Inlander 05/27/2021

MAY 27-JUNE 2, 2021 | FAMILY OWNED. COMMUNITY FOCUSED.

BORN OF BASALT 6 FIXING THE HOUSING CRISIS 8

2 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

INSIDE VOL. 28, NO. 33 | PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: DEREK HARRISON

COMMENT NEWS COVER STORY BEST OF BALLOT

5 8 14 21

CULTURE FOOD MUSIC EVENTS

23 28 30 32

I SAW YOU GREEN ZONE ADVICE GODDESS BULLETIN BOARD

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EDITOR’S NOTE

T

his week, our resident movie buff Nathan Weinbender investigates the state of the FILM INDUSTRY in the Inland Northwest and why Spokane is ready for the red carpet (page 14). Plus, he previews this summer’s most anticipated blockbusters and revisits the region’s previous turns on the big screen.

Also this week: Staff reporter Daniel Walters gives us 10 things we could do to address the region’s housing crisis (page 8), education reporter Wilson Criscione examines the ongoing struggles of Washington’s charter schools (page 12) and contributors Carrie Scozzaro and Mindy Cameron explore the ways North Idaho is changing — for good or ill — in separate stories (pages 23-25).

— JACOB H. FRIES, editor

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE PAGE 6

FOOD FLIGHT! PAGE 28

THE MAYHEM OF 1971 PAGE 30

HAPPENING THIS WEEK PAGE 32

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INLANDER

SPOKANE • EASTERN WASHINGTON • NORTH IDAHO • INLANDER.COM

1227 WEST SUMMIT PARKWAY, SPOKANE, WA 99201 PHONE: 509-325-0634 | EMAIL: INFO@INLANDER.COM THE INLANDER is a locally owned, independent newspaper founded on Oct. 20, 1993. It’s printed on newsprint that is at least 50 percent recycled; please recycle THE INLANDER after you’re done with it. One copy free per person per week; extra copies are $1 each (call x226). For ADVERTISING information, email advertising@inlander.com. To have a SUBSCRIPTION mailed to you, call x213 ($50 per year). To find one of our more than 1,000 NEWSRACKS where you can pick up a paper free every Thursday, call x226 or email frankd@inlander.com. THE INLANDER is a member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. All contents of this newspaper are protected by United States copyright law. © 2021, Inland Publications, Inc.

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COMMENT STAFF DIRECTORY PHONE: 509-325-0634 Ted S. McGregor Jr. (tedm@inlander.com)

IF SPOKANE WERE A CHARACTER IN A MOVIE, WHO SHOULD PLAY IT? NICOLE BISHOP: Jenna Fischer. She is a bigger-time celebrity with more of a small town/Scranton feel. And like Spokane, Jenna didn’t really “take off” until a little later in her life.

She also gets a bit overshadowed by her more popular co-stars,like Steve Carell, in the same way we get overshadowed by Seattle.

PUBLISHER

J. Jeremy McGregor (x224) GENERAL MANAGER

EDITORIAL Jacob H. Fries (x261) EDITOR

Dan Nailen (x239) MANAGING EDITOR/ARTS & CULTURE

MICHAEL STANLEY: Arnie [Leonardo DiCaprio] from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

Chey Scott (x225) FOOD & LISTINGS EDITOR Nathan Weinbender (x250) FILM & MUSIC EDITOR

Derek Harrison (x248) ART DIRECTOR

Chris Frisella COPY CHIEF

Wilson Criscione (x282), Daniel Walters (x263), Samantha Wohlfeil (x234) STAFF WRITERS

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OPERATIONS Dee Ann Cook (x211) BUSINESS MANAGER Kristin Wagner (x210) ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE

EDITOR’S NOTE

Normally, we ask our question of the week of people we randomly encounter on the street. But with the coronavirus pandemic, we instead asked our followers on social media to share their thoughts.

LUCAS McINTYRE: Garret Dillahunt.

Dude can be anything. You want a Russian mobster? Call Dillahunt.

Hapless dad? Dillahunt. Jesus Christ? Somebody call Dillahunt.

Spokane is the same way. Fabulous outdoor playground? Spokane.

Gritty urban wasteland? Spokane.

Bougie midsized city with a clique of villainesque old-money families pulling the strings? Spokane. We’re a versatile, vaguely familiar character actor of a city.

RENEI YARROW: Clint Howard.

Great small character in every one of his brother’s films, and other roles.

Never the star, but always there and memorable.

SONJA MONGAR: Because of the strong sociopathic tendencies, Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers.

JOEY BRYAN: William H. Macy from Shameless.

LINDA ASLESON: Chuck Norris.

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CAYA BERNDT: Nicolas Cage, and I say this with the greatest affection.

TOM SANDERSON: Steve Buscemi would be a good Spokane. Kind of rough on the exterior but pretty talented and does some amazing stuff.

PAUL SECREST: Dax Shepard. Often content to come across like a gross loser but also capable of being very warm and clever.

ALLEN ROEDEL: William H. Macy’s [Shameless character] Frank Gallagher.

DARCY HILDEBRAND: Jim Nabors as in Gomer Pyle. n

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COMMENT | PARKS

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Beyond Basalt

The raging waters of the Spokane River Falls and its ancient gorge bring past, present and future together at the new Riverfront Park

BY TED S. McGREGOR JR.

I

f you visit the Spokane River Falls about now, with the spring runoff creating its roar, throwing mist off the basalt cliffs, you can feel the entire history of this place. Falling water creates great fishing, which is why local tribes gathered in the vicinity for generations. It can also power a mill, which is why pioneers settled here. Later, and continuing to this day, it powers the electricity that helps run our city.

But go back even further, millions of years into the past, when massive flows of lava bubbled out of the earth and covered tens of thousands of square miles in the unforgiving black rock we call basalt. You can see it everywhere you look, all along the river’s gorge, then up along the edges of the South Hill and North Side, defining our city center.

As you watch the flow of water today, think bigger — much, much bigger. Imagine if all the rivers in the world were flowing through there at once. Then multiply that by 10. That’s the cataclysm that hit this region multiple times between 12,000 and 18,000 years ago, as the Ice Age waned and ice dams in North Idaho built up and then failed again and again, carving out the landscapes we now live in, from Grand Coulee to the Pothole Lakes to the Spokane River Gorge.

That’s some pretty dramatic history, and as of Friday, with the grand opening of the new amenities on the North Bank of Riverfront Park, it’s immortalized in one of the greatest kid zones

in all the Pacific Northwest — the Ice Age Floods Playground. And there’s more: a Hooptown basketball complex, a skate park, heck, you might even spot a rogue, 1970s-era dinosaur bone.

But if pondering all that geology makes you a little sleepy, that’s OK — the playground has some epic slides to check out, too.

A

s the Riverfront Spokane redevelopment project reaches completion, there’s recent history to consider as well. Go back to the 1960s, when the only cataclysm on locals’ minds was whether downtown Spokane was going to dry up and blow away. City leaders brought in a visionary urban planner from California, King Cole, and together they settled on an audacious moonshot solution. “C’mon, gang, let’s throw a World’s Fair!”

As we all know, they did just that, hosting Expo ’74 along the river, with hundreds of thousands coming to visit. They embraced the ecology theme by at least starting not to view the Spokane River as a big, handy sewer. Another lasting legacy was leaders like Jim Cowles convincing the railroads to clean up their tangled mess of tracks and relocate it all to the viaduct

where it runs today. In the process, they revealed the Spokane River for the first time in half a century. People started falling in love with it.

The physical space of Riverfront Park was left behind after the World’s Fair, but they also left a challenge for future generations to live up to. Let’s admit it, we kind of sucked at that for like 30 years, with no vision or investments into our most important public space and the river that runs through it. But recently local governments have taken that ecological cue, and the Spokane River has been significantly cleaned up. And in 2014, Spokane citizens voted to spend real money on preserving Riverfront Park.

Now, after years of planning and construction, you can see the results, from the lit-up lantern of a Pavilion to the beautiful new stable for Charles Looff’s horses. Our communal living room has never looked better.

R

iverfront Park is a symbol of so much: Our history, our local character — prickly as a Ponderosa pine cone, perhaps, yet sturdy as a column of basalt — and our future.

In a time when we can’t agree on much of anything, renovating the park is an investment in our lives together. It’s a statement of shared purpose. It tells the world — and our children — who we are as a community, what we care about. And it’s a confidence builder for a city and region that is only just getting used to the idea that, actually, we’re pretty damn cool. Build one of the best parks on the West Coast? Yeah, we can do that.

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Even if you view it strictly through a cost-benefit analysis, it’s already pumping out big dividends. There’s the world-class Podium athletic center, looming above the site on Spokane Parks land, steadily nearing completion. Next up: The new high school football and soccer stadium. All these decades later, King Cole’s Expo gambit is still paying off. Buildings are being renovated around the park’s perimeter, with new ones — towers, even — in the planning stages. People are looking to move here, young people are staying put, and we’re seeing our name on ONLINE those quality-of-life lists we Visit inlander.com/slideshows used to dismiss because it for more photos of the new was always Boise, Boise, Riverfront Park North Bank.

Boise. Kendall Yards keeps on growing, and one of Seattle’s top restaurateurs decided to join our already great dining scene in a space right across from, you guessed it, Riverfront Park.

Everybody pitching in a few bucks on a park bond to reach for a brighter future? Yeah, it’s penciling out.

So when you stop by the new Riverfront Spokane, be sure to take in the mighty Spokane River Falls. Feel the raw power of that water pounding across those basalt walls, shaping this place and all who live here as time marches on. n Ted S. McGregor is the publisher of the Inlander. From 201320 he served as a community volunteer planning the park renovations and later as a member of the Spokane Park Board.

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Now on Inlander.com: National and international stories from the New York Times to go with the fresh, local news we deliver every day

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 7

HOUSING

WHERE TO START Ten things we’re not doing to solve Spokane’s growing housing crisis

BY DANIEL WALTERS

B

en Stuckart spent eight years as president of the Spokane City Council, often weathering the outrage and criticism slung by a frustrated public. But now that he’s part of that frustrated public, he’s the one slinging criticism at the council.

“I think they’re failing,” says Stuckart. “They’re failing in their job to provide urgent public policy.”

Today, as director of the Spokane Low Income Housing Consortium, he’s horrified by what’s happening to Spokane’s housing market.

