couple of days and get, I don’t know, 80 to 100 orders in just a couple hours.”

House says that the economic stimulus checks served their purpose in fueling short-term buying. The downside, as he sees it, is that the influx of “free money” led to surges in discretionary spending that contributed to inflation, ultimately causing the cost of goods to hit new heights.

In the wake of the pandemic, House estimates that he’s paying at least 50% more for manufacturer-direct records as well as items like the distilled water he uses to clean his secondhand stock.

So far, however, the higher price tags on the record sleeves haven’t deterred customers.

“When I started” in 2016, he says, “there were multiple days when I would have no one in the store at all. Now, I’ll go days without having, like, one minute between a customer leaving and another coming in. On a weekend, I’ll probably have 20, 30 people in at a time.”

While that’s an encouraging sign for record stores, the current economic climate has left Johnson at Fringe & Fray feeling a little uneasy. She’s seen other small, independently owned boutiques — in Spokane and nationwide — struggle to regain their footing after the pandemic, and she worries that recent economic instability could start affecting more than eggs and imports.

“To the reader, I would say leave your house and support the small businesses that you love. They’re the heart of the city,” she says.

But, just to be safe, Fringe & Fray is also revisiting its pandemic pivots and looking at reopening its online shop. n

March 16

The reported global death toll stands at more than 2.6 million.

April 15

All people 16 and older become eligible for the vaccine.

Patty Allen styles a client’s hair in November 2020. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

PANDEMIC

Resilient Students

As schools address social impacts and learning deficiencies caused by the pandemic, educators are still figuring out how to reset attendance norms

BY COLTON RASANEN

When former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued a six-week shutdown in March 2020, students in Spokane had a day to prepare before moving to what was supposed to be a brief period of virtual learning. Six weeks quickly became the rest of the school year and much of the next.

High school seniors didn’t get to go to prom or to celebrate graduation at the First Interstate Center for the Arts with their peers like previous classes. Though Spokane Public Schools immediately began handing out food for students in need who relied on the breakfast and lunch they receive at school, the loss of in-person learning and access to resources was difficult for many students.

Many kids lost out on the social interaction that’s vital to their development, says David Crump, director of mental health services at Spokane Public Schools.

June 30

“They missed the sense of community that a school brings. They missed out on the interpersonal relationships with caring and loving staff and adults that can kind of provide support outside of the home, and they missed out on the social and emotional interaction as you normally develop,” Crump explains. “I truly believe that … face-to-face dynamic learning really helps kids.”

Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal says the pandemic proved the efficacy of in-person learning over virtual learning.

“If we learned one thing from the pandemic it’s that even if you had the best technology setup in the world, students should not be independently in front of screens for six hours a day trying to navigate their learning,” Reykdal says. “Human connection matters. Teachers are always going to be the core of this thing.”

Though Crump says some students thrived in

July 30

All businesses in Washington are allowed to reopen at 100% capacity, but masks are still required in all public places, inside and outside. Large events of 10,000-plus are capped at 75% capacity unless they verify vaccination status. Most major summer events have already been canceled or postponed.

an online learning environment, most suffered from “screen fatigue.”And while the pandemic affected students of every grade level, Crump says some in transitional periods felt the impact more than others.

“We had two groups that I saw that were impacted the most, and that was the littles that were never in school, and then all of a sudden when they [started] they were in second or third grade,” he says. “Then there was the group that was in fifth and sixth grade, and when they came back they started high school. They missed the whole middle school, which is a fun, beautiful, transitional, chaotic time of life.”

Although the pandemic was a catalyst for many of the social issues kids are dealing with today, Spokane Public Schools

Superintendent Adam Swinyard says the trend of isolation and disengagement in students has been around since the iPhone was released in 2007.

“We started to see some of the manifestations of that through chronic absenteeism and mental health issues, and we saw that trend building,” Swinyard says. “Unfortunately, the pandemic then introduced itself, and those trends just accelerated beyond what we could have ever imagined. As awful as the pandemic was, I think it has forced us to confront with a greater sense of urgency this trend of disengagement that we’re seeing amongst youth.”

Teachers and counselors in the district have worked to ensure students are caught up to where they should be, socially and academically, since they returned to the classroom at the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, but it can still be a challenge. Though there’s been growth since the return to in-person instruction, students have yet to surpass pre-pandemic achievements.

For example, in the 2018-19 school year 45.2% of students who took Washington’s Smarter Balanced Assessment (grades 3 through 8 and grade 10) in the district met state standards for math, according to the state superintendent’s annual school report card. In 2020-21 that dropped to 28.2% of students in those grades, then grew to 36.1% in 2023-24.

“Although there was certainly learning loss, the elasticity of learning and the ability for kids to recover from an academic standpoint was not as severe as what got promoted in the national narrative,” Swinyard says. “Kids are pretty resilient, and the kids that were behind in reading, we were catching those kids up, and they have recovered reasonably well, although there’s still work to do. I think what deteriorated faster than what we ever imagined, and what is much more difficult to repair, is norms.”

Students are struggling to get ready at home, and they’re struggling to make it to school on time. Some are even having trouble getting enough sleep to be ready for their first class. This has caused the levels of chronic absenteeism to skyrocket without a clear way to actually address it, Swinyard explains.

According to the state superintendent’s office, 17.1% of students were considered chronically absent in 2018-19 — i.e. they missed more than two days per month. By 2023-24, 32.3% of students in the district were chronically absent.

“When those routines got fractured, those family norms got fractured, I think what we found is you don’t just put those back together. It’s not like sitting down with a kid and showing them how to do two-digit multiplication,” Swinyard says. “If you looked across the country, you would see chronic absenteeism continuing to be a huge concern. [Chronically absent students] are still coming, but they’re missing a lot of school along the way, more than they ever have, and that is impacting them still.” n

Aug. 9

The first event returns to the Gorge Amphitheatre: Watershed Music Festival.

Inslee mandates that all state employees get fully vaccinated against COVID. On Aug. 18 the order expands to include public K-12 and higher education staff. (The order was ultimately rescinded on May 11, 2023.)

August-September 2021

Public schools in Washington return to full, in-person instruction.

Garfield Elementary teacher Lonna Gately hands a meal to 6-year-old Alex Hahn on March 19, 2020. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Over 6,000 properties in Spokane County are impacted by racially restrictive covenants, documents that limit who may live there according to race. Though outlawed in 1968 and currently unenforceable, the covenants remain in the chain of title for these properties. EWU’s Racial Covenants Project team is offering new workshops on identifying and modifying these racist property covenants. If all homeowners attend and bring photo ID, the county Auditor, Vicky Dalton, and a notary public, Nancy Embree, will help you complete a modification document that will strike the racially restrictive language from your deed.

Saturday March 29th, 2:30 PM : Spokane Public Library at Indian Trail 4909 West Barnes Rd, Spokane WA, 99208

Saturday April 5th, 2:30 PM : Spokane Valley Library 22 North Herald Rd, Spokane Valley WA, 99206

Public Health, Public Pressure

Public

health took center stage during the pandemic. Some things haven’t changed for the better

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

For many, public health was a relatively vague concept before the COVID-19 pandemic. Health departments or health districts were perhaps best known for inspecting restaurants, but few people outside these organizations had a deep understanding of the many roles that public health can play, including tracking and preventing the spread of diseases.

But public health officials, thrust into the spotlight as they worked to educate the public on rapidly changing information about the virus, quickly received backlash as they enforced rules to slow the spread in an effort to prevent the outbreak from reaching pandemic status. With states closing down businesses and banning gatherings, and health officials ordering people to stay home, stay distanced, mask up, get tested and quarantine if they got the virus, people’s patience for changing guidance rapidly waned.

September 2021 : DELTA VARIANT

Tracking the virus in those early days, as it went from an international concern to a local one, was “chaotic,” says Dr. Bob Lutz, who was the health officer at Spokane Regional Health District when the pandemic started.

“We were getting information from just a lot of different sources. You know, you were hearing about what was happening in China, you were getting regular updates from the CDC,” Lutz says. “Washington state DOH [Department of Health] mobilized its internal resources pretty quickly such that we were having daily calls to try to understand the complexity of this.”

Much of the early public health guidance was based on how officials thought the virus would act, i.e., like the flu, Lutz says. But that was not how it behaved. Plus, many of the things that local health officials took the blame for were actually requirements coming down from

Inland Northwest hospitals are flooded with COVID patients in the ICU with the delta variant. The wave affects many younger patients in their 20s, 30s and 40s who were put on ventilators and later died. Here’s an excerpt from Samantha Wohlfeil’s Sept. 23, 2021, cover story on the delta variant:

Idaho hospitals have entered crisis standards of care, with some patients getting beds in conference rooms, while others are experiencing staffing and supplies at a level usually considered unacceptable. Washington hospitals are also nearing a breaking point, with Spokane’s hospitals halting all nonemergency surgeries to free up capacity for the sickest patients.

While the COVID surge continues, cancer patients aren’t able to get tumors removed, people suffering heart attacks are sometimes waiting hours in the emergency room before they’re able to be seen, and people who’ve long been waiting for things like knee and back surgeries are being told it could be months before that can be scheduled.

Hospital staff who normally work in administrative

jobs are being asked to scrub toilets, clean

the state level.

“Local health can be more restrictive but not less restrictive than what DOH and the Governor’s Office requires,” Lutz says. “We were doing what we had to do based upon what we were told to do, and based upon the science that we had at the time.”

In the early fall of 2020, after months of extremely restricted activity, people did not like it when Lutz, as the health officer, shared that Spokane County was not heading in the right direction to hit the metrics laid out in former Gov. Jay Inslee’s four-phase reopening plan, he says.

“At the end of the day we really believed that we had everybody’s health foremost as a priority, and yes, there were economic challenges,” Lutz says.

But even if some choices could have been made differently — “we’re not infallible” — Lutz gives Inslee credit for truly wanting as many people to survive as possible, despite the criticism that he was being overzealous and destroying livelihoods.

“He really cared about the lives of Washingtonians,” Lutz says. “If you’re not alive, you’re not going to have a job.”

LESSONS LEARNED

The pandemic required public health to get really good at displaying massive amounts of data — think thousands of COVID results, from positive tests to hospitalizations to deaths — so Spokane Regional Health District’s epidemiology team improved its work on “informatics,” explains Mark Springer, who oversees the district’s “epi” team and communicable disease specialists.

“You know, a large outbreak prior to the pandemic might be 150 people,” Springer says. “But we were dealing with data sets with COVID of 30,000 to 40,000 unique patients.”

So the district and the state worked to build dashboards to quickly and clearly communicate that information with the community and health care providers, Springer says.

Since the pandemic, there have been two major outbreaks of communicable diseases in the Spokane area, with Shigella among the homeless population and pertussis, or whooping cough, among the broader community. Because of that data work during COVID, the team was more easily able to pull reports on those outbreaks, Springer says.

Spokane Health Officer Dr. Francisco Velázquez says the district has also maintained many of the relationships with community partners that were built and strengthened during the pandemic.

“If you think about it, for a large percentage of the population, public health was in the background and became front and center in the pandemic, which is actually a good thing,” Velázquez says. “I think a lot of people now have a better understanding of the significant presence of public health in many aspects of the community.”

The pandemic required the district to work closely

rooms and work cafeteria shifts to ease the burden on overworked nurses and support services staff.

Meanwhile, health care workers, already exhausted from working through a pandemic for 18plus months, are now dealing with the worst rate of admissions and deaths yet. Nurses are being asked to work extra days. Some aren’t taking more than a 10-minute lunch break in a 16-hour shift, while others make sure to drink most of their water for the day before they start work so they don’t have to run to the bathroom later on.

“Imagine caring for 750 people dying over the last 18 months,” says Peg Currie, chief operating officer for Providence in Eastern Washington, in an update to reporters. “That’s equivalent to [more than] five 737 plane crashes in Spokane alone.”

“I don’t think they’ve had a success story in three or four weeks,” Dr. Ben Arthurs, MultiCare Deaconess’ ICU medical director told the Inlander at the time. In other words, people were arriving at the hospital so sick, they weren’t making it.

Spokane Regional Health District faced new challenges throughout the pandemic.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

with groups like the chamber of commerce, event planners and schools, Velázquez says.

“We enhanced the collaboration and relationships that were there to a level that is useful and practical today,” he says.

BECOMING POLITICAL

Still, public pushback on everything from business restrictions to masks and vaccines resulted in public health landing in the political crosshairs in recent years.

Some communities fired their public health officials, as Spokane did with Lutz in October 2020. (Lutz has an ongoing wrongful termination lawsuit against the health district.)

“Public health became politicized,” Lutz says. “That’s why you saw so many high level officials, public health officials, either step away or resign or retire, or in my case, get fired. I think it’s a challenging time for public health going forward.”

Skeptics of well-established science have made their way to the highest levels of our health system. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken skeptic of the measles vaccine, is now the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services; meanwhile, a measles outbreak is currently affecting hundreds of people in Texas.

Simultaneously, states across the country are taking power away from local public health officials, and health offices at the local, state and federal level have largely returned to a fragmented, decentralized approach, where there’s little coordination, Lutz says.

“We saw some coordination during the pandemic response, but lessons learned have become lessons forgotten,” Lutz says. “I truly hope at the end of the day that there will be some lessons that we learned that will make us stronger when we face another pandemic.” n

Dr. Bob Lutz

PANDEMIC

For the region’s individual artists and arts organizations, the ability to pivot during the pandemic was limited. Moving their work online was one option, and many did so in one form or another, but virtual platforms weren’t viable replacements for the live, in-person experience of visual art, music or theater.

The most salient memory for Melissa Huggins, who was executive director of Spokane Arts until mid-2023, was “the sheer panic and dismay that everyone in the sector was feeling” when COVID shutdowns began.

“Our staff at Spokane Arts felt a tremendous responsibility to jump in and figure out how to help in whatever ways we could,” Huggins says. “So Spokane Arts and the Arts Commission advocated pretty strongly to the city of Spokane to allocate both CARES and ARPA dollars.”

One of the organization’s biggest goals was to ear-

Art in the Time of Coronavirus

Reminding people of the power of creativity, Spokane Arts helped keep the art scene alive

BY E.J. IANNELLI

mark 1% of the city’s federal American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, allocation for cultural sector relief. But it took a sustained and concerted effort.

“What we saw during the pandemic was that everyone sought out some form of art. They started binge watching more shows on television, listening to more podcasts, playing more records at home,” she says.

“When certain other outlets for community and creativity were shut off to them, those were the things that everyone leaned on.

“And so for the cultural sector,” she continues, “it was always so ironic to have to fight so hard to convince everyone that it’s worth investing in the arts.”

Over the course of the pandemic, Spokane Arts ultimately helped administer and distribute around $440,000 in funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief,

and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act; $920,000 from ARPA; and around $990,000 in Spokane Arts Grant Awards. On top of that, the organization awarded roughly $137,000 in emergency and support grants from sources like the city of Spokane and the Downtown Spokane Partnership.

All told, 521 individuals, businesses and nonprofits in the cultural sector received some degree of funding from Spokane Arts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Huggins says that their resourcefulness and ingenuity magnified what the dollars alone were able to do.

“People figured out how to have backyard concerts that were COVID safe and to still make art and create community in even more innovative and DIY ways than artists in Spokane normally need to do,” Huggins says. “That was really cool to see.” n

Building a healthier future together

For 140 years, we’ve been partnering locally to support communities in the ways they need it most. Because healthy communities need more than health care.

As executive director of Spokane Arts, Melissa Huggins steered the organization through the pandemic. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

spokanesports.org

Ghost Town to Boomtown

Q&A: Downtown Spokane Partnership President Emilie Cameron talks about how the pandemic changed the heart of the city

BY ELIZA BILLINGHAM

Five years ago this week, your favorite bar closed, that concert you had tickets for got canceled, and your go-to restaurant hadn’t figured out how to ramp up takeout yet. Chances are, all of those emptied venues were downtown. The heart of Spokane became a ghost town, and we’re still grappling with the economic, social and psychological impacts of that time.

To help us make sense of it, the Inlander interviewed Emilie Cameron, president of the Downtown Spokane Partnership. She offered unique insights into how downtown Spokane survived the pandemic and where it’s headed now. Her responses have been edited for length and clarity. Read a longer version of this Q&A at Inlander.com.

Sept. 20

Spokane County has had 814 COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic, North Idaho has had 444 deaths.

INLANDER: What were the biggest impacts that COVID had on downtown Spokane?

CAMERON: Well, I think the most obvious is with the closure of business, just an overnight drop in activity in downtown.

I did not get to Spokane until 2022, but I was in California, and it sounds like we were in very similar conditions. For a long time, downtown was purposefully the place for people to gather. Then, COVID created a fear of gathering. You often think about the tangible piece of people not being here and the economic impact of that, but then there’s the intangible part of, “What does that mean psychologically?” when you’re being told not to physically be together.

Overnight disappearance of foot traffic left empty streets that also created conditions where negative activity could flourish. I can’t tell you off the top of my head if homeless counts increased or decreased, but I think it definitely became more noticeable.

Oct. 14 Nov. 26

Inslee requires people attending large events (1,000+ indoors, 10,000+ for outdoors) to prove they’re vaccinated for COVID or tested negative for the virus within the previous 72 hours. The World Health Organization announces the omicron variant.

Five years later, is downtown Spokane still feeling any impacts from COVID?

Probably for some years to come, urban centers will continue in the recovery efforts — the most obvious being, what does the future of work look like downtown? About 70% of the employees who were in downtown pre-pandemic have returned to downtown today. It is encouraging because there are many downtowns that have not reached that level yet.

But it also creates opportunity as we think about, what does the next generation of downtown Spokane look like? Who are the tenants? I think we’re seeing a very strong appetite again around an entrepreneurial ecosystem. That’s something that you saw out of the Great Recession — people leaning in again to what their passions were. We’re seeing that really start to take off again.

For housing, we’re continuing to see new projects. Because of our architecture, the style of buildings we have, we have the “right bones,” so to speak, to convert office space

Feb. 28

Washington, California and Oregon announce mask mandates will be lifted by March 11 except in health care, long-term care and correctional settings.

Downtown Spokane was nearly empty on March 18, 2020, after Washington’s initial COVID shutdown started.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTOS

Emilie Cameron

into apartments. That doesn’t make it easy and doesn’t make it cheap, but I think you’re seeing an appetite not just among developers, but you’re really seeing an appetite among consumers who want to live in those types of spaces.

Do you have any idea of how much money downtown lost during shutdown?

I don’t know that I can answer that question. But I can tell you some numbers that are important to think about: Roughly 20% of the city’s sales tax is generated downtown — that’s over $1 billion annually. About 15% of the city’s total workforce works downtown, and about 12% of the city’s total businesses are downtown.

It’s even more impressive when you realize that downtown is only 0.7% of the city’s total landmass. It’s generating this important revenue that supports necessary public services in every single neighborhood throughout the city.

How does the experience of the pandemic transform your vision for the future?

It’s an interesting question — what is resiliency and how do you ever prepare for something like this again? We have to recognize that this was a phenomenal event. You probably could never really truly be prepared for it. However, the idea of resiliency is something that we’re constantly thinking about.

Everyone felt the impact of COVID, but as a neighborhood, downtown was disproportionately impacted. The attempt to restart it does require intention and commitment and champions.

There’s a lot of evidence that shows that when you are emotionally invested in your place, you’re a happier person. Your community is healthier. It’s more connected. Downtown is crucial to that. n

Oct. 28

Inslee announces all COVID emergency orders are lifted.

THEATER

Intergalactic Peace and Love

Popular anime Pretty Guardian

Sailor Moon tours the nation with a unique musical experience

BY COLTON RASANEN

Fighting evil by moonlight / Winning love by daylight / Never running from a real fight / She is the one named Sailor Moon

If you hummed along as you read those lyrics, this story is for you.

On Thursday, March 27, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live is taking the stage at Spokane’s First Interstate Center for the Arts. The musical experience exemplifies the very essence of Japanese pop culture, from its beloved source material to its unique production.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has been around since the early 1990s and is what’s known as a magical girl anime. The wildly popular Japanese series follows main character Usagi Tsukino, aka Sailor Moon, and her sailor guardian friends as they fight other celestial beings hellbent on some type of galactic takeover.

“Everybody has grown up seeing Sailor Moon as a Japanese animation or a comic, so this coming to life in this way, being still portrayed by a Japanese actor, is

something that I feel like is resonating with people,” musical producer Makoto Matsuda says via a translator. “We are excited to be leading the way so others can follow our footsteps, but we take this responsibility with excitement and honor.”

The live shows have all the makings of a traditional

an original anime and manga.

“[A 2.5D musical] is based on the idea of bringing the two-dimensional world of manga and animation, or even gaming, to life onstage. It’s an in-between world of expressing the 2D in the best way of 3D,” Matsuda says. “This is the first time a Japanese production [of Sailor

“...there’s a lot of fighting and action, but it is about how important it is to protect the precious peace of the world.”

musical, but Matsuda says the over-the-top choreography and high-tech visuals warrant the subtitle “Super Live.”

And unlike traditional musicals, he says the audience leans much younger and is more excited for an exciting production. The show is also known as a 2.5D musical, a type of live production that’s become popular in Japan based on

Moon] has made a 21-city U.S. tour, so we’re kind of a pioneer on its own for being able to do this.”

There’s lots of action in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, but at its core the story is about how friendship can change the world.

The Sailor Guardians strike their signature pose.

NAOKO TAKEUCHI • PNP / “PRETTY GUARDIAN SAILOR MOON” THE SUPER LIVE PRODUCTION COMMITTEE 2025 PHOTOS

“The action and the fighting is about friendship. It’s about love and trust and the building of the human connection between those characters,” Matsuda says. “This is a message about peace and how there’s a lot of fighting and action, but it is about how important it is to protect the precious peace of the world.”

Bringing that vibe to life can be hard, but the show’s choreographer Satomi Toma has been choreographing live shows like this one for a decade. Her job is to create a production that wows live audiences with new, exciting choreography while also remaining faithful to the spirit of the show.

Part of that means choreographing complicated fight scenes where the protagonists are wearing high heels and their beautiful, yet uncomfortable, sailor uniforms. She also needs to maneuver each character around the musical’s many moving parts.

“I care about the links between how it appears with the projection and other elements that are visually happening around as well, and to add a little bit of the sense of joyfulness,” Toma says via translator. “To bring it all together with all these in-between lines of making it a realistic fight and something that is attractive to be shown on stage is something that I care about.”

She also works to incorporate the sense of wonder and beauty that she’s come to love about the world of Sailor Moon into her choreography.

“Once I got involved in this production, I had the opportunity to reread the original comics and original manga, and I was so moved and impressed by this elegant line of beauty,” Toma says. “It’s how her hair moves, or how her skirt flitters, and like that sense of awe is something that I really want to keep in the production as well.”

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon began and finished airing before Riko Tanaka was born. Though she missed the opportunity to watch it live, she remembers renting episodes of the show in her early childhood.

“I was 3 or 4 years old when I first came across Sailor Moon, and I think I saw it in animation first,” Tanaka says via translator. “It was at that age when you kind of played the character with your friends.”

Twenty years ago her favorite character to play was the green sailor guardian who possessed superhuman strength, Sailor Jupiter. Today, Tanaka is a professional actress playing Sailor Moon in the North American tour of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live

Still early in her career, the 22-year-old says portraying the show’s beloved main character is a labor of love that may well spell her rise to fame. Matsuda, the show’s producer, says in Japan it’s every young actress’ dream to play Sailor Moon.

“This is a role that has been very important even within this industry, so my fellow actors who understand the significance of the role have been so encouraging, and they have been celebrating with me of this as my achievement as well,” Tanaka says. “Now that I’m portraying the character, I feel so much love from throughout the entire world, everybody loves Sailor Moon, and I feel that so much playing that character myself.” n

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: The Super Live • Thu, March 27 at 7:30 pm • $30-$85 • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • firstinterstatecenter.org

BEER PIONEERS

ON TAP

Through local collabs and prestigious awards, No-Li has helped put Spokane on the map as an internationally recognized brewing center

How do you put a city on the map? No-Li was already asking that question when Spokane’s local craft breweries were still coming into their own.

“For us, it was always about creating validation for this city that it could be a beer center — not just in the Northwest, but across America or the world,” says No-Li founder and owner John Bryant.

Back in 2012, global renown for Spokane as a craft beer hotspot sounded wildly ambitious. But Bryant knew that the city already had a reputation for punching well above its weight. If the Zags could do it on the basketball court, why couldn’t local breweries?

Yet cultivating a worldclass craft beer scene isn’t something you do alone. It takes the passion and support of a community.

Bryant takes inspiration from some of Spokane’s upand-coming breweries, like Whistle Punk Brewing. “In addition to many of their delicious beers, Matt Hanson and his father Craig make the best Czech Pils on the planet,” says Bryant. “ ey represent the spirit of craft brewing and community. ey make us all better.”

Whistle Punk’s co-founder Matt Hanson says that in his brewery’s early days No-Li’s collaborative spirit was a catalyst and a resource for smaller startups like theirs.

“ ey’re the originators in town, right? ey have been the ones to do things rst in the Spokane area. And so they created a lot of shared knowledge. Plus, as our biggest brewery, they do a lot to bring attention to Spokane.”

at attention comes in many forms — most visibly through sought-after industry awards. With a total of 190 (and counting) to its name, No-Li has been America’s most decorated brewery for several years running when it comes to international distinctions. In the past few months alone, European Beer Star gave No-Li’s

SQUATCH SEZ!

Ball has recently won top honors at international beer competitions in Europe and Japan.

Wrecking Ball a coveted silver medal for Best Imperial Stout. Just before that, Wrecking Ball took the bronze medal in the 2024 Brussels Beer Challenge and gold at Japan’s International Beer Cup.

No-Li’s extensive lineup of IPAs — including Big Juicy, Born & Raised, Imperial Squatch Juicy Haze and Cascade Fog Hazy — also racked up awards on multiple continents throughout 2024. And No-Li isn’t alone in enjoying that success. rough the Craft Brewing Certi cation program that the brewhouse helped establish at Eastern Washington University, No-Li and EWU garnered a bronze medal for their E Dubbel U Belgian Ale at the 2023 Asia International Beer Competition in Singapore. It was the rst medal ever shared by a university in an international brewing contest.

“ at brings a lot of eyes to the culture of brewing that’s being cultivated in Spokane,” says Hanson. “Anytime a brewery like No-Li wins an award, it just shows the high-quality level of beer we’re making here.”

”MattHansonandhisfatherCraig Hanson,makethebestCzechPilson theplanet,inadditiontomanyof theirdeliciousbeers.Theyrepresent thespiritofcraftbrewingand community.Theymakeusallbetter.”

— JOHN BRYANT

In 2024, No-Li racked up 35 awards at international contests in Germany, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Japan, Brussels, the UK and New York. And that’s not even counting the domestic and statewide honors that they bring home to Spokane each year.

When they’re not saving the day, the Sailor Guardians are regular school girls.