And so is Darin Watkins, government affairs director of the Spokane Association of Realtors, a group that poured money into defeating Stuckart’s 2019 mayoral campaign.

“It is really, really, really bad,” Watkins says about the housing crisis. “Our available inventory is at the lowest level in the entire country.”

Housing prices have skyrocketed by over 60 percent in just five years, and availability has plummeted. Today, recent survey data says, only one apartment unit out of every 167 is vacant. That’s half the level of vacancies we had four years ago, when the Inlander was warning about our extremely low vacancy rate.

And when the state’s eviction moratorium ends, Stuckart and Watkins expect rent increases to explode.

“The rent increases that everybody sees, they’re

Kendall Yards is praised for being a walkable neighborhood, but its townhomes and cottages are illegal to build in much of Spokane. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

8 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

gonna crush them,” Stuckart says. “I think we’re going to be shocked by the increase in homelessness.”

The problem is simple: We don’t have nearly enough houses for the number of people who want them.

And while there have been reforms at both the city and state levels, Stuckart, Watkins and others argue that we need dramatic interventions to get more houses and apartments built and fast. They, and other local leaders we interviewed, floated 10 ideas:

1 DECLARE A HOUSING EMERGENCY

“First, we should be declaring an emergency,” Stuckart says.

He rattles off a list of things he thinks should be done immediately: expand the multifamily tax exemptions — incentives rewarding developers who build apartments in certain spots — to the entire city. Waive permit fees on all new housing. Set a seperate fast-tracked housing permitting system. And spend a ton of the federal COVID dollars on speeding up the development of low-income housing.

2 FIX OR DITCH THE “CENTERS AND CORRIDORS” PLAN

The plan was simple: Target new development around select “corridors” like North Monroe and “centers” like the South Perry and Garland District. But while

businesses have thrived in some of these centers, the promised housing development hasn’t arrived.

“For 25 years, through the Centers and Corridors process, we have not built one major development in the city — not one,” Watkins says. “It’s a failed process. It doesn’t work.”

Stuckart argues that the plan had potential, but says the surrounding zoning needed to be changed to allow for a lot more housing near these zones.

City Council President Breean Beggs, however, suggests that the city should broaden its map by basing density on bus stops instead. Under Beggs’ idea, you’d be able to build higher and more closely packed buildings the closer you are to a bus stop. Major bus stops, like those on the high-frequency City Line route, would allow especially dense development, he proposes.

3 LEGALIZE KENDALL YARDS EVERYWHERE

The Kendall Yards development, filled with rows of multistory townhomes and clusters of cottages, may not strike people as particularly radical, even if plopped down in the middle of suburbia. But Kendall Yards is the sort of design only made possible through special exceptions of local rules about yard size, lot size and parking availability. ...continued on page 10

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MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 9

NEWS | HOUSING

“Anytime you want to move quickly, and do something big it takes sacrifices,” City Council President Breean Beggs says of the difficulty of addressing the housing crisis. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

“WHERE TO START,” CONTINUED...

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“Yet you cannot build that in 85 percent of Spokane,” Watkins says.

In 2018, the city loosened up on some of those regulations, but only within a quarter mile of the city’s Centers and Corridors zones.

“What is happening in Spokane is we are building houses on large lots, and we build large apartment complexes, and we build nothing in between,” Kendall Yards developer Jim Frank wrote in a paper for the Spokane Housing Summit earlier this year.

In the months ahead, Beggs expects the council to consider a variety of proposals to address the housing crisis “that includes the kind of Jim Frank gospel of making smaller lots and getting rid of some of the requirements for square footage,” Beggs says.

4 INVITE MOTHER-IN-LAW UNITS TO MOVE IN

Accessory dwelling units, or “mother-in-law apartments” as they’re sometimes called, are a simple idea: a smaller home or apartment built in the yard or garage of a larger property.

But these dwellings remain illegal in many residential zones in Spokane. The quickest way to turn around the housing crisis, Beggs says, is to change that.

“And then, we should hire one to two city employees whose job it is to market them,” Beggs says.

Those city staffers would develop a few prefab floor plans and streamline the permitting, utility hookup and bank loan processes, making it easy for any homeowner with a little extra money to put new homes on the market.

“You can do that throughout the city,” Beggs says. “Then you get to the promise: You can live in every neighborhood, even Rockwood, affordably if you’re willing to live in a small enough place.”

5 ALLOW HOUSES TO FACE ALLEYWAYS

Similarly, “laneway housing” could take little-used backyards and turn them into spaces for second homes that open onto alleyways. City

Councilman Michael Cathcart argues that this would also have the benefit of creating “much more vibrant and safe areas” by putting more eyes on the alleys.

THE PARKING LOTS 6 UNPAVE AND PUT UP PARADISE

Spokane loves parking, but there’s a huge invisible cost to dedicating our most valuable downtown real estate into asphalt rectangles instead of high rises filled with mixed-use residential and retail units.

“If even a small fraction of that land could be converted into denser housing, that would both help the housing crisis and add vitality to downtown,” Washington state Sen. Majority Leader Andy Billig says.

Yet since the Davenport Grand Hotel opened downtown in 2015, very little parking space has been converted. Billig says it’s a matter of using local policy to discourage parking lots and reward downtown housing.

THE DEFINITION OF SINGLE-FAMILY 7 CHANGE ZONES AT THE STATE LEVEL

“Oregon Legislature Votes To Essentially Ban Single-Family Zoning,” a 2019 NPR headline announced. That makes it sound like building a single-family home is now illegal in Oregon.

But that’s not the case at all: It wasn’t banning single-family homes, it was mandating that local governments allow other types of housing, too. Oregon’s law requires all cities with more than 10,000 people to allow duplexes in singlefamily zones, and larger cities (or cities near Portland) to allow fourplexes.

Yet, so far, the Washington Legislature has declined to pass anything similar.

“The tension there is that there’s also a strong sense of ‘let local communities come up with solutions that work for that community,’” says Sen. Majority Leader Andy Billig, D-Spokane.

But at the local level, Beggs says, there’s

heavy resistance to allowing even more duplexes.

“There are people who think that would be crazy and there would be pitchforks,” Beggs says. “There’s always this question of how do you bring people along? Because the reality is, it wouldn’t be bad.”

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8 BRING ON THE STATEWIDE DENSITY INCENTIVES

If forcing cities to change their zoning codes wasn’t politically possible, what about effectively paying them instead?

House Bill 1157, co-sponsored by Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane, during this year’s legislative session would have rewarded cities that upzoned areas to allow for denser housing development, like building townhomes, fourplexes and apartment complexes. The premise: Whenever developers built the newly allowed types of housing units, the local cities would get back some of the taxes paid to the state when the homes get sold.

But while it passed out of the state House 93 to 4, it wasn’t able to escape out of the Senate Committee before the Legislature closed up shop.

9 FINISH FIXING UP THE CONDO LAW

“We’re fighting a housing crisis, in my opinion, created by the state,” says Spokane County Commissioner Al French.

Beyond his frustrations over state regulations on development in unincorporated areas of the county, he says the state’s condominium regulations still make it way too expensive to build affordable units.

He says the condo liability reforms the state passed in 2019 didn’t go nearly far enough to make condominiums an attractive option for developers. That means that in cities like Spokane, it’s almost impossible for low-income residents to find a home they can afford.

“You’re denying people the right of home ownership, even if it’s a condo, and robbing them of the opportunity to grow wealth,” French says. “Shame on us, shame on the state, and shame on the Legislature.”

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“I’m worrying that their own personal perspective isn’t opening their eyes to the suffering that’s going on in the other 47 percent of the community.”

10 SHOW A LOT MORE URGENCY

But Stuckart, Watkins and even Cathcart share a sense of exasperation that, in their view, there doesn’t seem to be any sense of urgency to fix the crisis. The city hasn’t even hired an official planning director for three years, Stuckart points out.

At the state level, Billig can point to the $900 million in emergency rental assistance for tenants and landlords. And Beggs cites the city’s recent efforts — like sweetening the multifamily tax exemption incentives and levying a local sales tax to fund affordable housing — as well as its desire to implement some suggestions in the city’s recently released “Housing Action Plan.”

But at the same time, Watkins can point to housing development projects that the City Council has rejected, even in recent months.

“If you’re like every member of their council right now that owns their own homes, they have stable housing costs,” he says.

“I’m worrying that their own personal perspective isn’t opening their eyes to the suffering that’s going on in the other 47 percent of the community.”

But while Beggs disagrees with that kind of assessment of the City Council, he agrees about the underlying issue.

“It’s a tale of two cities — and a big portion of the city’s in crisis,” Beggs says.

The challenge, he says, is that the folks who wield the most political and economic power aren’t in that portion. n

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MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 11

NEWS | EDUCATION

Making the Grade A state audit tests Spokane Public Schools oversight of PRIDE Prep as the charter school grapples with prior financial and academic trouble

BY WILSON CRISCIONE

W

hen public charter school PRIDE Prep faced the possibility of losing its authorization last week, it wasn’t the first time the future of the school hung in the balance.

Charter schools in Washington have been plagued by uncertainty ever since voters approved their creation in 2012. If it wasn’t a state Supreme Court ruling threatening their existence, it was a lack of stable funding or low enrollment. In 2019 alone, four Washington charter schools closed due in part to enrollment issues.

But PRIDE Prep last week was on shaky ground for different reasons. The school had poor academic performance based on standardized test scores, and in April state auditors flagged issues with school financial records and the leadership of its founder and superintendent, Brenda McDonald.

Most charter schools in Washington are authorized by the Washington State Charter School Commission.

Spokane Public Schools, however, is the only district in the state to authorize charter schools on its own. But board members expressed serious concerns during a meeting last week.

“What happened just seemed so egregious,” school board member Jenny Slagle said. “I keep thinking back to if this were our superintendent, and we had similar issues, how would we deal with it?”

It was a test in what kind of oversight the school district has over the charter school, which was recently on the wrong end of a state audit raising questions over its use of public funds. In the end, the school district voted to renew authorization, on the condition that there is a plan moving forward. Slagle was the lone “no” vote.

But while there were concerns about PRIDE’s leadership team, ultimately board members realized they didn’t have much power to force PRIDE to hold them accountable for what they saw as egregious errors.