No-Li’s Wrecking

Whistle Punk Brewing’s Matt Hanson

MARCH MADNESS ALWAYS ZAGGING

Heading into the NCAA Tournament, 2024-25 Gonzaga team is a dangerous enigma that may be (finally) finding its identity

ANALYSIS BY SETH SOMMERFELD

B“ut how good is Gonzaga, really?” That’s been the implied question always bandied about by outsiders over the past few decades as the Gonzaga men’s basketball team has gone from a tiny Jesuit school whose name nobody could pronounce to one of the winningest programs in the NCAA.

“Sure, the Zags won a lot of games… but the West Coast Conference is easy.”

“Sure, the Zags won a lot of games… but they can’t match talent with teams that have future NBA players.”

“Sure, the Zags won a lot of games… but they’ve still never won the Tournament.”

The bar always keeps moving to try to diminish the unreal accomplishments that GU head coach Mark Few and his teams have achieved.

But the 2024-25 Gonzaga season has been a bit

different. There weren’t a slew of major nonconference victories. There have been a handful of brutal choke job losses. Gonzaga wasn’t even in contention for the regular season WCC title heading into the final weekend.

As the Bulldogs set to depart for their 26th straight Big Dance, it’s still hard to pin down what defines this team. So when that query has been raised this year, it’s coming less from the outside world and more from Zags fans who ask the question with no malice behind it.

“Sure, the Zags won a lot of games… but how good is Gonzaga, really?”

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee’s answer to that question was a resounding “not great.” And while fans might bemoan the draw, it’s hard to fault the NCAA when the Zags only beat

three NCAA Tournament teams this year, and none were teams the committee held high: 7-seed St. Mary’s, 9-seed Baylor, and play-in game 11-seed San Diego State. The lack of marquee wins means that even if the 8-seed Zags win their opener against a feisty Georgia team, they will almost certainly need to beat the 1-seed Big 12 champion Houston Cougars to keep their streak of nine straight Sweet 16s alive. Perhaps what the committee saw was as simple as this: It’s March and it’s still not clear if this Gonzaga team has an identity. This might be the most enigmatic Gonzaga team in Mark Few’s entire tenure as head coach.

While pretty much every other fan base would kill to have the 2024-25 Gonzaga season be their “down” year, perhaps the thing that made the season most frustrating is that we saw just how good these Zags could be on opening night. While Baylor ended up not being elite, Gonzaga’s

Along with his wicked dunks, Khalif Battle has made nearly 93% of his free throws this season, which ranks third in the NCAA.

Braden Huff joined Graham Ike in the starting lineup for the season finale win against St. Mary’s and scored 18.

MARCH MADNESS

trouncing of the Bears 101-63 at Spokane Arena surely had some fans preemptively booking Final Four tickets. We know exactly how good this team can be because we saw the talent fully clicking on night one.

While Ryan Nembhard and Graham Ike have mostly been consistent, everything else around them has sometimes felt like fitting square pegs into round holes. Sometimes Nolan Hickman is a deadeye shooter and lockdown defender, other times he’s passive on offense and incredibly lazy on defensive rotations. When he’s hot, Khalif Battle is a pure bucket with swag that few Zags ever can match, but when he’s off (he has 10 games scoring in single digits) Gonzaga’s offense can seem lost. Michael Ajayi was one of the best players in the WCC last year, leading the conference in scoring while grabbing the second-most rebounds, but he’s looked lost almost his entire tenure at GU. Ben Gregg can sometimes make defenses pay for ignoring him, but more often than not just feels like a replacement-level big eating up minutes. Dusty Stromer has seen his minutes dwindle, while Emmanuel Innocenti has provided a late season defensive boost, but has yet to find his shot. Braden Huff might be the third-best player on the team as his efficient offense jumps off the screen, but he’s been buried behind Ike and Gregg on the depth chart, ranking eighth on the team in minutes.

It’s a Zags team that was always in flux, as evidenced by Few’s tinkering with his lineup throughout the season — something longtime watchers of the Bulldogs will recognize as a wild anomaly for a coach who almost never mixes up his starters.

...continued on next page

(Big) Dance Partners

Assessing Gonzaga’s opening NCAA matchup versus Georgia and potential future foes

BY SETH SOMMERFELD

GONZAGA BULLDOGS (25-7, 8-seed)

VS. GEORGIA BULLDOGS

(20-12, 9-seed)

Thursday, March 20 at 1:35 on TBS (Wichita, Kansas)

It’s Northwest Bulldogs versus Southern Bulldogs to open up Gonzaga’s 26th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance. Georgia is on the opposite end of that spectrum, as this is UGA’s first time to the Big Dance in a decade. In fact, Georgia only has one win in the NCAA Tournament since Mark Few took over as Gonzaga’s coach in 1999… and that win was vacated by the NCAA due to a rules violation.

The main reason Bulldogs from Athens are still playing this time is Asa Newell. The forward might be the best freshman in the country outside of Duke’s National Player of the Year favorite, Cooper Flagg. Newell is an explosive athlete (he’s a projected Top 10 pick in the NBA Draft) and an absolute terror on the offensive glass. He didn’t look like a kid despite being a 19-yearold in the absolutely loaded SEC, which sent a record 14 teams (out of 16!) to the NCAAs this year.

The brutal SEC schedule means Georgia is used to playing top-flight opponents. They notably knocked off title favorite Florida less than a month ago and also

boast wins over St. John’s and Kentucky. On the other hand, playing in the SEC gave them way, way more chances to pick up big wins, and they got a higher seed in the NCAA Tournament than they did in the SEC Tournament (No. 11). Gonzaga should win the game considering their overall experience, talent and coaching advantages (Gonzaga is -6.5 point favorites), but looking past UGA would be a massive mistake considering how few big games the Zags have closed out this year. Per the famed analytics formula at KenPom.com, Georgia has the 34th-best team in the country (54th offensively, 24th defensively), while Gonzaga ranks 9th (9th offensively, 29th defensively).

The game will likely be determined by how much Gonzaga point guard Ryan Nembhard can exploit the clear advantage he has as a distributor (he averages 9.8 assists per game while Georgia averages 12.5 as a team) and whether Graham Ike and Braden Huff can use their experience and skill advantages to slow down Newell.

POTENTIAL SECOND ROUND OPPONENT: 1-seed Houston

If Gonzaga can handle its business against Georgia, then we’d get maybe the most hyped matchup of the second round on Saturday when the Zags would almost certainly face the Big 12 champion Houston Cougars. The team from Texas has amassed a wildly impressive 30-4 record while ranking second in the country in defensive efficiency and 10th in offensive efficiency, according to KenPom. Bottom line: Scoring against Houston is hard

Three of the Cougars’ losses have come to teams that earned 1-, 2- or 3-seeds (Auburn, Alabama, Texas Tech) by a combined total of 11 points. The silver lining for Gonzaga is that Houston’s other loss was to San Diego State, a team the Zags pretty easily beat by 13 on the road. GU has the talent to keep the Sweet 16 streak alive with a big upset, but it would likely take an uncharacteristically good shooting effort from behind the 3-point line to declaw the Cougars.

POSSIBLE MIDWEST REGIONAL OPPONENTS: 4-seed Purdue / 5-seed Clemson then 2-seed Tennessee / 3-seed Kentucky

If — massive IF — the Zags can find a way to knock off Houston, there’s a pretty clear and realistic path to winning the Midwest Region and heading to the Final Four. While additional upsets are possible, the Zags would likely face Purdue or Clemson in the Sweet 16. The Purdue Boilermakers no longer have the giant Zach Edey, who led them to a title game last season, but still boast the point guard who finished second in assists nationally (trailing Nembhard) in Braden Smith. Clemson also had tourney luck last year making the Elite Eight, and led by senior guard Chase Hunter, the Tigers are the only team to beat Duke since November. If GU finds its way to the Elite Eight, they might be staring down an SEC foe in Tennessee or Kentucky. Tennessee has one of the best defenses in the country, while Kentucky’s offense is elite. UK beat the Vols the two times they played, and Gonzaga had an 18-point lead on Kentucky in the second half of their December showdown in Seattle before completely choking the game away. n

Ryan Nembhard logged 325 assists this season, tops in the nation and the 10th-best assist year in NCAA history.

ERICK DOXEY PHOTOS

Heck, it wasn’t until the final game before the Big Dance that Few even tried starting his two best big guys — Ike and Huff — together (an obvious move from the start of the season, but, again, Few is often lineup stubborn).

Trying to make sense of this Zags team often felt like a baffling endeavor. The Zags were second in the country in scoring per game (86.6), and advanced analytics still love the Gonzaga offense, but no fans would say they measure up to the best offenses Few has coached in terms of the eye test. They can still score in bunches — especially when point guard Nembhard gets in transition — but they’ve mostly been terrible shooting from deep (34.4%, 155th in the country). They have Nembhard feeding two of the most efficient post scorers in the country (Ike and Huff), but they somehow often go ice cold with that much talent on the floor (I hand-counted 22 stretches of 3+ minute scoring droughts over 33 games). The defense has also been a rollercoaster: They’ve made squads like St. Mary’s look offensively inept, but they’ve also absolutely gotten toasted by non-tourney teams like Santa Clara.

GZags Got Stats

A look at the stats that have defined Gonzaga’s 2024-25 season BY

SETH SOMMERFELD

325

Ryan Nembhard’s assist total this season, which ranks No. 1 in the country. It’s the all-time single season record for both Gonzaga and the West Coast Conference.

The number of games where coach Mark Few decided to start both of Gonzaga’s best big men — Graham Ike and Braden Huff. Unsurprisingly, that lineup worked out great, sparking the Zags to notch their biggest win of the season: beating St. Mary’s in the WCC Championship Game.

onzaga’s NCAA Tournament hopes will rely on the flashes of greatness showing up during the opening rounds. Gonzaga began its long rise to the top of the college basketball landscape with the Bulldogs the ultimate underdogs. Those turn-of-the-millenium teams overcame talent differences through team basketball centered on grit and heart. Straight up? This year’s Gonzaga team is more talented than those teams of lore. But talent will only take you so far. It’s time to get back to that “nobody believes in us” mentality. For their bite to be as vicious as their bark, these Bulldogs need to find that underdog heart. It’s time to see if the Cinderella slipper still fits. n

13.2%

Nembhard has 13.2% more assists than the second-leading distributor in the country, Purdue’s Braden Smith, who has a total of 287.

#10

Nembhard’s current rank for all-time assists in a single college basketball season. While Mark Wade’s all-time record (406) is out of reach, he could move into the Top 5 with a nine assist game in the opening round of the tourney.

92.9%

Khalif Battle free-throw percentage this season (117-126), which ranks third in the NCAA, and could be vital if the Zags have to hit shots from the charity line in a close tournament game.

32.4

Graham Ike’s player efficiency rating (an advanced stat that attempts to calculate how impactful a player is in the minutes they play). Ike ranks third in the country in PER and is also near the top in other nerdier benchmarks like win shares per 40 minutes (fifth) and box score plus/minus (seventh).

Double-digit losses this season for Gonzaga. All of their losses have been close, suggesting that the team can hang with most anyone in the country.

The number of scoring droughts of 3+ minutes that the Zags had this season. If you’ve watched the team and been like, “Why do I feel like this offense isn’t as elite as the advanced metrics say?” it’s probably because when they’re off, they’re really off.

Gonzaga’s national rank both overall and in offensive efficiency according to the formula used by the prominent college hoops analytics site KenPom.com. (The Zags defensive efficiency ranks 29th.)

0-121

The record of teams in games where they scored under 60 points, shot under 10% on 15+ three point attempts, and got outrebounded by 15… until Gonzaga broke that streak with those dreadful stats in the WCC Championship Game against St. Mary’s.

Consecutive Sweet 16s reached by GU. The all-time record is 14 by UCLA back when the legendary John Wooden was coaching the team.

Wins by single digits this season for the Zags (Arizona State, Pepperdine, San Francisco, St. Mary’s), none of which came down to the final few possessions. The Zags haven’t won a downto-the-wire game all season. The other 21 wins for the Zags were by double digits.

Graham Ike is one of the most efficient post players in the country, ranking third in the Player Efficiency Rating (PER). ERICK DOXEY PHOTO

WINNING COLORS CHALLENGE THRU MAR 29

Rep the Zags with a customized Camas Rewards card. Snag yours today and ﬁnd out how you can win up to $100 Reward Play or bonus entries in our Mercedes-Benz giveaway! D Details at northernquest.com/winningcolors

MARCH MADNESS International X Factors

Newcomers Emmanuel Innocenti and Ismaila Diagne provide late-season spark that has Gonzaga surging in March

BY WILL MAUPIN

When Gonzaga opened the season with a 101-63 thumping of preseason No. 8 Baylor on Nov. 4 at Spokane Arena, it was the usual suspects who garnered the most attention. Familiar names like Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman and Graham Ike stuffed the stat sheet. New high-profile transfers Khalif Battle and Michael Ajayi were positive contributors. Dusty Stromer and Braden Huff played big minutes off the bench.

Emmanuel Innocenti and Ismaila Diagne combined for just six points in three minutes apiece. Despite the extremely lopsided score, they barely saw the floor. But recently those two international Bulldogs have become a spark that’s helped salvage a season that went a little off the rails in the months since that game against Baylor.

After back-to-back losses to Oregon State and Santa Clara in mid-January — in which Innocenti played a grand total of two minutes — the Italian sophomore

transfer from Tarleton State moved into the starting lineup for three games.