“PRIDE Prep as a charter school has its own independent board, and the board hires the superintendent,” says Cindy Coleman, chief finance and business services officer for Spokane Public Schools. “Their decision to hire, retain, fire, mentor and discipline is an individual board decision.”

The PRIDE board, meanwhile, maintains confidence in McDonald, PRIDE’s founder.

“We’re very confident in Brenda and the team we have here moving forward,” says Ian Field, a board trustee member.

AUDIT FINDINGS

On April 1, the Washington State Auditor’s Office released a report finding multiple problems with PRIDE Prep’s operations from 2017 until 2019.

12 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

Spokane Public Schools approved a three-year conditional authorization for public charter school PRIDE Prep.

For the public charter school, the report came at an inauspicious time — just as Spokane Public Schools was getting ready to make a decision on reauthorization.

McDonald says the charter school immediately began taking strides to address the issues raised in the report.

“We’ve taken responsibility for the components of the audit where we have needed to make changes,” McDonald says.

The first issue auditors flagged had to do with vacation leave. Staffers were both overcredited and undercredited for leave, some took more hours than allowed by school policy, and vacation days from previous years weren’t transferred accurately. Auditors said those errors were due to a lack of oversight and monitoring of payroll, along with inconsistent policies on vacation leave and accrual.

Auditors also found that $4,779.39 was mistakenly charged to PRIDE Prep. PRIDE staff members, including McDonald, were providing consulting for another charter school in Washington and erroneously charged travel expenses for that to the PRIDE account. Auditors described the error as the charter school not complying with the state constitution to safeguard public resources.

But McDonald says the error was quickly fixed.

“As soon as we realized we’d booked travel on the PRIDE credit card, the other school was invoiced immediately,” McDonald tells the Inlander.

The final problem described by auditors had to do with the school allegedly hindering the audit itself. The charter school “impeded access to information and delayed responses to auditor inquiries,” the report says. Paid leave documents were also altered, auditors say. When they questioned McDonald about the altered documents, she said she was instead providing updated documents that had been corrected after learning of recordkeeping shortfalls — they just did not clearly label them as “updated.”

Auditors, however, remained concerned.

“Altering documentation and limiting information to the board affects the board’s ability to demonstrate business was conducted in a transparent manner,” the report said, adding that it may compromise the school’s “ability to prevent misappropriation or misuse of public resources, safeguard public assets, and complying with state laws and their contract in a timely manner, or at all.”

These findings raised alarms for members of the Spokane school board as it considered whether to reauthorize PRIDE Prep. The PRIDE school board, however, assured Spokane Public Schools that it has implemented a new payroll and time-off system with the help of an outside consultant, changing practices to prevent future problems. In a written response, the PRIDE board added

WILSON CRISCIONE PHOTO

that McDonald has been held accountable “through the evaluation and employee discipline process.”

Field, the PRIDE board trustee, wouldn’t go into more detail on that process in an interview with the Inlander, saying those decisions were made in executive session. Field stopped short of calling the mistakes identified by the auditors “egregious,” though he says they are taking the audit seriously.

“I don’t think the information presented demonstrates there was intentional fraud,” Field says. “I think what they revealed was that there were systems that we needed to fix, and I think it was essential that we fix those systems immediately.”

FINANCIAL, ACADEMIC ISSUES

Separate from the audit, PRIDE Prep’s bid for reauthorization was threatened by its overall financial health and academic performance.

Academically, PRIDE Prep students haven’t performed well on the state’s Smarter Balanced assessment.

While English Language Arts scores hover around the Spokane Public Schools district average, math scores lag far behind. Student attendance, too, has been low.

But Brian Via, principal of PRIDE’s Innovation High School, says the charter has been successful in helping students who struggled in traditional public schools succeed. PRIDE Prep has a higher proportion of special education and low-income students compared to the state average. Next month, PRIDE is graduating 81 students, and all of them have been accepted into a post-secondary institution.

“Students come to us and they find their niche, and they thrive, and they figure out who they are, and they figure out what they want to do,” Via says.

PRIDE Prep uses project-based learning, a method of teaching emphasizing real-world explorations of various subjects. McDonald says some traditional assessments may not measure how students are learning through the project-based model. Still, she also notes that students exceed the benchmark for PSAT scores in English.

As for the low math scores, she says students often come to the school behind in math, and PRIDE tries to get them caught up. Among the conditions for reauthorization, PRIDE must provide additional math support for all middle school students.

Financially, McDonald admits things have been unstable. Since 2016, for example, the school consistently has not had the required amount of unrestricted cash on hand.

McDonald partly blames a lack of state funding.

The school building also had to expand to add grades as middle school students transitioned to high school, and

those costs aren’t covered with public dollars like they would be for a traditional public school, she says.

“Sixty days’ cash for us is nearly $2 million, and it’s very difficult to get $2 million when you’re just starting out and you’re trying to buy furniture every year for students, and you’re trying to hire teachers and offer them a competitive wage,” McDonald says.

Other charter schools have had similar issues.

Georgia Heyward, a research analyst for the nonprofit Center on Reinventing Public Education, says public charter schools in Washington often serve a higher proportion of students with disabilities, English language learners and students in poverty. But the state funding typically doesn’t match those needs. Private donations, meanwhile, usually cover some start-up costs but aren’t always sustainable, she says.

And at the same time, charters have a hard time finding suitable facilities in urban areas for a reasonable price.

Heyward studied why four charter schools in Washington closed in 2019, and she found that generally it had to do with a lack of funding combined with a political environment that impacted enrollment.

“The political environment — which included repeated threats of closure — made it challenging for early schools to attract students and staff,” Heyward says.

But enrollment at PRIDE Prep is at capacity. The school serves 722 students in grades 6-12, and there’s a wait list among others trying to get in. Because the school is no longer expanding, spending money on facilities won’t be a problem moving forward, McDonald says.

Overall, McDonald says she’s thankful to have gone through this process with Spokane Public Schools as an authorizer.

“That’s their job,” McDonald says. “They’re a good partner to us, and they have a great deal of expertise. We are a small but growing organization that has learned a lot along the way.” n

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MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 13

Spokane-based filmmaker Andrew Hyatt COURTESY PHOTO

14 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

Spokane Lights, Camera, After a dormant 2020, the Inland Northwest film industry is ready for its close-up

By Nathan Weinbender

I

t’s not every day you see a feature film crew on the sidewalks of Spokane, and it’s even rarer to see Spokane actually playing itself on a big screen.

The upcoming indie dramedy All Those Small Things is not only set in Eastern Washington, it’s practically an advertisement for the transformative charm of the region. Shot in and around Spokane at the tail end of 2019, it’s about a veteran British TV personality, played by Game of Thrones’ James Faulkner, who travels to the rural Inland Northwest in the throes of an existential crisis. He’s a proverbial fish out of water, a posh gentleman in a landscape of trailer parks and dive bars, but he’s soon won over by the eccentric but welcoming locals.

It’s an experience that almost mirrors that of the film’s writer-director, Andrew Hyatt. Raised in Colorado, Hyatt and his wife moved to Spokane a few years ago to be closer to her family, and All Those Small Things is the first project he’s shot in his new hometown. Hyatt’s previous feature, the 2018 biblical drama Paul, Apostle of Christ, was filmed in Malta, and he recently wrapped production on a film in British Columbia.

“I’ve been in places shooting where you’re really not welcomed,” Hyatt says. “I was just up in Vancouver, and not to knock the Canadians, but there were people who would wander on the set and ask for $500 to walk off set.

‘Pay me to get out of here.’”

But over the course of their nearly four-week Spokane shooting schedule, particularly their days working in the Garland neighborhood, Hyatt and his small crew were greeted with the same kind of provincial civility you see in the movie, which is set to be released later this year.

“People on the street were smiling and waving. They would come up and ask, ‘What’s the film about?’ and ‘Good luck, let us know where we can watch it,’” Hyatt recalls. “It’s hard to summarize how rare that is, that people are just excited, and they’re rooting for you. …

The whole town feels involved when you make something here. It’s just very special.”

Hyatt isn’t the only director who has seen the perks of filming in Eastern Washington firsthand, and as the state’s movie industry rights itself after a yearlong latency period, more filmmakers will likely be eyeing this area as a prospective shooting location. There’s only one thing potentially holding them back: money.

T

he special quirks of Spokane have stolen the spotlight away from A-list actors in the past. Most famously, Spokane served as the setting for 1985’s Vision Quest, a high school sports drama starring Matthew Modine and featuring a cameo from “Like a Virgin”-era Madonna, and 1993’s Benny & Joon, in which a Charlie Chaplinobsessed Johnny Depp cavorted around Peaceful Valley, Riverfront Park and Ferguson’s Cafe.

But those were the rare instances of Eastern Washington garnering any attention from studios or TV networks, which by far preferred shooting on the other side of the state (Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, Sleepless in Seattle).

That changed in 2006, when the Washington Legislature passed the state’s film incentive program. Known as the Motion Picture Competitiveness Program, it allows for $3.5 million per year to be disbursed to various film, TV and commercial projects within Washington.

When the incentive went into effect 15 years ago, there was an immediate uptick in regional productions.

The first feature to take advantage of the incentive was the 2007 Lifetime comedy The Family Holiday, which starred Full House’s Dave Coulier and was filmed in Spokane. Other Inland Northwest-based projects that benefited from the incentive include the actioner Give ’Em Hell, Malone (2009), featuring Thomas Jane and Ving Rhames; the comedy The Joneses (2009), with David Duchovny and Demi Moore; and the John Carpenter horror film The Ward (2010). Spokane also served as the production hub for the post-apocalyptic horror series Z Nation, which recently ended its five-season run on SyFy. Juan Mas, who has been a filmmaker and producer in Spokane since the early 2000s, recalls the boost in

production activity following the incentive’s approval. It was like a switch had flipped, he says.

“For us, locally, it was huge,” Mas tells the Inlander.

“You immediately saw a resurgence of growth within the workforce. More training was available, there was more consistent shooting, and our workforce became very solid and started growing very quickly.”

“We were doing three to five features a year,” says Rebecca Cook, who has worked on a number of local film sets since the mid-2000s. “That was pretty steady, and that was great work.”

In total, the Motion Picture Competitiveness Program has helped fund more than 120 projects in Washington. It also birthed the Seattle nonprofit Washington Filmworks, which also serves as the state’s film office and oversees productions that ultimately receive that $3.5 million incentive.

“We are, by definition, the first point of contact for filmmakers looking for locations and resources,” says Amy Lillard, who is the state’s film commissioner and executive director of Washington Filmworks. “But the heart and soul of what we do is economic development. That’s what we look at: How do we keep the film industry working, and how do we create economic development opportunities for the state of Washington?”

It may have attracted more productions to the state, but Washington’s film incentive program has sometimes struggled to gain traction within the Legislature.

The original bill lapsed in 2011, and while Lillard and other advocates lobbied for its renewal in Olympia, the union-supported film jobs in Eastern Washington slowed to a trickle. It was around that time, Mas says, that he resorted to the freelance route, leaving Spokane behind for monthslong jobs in Louisiana and Los Angeles.

“It makes it hard to be part of a community when you’re traveling that much,” he says. “And that’s at a personal level. On the creative level, I had to focus mainly on whatever gig I could get.” ...continued on next page

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 15

North by Northwest co-founder Rich Cowan hopes the state's film incentive becomes more competitive.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

“LIGHTS, CAMERA, SPOKANE,” CONTINUED...

The incentive was eventually reinstated the next year

by Gov. Christine Gregoire, but it has been a continuous struggle to keep the bill in play, with Washington Filmworks launching multiple campaigns to highlight the importance of the incentive. In 2017, the incentive was officially renewed for a 10-year period, but the allocated annual budget remains at $3.5 million.

And that’s becoming an issue.

T

hirty-six U.S. states now offer incentive programs for film productions, and those with the biggest budgets have (unsurprisingly) attracted the most high-profile projects. Canada has long been a go-to location for film shoots because of its refundable tax credits, and Georgia has followed a similar route: Its generous tax credits have attracted the likes of Marvel Studios and Netflix’s Stranger Things to the state. In this corner of the country, Oregon’s annual film incentive of $14 million has made it the most popular place to shoot in the Pacific Northwest. Montana, meanwhile, has seen an uptick in productions since the streaming series Yellowstone began filming there, and the Wyoming Legislature is in the process of increasing its $10 million film incentive.

Compare those numbers to Washington’s $3.5 million budget, which makes it the third-smallest film incentive in the United States. Washington Filmworks has advocated for a budget increase and has received support from politicians such as Rep. Marcus Riccelli and Commerce Director Lisa Brown, who recently presented a report to the Legislature in Olympia about the economic benefits of increasing the incentive.

“We’re constantly in a situation where we are turning business away,” Lillard explains. “We’re very grateful for the $3.5 [million]. But we can generate so much more economic activity if you increase the incentive. … [In Or-

16 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

egon and Montana], you can see the correlation between the investment and the incentive, and the investment in the economy. People will start to invest in infrastructure businesses, like trucks and catering, these things that are really important and unique to film.”

When Rich Cowan co-founded North by Northwest Productions in 1990, the film incentive was still on the horizon, and most productions that came to Spokane (save for the rare Hollywood hit like Benny & Joon) tended to be extremely low-budget affairs. Since then, North

by Northwest has become the region’s most prominent production company, co-producing most of the films that come through town.

Spokane has always been known as a “one-crew town,” but Cowan is positive that an increase to the annual incentive would also increase the number of film productions in the state. That budgetary change would have a ripple effect, too: Film productions beget more film productions, which would bring about a demand for large soundstages, equipment rental houses and even more union crew members, meaning Spokane could take on multiple productions at once.

Besides, he points out, Spokane is an ideal shooting location through sheer logistics: The airport is only about 10 minutes away from the downtown core, there’s far less traffic or travel time than in bigger cities, and the city offers enough geographic diversity to fulfill just about any location requirement.

“There’s absolutely no doubt, as the sky is blue 280 days a year here,” Cowan says, “that we would be a film mecca. Success breeds success. More people will appear, then we’ll go from one crew, to maybe three crews. … It would be a game changer.”

Rebecca Cook is both a board member with Washington Filmworks and president of the Spokane Film Proj-

ect, a networking organization that connects producers with crews and provides support and education to local filmmakers. She believes that if Washington legislators were willing to increase the incentive, the production capacity in the city would increase seemingly overnight.

“We turn away so many projects at Washington Filmworks because we don’t have the money for them,” Cook says, noting that there’s currently talk about starting a political action committee to bring more attention to Washington film. “That is just a reality. No matter how many ways we approach legislators, it’s just maddening.”

“There is no question in my mind that if we had had a bigger incentive, that money would get spent, and it would create more jobs and more economic activity,” Lillard says. “There are case studies across the United States where if you are a state that invests in this type of program, the business follows.”

“It’s so competitive out there with these other states, and at a certain budget level, you need to be competitive,” Cowan says. “But I’m super optimistic about the future here.”

L

ast year, the state’s film industry hit another roadblock in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and Washington, which had some of the strictest on-set COVID-19 protocols in the country, didn’t fund any productions in 2020.

But that unused $3.5 million rolls over to the 2021 budget, thereby doubling the regular incentive. Film production ramped up again this winter, with the historical drama Boon filming in the Inland Northwest in January and February, and Washington Filmworks is currently negotiating for more productions in the summer and fall. ...continued on page 18

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“LIGHTS, CAMERA, SPOKANE,” CONTINUED...

F9

Return of the

Blockbuster

By Nathan Weinbender

M

ost movie theaters in the country went dark for the majority of 2020, so in 2021, audiences will no doubt be making up for lost time. Here are some of the most high-profile releases you’ll be able to see on big screens this summer. Get ready for a whole lot of sequels, reboots, spinoffs and the occasional original idea.

THE CONJURING: THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT

JUNE 4

Real-life paranormal investigators and totally-not-charlatans Ed and Lorraine Warren are back for their third chilling adventure, and their big case this time is a murder suspect who claims to be possessed by a demon. Expect lots of quiet scenes that culminate in loud jump scares.

IN THE HEIGHTS

JUNE 11

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s breakthrough Broadway hit gets a bigscreen adaptation courtesy of director Jon M. Chu. Set during a late summer heat wave, the plot centers on a cast of lovers and dreamers within the Dominican community of New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, all of whom love to sing their feelings.

BLACK WIDOW

JULY 9

She may have met a bitter end in Avengers: Endgame, but there’s no such thing as finality when money can be made, and so Russian super-agent Natasha Romanoff now has her own movie. Scarlett Johansson reprises the role in a globetrotting adventure set immediately after the events in Captain America: Civil War.

SPACE JAM: A NEW LEGACY

JULY 16

First it was Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, and now it’s LeBron James who’s yucking it up with Bugs, Daffy and Lola Bunny in this live action/animation hybrid. Whether it’ll be aimed at the millennials who loved the first film or 2021 kids, it promises to be the ultimate marketing machine.

OLD

A film crew on the set of Z Nation in downtown Spokane.

JULY 23

M. Night Shyamalan has had a roller-coaster of a career, and his latest allegorical chiller sounds like it’ll have just as many twists and turns. It’s about a family who settles on an isolated beach while on vacation, only to discover that some kind of time warp is causing them all to rapidly age.

JUNGLE CRUISE

JULY 30

Another Disney attraction turned into a potential blockbuster, with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt channeling The African Queen as they hop into an old-timey riverboat and head into the jungle on the hunt for a lifesaving elixir.

THE SUICIDE SQUAD

AUG. 6

In this sequel to the surprise 2017 action-comedy hit, Ryan Reynolds’ traumatized bodyguard is trying to escape the business, only to be pulled back in by his previous client (Samuel L. Jackson) and his equally violent spouse (Salma Hayek).

The universally hated DC tentpole gets a do-over, this time with Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and an R rating. Idris Elba, Margot Robbie, John Cena and more A-listers play the titular supervillain task force, broken out of prison and dropped onto a trap-filled island on a mysterious mission.

F9

FREE GUY

HITMAN’S WIFE’S BODYGUARD

JUNE 16

JUNE 25

Dom, Letty and the gang — even Han! — are back in the ninth installment of the Fast & Furious extravaganza, and the bad guys chasing them this time include Charlize Theron as the super-hacker Cipher and John Cena as Dom’s assassin brother.

THE FOREVER PURGE

JULY 2

In each installment of the Purge series, characters either indulge in or evade an annual 12-hour period where all crime is legal. But now in movie No. 5 of the low-budget horror franchise, a group of purgers finally decides to ignore the time limit and keep on killing.

18 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

So after a year of uncertainty and dormancy, the future of Washington’s film industry looks more promising than it has in a long time.

“I feel like the energy right now is really strong,” says Mas, who worked as first assistant director on the set of Boon. “We’ve got a lot of people looking to come up here and shoot.”

One of those people is Karl Schaefer, who co-created Z Nation and worked as showrunner for all five seasons.

Schaefer hadn’t stepped foot in Spokane before starting production, but Washington offered two big perks: great locations and available funds in the year’s film incentive.

The Inland Northwest turned out to be an ideal shooting location for the series, a cross-country odyssey in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, because the city was practically chameleonic. The Spokane River filled in for the Mississippi River in one episode, and scenes in Philadelphia and New York City were both shot on First Avenue (aided by a bit of CGI), and whether scripts called for a mountain range or a desert climate, location scouts could find it here.

AUG. 13

Ryan Reynolds’ second comedy of the summer has him playing an everyday schmo who discovers that he’s an NPC (that’s “non-playable character” for those unfamiliar) inside a video game, and he must insert himself into the narrative.

CANDYMAN

AUG. 27

Clive Barker’s tale about ghosts and racial violence gets a 21st-century update, with an upper-class couple discovering the dark history of their high-priced condo building.

Nia DaCosta directs, Jordan Peele produces, and Tony Todd returns as the Candyman himself. n

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

“Just by opening up your circle of locations a little bit, you can get deserts and rivers and the Palouse,” Schaefer says. “It would have been impossible to do Z Nation in Vancouver or Calgary or Georgia, in my opinion.”

Over the course of Z Nation’s five years on the air, Schaefer says he noticed a growing camaraderie and dedication among his crew that he hadn’t experienced on other sets. In fact, Schaefer was so smitten by Spokane that he’s now developing more projects to be shot here, and he hopes that the high profile of Z Nation will draw more attention to the region.