While he’s now back to coming off the bench, Innocenti has cemented himself in the rotation as a defensive stalwart. As a freshman at Tarleton State last season, the Italian was named to the WAC All-Defensive Team. And while he couldn’t find minutes early, his presence was much needed for Gonzaga after giving up a shocking 101 points at home (the McCarthey Athletic Center record for a visiting team) in the loss to Santa Clara.

Since Innocenti moved into the rotation, Gonzaga rates as the 14th-most-efficient defensive unit in the sport, according to statistician Bart Torvik. Prior to that, Torvik’s stats show Gonzaga as the 59th defensive team in the country.

Innocenti’s role as a defensive-minded player who does little in the scoring column — he’s scored zero points in half of the games he’s played since moving into the rotation — is reminiscent of another small forward

from Gonzaga’s past: Mike Hart.

As a senior in 2013, Hart moved into the starting lineup midway through the season and helped lead Gonzaga to the first No. 1 seed in program history.

It’s not just that their roles are similar, but their paths to playing time are as well. Head coach Mark Few rarely tinkers with his lineups as dramatically as he has this season with the insertion of Innocenti.

Since that 2013 team, this is only the fourth time that Few has significantly altered his rotation midseason for noninjury reasons. It happened last year when Ben Gregg replaced Stromer as a starter, in 2021 when Andrew Nembhard took a starting spot from Anton Watson, and in 2020 when Joel Ayayi replaced Admon Gilder.

The difference now is that those previous three situations involved players who suddenly got more minutes were already firmly in the regular rotation. Innocenti was, from a playing time perspective, an end-of-the-bench afterthought until late January.

While not as impactful on the court as Innocenti, fellow newcomer Ismalia Diagne has provided a spark down the stretch as well.

The 7-foot-tall freshman from Senegal came to Gonzaga with a strong basketball background. Prior to Spokane, Diagne was in Spain playing for Real Madrid, one of the top professional clubs in Europe. Despite that pedigree, the big man struggled to crack the rotation.

Diagne has appeared in just nine games this season, the first six of which were blowout wins. But he’s now played in three of Gonzaga’s last four games and logged a career-high 18 minutes in the regular season finale against Santa Clara.

That game was an aberration, as foul trouble forced Few to go deep into his bench. Diagne bailed out his struggling teammates, scoring 9 points on 4-of-4 shooting and grabbing 4 rebounds in the game, drawing praise from Gonzaga legend Adam Morrison.

“He’s always happy, he’s always smiling, he’s always joking,” Morrison said on his podcast, The Perimeter. “Guys always gravitate to those types of players, so when they do get their chance it kind of hypes everybody up.”

Diagne’s energy off the floor was also visible during the WCC Tournament. In the semifinal against San Francisco, in an uncomfortably close game, Diagne got right up in the face of both Ben Gregg and Graham Ike during a timeout.

It wasn’t aggressive, it was inspirational.

He played just three minutes in that game, but Diagne’s presence on the bench and his connection with his teammates was palpable even through the TV screen.

When the season began in November, Innocenti and Diagne weren’t thought to be keys to Gonzaga’s success, but both players have left their mark on this team and helped to stabilize the season. n

Women’s Tournament Comes to Spokane

While none of the regional schools’ women’s programs made the NCAA Tournament this season, there’s still one big reason for those in the Inland Northwest to get hyped for the Women’s Tourney: The Spokane Regionals taking place next weekend will send two teams to the Final Four. Two Sweet 16 games apiece will take place on Friday and Saturday, March 28 and 29, while Elite Eight showdowns will tipoff on Sunday and Monday, March 30 and 31.

To say the Spokane Regionals are filled with talent would be an understatement as four of the top five players in the country

might be suiting up in Spokane: USC guard JuJu Watkins, UConn guard Paige Bueckers, UCLA center Lauren Betts and LSU forward Aneesah Morrow.

The big-time teams in play include overall No. 1 seed UCLA, their fierce rival and fellow 1-seed USC (who beat the Bruins two out of three matchups this year), perennial juggernaut 2-seed UConn (who could face USC in the Elite Eight; the last time they played it was the highest-rated women’s

game of the year), the women’s game top villain (coach Kim Mulkey) and her 3-seed LSU squad, and contenders like 2-seed NC State and 4-seed Baylor and Kentucky.

NCAA TOURNAMENT SPOKANE REGIONAL

March 28-31

Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. $28-$69 per session, spokanearena.com

There will also be community events tangential to the Women’s Tournament, including Spokane Sports Fan Fest Block Party at Riverfront Park’s Butterfly on Saturday, March 29 (noon-5pm) and the Beyond the Baseline Women’s Panel at Montvale Event Center on Tuesday, March 25 at 5:30 pm. (SETH SOMMERFELD)

According to statistician Bart Torvik, Gonzaga went from the 59th best defense to 14th after Emmanuel Innocenti joined the rotation.

ERICK DOXEY PHOTO

DRINK LOCAL

GRAIN TO GLASS

The Inland Northwest is becoming a craft malt powerhouse, one batch at a time

BY DORA SCOTT

When beer lovers in the Inland Northwest order a pint at a local craft brewery, they might not realize the grains used to make what’s inside their glass were probably not only grown nearby but also malted by a world-class, local craft malthouse.

During the recent 2025 Craft Maltsters Guild Malt Cup, the only international competition of its kind, malts produced by three Inland Northwest-based malthouses — Cascadia Malts, LINC Malt, and Cold Stream Malt and Grain — all took home awards.

Malting is the process of germinating, drying and roasting raw barley or other cereal grains, which is essential for brewing beer and distilling spirits. While historically brewers have malted their own grain, the rise of commercial malthouses with large-scale production capacity made it more cost-effective to buy as well as get consistent products.

The Malt Cup judges malt quality through a rigorous three-round process. The first round involves labs analyzing the quality of each malt. The second and third rounds are sensory, and judges perform hot steep evaluations prior to the annual Craft Malt Conference in Colorado. The top three malts in various categories are then awarded gold, silver or bronze medals.

On the flight back to Spokane at the beginning of March with three awards between them, Cascadia Malts founder Corey Freuen and Brian Estes, the malt enterprise director of LINC Malt, got to talking about how to raise awareness of the Inland Northwest’s local craft malt industry.

“I think people want to support local. They really do, but sometimes there are barriers in the way, and one of those barriers is cost,” Freuen says. “Slowly, I think it’s about raising awareness and hoping that people decide to

value it more.”

For years, malting has been dominated by large corporations that source from growers across the U.S. Mirroring the craft beer boom of the last two decades, however, smaller malthouses have popped up as an attempt to connect brewers and distillers to local farmers, making malting a craft industry, too.

“I am not aware, outside of maybe Colorado, where there are a good number of malthouses,” Estes says. “It’s pretty unique to have such a geographic density of awardees” in the Inland Northwest, he continues. “I think that speaks to the character of the grain that we get to work with and then I think also the quality of the malting.”

Much like how wine has a terroir, “Washington is uniquely situated for grain,” Freuen says. “It’s because most grain is grown without irrigation, it’s dry farmed, so you need a wet spring so that those roots can grow deep

Malted cereal grains are essential to brewing. YOUNG KWAK PHOTOS

and get an early boost. But then you need a pretty dry summer so that you don’t get disease growth.”

At malthouses like Cascadia, LINC and Cold Stream, raw grains are first soaked to increase moisture content and activate natural enzymes. The grain is then transferred to a controlled environment where it begins to germinate and grow little rootlets, which breaks down the cell walls and makes sugars and enzymes needed for fermentation more accessible.

The germinated grain is finally dried in a kiln and roasted to develop different flavors and colors, with lighter roasts used for brewing beer like pilsners and darker roasts for stouts and porters.

Cascadia Malts’ warehouse is located next to Freuen’s home in Nine Mile Falls. The company traces its roots to his family’s farm, McKay Seed Co., which has been cultivating grain since the 1870s near Grand Coulee Dam in Central Washington’s Columbia Plateau.

Not a farmer himself, but raised as a city boy in Spokane, Freuen wanted to be more involved in the family venture. Ten years ago, he thought about opening a brewery and making beer using his family’s grain.

LINC Malt operates under LINC Foods, a farmer and worker-owned cooperative based in Spokane Valley. Established in 2014, LINC aims to create direct market opportunities for regional producers.

Seeking a year-round industry (unlike seasonal produce) to expand into, LINC entered the malting industry in 2016.

“We looked at that and said, ‘Oh, there’s a place where we could go with our high value grains, where the producer wanted to be part of that supply chain, and that’s what got us into what we do,” Estes says.

In 2022, two of the farms that LINC works with, Horlacher Farms and Clearwater Farms, decided to vertically integrate and partner with LINC as a separate entity called Cold Stream Malt and Grain.

Cold Stream uses its own grains, working with LINC to do trial batches before completing the bulk of the malting process with another partner, Montana Craft Malt. The malt is then shipped back to LINC’s warehouse in Spokane Valley.

SPOKANE MALTSTERS’ 2025

MALT CUP MEDAL HAUL

Cascadia Malts: Silver for Pilsen; Bronze for Distiller’s Malt

“In doing that process of studying the [brewing] industry and what it would take to do that, I taught myself malting, you know, YouTube and Google and everything, just using Rubbermaid bins and food dehydrators,” Freuen says.

LINC Malt: Gold for Wheat

Cold Stream: Bronze for Pilsen (in partnership with Montana Craft Malt)

He eventually took a malting course from Virginia Tech University and shifted away from the brewery plan, deciding to open a malthouse to connect local craft brewers and distillers to his family’s grain. Cascadia Malts launched in 2024.

Freuen’s operation is small but mighty, and in just its first year, Cascadia earned silver in the Pilsen category and bronze in the Distiller’s Malt category at the recent Malt Cup.

“[Pilsen is] a very delicate and nuanced category, and I truly believe that it’s only the quality that it is because of the barley, just because of what it came from,” he says.

Throughout the past year, Cascadia has worked with about 15 brewers and distillers, most in Spokane, like Humble Abode and Whistle Punk breweries, but also Westland Distillery in Seattle.

“The LINCCold Stream partnership malts are primarily what are referred to as base malts, which comprise the vast majority of malted grains that go into any beer of any style,” Estes says.

These co-branded malts are used by most of the breweries that the two companies work with, which they say is a majority share of brewers in the greater-Spokane area. Some of LINC’s regular, higher-volume clients include the Grain Shed, YaYa Brewing Co., Wildland Cooperative, Lumberbeard Brewing and Precious Things Fermentation Project.

At the Malt Cup, LINC landed gold for its wheat malt, while Cold Stream won bronze in the Pilsen category.

“We’re just this little pocket of producers in this area, and we’re beating the globe,” Freuen says, referring to Washington state’s world-class industries: hops, grains, malting, brewing and distilling, and even wine grapes.

So next time you raise a glass of your favorite locally brewed beer, take a moment to appreciate the malt behind the magic. n

Cascadia Malts owner Corey Freuen inside his Nine Mile Falls production faciltiy.

ALSO OPENING

Bundle of Joy

The Assessment is a dystopian sci-fi film of both dark humor and existential dread that grows on you

BY CHASE HUTCHINSON

What does it mean to want to have a child? In our present moment, many people — including those who do want offspring at some point — are reportedly deciding against having kids because now doesn’t feel like a really a great time to do so. When you look around at the sad state of the world that always seems to be only getting worse, it’s hard to not empathize with this struggle. No judgment on those who still decide to reproduce, as the world has always been a right awful place. Bringing a child into any period of time is inherently a leap of faith. It’s an expression of hope that things could possibly begin to get better for you, for the world and for your children’s future.

In The Assessment, the fascinating feature directorial debut from Fleur Fortune about a couple trying to prove themselves worthy enough to have a child in a dystopian future where the world has fallen apart and procreation has become impossible without approval, it is this hope that all are desperately seeking. With elements of everything from Alfonso Cuarón’s still magnificent Children of Men to Mel Eslyn’s oddly beautiful Biosphere, it’s a sci-fi film that’s primarily about using the genre to explore what it means to be alive when all hope seems lost. As we get to know the couple of Mia (Elizabeth Olsen) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) as well as their assessor Virginia (Alica Vikander),

Fortune approaches this with a sharp eye for humor and a sense of existential dread. It’s a rather messy cocktail, but an ultimately effective one that grows on you.

The Assessment Rated R Directed by Fleur Fortune Starring Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Himesh Patel

It’s also a quite beautifully designed and shot film as, from the moment we first see the couple’s residence where we’ll spend most of the film, it creates a sense of understated yet cold beauty. Forced to live under a dome as the world beyond is supposedly inhospitable to life, their reality is a bleak one where, even as some of the more harrowing details either come via dialogue rather than us seeing them or exist on the margins of the frame, we feel the weight that both of the aspiring parents carry on their shoulders. When Virginia first arrives, the nervousness that the couple feel soon turns to something that teeters on the edge of despair as their assessor seems to be there primarily to torment them. They do their best to fulfill what is being asked of them, but the seven-day test they’re put through goes from being more comically strange to sinister as time passes. With every absurd task that’s placed upon them, the weight they bear grows heavier.

While this may sound like the exact worst thing to watch for either parents or those aspiring to be, it’s actually them who may enjoy it most. From the many scenes where Virginia pretends to be a petulant child to the ones where Mia and Aaryan begin to stress over how to put together

THE ALTO KINGS

Robert De Niro apparently got sick of playing a mob boss in so many movies, so he decided to play opposite himself in both leading roles in this drama about two actual 1950s mafia rivals. Rated R

DISNEY’S SNOW WHITE

Oh joy, another live-action Disney remake that absolutely no one wanted or needs! Rated PG

LOCKED

When a thief (Bill Skarsgård) tries to steal a luxury SUV, he finds himself trapped in the remotely controlled vehicle and subjected to the vigilante whims of the man controlling the car from afar (Anthony Hopkins). Rated R

MAGAZINE DREAMS

After being shelved following star Jonathan Majors’ domestic assault conviction, this intense drama about a struggling bodybuilder with grand dreams finally arrives in theaters. Rated R

an elaborate structure for their potential future kid, it’s a film that’s often witheringly funny about how nobody really knows what they’re doing in these situations. Where it then becomes more intentionally rough going is when Virginia begins to wreak havoc on the lives that they have built. Why is she doing this? What possible purpose could it serve? The more you try to make sense of it all, the more it seems like this test is merely some sort of cruel joke. Rather than feel repetitive, the respective performances ensure we are always being kept on our toes. Vikander, whose still astounding work in the modern sci-fi classic Ex Machina feels most relevant to some of what she is doing here, is a menace in the best possible sense with layers upon layers to her performance. Olsen, who gave a quietly shattering performance in last year’s His Three Daughters, is a grounding force to the experience, perfectly playing off of Vikander’s more menacing energy. Even Patel (Station 11), who can often feel like he is left with the least to do, is able to capture something critical as the film increasingly becomes about his character’s desire to create a false mirage of hope and connection so he can pretend that everything is OK.

How this takes shape is best left to the film, as there are some significant revelations in the final act, but it’s also not reliant on these twists. Instead, Fortune demonstrates a command of both tone and theme, opening up The Assessment to be much more about the clinging to hope that can come from a child rather than confronting the cold realities of the world as it is. In this regard, it bears some similarities to Joshua Oppenheimer’s recent narrative debut The End in how it is about the fragile lies the characters have told themselves either shattering to pieces or becoming something that they hold even tighter to. As Mia and Aaryan begin to drift apart from each other in how they respond to this, Fortune captures some of her most illuminating images that tear right through you. They both find hope in their own ways, but there is the grim realization that these could be false. Yet confront them Fortune does, finding plenty of truths in the shadow of the death of their hope. It’s no bundle of joy, but there is plenty of life there all the same. n

Patel and Olsen must apply for parenthood in The Assessment

A Cover Song in Space

Ash proves director Flying Lotus has seen many sci-fi classics, but he struggles to make one of his own

BY CHASE HUTCHINSON

Ash is what you’d get if Ridley Scott’s enduring classic Alien, Brandon Cronenberg’s recent body horror gem Possessor, and the visceral video game Dead Space had a truly nightmarish xenomorph baby together. Unfortunately, the film is not nearly as exciting as that sounds. The latest from the musician/ producer-turned-director Flying Lotus, it’s such a mishmash of reference points that it struggles to bring together into a compelling whole. This isn’t always a problem, as the film is intentionally fragmented and consistently splits itself apart just as the doomed characters trapped in it do. However, it starts to grow repetitive in how it loops back on itself. When it then proceeds to awkwardly spell out its central misdirect and repeatedly beat us over the head with what happened, it drains the life out of the more maximalist visuals with which it bombards viewers.

planet to try to help them. He wants to flee, but she is drawn to piecing together what it is she can’t remember.

Ash

Rated R

Directed by Flying Lotus

Starring Eiza González, Aaron Paul

The premise is a familiar one. Ash follows the troubled Riya as she finds herself alone on a spaceship that is now stranded on a faraway planet. Something has gone terribly awry. She is trying to remember how her fellow crew members all ended up dead — with consistent bursts of violence flashing in her mind — but something seems to be stopping her from doing so. Though played well enough by Eiza González (The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare), who proves that she can more than lead a film all her own, the writing by Jonni Remmler reduces Riya to being a one-note character who mostly exists to look confused about what is going on. This will continue with the arrival of Brion, played by a stranded Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), who says that he had received a distress signal and came down from the communication buoy hovering above the

With the duo bathed in reds to blues as they wander the ship to Flying Lotus’ pulsating score, one is tempted to compare Ash more to music videos than other movies. However, if anything, leaning more into the sensory and emotional rather than the mystery would’ve been an intriguing path for Ash to go down. For all the bursts of nightmarish gore that invade Riya’s mind, it’s the moments in between this where the film starts to stall and undercut itself. Without giving anything away, it’s abundantly clear what happened from the jump based on how Riya remembers violent encounter after violent encounter. And yet, Ash is frustratingly fixated on making sure we come away knowing exactly what it was that went down.

This leaves no room for the visuals and the disquieting uncertainty to get under our skin. The film can’t get out of its own head. It robs not only the reveals of any impact — as it holds our hand through its painfully obvious unveiling — but it reduces the often striking imagery to feeling like cutscenes from a video game. As it drags us back through Riya’s memory, the thing you end up predominantly feeling is weariness at it all. That a work which looks as consistently nightmarish as this can manage to feel frequently tedious is almost impressive, though it’s still hard to shake the sense that we’re watching an interesting but scattered cover of a sci-fi film we’ve already seen many times before. When it cuts into the mind of Riya near the end to see what has made its home there, what comes pouring out is blood, not ideas Ash can call its own. n

Ash is a smoothie of sci-fi memberberries.

Starring Elizabeth Olsen & Alicia Vikander

LOCAL BANDS

CHILD’S PLAY

A local battle of the bands competition nurtures young Spokane musicians’ passion for performing

BY MADISON PEARSON

The Lemonheads. The Carpenters. The Zombies. They all have something in common: They competed in battle of the bands competitions before becoming well-known artists.

Of course, competing in a battle of the bands competition hardly guarantees a band will make it big, but it’s certainly a good place to start.

Since early February, 17 Spokane groups composed of high school and middle school kids have been competing in Rock Club’s Battle of the Bands. It all comes down to this Saturday’s finale at the Players & Spectators Event Center in Spokane Valley where the last six bands remaining will compete for the crown.

For over a decade, Rock Club owner Sean Burgett has been teaching music lessons and encouraging young kids to pursue their dreams of playing on big stages in

This year’s battle of the bands marks the first competition since 2019 and includes bands under Burgett’s instruction at Rock Club and groups from outside that circle who wanted to test their chops. Since it’s the first battle in six years, Burgett has tried to make it one that the bands and the audience will remember.

Burgett not only teaches his students how to play their instruments correctly and put on a proper show, he also teaches them about the music industry and how to be a part of a band.

front of rowdy crowds. Every year, Burgett puts together an end-of-year recital showcasing all of the hard work his students have done, but he always wanted to take it a bit further for them.

“I used to play in battle of the bands in high school,” Burgett says. “I just remember it being such a great starting point for us. We met so many other bands and started getting more shows off that and creating momentum from just that one thing.”

In 2019, he successfully pulled off hosting his first battle of the bands competition at The Pin, a now-defunct venue in downtown Spokane. Members of the winning band from that year — Violet Ice — went on to form Vika & the Velvets, one of Spokane’s most successful current groups, who’ve toured in California, Utah, Seattle and gained spots on festival lineups across the region.

“Ethics has been my main focus when working out how to deal with making money and hiring young and inexperienced bands,” he says. “Ryan Levey from the Big Dipper/Monumental Booking has been a close planning partner.”

The first four rounds of shows at the Big Dipper gave all 17 bands a chance to sell physical tickets and make a 2:1 split with the organizer, allowing them to earn money from pre-sales before any door sales are taken into account. Burgett says given the range of ages participating in the competition, it was important to hammer home how to operate independently as a band.

“Knowing what standards bands get paid by was key for me in making sure we were doing things in a way everyone could feel great about,” Burgett says. “We wanted to teach young bands the way they deserve to be treated

Not Taking Complaints XANDER & KELLEN PHOTO

Nathan Barr celebrates his band Flyborne’s win. XANDER & KELLEN PHOTO

by people booking shows just as much as giving them a positive and constructive performance experience and a chance to win something cool.”

The “something cool” in question is two days of studio time at J Bones Musicland, Jay Condiotti’s dual studio and performance space in Spokane’s East Central neighborhood.

Six bands — four winners and two wildcards — have earned their way to the final performance. Each group was judged by a different panel each night and will face one last panel at the final concert.

Burgett says that first-round winner Flyborne boasts extremely talented instrumentalists who have formed a tight band playing all original music. Round-two winner Dissonance is the youngest band among the finalists, and the all-ninth graders act plays original metal music.

The third week’s winner was originally going by the name Brutal Creep but switched to Asphyxia after a judge said their name could use some work.

“That name lends itself to the traditional splattery metal logo more, I think,” Burgett says.

The Monday Band, the fourth-week winner,

hails from West Valley High School and is named after the students’ after-school practice time slot.

The two wildcard bands — deemed the best of the bunch who did not win their respective weeks but earned an honorable mention from the judges — are Crimson Creek and Taking No Complaints.

Burgett says it’s anyone’s game going into the final show, but more than anything, he looks forward to seeing what each band does once the battle is over. One will head into the recording studio with its winnings, but many others will book local shows and continue playing music together long after the battle is over.

“The local music scene will always change and grow,” he says. “These are the people that are going to take it over someday, and they’re going to be standing on the shoulders of those that came before them. It’s going to be a little bubble of magic.” n

RockFest: Battle of the Bands Finals • Sat, March 22 from 5-10 pm • $15-$20 • Players & Spectators Event Center • 12828 E. Sprague Ave., Spokane Valley • facebook.com/RockClubSpokane

XANDER & KELLEN PHOTO

INDIE POP TINSLEY

INDIE ROCK HIT LIKE A GIRL

Thursday, 3/20

J THE BIG DIPPER, Atrae Bilis, Replicant, The Last of Lucy, The Night We Died BOLO’S BAR & GRILL, Bolo’s Blues & Brews

J BOTTLE BAY BREWING CO., Jason Perry

CHECKERBOARD TAPROOM, Weathered Shepherds GARLAND DRINKERY, Speak Easy: Open Mic Night

J LUNARIUM, Starlite Open Mic

J QQ SUSHI & KITCHEN, Just Plain Darin RED ROOM LOUNGE, Thurrsdays EDM Night ZOLA, Pancho, X24 25

Friday, 3/21

ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS, Lyle Morse

J THE BIG DIPPER, RivetSkull: A Celebration of The Music of Ronnie James Dio

J BING CROSBY THEATER, Jump: America’s Van Halen Experience

BULLHEAD SALOON, Neon Interstate THE CHAMELEON, The Bed Heads, Timeworm, Warren Dunes

CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, Little Gospel Devils

J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Elektro Grave Dance Night

J J KNITTING FACTORY, Sullivan King, Yookie, Grabbitz, RZRKT NIGHT OWL, Four On The Floor Fridays

J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Pamela Benton

J PUEBLA MEXICAN RESTAURANT, Latin Dance Party

J SPOKANE TRIBE CASINO, Steelheart

ZOLA, Jerry Lee Raines

Saturday, 3/22

ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS, Pamela Benton

BERSERK, Whiskey

Dick Mountain, Funladies

J THE BIG DIPPER, Emo Karaoke with Millennial Falcon

J BOTTLE BAY BREWING CO., Ben Vogel

BULLHEAD SALOON, Neon Interstate

THE CHAMELEON, Graveyard Dance: Warlord Colossus & Eraze

CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, D.A. & The Bluenotes

THE DISTRICT BAR, The Swaggerlies, Vera Gogo, The Dilrods

J THE GRAIN SHED TAP HOUSE, Haywire

J J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Tinsley, Austen, Water Monster

J KNITTING FACTORY, The Amity Affliction, Hail The Sun, Many Eyes, Solence

MIKEY’S GYROS, Guilty Pleasures

NIGHT OWL, Priestess

J PATERA TEMPERANCE LOUNGE, Vika

J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Oak Street Connection

J J PLAYERS & SPECTATORS, Rockfest Final: Asphyxia, Crimson Creek, Dissonance, Flyborne, The Monday Band, Not Taking Complaints

J SOULFUL SOUPS & SPIRITS, Spooky, Absent Cardinal, SEIZuREDr3AM, Public Apology

Boasting a dreamy pop rock sound that evokes bands like The Cranberries, Tinsley has become one of the up-and-coming artists to watch in the Seattle music scene. She’s also carved out a niche as a tastemaker favorite, as famed Seattle DJ Marco Collins was a champion of her 2023 EP Love Songs and beloved KEXP DJ John Richards funded the vinyl pressing of her new self-titled debut EP. Tinsley offers up warm, nostalgia-tinged romantic tunes that feel like tiny aural diary entries. She’ll showcase the new tunes when she makes her Spokane debut at The Chameleon’s Jaguar Room.