“There’s a really strong filmmaker community here,” Schaefer says. “They’re people that love making movies. … You get people that have wanted to do this their whole lives. Everybody on our crew moved up a couple of pay grades over the five seasons, became directors, became writers, got to act in the show. We have a pool of directors up here now that are in the [Director’s Guild of America], and that wasn’t here before Z Nation.”

That, again, hints back at Hyatt’s film All Those Small Things, in which an out-of-towner is unexpectedly embraced by Eastern Washington hospitality. Hyatt hopes the film won’t be his last Spokane-centric story, and that his production company Chi Rho Films will be instrumental in getting the Inland Northwest up on the screen more often.

“In this particular film, two very different worlds collide,” Hyatt says, “and it ends up changing the main character’s life for the better. If I look at my own life, it’s better for living in Spokane than anywhere else in the world. Because of the town, because of the people. And I don’t mean that lightly.” n

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MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 19

Spotlight on Spokane

By Nathan Weinbender

W

e may not be Hollywood, but Spokane and the surrounding area has occasionally taken a starring role in major theatrical releases — sometimes as itself and sometimes as other cities, but most often in the role of Anytown, U.S.A. (And no, the Red Dawn remake and the 2019 comedy Tag were not filmed in the Inland Northwest, despite being set here.) From a Steven Spielberg fantasy to a thriller by horror master John Carpenter, here are some notable films shot in and around Eastern Washington.

WHY WOULD I LIE?

THE BASKET

1980

One of the first major features to use Spokane as a backdrop was this long-forgotten comedy starring Treat Williams as a compulsive liar who adopts a precocious kid and tries to track down the boy’s mother. The film was critically panned and was never released on home video in the U.S.

VISION QUEST

nantly Native American cast and crew, this adaptation of a Sherman Alexie short story was filmed in downtown Spokane and on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation. It has become a beloved classic and was recently preserved by the Library of Congress for being historically and culturally significant.

Vision Quest

MOZART AND THE WHALE

1985

END GAME Benny & Joon

1989

It isn’t one of Steven Spielberg’s best-remembered films, but the old-fashioned, supernatural romance Always uses Eastern Washington locations (the towns of Ephrata and Sprague), as well as the forests of the Idaho panhandle, to magical effect. A remake of 1943’s A Guy Named Joe, the movie features Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, John Goodman and Audrey Hepburn in her final film appearance.

TOYS

BENNY & JOON

The Basket

1993

1998

The first wide-release feature film made by a predomi-

20 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

2006

Spokane was again in the spotlight with this Bush-era drama about soldiers returning from the Iraq War (those scenes were shot in Morocco) and readjusting to their ordinary lives. Samuel L. Jackson, Jessica Biel, Christina Ricci and 50 Cent appeared in the film, and it was directed by longtime Martin Scorsese collaborator Irwin Winkler.

Aidan Quinn and Mary Stuart Masterson are siblings marred by family tragedy, and Johnny Depp is the silent movie-obsessed oddball who shakes up their lives.

Benny & Joon is practically a tour of Spokane locations — Peaceful Valley, Riverfront Park, Ferguson’s Cafe and Mary Lou’s Milk Bottle — and features a bunch of A-plus character actors in supporting roles: Julianne Moore, Oliver Platt, Dan Hedaya, C.C.H. Pounder, William H. Macy.

The opening credits tune, the Proclaimers’ super-catchy “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles),” also became a huge hit.

SMOKE SIGNALS

2006

There was a period where Cuba Gooding Jr. never seemed to leave Inland Northwest, appearing in such Spokane-shot films as Lies & Illusions, The Hit List and Wrong Turn at Tahoe. This 2006 thriller was the first of that batch and has Spokane playing Washington, D.C., where a Secret Service agent investigates a presidential assassination attempt. Burt Reynolds, Angie Harmon and James Woods co-star.

HOME OF THE BRAVE

1992

A notorious box office flop, Barry Levinson’s overly whimsical fantasy stars Robin Williams as an eccentric man-child protecting his late father’s toy factory from a militaristic uncle. The factory itself was created on brightly colored sound stages, but there are some gorgeous and eye-catching outdoor scenes that were filmed near the Palouse, most notably in the golden wheat fields of Rosalia.

2005

This rom-com was originally planned as a project for Steven Spielberg, but it ended up being helmed by Norwegian filmmaker Petter Næss and starring Josh Hartnett and Radha Mitchell as autistic adults who fall in love. The film features the Gonzaga University campus and the Cat Tales nature preserve, and a fantasy set piece was shot in the main atrium level of River Park Square.

Based on a novel by then-local author Terry Davis, this inspirational story about a high school wrestler (Matthew Modine) and a tenacious drifter (Linda Fiorentino) was shot at various schools around town, including Rogers, Shadle and Ferris. The movie also features Madonna, who sings “Crazy for You” on stage at the Bigfoot Tavern on N. Division. By the time Vision Quest was released, she was the biggest pop star in the world, and “Crazy for You” topped the Billboard charts.

ALWAYS

1999

Set during World War I, a family-friendly story of German orphans who are transplanted to the Pacific Northwest and an inspiring schoolteacher (Peter Coyote) who introduces the small town to basketball. Directed by North by Northwest’s Rich Cowan, the film focused on the visual splendor of the region, with plenty of goldenhour shots of the landscape.

THE WARD

2010

Horror master John Carpenter emerged from a decadelong hiatus for this psychological ghost story shot primarily at Eastern State Hospital, and while critics admired the atmosphere of the real locations, they mostly panned the movie. The film never received a wide theatrical release in the States, and Carpenter hasn’t directed another feature since The Ward.

KNIGHTS OF BADASSDOM

The Ward

2013

This goofy action comedy plays like a grab-bag of nerdy pop culture references, with its plot about live-action role players battling actual hellspawn and its cast featuring True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten, Firefly’s Summer Glau, Community’s Danny Pudi and Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage. The movie generated buzz after it was significantly re-edited by its distributors, and director Joe Lynch campaigned for the release of his own cut of Badassdom. n

The Inland Nor�hwes� is back, baby, and so is our 28th annual Readers Poll!

And for 2021 we’ve got a great mix of classic questions — from Best Burger to Best Brewery — and new ones — like Best Real Estate Agent and Best Local TikTok Star. We’ve also got special categories just for our readers in the Palouse and Sandpoint areas, along with some special pandemic questions, like Best Place to Buy Nice Sweatpants. (Kidding! We all know it’s time to wear real pants again.)

We do want to find the Best Pandemic Heroes and Best Pandemic Pivots by a business or institution, so watch for that.

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WORDS

A RURAL RECKONING

Ryanne Pilgeram’s new book offers a cautionary tale of one town’s struggle against the backdrop of local, regional, national and even international forces.

COURTESY PHOTO

Pushed Out uses an Idaho town to offer a different perspective on the theme of westward expansion

BY CARRIE SCOZZARO

E

veryone knows a place like Dover, Idaho, an idyllic spot with abundant natural resources drawing continuous waves of people, each reshaping land and occupants alike. Perched on the Pend Oreille River south of Sandpoint en route to majestic Lake Pend Oreille, Dover is typical of western towns driven by extraction industries like mining, timber, even farming. It also offers the familiar narrative of what happens when “new” meets “old:” some assimilate, others push back, but ultimately many are pushed out.

It doesn’t have to be that way, argues Ryanne Pilgeram, a University of Idaho associate professor of sociology and former Dover resident. Her new book, Pushed Out: Contested Development and Rural Gentrification in the US West, offers a cautionary tale of one town’s struggle against the backdrop of local, regional, national and even international forces.

“Unless we understand the dynamics of the past and the ways our economy structures our present, communities will find it next to impossible to imagine paths forward that center our real human needs,” writes Pilgeram in the book, out this month from University of Washington Press.

Pilgeram wondered how Dover, a resilient and close-knit former mill town, acquiesced in 2004 to rezone the waterfront and surrounding areas to allow a master planned community called Dover Bay, despite significant opposition.

Called Mill Lake in the book — Pilgeram uses pseudonyms consistent with the university’s and her industry’s standards — Dover Bay is a shining testimony to lifestyle marketing. It’s 285 acres of charm: 14 neighborhoods with names like Estuary Forest and Sandy Beach, nine miles of manicured trails, and a resort with on-site dining, guest bungalows and a fitness center. The 1930s barn is now an events center, the riverfront has been rebranded as Lake Pend Oreille, and the region’s history condensed into 58 well-chosen words on the development’s website.

In the book, Pilgeram describes Dover Bay as a “simulacrum for an American West that never existed,” looking old-timey, more Hollywood than anything else.

Yet it is not (or not just) the development and certainly not new residents she takes issue with.

Instead, she looks at how Dover is indicative of many communities in the New American West “driven by economic, environmental, and political pressures to ‘fix’

the problems that capitalism itself created,” she writes.

Boom-and-bust cycles, Dust Bowl refugees, NAFTA, westward expansion, Save the Spotted Owl, the insular nature of smaller communities: Pilgeram takes the reader on a well-researched journey that universalizes the Dover experience.

Thus Pushed Out isn’t a single narrative; it’s several narratives intertwined.

Broadly, it’s about the residents of Dover, present and past, including the Kalispel, who have called the region home for nearly 10,000 years. It’s about recontextualizing the mythology of the American West, settled not by “rugged individuals” but rather “according to the spatial and capitalist logics of railroad and timber barons, with Indigenous people, settlers, and laborers always struggling to assert their autonomy and dignity in the process,” writes Pilgeram.

And it’s about the consequences of “rural gentrification” that creates “amenity migrants” in search of natural beauty and/or cultural amenities in rural places like Dover Bay. Change the name from Dover to Sandpoint or from Dover Bay to Kendall Yards, and you get the picture. ...continued on page 25

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 23

CULTURE | ANALYSIS

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A Hard Right A North Idaho resident delves into the region’s drift toward extremism from her tiny blue oasis in a sea of red

BY MINDY CAMERON

I Sign up now at Inlander.com/newsletters 24 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

daho often has been overlooked by those dreaming of moving to the great Northwest. No more. The state population of 1.8 million is growing faster than any other in recent years, adding 256,167 residents (16.3 percent) from 2010 to 2020.

A natural question arises about one of the reddest states: Is growth changing its political profile? It is, but not in the way you might think. It’s growing meaner, sillier and more small-minded.

Drawn to Idaho for its beauty, not its politics.