— SETH SOMMERFELD

Tinsley, Austen, Water Monster • Sat, March 22 at 8 pm • $10-$15 • All ages • Jaguar Room at The Chameleon • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • chameleonspokane.com

If you listened to the past two Hit Like a Girl albums, there’s a 99% chance you wouldn’t think it was the same band. Led by singer-songwriter Nicolle Maroulis (who also runs the nonprofit No More Dysphoria, which helps financially support trans and nonbinary folks as they transition), the Philadelphia band’s 2021 album Heart Racer showcases the tender melodic indie rock that has typically been the group’s calling card and calls to mind acts like Wednesday and Rosie Tucker. But 2022’s Becoming? Well that’s just straight up a vocal shredding metalcore album. Get you a band that does both, I suppose. Hit Like a Girl seems to be back to its older folky indie pop roots on its latest single, “The Decider.” No matter what sonic pool Maroulis dips their toes into, it (fittingly) hits. — SETH SOMMERFELD

Hit Like a Girl, Madska, When She Dreams, Flyborne • Thu, March 27 at 7 pm • $12 • All ages • Neato Burrito • 827 W. First Ave. • instagram.com/neato.babybar

J THE FOX THEATER, The Mark Wood Trans-Siberian Symphony Experience ZOLA, Blake Braley, Dylan Kai

Sunday, 3/23

J THE BIG DIPPER, False Visions, Oathbound, Glass Artifacts, Thornwalker, Mark of The Beast

J HAMILTON STUDIO, Dayan Kai HOGFISH, Open Mic

Monday, 3/24

RED ROOM LOUNGE, Red Room Open Mic ZOLA, Tristan Hart Pierce

Tuesday, 3/25

J THE BIG DIPPER, Bit Brigade Performs Super Mario

World & F-Zero

MIKEY’S GYROS, Giant Palouse Earthworm SWING LOUNGE, Swing Lounge Live Music Tuesdays ZOLA, The Zola All Star Jam

Wednesday, 3/26

THE DRAFT ZONE, The Draft Zone Open Mic

J KNITTING FACTORY, Kayzo, Samplifire

RED ROOM LOUNGE, Red Room Jam

J TIMBERS ROADHOUSE, Cary Beare Presents TRVST, The TRVST Open Decks ZOLA, Akifumi Kato

Just Announced...

J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Sunfish, March 30.

J MIKEY’S GYROS, The Phantom A.D., April 2.

J MIKEY’S GYROS, Minot, April 5.

J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Magenta Wave, April 27.

THE DISTRICT BAR, Whitey Morgan (Acoustic), May 10. THE CHAMELEON, Pigeon John, May 16.

J THE BIG DIPPER, Inferi, June 15.

THE DISTRICT BAR, James McMurtry, June 21.

J KNITTING FACTORY, Stephen Wilson Jr., June 22.

J KNITTING FACTORY, Kurt Vile and the Violators, June 28.

THE DISTRICT BAR, New Constellations, July 1.

J BING CROSBY THEATER, Macy Gray, July 18.

J J WAR MEMORIAL FIELD, Festival at Sandpoint: Toad the Wet Sproket, Semisonic, Sixpence None the Richer, July 26.

J WAR MEMORIAL FIELD, Festival at Sandpoint Grand Finale: Sounds of Summer, Aug 3.

J THE BIG DIPPER, MC Chris, Aug. 7.

THE DISTRICT BAR, Giovannie & The Hired Guns, Aug. 10.

J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Olive Klug, Aug. 12.

J THE FOX THEATER, Keb’ Mo’ & Shawn Colvin, Aug. 21.

J KNITTING FACTORY, Tribal Seeds, The Movement, Aug. 29.

J SPOKANE TRIBE CASINO, Cinderella’s Tom Keiferband, Sept. 12.

J NORTHERN QUEST CASINO, Warren Zeiders, Sept. 13.

J J KNITTING FACTORY, Sunny Day Real Estate, Sept. 23.

Coming Up...

J NEATO BURRITO, Hit Like a Girl, Madska, Flybourne, When She Dream, March 27, 7 pm.

REPUBLIC BREWING CO., Jason Eady, Dani Bacon, March 27, 7 pm.

THE DISTRICT BAR, Youth Lagoon, March 27, 9 pm.

J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, The Cole Show, March 28, 5-8 pm.

ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS, Isaac Walton, March 28, 6-8 pm.

THE COEUR D’ALENE RESORT, Soundscape Music Festival, March 28, 6-10 pm & March 29, 3:30-10 pm.

HELIX WINES, Ron Greene, March 28, 6-8 pm.

J J GARLAND THEATER, Spring Reverb Bash: Session #1, March 28, 6:30 pm-1 am.

J THE BIG DIPPER, Mismiths, March 28, 7:30 pm.

THE CHAMELEON, Alec Shaw, Junaco, March 28, 8 pm.

MUSIC | VENUES

219 LOUNGE • 219 N. First Ave., Sandpoint • 208-263-5673

ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS • 4705 N. Fruit Hill Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-927-9463

BABY BAR • 827 W. First Ave. • 509-847-1234

BARRISTER WINERY • 1213 W. Railroad Ave. • 509-465-3591

BEE’S KNEES WHISKY BAR • 1324 W. Lancaster Rd.., Hayden • 208-758-0558

BERSERK • 125 S. Stevens St. • 509-315-5101

THE BIG DIPPER • 171 S. Washington St. • 509-863-8098

BIGFOOT PUB • 9115 N. Division St. • 509-467-9638

BING CROSBY THEATER • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-227-7638

BLACK DIAMOND • 9614 E. Sprague Ave. • 509891-8357

BOLO’S BAR & GRILL • 116 S. Best Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-891-8995

BOOMERS CLASSIC ROCK BAR • 18219 E. Appleway Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-368-9847

BUCER’S COFFEEHOUSE PUB • 201 S. Main St., Moscow • 208-596-0887

THE BULL HEAD • 10211 S. Electric St., Four Lakes • 509-838-9717

CHAN’S RED DRAGON • 1406 W. Third Ave. • 509-838-6688

THE CHAMELEON • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd.

CHECKERBOARD • 1716 E. Sprague Ave. • 509-443-4767

COEUR D’ALENE CASINO • 37914 S. Nukwalqw St., Worley • 800-523-2464

COEUR D’ALENE CELLARS • 3890 N. Schreiber Way, Coeur d’Alene • 208-664-2336

CRUISERS BAR & GRILL • 6105 W Seltice Way, Post Falls • 208-446-7154

CURLEY’S HAUSER JUNCTION • 26433 W. Hwy. 53, Post Falls • 208-773-5816

THE DISTRICT BAR • 916 W. 1st Ave. • 509-244-3279

EICHARDT’S PUB • 212 Cedar St., Sandpoint • 208-263-4005

FIRST INTERSTATE CENTER FOR THE ARTS • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • 509-279-7000

FOX THEATER • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-624-1200

IRON HORSE • 407 E. Sherman, Coeur d’Alene • 208-667-7314

IRON HORSE BAR & GRILL • 11105 E. Sprague Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-926-8411

JOHN’S ALLEY • 114 E. Sixth St., Moscow • 208-883-7662

KNITTING FACTORY • 911 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-244-3279

MARYHILL WINERY • 1303 W. Summit Pkwy. • 509-443-3832

MILLIE’S • 28441 Hwy 57, Priest Lake • 208-443-0510

MOOSE LOUNGE • 401 E. Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene • 208-664-7901

NASHVILLE NORTH • 6361 W. Seltice Way, Post Falls • 208-457-9128

NORTHERN QUEST RESORT & CASINO • 100 N. Hayford Rd., Airway Heights • 877-871-6772

NYNE BAR & BISTRO • 232 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-474-1621

PEND D’OREILLE WINERY • 301 Cedar St., Sandpoint • 208-265-8545

POST FALLS BREWING CO. • 112 N. Spokane St., Post Falls • 208-773-7301

RAZZLE’S BAR & GRILL • 10325 N. Government Way, Hayden • 208-635-5874

RED ROOM LOUNGE • 521 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-838-7613

THE RIDLER PIANO BAR • 718 W. Riverside Ave. • 509-822-7938

SEASONS OF COEUR D’ALENE • 1004 S. Perry St. • 208-664-8008

SPOKANE ARENA • 720 W. Mallon Ave. • 509-279-7000

SPOKANE TRIBE RESORT & CASINO • 14300 US-2, Airway Heights • 877-786-9467

SOUTH PERRY LANTERN • 12303 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-473-9098

STORMIN’ NORMAN’S SHIPFACED SALOON • 12303 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-862-4852

TRANCHE • 705 Berney Dr., Wall Walla • 509-526-3500

ZOLA • 22 W. Main Ave. • 509-624-2416

FOOD THE LAST COURSE

Whether you know him from his quirky yet informative Good Eats series breaking down the fascinating science of common pantry ingredients and classic recipes, or his time hosting culinary challenges like Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen, Alton Brown is undoubtedly a modern household name. Maybe you’ve also been lucky enough to attend one of the bespectacled Brown’s past live shows, a sort of culinarythemed revue that includes everything from fireside-chat style monologues, songs, and even fun food challenges featuring audience members, plus much more. Unfortunately for fans, Brown’s current Last Bite road show may very well be the final such sojourn — if we’re to ever start believing any celebrity doing a “farewell tour” — so take that tidbit with a grain of (high-quality flake) salt, as they say.

— CHEY SCOTT

Alton Brown Live: Last Bite • Wed, March 26 at 7:30 pm

• $50-$205 • First Interstate Center for the Arts • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • firstinterstatecenter.org

OUTDOORS LIFE IS WATER-FUL

Water is an essential ingredient of life, so of course it should be celebrated! On March 22, celebrate World Water Day at the Doris Morrison Learning Center with fellow water enthusiasts. The Learning Center is part of the restored Saltese Wetland Area and provides education on the importance of water conservation and land stewardship. This event is hosted by Spokane County’s Water Resource educators, plus specialists who discuss why water is so important to life in the Inland Northwest. There will be fun activities for all ages including bird-watching, a children’s storytime, science activities and even a guided walking tour.

— HANNAH HIGENS

World Water Day Celebration • Sat, March 22 from 9 am-noon

• Free • Doris Morrison Learning Center • 1330 S. Henry Road, Greenacres • facebook.com/spokanecountywaterandwaste

DANCE LIKE NOBODY’S WATCHING

The art of dance has always been a powerful outlet to showcase creative expression and culture, and since 1991, the Inland Northwest Dance Association (INDA) has been bringing the expressive art form to Spokane. This weekend, INDA is hosting their annual DanceFest, a celebration of the diversity and culture of dance in the Inland Northwest that’s been happening since 2005. If you have an appreciation for the art of dance and live performance, stop by for an afternoon of free dance performances showcasing local dance groups that are performing a variety of genres including contemporary, Latin, tap, highland and more.

— HANNAH HIGENS

DanceFest 2025 • Sat, March 22 at 1 pm • Free • Spokane Community College, Building 6 • 1810 N. Greene St. • indaspokane.org

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.

CULTURE DEMPSEY’S DIVAS

For more than two decades Dempsey’s Brass Rail was a place for Spokane’s LGBTQ+ community to gather for a drink or some glamorous drag shows. But after closing in 2011, a void was created that’s yet to be completely filled. Last year Spokane Pride alongside local drag queen Crystal Marché hosted the first-ever Dempsey’s Reunion Show to remember the drag divas who called Dempsey’s home and to raise money for the upcoming Pride celebrations. This year the reunion returns as a fundraiser for Spokane Pride’s History and Remembrance Project, which documents the queer memories of the Inland Northwest. VIP table tickets have already sold out, but $20 general admission tickets are still available.

— COLTON RASANEN

Dempsey’s Reunion Show 2025 • Sat, March 22 at 5 pm • $20 • nYne Bar & Bistro • 232 W. Sprague Ave. • eventeny.com/events/dempseysreunionshow-17857

BENEFIT GIGGLES FOR A CAUSE

The Blue Door Theatre, Spokane’s beloved improvisational comedy outlet, has had a tumultuous couple of years. After relocating to downtown Spokane from its former longtime home in the Garland District, the BDT’s new building still needs some major updates. Now, a little over a year since that move, Blue Door is running a “Campaign to 30” to help meet city building requirements and secure its future. This weekend, catch this fundraiser comedy show and silent auction hosted by Michael Glatzmaier and David Honeycutt and featuring local comedians Timarie Maxwell, Harry J. Riley, Lyv Babinski and Midnight Goats. They’re all teaming up for the Blue Door’s benefit so it can dole out laughs for many years to come.

— MADISON PEARSON

Stand-Up Spokane • Sat, March 22 at 3:30 pm • All ages • $15-$20 • Spokane Comedy Club • 315 W. Sprague Ave. • bluedoortheatre.org

*APR = Annual Percentage Rate. 6-month introductory rate of 2.99% APR (includes relationship discounts of 0.25% discount with automatic pay from Numerica checking and 0.25% discount with Numerica Visa credit card or another Numerica loan). The current APR is as low as 7.75%, effective March 1, 2025. Offer good on applications submitted between March 1 and May 31, 2025. To be eligible for the introductory rate, member must have or open a Numerica personal checking account. Combined loan-to-value ratio up to 90% on primary residence on qualifying credit. Not available on second homes, vacation properties, investment properties, bridge loans, combo loans, refinance of existing Numerica HELOCs, or on residences outside Washington or Idaho. All fees/costs, except full appraisal if required, are typically paid by Numerica if the loan amount is less than $250,000. Fees/ costs to open HELOC generally range between $500 to $1,500. HELOCs are subject to recovery charges if closed within two years of origination. Recovery charges are the lesser of total third-party costs paid by Numerica or $500. Full appraisal is required for loan amounts exceeding $250,000, manufactured homes, or underwriter discretion. Rate will increase after 6-month introductory period depending on credit score and prime rate and may change quarterly thereafter. APR is variable and based on the Wall Street Journal Prime Rate. It can adjust quarterly but will never exceed 18.00% APR or go below 2.99% APR. As of March 1, 2025, the prime rate is 7.50% and is subject to change. The APR is a combination of the prime rate plus a margin, which is determined at application and based on several factors, including creditworthiness. All loans subject to approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Rates, terms, and conditions are subject to change.

I SAW YOU

RE: NOT MY OUTTHERE Based on your responses and that you indicate you came to your party many times with tears. This was not the case for me. That’s how these things go. It was a leaf in the wind. Such is life. However any preliminary analysis of your posts from an outsider suggests potentially contradictory messages from you indicating a need for integrity on your part. It’s interesting that so many people’s lives have similar details and intersect.

CHEERS

WATCHED We are being watched by our ancestors on the moon. The sons of god and the daughters of men, also known as the Nephilim. This is why we only see one side of the moon.

A MATTER OF BALANCE! Thanks to A Matter of Balance, Aging & Long Term Care’s falls prevention program, more than 1,000 older adults in our area have taken steps to prevent falls and their consequences! Falls are the leading cause of injuries for adults ages 65 and older, but falling is NOT a normal part of aging, and most falls can be prevented. A Matter of Balance, a FREE program for adults 60+, empowers individuals to reduce falling risks and increase their activity levels. This program relies on volunteer coaches to encourage participants to do what they can to identify and eliminate falling hazards and be safely involved in activities they enjoy. Cheers to Aging &

Long Term Care of Eastern Washington for offering this program in its five-county service area! For information about this program or to sign up for a class, please visit https://www.altcew.org/ programs-services/preventing-falls/

NICE GUY AT YOKE’S ON MONTGOMERY

Cheers to the really nice guy in front of me at the checkout at the Yoke’s on Montgomery on March 12, 2025 in the evening. I ran to the store to grab a few things after a very long day. You offered to pay for my groceries. That was so nice of you! I had such a hard day and this really made my week. God bless you and I hope your kindness is returned to you tenfold. I can’t thank you enough!

JESSE EISENBERG: SO TENDER, SO RAW

Oh, Jesse, youthful star of yesteryear// Who graced the screen in fleeting, modest light//A charm so raw, so tender, yet sincere//Unveiled a spark within that stirred the night.//Thy timid gaze, thy soft and crooked grin,//Did whisper truths to hearts not yet aware.//No brazen fire, no loud or carnal din,//But gentle storms of passion, sweet and rare.//What alchemy, that one brief ad could spark//A flood of thoughts unknown, desires untamed.// Thy presence lit the corners of the dark,// And softly kindled dreams I’d not yet named.//Oh, didst thou know, within that fragile frame,//A force unmeasured quietly did dwell?//Thy awkward grace, unpolished yet aflame,//Did weave a spell no words could rightly tell.//For in thy flaws, thy beauty found its hue,//A beacon bold for those who seek the strange.// Through thee, I learned to love the raw, the true,//And found delight in what the world deemed strange.//So, Jesse, thou, in modest, fleeting guise,//Didst wake a soul to love through timid art.//A stolen moment held in captive eyes,//Forever lives within this tender heart.

JEERS

BRT NOW NOT LATER! Boo STA! C’mon! You guys have been hyping everyone about Bus Rapid Transit forever. A bus line that runs often enough that it’s actually usable! And now I hear that you won’t roll it out (on Division) until 2030? It’s funded. You’re caving to perceived or anticipated political backlash if you roll it out before the completion of 395? No one even knows when 395 will be completed. There is still right of way that needs to acquired for 395. Please do not cave to

political pressure. You have the means to start the BRT project.

GO TAKE A LEAK ELSEWHERE Jeers to the guy that rudely barged into our place of business without a simple “hello” or a response of why you’re here and proceeded to go use the bathroom and then leave pretending to be on a call

without a word to anyone. And of all places, you chose a salon instead of a gas station that was literally next to us. You’re the reason why bathrooms are for customers only. I bet you’d have a different reaction if everyone else showed up your house and walked in without a word, taking a dump in your bathroom and leaving without a word.

SUPPORT OUR VETERANS Trump is planning to fire 83,000 VA employees. I am a veteran and appalled. Our veterans, especially combat vets, don’t get the health care and therapies they need. Trump has always shown his contempt for vets but this is too much. Write Congress and tell your representative and senators to stop dismantling the VA. Trump hates vets because they sacrificed for this country, something he has never done.

LICENSE FRAUD Cheers to all of those commenting on the expired (illegal) tabs in Spokane still driving down city streets. Jeers to all of those who are doing so thinking that everyone else is responsible for paying for them but not them. Recently, I saw two motorcycle police who were situated several blocks apart from one another and appeared to be pulling over speeders. Now, if they set up the same types of scenarios but pulled over those with expired tabs also, that would be great. I’ve been all over the country and never seen so many expired tabs anywhere but Spokane.

HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU YET? Trying to make sense of what’s going on with Trump, Musk, and their legions of toadies? Look to a companion species for the easy but perfect cliche: frog in the kettle. Tariffs? Trump turns up the heat, then dials it down a little, but not really. Repeat the process. Budget cuts? Maniac Musk announces scorched earth plans,

then backtracks before we feel too much discomfort too soon. Slowly but steadily the temperature climbs, a less obvious but no less devastating version of climate change. And still the poor beast doesn’t jump, tolerating ever higher prices, fewer government services, the dismantling of democracy by degrees until it’s too late. Soon, the oligarchs will dine on frog legs.

MR. BAUMGARTNER I appreciate your position. Brand new in a well funded and padded seat that CMR had for years. But, I take exception to your fireside chat newsletter proclaiming you’re speaking to all Eastern Washington when your town halls consist of a trip to see the Girl Scouts, Ritzville, and Whitworth College? REALLY? The users of Medicaid, Social Security, free school lunches and children’s health care are not LIVING IN THOSE AREAS! Come downtown (not on St. Patty’s Day). Again, your choice of venue is questionable. Come to Riverfront Park, Downtown Library, come to where you’ll find the people who use Medicaid, Social Security, free school lunches, Veterans without housing, child health care …all of which will be frittered away by DOGE’s inexperienced staff. Come where the voters are!!!

RE: THANK YOU FOR READING Dear “Thank you for Reading,” I read your Cheers in last week’s Inlander. While I agree that “1984,” “Animal Farm,” “A Brave New World,” “It Can’t Happen Here” should all be on our reading lists, I find it funny that you claim now that we may not

be able to for very much longer. Wasn’t it the Biden Administration censoring free speech on social media? Don’t believe me? Go watch “The Weaponization of the Federal Government” where Jim Jordan’s committee drilled Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, both lifelong liberal journalists. The Democrats called these esteemed men “so-called journalists” and belittled them for revealing this censorship. It truly enlightened me how far the liberals have fallen. Liberal used to mean “open to new ideas and opinions.”

ZIPLINE Six years ago at a cost of $28,000,000 “The Place of Truths Plaza” is proposed to be the East terminus of a private corporation’s Zipline. The West terminus is Red Band Park. There are two parking places at the Plaza. The street legal golf carts will come up to the Intersection of West Main, North Monroe and Spokane Falls Boulevard. Never busy — nobody runs red lights. I fail to understand the Boondoggle of a Zipline. [EDITOR’S NOTE: The lion’s share of the city’s $25 million pricetag for A Place of Truths Plaza was spent building a massive 2.2 million gallon underground storage tank to capture stormwater runoff so it can be treated before it goes into the river. Liberty Lake-based Mica Moon Zip Tours is privately paying to build a zipline from the plaza, and will operate it.] n

BENEFIT

2ND ANNUAL STARDUST GALA

FUNDRAISER This event supports 165 singers, from youth choristers to adult musicians. Enjoy performances by Spokane Area Youth Choirs faculty and choirs, a buffet dinner, a no-host bar, fundraising games, raffles and a special look at SAYChoirs’ impact. March 22, 5:30 pm. $75. Gonzaga Cataldo Hall, Addison and Sharp. saychoirs.org

A NIGHT OUT: FASHION STORIES FROM SPOKANE An evening wear fashion show with hors d’oeuvres, desserts and drinks. Proceeds support P.E.O.’s mission to provide grants and scholarships for Women’s educational goals. March 22, 4-6 pm. $40. Woman’s Club of Spokane, 1428 W. Ninth. thewomansclubofspokane.org

SHOP & SIP A complimentary happy hour beverages while browsing unique home decor and lifestyle items. Twenty percent of all sales will directly support Girls on the Run Spokane County. March 22, 4:30-6:30 pm. Pleasantries, 823 W. Garland Ave. girlsontherun.org

STAND-UP SPOKANE A fundraiser for Blue Door Theatre featuring comedians Timarie Maxwell, Lyv Babinski, Harry J. Riley and more. March 22, 3:30 pm. $15-$20. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

COMEDY

MATT BRAUNGER Braunger was a series regular on Fox’s MADtv, a cast member of the TruTV series How to Be a Grown Up, and has appeared on Carol’s Second Act, Superstore, Fuller House and more. March 20, 7 pm. $15$22. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

BLUE DOORS & DRAGONS Watch as fearless improvisers embark on a quest shaped entirely by audience suggestions, daring dice rolls and pure imagination in this Dungeons & Dragonsinspired improv show. Fridays at 7:30 pm through March 28. $9. Blue Door Theatre, 319 S. Cedar St. bluedoortheatre.org (509-747-7045)

DERAY DAVIS Comedian-turned-actor DeRay Davis can most recently be seen starring opposite Taraji P. Henson as her go-to hitman/cousin Jermel in Empire. March 21-22, 7 & 9:45 pm. $35-$45. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

GIANMARCO SORESI Gianmarco

Soresi is a New York based stand-up comedian, actor and creator known for his sharp societal observation and energetic stage presence. March 23, 4 pm. $25-$35. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

LATE NITE CATECHISM The irrepressible Sister teaches an adult catechism class to a roomful of “students” (the audience). Over the course of the play, Sister goes from benevolent instructor, rewarding the “students” for correct answers with glow-in-the-dark rosaries and laminated saint cards, to authoritative drill sergeant. March 23, 3 pm. $57-$70. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. bingcrosbytheater.com

ALTON BROWN LIVE: LAST BITE Famed foodist Alton Brown reflects on his decades in food media, presents several of his favorite culinary megahacks, sings some of his funny food songs, and in general offers a culinary variety show. March 26, 7:30 pm. $50-

$205. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. firstinterstatecenter.org (509-279-7000)

COMMUNITY

THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE SWORD This exhibition showcases Japanese swords as more than a mere weapon of war. The iconic Samurai sword of Japan and its accompanying fittings were elevated to works of high art that were, and still are, treasured and collected for their beauty and craftsmanship. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through May 4. $9-$15. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org

SAMURAI, SUNRISE, SUNSET Step into the world of a samurai and experience armor, weaponry and personal items from the powerful military class that ruled Japan for nearly 700 years. Each item tells a story through its master craftsmanship and individual details. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through June 1. $9-$15. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931)

3RD LEGISLATIVE DISTRICT TOWN

HALL MEETING Washington’s 3rd Legislative District lawmakers will meet with constituents to give an update on their work in Olympia. There will be a question-and-answer portion for constituents to ask questions and hear directly from Sen. Marcus Riccelli, Rep. Natasha Hill and Rep. Timm Ormsby. March 22, 10:30 am-noon. Free. Spokane Falls Community College, 3410 W. Whistalks Way. leg.wa.gov

YIN YOGA & SOUND BATH Through the stillness of yin yoga and the soothing vibrations of a sound bath, cultivate deep rest, inner balance, and an openness to the growth that spring offers. March 22, 1-2:30 pm. $35. Patera Temperance Lounge, 1507 E. Sprague Ave. instagram.com/pateralounge

RESULTS OF THE COMMUNITY PFAS

SURVEY West Plains Water Coalition’s health committee leader Gail Oneal and others discuss the results of the community PFAS survey. March 24, 6:30 pm. Free. The HUB, 12703 W. 14th Ave. westplainswater.org

MAC AFTER HOURS Enjoy a mix of programming from live music to demonstrations related to the exhibits in the museum. March 26, 5-8 pm. $3.50-$6. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First. northwestmuseum.org

SPOKANE ZERO WASTE MEND-IT

CAFE People are invited to bring clothing and textiles in need of repair. They will be paired up with a mender who will fix the item(s) at no charge. March 26, 4-7 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. spokanezerowaste.org

INTRO TO SEWING: TOTE BAGS Learn basic operation of a sewing machine, threading and adjusting and how to make your very own stylish tote bag. Ages 18+. March 27, 2-4 pm. $50. Gizmo-CDA, 283 N. Hubbard Ave. Suite 102. gizmo-cda.org (208-929-4029)

POLICY, LAW AND PUBLIC HEALTH

A panel discussion and an open Q&A session covering a range of topics, from how political polarization affects public health policy to public health-centered approaches to justice and how to identify barriers in translating scientific research into public health policy. March 27, 4 pm. Free. Gonzaga University Jepson Center, 502 E. Boone. gonzaga.edu

HEARTBREAKER TATTOO GRAND

REOPENING Heartbreaker Tattoo celebrates the opening of their new location with three days of buy-one-getone tattoos. March 28, 12-10 pm, March 29, 12-10 pm and March 30, 12-10 pm. Free. Heartbreaker Tattoo, 601 W Maxwell Ave. heartbreakerspokane.com

FILM

MOSCOW FILM SOCIETY: SOLARIS

Ground control receives mysterious transmissions from the Solaris space station. March 20, 6:30-9 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. kenworthy.org

OUTLIVE FILM FESTIVAL A collection of world-class short films telling stories of healing and courage, lived outdoors. The event also features an exhibit by Wenatchee-based nature painter Chet Harum. March 20, 7-9 pm. $15-$20. Washington Cracker Co. Building, 304 W. Pacific. outlivefilmfestival.com

VIET THANH NGUYEN: ADAPTING THE SYMPATHIZER FOR TELEVISION

Listen to Viet Thanh Nguyen discuss the challenges and rewards of adapting his Pulitzer Prize-winning spy novel about a half-Vietnamese, half-French communist double agent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War into a hit miniseries on HBO. March 20, 5-6 pm. Free. University of Idaho Administration Building, 851 Campus Dr. uidaho.edu