I moved from Seattle to North Idaho 20 years ago. When confronted by liberal family and friends with raised eyebrows, I responded with a simple declaration: “I’m not moving there for the politics.”

My husband and I had long vacationed at a cabin on Lake Pend Oreille and, smitten by the peaceful lifestyle, rural acreages Mindy Cameron and small-town charms of Sandpoint, planned our retirement there. Today we enjoy a busy life on 25 acres with two gardens, a horse, a pen where we raise lambs, and a flock of hens that lay the prettiest brown and blue-green eggs. In the fall and spring, we clean up the forest and burn the slash piles. That was the life we imagined.

What we didn’t imagine was finding ourselves in what we now call “the blue nation of Glengary,” a collection of neighbors spread along a two-mile band of wooded acres and lakefront homes. The scenery is matched by the quality of friendships we’ve

CLLOYD PHOTO/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

made. We don’t talk politics much, but over time these good friendships reveal shared values about protecting the lake’s water quality and the importance of electing reasonable people to the county commission, the school board and the state Legislature.

Last fall there were plenty of Trump signs in the area, but I was pleased to see a Biden flag added flying below the American flag on my neighbor’s pole.

This is not the Idaho most people imagine, and it is not representative of Idaho — old or new. My neighborhood is a tiny blue puddle in a sea of red. For all the talk (hope?) that the influx of newcomers would moderate the politics of Idaho, the opposite is the reality.

The last Democrat to win an Idaho presidential election was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Kootenai County in North Idaho is a population growth hotspot. It is home to Coeur d’Alene and site of a successful organizing effort by far-right conservatives in recent years. Its margin for Trump last fall was 43 points. In the state as a whole, Trump bested Biden by more than 30 points.

I

started my newspaper career in Boise in the early ’70s and for several years covered the Idaho Legislature. Republi-

CULTURE | WORDS cans dominated, but nothing like today. To my inexperienced eyes, the place seemed largely respectful of differences in politics. A few Democratic leaders managed to wield influence, but one Democrat outdid them all: Cecil Andrus was governor, and that made all the difference. Andrus served from 1971-77, when he left to become Interior secretary in the Jimmy Carter administration. A sign of Andrus’ enduring popularity in the state was his re-election after the stint in Washington, D.C. — two more terms, which ended in 1995. This was also the era of Sen. Frank Church, elected in 1957 and defeated by less than 1 percent of the vote in the 1980 Reagan revolution. No Idaho Democrat has served in the U.S. Senate since.

Church and Andrus are legends of Idaho political history. They came to power when labor unions flourished in North Idaho, where mining and timber dominated. All that began to change in the ’70s when I was covering the Idaho Legislature for the Idaho Statesman and later Idaho Public Television. Liberals across the country were embracing environmental causes and cultural issues — feminism, abortion, antiwar. These causes didn’t play well outside liberal Boise. Elsewhere, Mormons and conservative values prevailed. At the same time, traditional, unionized industries related to mining and forestry were declining.

Idaho chugged along with its Republican political base until a decade into the current century when population growth due to inmigration began to alter the dynamics.

Voter registration numbers tell the tale.

Republicans consistently register more new voters than Democrats, especially in the areas of greatest growth. The result was a huge gain for Republicans by 2020, with 53 percent of voters registering Republican to just 14 percent for Democrats.

This swing to the GOP in the Trump era is obvious in the current Idaho House of Representatives, where some crazy stuff is going on. Lawmakers rejected a federal grant of $6 million for early childhood learning. One lawmaker opposed it because he believes mothers should be at home with preschoolers. Others worried that the curriculum would push a “social justice agenda” on Idaho’s little ones. Early education funding lost by two votes. Idaho is one of only six states that does not fund any early education and one of many states now fearful of a so-called “social justice agenda.”

Rep. Heather Scott, one of the best known and most conservative members of the Legislature, is from my region of North Idaho. She gained attention a few years ago for traveling to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to meet with Ammon Bundy. In the current legislative session, she helped to end Idaho’s involvement in Powerball, which brings in money targeted for education. Why? Because it’s now being expanded to Australia, and Scott, who is staunchly pro-gun, fears the Aussies would spend Powerball money on anti-gun causes.

Last month I sent an email to Sen. Carl Crabtree, a Republican, who represents

me in Boise. I knew him to be a reasonable fellow and said I hoped he would vote against a bill that would make it virtually impossible to pass citizens’ initiatives. Two years ago, an initiative to expand Medicaid in Idaho was successful, and conservative lawmakers, still stinging, were determined to head off a new effort that would increase education funding. (Idaho is 50th in the nation for per pupil spending.) Crabtree said he did not intend to vote for the bill. Two weeks later I saw that he had voted in favor.

I emailed again. He responded promptly and said he had received additional information. “My opinion is with you, my vote was with the plurality of my constituents,” he wrote. When asked about the additional information, he explained that his base supporters, agricultural interests, were lined up on the other side.

Agriculture has long had influence in Idaho. But the larger truth today is the heavy hand of the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Republicans like Crabtree cannot afford to buck the IFF too many times or they will face a far-right candidate in the primary. It’s likely that today the IFF wields as much power as any single interest in the Idaho Legislature. It has ties to a national consortium of conservative and libertarian think tanks, and the result is look-alike positions to other red states: opposition to teaching social justice in colleges, rallying against governors’ stay-at-home orders, favoring public support of private schools while criticizing “government” schools, questioning all-things pandemic, especially masks.

I

daho’s political history includes not only Church and Andrus, but also Sen. William Borah, a progressive Republican who served from 1907 until his death in 1940, and Sen. Len Jordan, a Republican who served from 1962-73. Borah preceded Sen. Church as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He is remembered as an “intellectual giant” and “truly great man.”

Idaho’s highest peak is named after him, along with many schools and the University of Idaho’s annual Borah Symposium on international affairs, and his bronze statue is in National Statuary Hall. Jordan is less celebrated, but his Senate record reveals a progressive spirit. He voted in favor of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court and in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Idaho of Andrus, Church, Jordan and Borah is still a largely rural paradise, but its inhabitants, old and new, have traded self-styled independent conservatives and progressives for hard-right, orthodoxyspewing politicians. It’s a political climate the state’s political heroes would not have recognized or appreciated. n Mindy Cameron is a journalist and author of a memoir, Leaving the Boys, a story of motherhood and career, feminism and romance. A version of this story was first published on postalley.org

“A RURAL RECKONING,” CONTINUED...

For the minutiae-minded, wade through the preface to discern more of Pilgeram’s motivation for pursuing sociology, which includes numerous works on women in agriculture, as well as the foundation for Pushed Out. A teenager when her family was pushed off its western Montana ranch and relocated to Dover, Pilgeram brought with her an interest in understanding Indigenous cultures, empathy for the working class, and an innate curiosity about her own adopted home. Rather than shy from her personal connections to place, Pilgeram embraced them.

“Detachment is overrated,” says Pilgeram of her research approach. These stories are personal, so her involvement emotionally is important, she says. “Personal connections are the weight of responsibility, and maybe all researchers should wear that a little more.”

The lengthy book introduction walks the reader through a sense of place in old Dover, Pilgeram’s initial assumptions about the town’s history, and the evolution of her methodology.

She also delves into rural gentrification, which requires both “a demographic shift of population from urban and suburban areas to rural ones” as well as “the influx of a population with social and economic power to rural areas where they can assert that power.”

Framing what happened in Dover this way, explains Pilgeram, helps contextualize the sense of loss that echoes throughout the book when working-class folks realized they couldn’t compete against the Goliath of a large corporation or the same juggernaut of forces that initially drew them to Dover.

The meat of the book begins with the land itself and culminates in “A Tale of Two Dovers.” We learn about Dover’s recurring water and infrastructure issues, small but significant dramas like the missing minutes from crucial City Council meetings during the rezoning hearings, and how housing prices elsewhere and various economic theories might predict many of the issues that befell old Dover.

Here, too, history buffs will find a fascinating and thoroughly documented read that manages to remain highly accessible and interesting, even for those unfamiliar with Dover.

“That was one of my goals: to make it very specific but also make it accessible to others,” Pilgeram says.

She gets the sense that those she interviewed appreciated the opportunity to relay their experiences in ways that hadn’t yet happened, she says, including being oft-overshadowed by Sandpoint.

And although there is a sense of loss throughout the book, Pilgeram wonders how the story of Dover and Dover Bay might have turned out differently. What if agriculture were more central to land use there, or what if the land had been returned to the Kalispel?

Noting the cyclical history of displacement in Dover, she says one of the book’s main messages is that what we do to the least among us may be our fate if we don’t push back and reckon with the past. n Pilgeram will be at Vanderford’s Books & Office Products, 201 Cedar St., Sandpoint, from noon-2pm on Saturday, May 22, to sign copies of her book.

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 25

CULTURE | DIGEST

When Heroes are the Villains QUEST FOR COMEDY If you see humor in Apple TV Plus’s Mythic Quest that reminds you of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, creators Rob McElhenney, Megan Ganz and Charlie Day all came from the long-running FX hit. Mythic Quest is focused on an egomaniac named Ian Grimm, a video game creator played by McElhenney, whose vision forces everyone else — most often creative partner Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao) — to go to ridiculous lengths to please him.

But while It’s Always Sunny revels in its lead characters tormenting and dismissing those around them, Mythic Quest finds comedy exploring how everyone else deals with that kind of toxicity in an office environment. By doing so, Mythic Quest is able to mix in just a little bit of humanity with the laughs. (WILSON CRISCIONE)

W

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

here do you draw the line between superhero and supervillain?

For that matter, what makes someone good and someone else bad?

If two characters have murdered someone, can either of them still be a “good” person? And who can really get a fair shake when the most powerful people in this equation have a multibillion-dollar corporation behind them covering up all the horrors that are committed behind the scenes of “heroic” actions?

One of the greatest successes of Amazon Prime’s The Boys is how it somehow lures viewers into sympathizing with very human superheroes who fall into the worst mortal trappings, including narcissism and a thirst for power.

Unlike the perfect all-Americans that “the seven” main heroes are portrayed as in every convenience store display and TV commercial, the heroes in this universe are at times the worst of humanity: rapists, drug addicts, murderers and moneywhores.

THE BUZZ BIN

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST There’s noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online May 28. To wit: DMX, Exodus. His first posthumous release (yes, I’m guessing there’s more DMX in the vaults).

Black Midi, Cavalcade. The Brit rock crew’s video for “John L” is one tripped-out production, go YouTube it. k.d. lang, makeover. lang might not be the first name you think of when you think of dance remixes. Well, think again! (DAN NAILEN)

26 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

So it’s easy at first to completely side with the show’s namesake group, “the boys,” a handful of relatively kind-hearted people, albeit with shady backgrounds in some cases, each with a different reason to hold a grudge against the “supes.” They work together over two seasons (a third is on its way) to get justice for their loved ones.

But the brilliance of the show is that over time, as the boys commit more crimes, and as you learn more about the traumas that have shaped the supes into questionable people, you struggle to keep loving or hating any single character all the time. They’re complicated and imperfect.

You still mostly hate the heroes who care little about life or limb (or blood… so, so much blood), but you can also see the ways they hate themselves, and how that leads them to hurt other people.

Likewise with the antiheroes, you of course root for them to call public attention to the evils that be, and you want them to win. But sometimes the way they go about that work is upsetting and messy.

Unlike the escapist narratives of many modern superhero tales, which have a clear winner to root for, there’s no perfect character here. The show forces you to think.

If only parental love had been provided, would he have turned out that way? If you had the choice to give your child extraordinary abilities, would you pick that future for them without being sure of the consequences?

What choices separate us in real life from the people we view as monsters? And how can we ensure that as many people as possible choose to be good, even if that’s the harder path? n

SARA CONYBEER PHOTO

GO GARLAND! Kids at Garfield Elementary School were mentored by local artists Susan Webber, Daniel Lopez and Sara Conybeer and garnered a SAGA grant to create a mural in the Garland District’s Art Alley. The final result is a wonderfully colorful addition to the hip strip of street art (and includes a person riding a shark!), so drop by and give it a look when you can. (DAN NAILEN)

THE REMIX Michael Azerrad published a brilliant book 20 years ago called Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991. He methodically illustrated the vibrant music rarely heard on the radio or seen on TV, basing each chapter on a band like Mission of Burma, Minor Threat or The Minutemen. Now the And Introducing podcast, dedicated to books about music, is doing a deep dive into Azerrad’s tome with a special series called We Pod Econo, available on various platforms. Hosts Chris Wade and Molly O’Brien welcome music writers, comedians and fellow music geeks for gloriously nerdy music chats that run up to two hours, and it’s pretty damn entertaining. (DAN NAILEN)

WANT TO PLAY A GAME? My most recent sojourn to a movie theater was for Spiral, the ninth(!) entry in the seemingly never-ending Saw franchise. I was never a fan, but I’m making up for all that time when big screens were dark, so it’s perhaps not surprising I thought Spiral was pretty lame. Chris Rock stars as a troubled cop investigating a copycat of the engineering serial killer Jigsaw, whose diabolical booby traps are targeting the most crooked members of his precinct. The script flirts with commentary about police corruption but never quite says anything potent, and it’s all wrapped up in a laughably predictable mystery. (NATHAN WEINBENDER)

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MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 27

Tom Sawyer Country Coffee’s coffee flight.

DINING

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Flights of Fancy Food and beverage flights are trending on local menus, from margaritas to pizza and tacos to coffee

BY CHEY SCOTT

M

ove over, beer and wine tasting flights. There’s a new bunch in town bringing new meaning to what’s traditionally been considered a “flight” in the food world, those sample-size portions of a variety of beverages or bites.

Earlier this year, we noticed some of the area’s foodfocused social media groups buzzing about a new trend catching on in coffee shops: flights of miniature lattes, espresso and other specialty drinks. Soon after we started finding creative food and drink flights everywhere.

Mimosas make for an obvious flight-friendly option, too, and there’s plenty such on brunch menus around the Inland Northwest, offering customers any combination of flavors for the bubbly, champagne-based cocktail.

Flights aren’t limited to liquid form. One new downtown Spokane restaurant introduced a pizza flight to its menu, giving diners the choice of any three miniature pies.

The list goes on: sliders, margaritas, wings, tacos, hard seltzer and surely even more options just waiting to be introduced or discovered by us and fellow foodies. The best part about this hopefully-not-fleeting flight trend? It’s the solution to all indecisive restaurant customers’ problems, as well as those who want to sample as much from the menu as possible. We’ve rounded up

28 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

some of the most creative food and drink flights introduced of late.

TOM SAWYER COUNTRY COFFEE

608 N. Maple St., tomsawyercountrycoffee.com Coffee flight, $13.50 New owners Amanda and Jeff LaShaw took over this small coffee roastery in Kendall Yards at the start of the year, and while much of Tom Sawyer’s offerings haven’t changed, the couple did make one exceedingly popular addition: coffee flights.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Tom Sawyer’s cafe seating is full, and nearly every table is sampling its spring seasonal coffee flight. Served on a wooden board, each flight of four 10-ounce servings can be customized to include any beverage on its menu. The featured spring flight, however, offers a wide sampling of the cafe’s current offerings, and was crafted to be on the lighter side with two lattes and two non-coffee drinks.

Tom Sawyer’s spring flight contains white coffee with white chocolate and frosted mint flavors, topped with whipped cream and an Andes mint. There’s also local Revival Tea Co.’s passion fruit tea with desert pear and guava flavoring, and a honey lavender latte. The fourth featured drink is the huckleberry lemon Lotus, featur-

ing the Lotus Plant Energy brand’s Pink Lotus caffeine concentrate.

“People love the idea of being able to try different drinks,” says Amanda LaShaw. “We also have a lot of people who prefer to share their flights. It’s a lot of fun.

They’re all very unique flavors, and it’s a fun alternative to when you go to a coffee shop and only pick one drink, or you order something and maybe it’s not what you expected or wanted.”

SLIGHTLY CHARRED WOOD FIRED PIZZA

816 W. Sprague Ave., spokanepizzas.com Pizza flight, $16 Lots of dishes (sliders, wings and pastries, to name a few) are primed to be made in miniature, yet food-based flights, at least so far, are less common than their liquid counterparts.

Among the bite-sized snacks we did discover, however, is a flight of mini pizzas at the newly opened Slightly Charred Wood Fired Pizza in downtown Spokane. Located in the former location of Fire Artisan Pizza (which last year was also home of the short-lived Gozo Brick Oven Bistro), Slightly Charred launched in February, specializing in thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas.

Owner Sonja Halverson says she introduced the pizza

FOOD | TO GO BOX flight — three, four-inch pizzas in any combination from the menu, or with totally customized toppings — about a month after opening. Since then, the flights quickly became a bestseller. During happy hour (Tuesday through Friday from 3-5 pm) the flight is $12.

“It blew up, and people went crazy,” Halverson says.

“People ask for them all the time.”

All of Slightly Charred’s pizzas have music-inspired names. Among customers’ favorites are “I Think I Love You” with prosciutto, pears and a balsamic reduction, and the “Mosh Pit,” a version of classic supreme pizza.

DE LEON’S TACO & BAR

1801 N. Hamilton St., 2718 E. 57th Ave., 10208 N. Division St., deleonstacoandbar.com Margarita and taco flight, $20-$20 Taco Tuesday got a major upgrade when De Leon’s Taco & Bar introduced margarita and taco flights to its menu, which are also available any day of the week and at all three locations, says co-owner Sergio De Leon.

“We have some of the best margaritas in Spokane, and a lot of people want to try all the different flavors,” he says.

Restaurateur Ethan Stowell.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Two for the Show Ethan Stowell Restaurants’ counter spot Bosco opens in Wonder Building

BY CHEY SCOTT

L Add tacos to your marg flight at De Leon’s Taco & Bar. Margarita flights ($20) of four can include any combination of De Leon’s nine featured flavors: the traditional house blend, huckleberry, mango, peach, prickly pear, raspberry, strawberry and watermelon. Each flight-sized serving is about 8 ounces.

To make it a full meal, De Leon’s also offers two of its bestselling tacos — the housemade chorizo with panela cheese and its favorite “Holy Taco” with skirt steak — for the full taco and marg flight ($29), which comes with two of each of those tacos.

FOUR EYED GUYS BREWING CO.

910 W. Indiana Ave., facebook.com/foureyedguys Seltzer flight, $2.50/pour Nobody in town is making as many flavors of hard seltzer than the new, north central Spokane craft brewery Four Eyed Guys. At any given time, there’s usually between four and six flavors of hard seltzer crafted by the brewery on tap, says co-owner Alex Rausch.

As of last week, that ever-changing lineup included cucumber mojito, orange, orange lime, green apple, coconut and peach. With so many flavors to choose from, Four Eyed Guys offers flights of both its seltzer and beer, giving customers the freedom to choose how many sample-size pours in total they’d like to try.

“Our seltzers have a very clean taste,” Rausch says.

“We don’t have preservatives in them like Truly and White Claw, so it’s a really clean flavor.”

Most popular so far has been Four Eyed Guys’ coconut seltzer, but Rausch says the list of new flavors he hopes to introduce later this year include Tahitian vanilla, guava, apricot, persimmon and pear. n

ast week we covered the opening of Tavolàta downtown — Seattle-based Ethan Stowell Restaurants’ first Spokane eatery. Now, the company’s second restaurant in the Lilac City is open, a small counter-service spot inside the Wonder Building called Bosco.

The casual pasta-centric venture joins existing Wonder Building food and drink purveyors High Tide Lobster Bar and Evans Brothers Coffee, which together create an urban food hall vibe inside the renovated historic space. More food tenants are also expected to move in soon.

Owner Ethan Stowell describes Bosco as more of a fast-casual version of Tavolàta.

“You can get a bowl of pasta, a panini, salad, and we added a bunch of outdoor seating and more tables, and we can also serve alcohol there,” he says.

Bosco is located in the northwest corner of the Wonder’s main floor, next to High Tide Lobster Bar.

MORE RECENT AND FORTHCOMING OPENINGS

As we crawl our way out of the coronavirus pandemic, the rate of new restaurant openings in the area isn’t showing major signs of being slowed down (except for the fact that hiring has become an unprecedented challenge — more on that in Food next week).

Evidence of this regional trend is a slate of recent openings, with several more on the horizon, and which we’ll be covering in the coming weeks.