SANJURO This film follows a crafty samurai who stumbles upon a group of samurai seeking to expose corruption in their clan. The clan’s Superintendent is plotting to seize power and Sanjuro helps his fellow clansmen navigate situations to thwart the plans. March 21, 6:30 pm. $8. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931)

NT LIVE: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST While assuming the role of a guardian in the country, Jack lets loose in town under a false identity. Meanwhile, his friend Algy adopts a similar facade. March 23, 12-3 pm. $10. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. kenworthy.org

HOME COURT An Asian American high school star pursues her hoop dreams as recruiting intensifies. March 26, 5-6 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. spokanelibrary.org (509-444-5300)

MOSCOW FILM SOCIETY: YI YI Yi Yi follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. March 27, 6:30-9:30 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. kenworthy.org

BURLESQUE A small-town girl ventures to Los Angeles and finds her place in a neo-burlesque club run by a former dancer. March 28, 7-9 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org

MOSCOW LEBOWSKI FEST An all-day event featuring bowling, trivia, a costume contest and more culminating in a screening of The Big Lebowski. March 29, 4-9:30 pm. $20-$40. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. palousecultfilms.org

FOOD & DRINK

CHOCOLATE TASTING & BOOK PAIRING Sample treats with different flavors from Halletts Chocolates and get suggestions for books that pair well with them. Adults. Registration is required. March 20, 7-8 pm. Free. Airway Heights Library, 1213 S. Lundstrom St. scld.org

Gem, Mineral & Jewelry Show

March 28, 29 & 30

EVENTS | CALENDAR

TIKI COCKTAIL CLASS Learn how the forces of 19th-century drinking culture, Prohibition, war, and tourism brought together the proliferation of Tiki culture. March 20-21, 6-9 pm. $85. Commellini Estate, 14715 N. Dartford Dr. commelliniestate.com (509-466-0667)

WINE COMPOSITION Learn about sugar, alcohol, tannin, and acid components in wine. March 20, 12-8 pm. $40-$50. Arbor Crest Tasting Room, 808 W. Main Ave. arborcrest.com (509-927-9463)

CELEBRATING WASHINTON WINE

MONTH A culinary journey through the diverse wines of Washington paired with a multi-course feast crafted by the Beverly’s chefs. March 21, 6-9 pm. $149. Beverly’s, 115 S. Second St. beverlyscda.com

FILLED PASTA MASTERCLASS Join Commellini Estate’s chef, Frank, for an interactive culinary journey celebrating the rich diversity of filled pasta. This handson class teaches how to craft a variety of filled pasta shapes and styles while exploring unique and delectable fillings. March 26 & 28, 6:30-8:30 pm. $85. Commellini Estate, 14715 N. Dartford. commelliniestate.com

MUSIC

RM FRANCIS An experimental computer music performance by RM Francis featuring 4-channel (surround sound) audio work consists of sound and language generated by AI and machine learning/ listening technologies. Takes place in the WSU Planetarium. March 21, 7-8:30 pm. Free. Washington State University, 2000 NE Stadium Way. jasoneanderson.net

123 ANDRÉS Known for their high-energy, interactive performances, Andrés and Christina engage young audiences with music that blends Spanish and English while introducing a variety of Latin American rhythms. March 22, 2 pm. $10-$16. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu

CELEBRATING YOUNG ARTISTS Young artists from the Coeur d’Alene Symphony National Young Artist Competition perform with the symphony. March 22, 7 pm. Schuler Performing Arts Center, 880 W. Garden Ave. cdasymphony.org

MUSICAL MIGRATION CONCERT: NORWAY A concert of songs highlighting the bicentennial of the first wave of immigration from Norway. Seattle soprano, Laura Loge, will be joined by Composer, Steven Luksan, to share long-forgotten works by Norwegian immigrant composers including nostalgic folk and classical, popular, and solo piano. March 22, 1-2 pm. $10. The Jacklin Arts & Cultural Center, 405 N. William St. son-cda.com

SIMPLY CLASSICAL A performance of 14 choral selections from masterworks and essentials of the choral realm performed by Chorale Coeur d’Alene. March 22, 2 & 7 pm. $10-$90. Trinity Lutheran Church, 812 N. Fifth St. choralecda.com

JEANNE BOURGEOIS & YUNJUNG

PARK Guest artists Jeanne Bourgeois (violin) and YunJung Park (piano) perform Brahms’ Sonata No. 1 in G major and Frank’s Sonata in A major. March 23, 3-4 pm. $10. St. John’s Cathedral, 127 E. 12th Ave. stjohns-cathedral.org

SPOKANE GUITAR COLLECTIVE CONCERT Enjoy four of Spokane’s premier

classical guitarists of Spokane Guitar Collective performing live. Pay at the door. March 23, 12-1:30 pm. $25. Unity Spiritual Center Spokane, 2900 S. Bernard St. unityspokane.org (509-838-6518)

SPORTS & OUTDOORS

OUTDOOR GEAR SWAP Buy, sell or trade outdoor gear, upgrade your equipment, find great discounts and connect with outdoor organizations. March 21, 6-8 pm. Free. Millwood Masonic Center, 3219 N. Argonne Rd. millwoodmasoniccenter.com (509-999-9930)

SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. SEATTLE THUNDERBIRDS Regular season games. Promotional schedule includes Coeur d’Alene Casino Regular Season Finale and Family Feast Night. March 21, 7:05 pm. $12-$40. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com

MINI YOGA RETREAT A three-hour yoga retreat led by Inclusion Wellness Community featuring a blend of mindfulness, movement and community connection. Register to attend. March 22, 10 am-1 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. spokanelibrary.org (509-444-5300)

SLUSH CUP & POND SKIM This fun-filled day features a pond skim, snow golf, a costume contest, silent auctions, a poker run, live music and more. March 22, 9 am. 49 Degrees North, 3311 Flowery Trail Rd. ski49n.com (509-935-6649)

BEYOND THE BASELINE WOMEN’S PANEL A panel meant to inspire discussion around women’s sports featuring

panelists Cierra Burdick, Stephanie Curran, Jennifer Dill, Terry Gawlik and Renee Washington. March 25, 5:30 pm. $20. Montvale Event Center, 1019 W. First. Ave. spokanesports.org (509-844-5672)

2025 NCAA DIVISION 1 WOMEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP Watch eight teams battle it out with two teams heading to the Women’s Final Four. March 2831; times vary. $28-$69. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanearena.com

FAN FEST BLOCK PARTY Celebrate women’s sports with food vendors, activities, giveaways, a DJ and special surprises. Located in Riverfront Park’s Butterfly Plaza. March 29, 12-5 pm. Free. Riverfront Park, 507 N. Howard St. championwomensports.com (509-625-6600)

THEATER & DANCE

DANCING WITH THE STARS LIVE! Experience the TV show’s famed ballroom dancing live wiht a night of electrifying dance performances from world-renowned dancers who topped the leaderboard, including Emma Slater, Alan Bersten, Brandon Armstrong, Britt Stewart, Daniella Karagach, Gleb Savchenko, Pasha Pashkov and Rylee Arnold. March 20, 7:30-10 pm. $40-$125. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. dwtstour.com (509-279-7000)

THE WOLVES A fly-on-the-wall look at a girls’ high school soccer team as they go through their warm-ups. From the safety of their suburban stretch circle, the team navigates big questions and wages battles. Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 pm

through March 30. $15-30. Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St. spokanecivictheatre.com (509-325-2507)

SFB A modern retelling of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s 1895 play The Seagull. March 21-30; Fri-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm. $16. Gonzaga University Magnuson Theatre, 502 E. Boone Ave. gonzaga.edu/theatreanddance

SWING DEVILS OF THE PALOUSE: ALIVE AND KICKING Swing Devils of the Palouse host a swing dance night featuring lessons, performances and a screening of Alive and Kicking, an insider’s view into the culture of the current swing dance world March 21, 7-9 pm. $8. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. kenworthy.org

DANCEFEST 2025 DanceFest celebrates diversity of dance in the Inland Northwest with 10 groups ages youth to adults from the Inland Northwest performing a wide variety of dance styles. March 22, 1-3:15 pm. Free. Spokane Community College, 1810 N. Greene St. indaspokane.org

VISUAL ARTS

BEASTS, THE COLOR OF WINTER A group exhibition about dreams, precious artifacts and the ambition to understand the secrets harbored in the empyrean divine by artists Megan Finch, Tuk Vaughankraska and Mary Tevlin. ThuSat from 4-7 pm through March 29. Free. Terrain Gallery, 628 N. Monroe St. terrainspokane.com

KAREN MOBLEY: BIG DOODLES Large format improvisational watercolors by local artist Karen Mobley. Daily from 11 am-6 pm through March 29, 11 am-6

For information on advertising in the next edition, contact: advertising@inlander.com

pm. Free. Entropy, 101 N. Stevens St. explodingstars.com (509-499-0784)

ERIN ELYSE BURNS: ITERATIONS Erin Elyse Burns is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice navigates territory within the disciplines of photography, video, performance art and artifact. Mon-Fri from 9 am-6 pm through April 10. Free. Eastern Washington University, 526 Fifth St. ewu.edu

I AG DUL BHFIAIN & DOINK AND INCONGRUITIES A two-person show with Thomas O’Day displaying text and images from Dublin and Tresia Oosting including works resulting from a bag of candy. Wed-Fri from 11 am-5 pm, Sat from 1-4 pm through April 1. Free. Kolva-Sullivan Gallery, 115 S. Adams St. kolva.comcastbiz.net (509-458-5517)

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

MASTER OF FINE ARTS THESIS EX-

HIBITION A collection of work from WSU Master of Fine Arts candidates Cameron Kester, Anna Le, Abigail Nnaji and Sara St. Clair. March 25-June 28, Tue-Sat from 10 am-4 pm. Free. Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU, 1535 NE Wilson. museum.wsu.edu

INKSCAPE FOR BEGINNERS Learn the basics of the Inkscape interface, gain an understanding of dock and file organization and leave with a design of your own onto a tote bag. Ages 12+. March 26, 5-7 pm. $95. Gizmo-CDA, 283 N. Hubbard Ave. gizmo-cda.org

OPEN STUDIO Stop by The Hive to see

what Artists-In-Residence are up to, and tour the building. Every Wednesday from 4-7 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague. spokanelibrary.org

WORDS

REMEMBERED PLACES, SIGNIFI -

CANT SPACES Dr. Samantha Flood discusses how the architectural makeup of rooms and buildings in the Pueblo Southwest alter the relationships among the people who occupy them. March 20, 6-8 pm. Free. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org

AUNTIE’S BOOK CLUB: QUEER & WEIRD Discuss Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao at the March meeting. March 22, 6-7 pm. Free. Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main. auntiesbooks.com

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. spark-central.org

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

MATT KRACHT: A DUMB BIRDS FIELD GUIDE TO THE WORST BIRDS EVER

Professional birding amateur and bestselling author Matt Kracht’s new book is a field guide to help identify and stay away from the worst birds ever to plague planet Earth. March 27, 7-8:30 pm. Free. Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave. auntiesbooks.com n

What the Hex?

The United Nations just voted to ban hexahydrocannabinol, so what is it?

BY WILL MAUPIN

We all know THC and CBD, but those are just two of over 100 so-called cannabinoids known to naturally occur in the cannabis plant. But who knows what hexahydrocannabinol is?

Well, apparently people at the United Nations do, because they just voted to make it an illicit drug.

Hexahydrocannabinol is the latest in an everincreasing line of cannabinoids to make waves on the gray market. Chemically similar to THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, hexahydrocannabinol, or HHC, creates a high similar to THC.

Because it is not THC, however, HHC has been used as a “legal” replacement for otherwise illicit THC.

While legal in states like Washington, cannabis remains illegal both federally and broadly around the world. Hemp, on the other hand, has been legalized at the federal level. On a botanical level, there is no difference between the two plants, but in terms of regulation there is, and that creates the loophole that has allowed chemicals like HHC to make their way onto the market.

In the United States, hemp is defined as cannabis that contains less than 0.3% THC by weight. In essence, it’s incredibly dull weed. It’s

so weak, it won’t get you high.

The hemp law says nothing about the content of other cannabinoids like HHC, however. Enterprising business owners have exploited that definition by breeding cannabis plants to produce HHC rather than THC, therefore rendering them as legal hemp but allowing them to produce a high similar to illicit cannabis.

This is the same reason that CBD is now considered legal in the United States; hemp can contain CBD, just like cannabis, as long as it contains less than 0.3% THC.

Unlike CBD, which does not cause a high, HHC presents a problem for regulators. If the purpose of prohibition is to prevent intoxication, then what good is regulation that allows for legal loopholes?

International regulators at the UN last week recognized this issue and voted to put HHC on the Convention on Psychotropic Substances as a banned substance.

The move is yet another “one step forward, one step back” in the dance that is cannabis reform. While some jurisdictions move in the direction of legalization, others remain engaged with the struggle to enforce prohibition. As long as there is no consensus on the issue, the gray area that leads to chemicals like HHC hitting shelves will continue to be exploited. 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.

HHC creates a high similar to THC.

BE AWARE: Marijuana is legal for adults 21 and older under Washington State law (e.g., RCW 69.50, RCW 69.51A, HB0001 Initiative 502 and Senate Bill 5052). State law does not preempt federal law; possessing, using, distributing and selling marijuana remains illegal under federal law. In Washington state, consuming marijuana in public, driving while under the influence of marijuana and transporting marijuana across state lines are all illegal. Marijuana has intoxicating effects; there may be health risks associated with its consumption, and it may be habit-forming. It can also impair concentration, coordination and judgment. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. Keep out of reach of children. For more information, consult the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board at www.liq.wa.gov.