Last week saw the debut of The Tea, a boba tea bar in the front corner of the Inlander’s building in Kendall Yards, 1227 W. Summit Parkway. The Tea serves up refreshing milk tea drinks with plenty of flavor options, along with the traditional boba: tapioca pearl or fruity popping boba balls to slurp through a super-sized drink straw. The Tea is co-owned and operated by staff at Umi Kitchen & Sushi Bar next door.

Nearby and set to open the first week of June is the hotly anticipated Vieux Carre NOLA Kitchen, specializing in New Orleans- and Cajun-style cuisine.

Located in a Victorian-style brick building with a Nola vibe at 1403 W. Broadway, the restaurant’s neighbors in the space are the Gamer’s Haven game shop and barbershop Maverick’s Men’s Hair.

Yet another new arrival to the Kendall Yards area is Crepe Cafe Sisters over on the neighborhood’s western edge at 441 N. Nettleton, across a parking lot from Park Lodge, Hello Sugar and Indaba Coffee. The venture offering freshmade sweet and savory crepes (including gluten-free options) began as a food truck; its owners had sought a permanent storefront for several years.

Another locally owned restaurant has returned in new form after being closed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020. North Hill on Garland (706 W. Garland) reopened last month under the new ownership of recently returned Spokane native David Hayes, who last operated a restaurant on the Oregon Coast. So far Hayes has expanded North Hill’s two-level patio, and introduced a revamped pub food menu with flatbreads, salads, shareable appetizers and an extensive wine list. n

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 29

STREAMING

CH-CH-CH

FROM LEFT: John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Marvin Gaye and Tina Turner are featured in 1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything.

CHANGES

Were there any musical discoveries you made while working on the show, artists or songs you didn’t really know and are now a fan of?

Actually, a lot of the music that we include in the series I was already a fan of. Some of the Alice Cooper records I was less familiar with, and that’s a really intriguing part of the story. When it comes to Aretha Franklin and Bill Withers and Stevie Wonder, they’re such classic albums and artists that they were already in my record collection, pre-starting this project.

BY NATHAN WEINBENDER

The show hops around quite a bit between episodes.

Was the structure set in stone from the outset, or did it change throughout production?

The structure definitely evolved over time. The book [Never a Dull Moment] itself is chronological — it moves from January through December. One of the big challenges of the edit was to work out what this story was. At one point it was going to be four films, and then there was the suggestion that it could go to six hours as it became more episodic. Finally we settled on these eight [45-minute episodes]. It was such a challenge for the editorial team to find these story arcs and strands, and then to work out which artists and songs feed into those.

As a viewer, it’s mind blowing, and the political backdrop alongside the absolute classic music released at the time makes for an amazing documentary series.

Radical sounds: A new Apple+ docuseries looks at the music and mayhem of 1971

I

t’d be an understatement to say that a lot was happening in 1971, and it was all reflected in the popular music of the time.

Visionaries like Sly Stone, John Lennon and the Rolling Stones retreated to their home studios and experimented with sonics. David Bowie and Marc Bolan were challenging gender norms and pushing fashion in a glam direction. Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Elton John brought newfound honesty and intimacy to the singersongwriter genre. Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” channeled the tumult of the era in confrontational, reactionary ways. Meanwhile, the chaos of the Vietnam War and the chicanery of the Nixon administration thrummed in the background.

1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything, now streaming on Apple+, is an eight-episode documentary series directed by Asif Kapadia and inspired by David Hepworth’s nonfiction book Never a Dull Moment, and it explores the sounds that defined the era with a head-spinning soundtrack of iconic music. But it’s not just about the records people were buying five decades ago: It’s also about the political radicalization, violence and mayhem of

30 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

the post-Woodstock era, and about how it rubbed off on the music.

That soundtrack was curated by music supervisor Iain Cooke, who has worked on series like Luther and Call the Midwife, as well as Kapadia’s Oscar-winning documentary, Amy. Cooke spoke to the Inlander about The Year That Music Changed Everything and the timelessness of its featured artists.

INLANDER: How familiar were you with this era of music, and of history, before taking on the project?

COOKE: The albums in ’71 are so pivotal and hailed as classics, so my knowledge was pretty decent.

Certainly albums like There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Sly and the Family Stone was an absolute favorite of mine, and Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On. The Gil Scott-Heron album is one of my favorites. And the wider audience is going to have knowledge of the Stones and John Lennon, Carole King’s Tapestry and Joni Mitchell’s Blue. But one of the beauties of this series is that we get a chance to showcase some of the deeper cuts and lesser known albums and songs of the era, and hopefully introduce them to a whole new audience.

Is there any other era or genre you’d now want to do a series-length deep dive on?

There’s several artists in this series that would make for an amazing standalone documentary. I think Sly and the Family Stone stands out as one. He was such a genius and maverick, and there are such heartbreaking elements to that story. Likewise, Aretha Franklin. I could watch both of those very easily. n

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PXG Demo Day SATURDAY, MAY 29 TH | 10 AM – 2 PM Ready to take your game to the next level?

Schedule your free fitting appointment today to experience the latest technology from PXG. Try their cutting-edge irons, drivers and wedges out for yourself at our 25-acre practice facility.

National Women’s Golf Day TUESDAY, JUNE 1 ST | 7 AM – 8 PM Ladies, join us on National Women’s Golf Day to play a round of golf and enjoy special discounts at our Pro Shop. Plus, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a Spa Package.

Couples Date Night Wine Tasting FRIDAY, JUNE 25 TH | 5:00 PM Looking for a fun date night idea? Join us for our Couples Date Night Wine Tasting. Start with a four-person scramble round of golf and end the evening with a special wine tasting.

Visit cdacasino.com/golf to learn more or to book your tee time.

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MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 31

VISUAL ARTS ONLINE EXPLORATIONS

While shows at the Chase Gallery inside Spokane City Hall have been closed to the public for the past year, the online offerings have been stellar, and that continues with a new show opening Tuesday. Figure is a group show featuring a collection of figurative photos, paintings and drawings by artists Hannah Charlton, Janelle Cordero, Sally Jablonsky, Posie Kalin, Kayleigh Lang, Egor Shokoladov, Lindsey Davis Johnson and Megan Harsh Pine. Their range of approaches is impressive, as is their ability to convey their ideas about sexuality, faith, humor and human nature. The show will be online-only unless City Hall reopens during its run, scheduled to last until July 30, and it’s one of the stops on the June 4 Spokane Queer Art Walk (albeit obviously a “virtual” stop).

— DAN NAILEN Figure • June 1-July 30 • Chase Gallery • 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • Online; available for viewing June 1 at spokanearts.org/chase-gallery

MUSIC GRANGE LIFE

If you only know the Statler Brothers from the inclusion of their excellent song “Flowers on the Wall” included on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, you might not know that the Country Music Hall of Famers also served as Johnny Cash’s regular opening act and backup singers for eight years, or that they took their blend of country and gospel harmonizing to the top of the charts four times.

They even hosted their own variety show in the ’90s, incorporating plenty of jokes along with their spiritual tunes. Given the history, you’d have to say the band is worthy of a tribute, and that’s just what the Mountain Dew Boys are giving them on Saturday, bluegrass-style, in the Green Bluff Grange Hall. Be ready to enjoy a beverage or two while the Boys pick and grin their way through some country classics.

— DAN NAILEN The Mountain Dew Boys: A Bluegrass Tribute to the Statler Brothers • Sat, May 29 at 6 pm •$8/adults; $4/kids • All ages • Green Bluff Grange Hall • 9809 Green Bluff Rd., Colbert • 509-979-2607

32 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

VISUAL ARTS REOPENED & RENEWED

Fifteen months into the pandemic and almost four months after a catastrophic flood inside the gallery, The Art Spirit in Coeur d’Alene is back open: refreshed, renewed and refocused. Fittingly, the gallery’s May show is titled Graceful Renewal, a nod to its longawaited return to some semblance of normalcy. The show features a medley of works by five Western artists: locals Del Gish and Kathy Gale, Montana artists Louise Lamontagne and Susan Mattson, and Wyoming’s Shannon Troxler. Art in the show ranges from soft, peaceful landscape paintings (Lamontagne) to pit-fired ceramics (Mattson) and masterful still lifes (Gish). In preparation for summer, the Art Spirit is also now open daily. Beat the crowds before tourist season starts for some fresh air and inspiring art viewing.

— CHEY SCOTT Graceful Renewal • Through June 5; open daily from 11 am-6 pm • Free • The Art Spirit Gallery • 415 Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene • theartspiritgallery.com • 208-765-6006

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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.

WORDS STEAMY MYTHS

Updated reimaginings of Greek mythology have been bestselling of late, and the same is expected for the hotly anticipated new novel Neon Gods from romance author Katee Robert. An update of Hades and Persephone’s forbidden love story, Neon Gods is far removed from the traditional Greek myth setting, instead placing Persephone as a society darling fleeing the trappings of her ultra-controlled life in the upper class. Once she escapes to the seedy undercity of Robert’s ultra-modern version of Olympus, she meets the mysterious and revenge-hungry Hades. Steamy encounters between the two ensue, adding fuel to the fire that’s given Robert’s writing the label “unspeakably hot,” in the words of Entertainment Weekly. For this virtual event, Robert is joined by fellow romance writers Rebekah Weatherspoon and Kennedy Ryan.

Neon Gods is available for preorder from Auntie’s Bookstore.

— CHEY SCOTT Katee Robert: Neon Gods • Wed, June 2 at 6 pm • Free • Online; register at auntiesbooks.com

EVENTS | CALENDAR

BENEFIT

SPOKANE ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS’ LUAU ON THE BLUFF Enjoy Hawaiian-themed food, a silent auction, door prize drawings, photo booth and contest for the best Hawaiian outfit, along with music by the Ryan Larsen Trio Band. Proceeds support Family Promise of Spokane, providing hope, encouragement and a path to stability for some of our community’s most vulnerable families. June 3, 5 pm. $35.

Arbor Crest Wine Cellars, 4705 N. Fruit Hill Rd. arborcrest.com (509-927-9463) UPSCALE SALE The Spokane Symphony Associates’ gigantic estate sale this year fills 40,000 square feet of retail space at the former Toys R Us, 6104 N. Division St. Donated items include costume jewelry, goblets and crystal, china sets, kitchen items, holiday and home decor, furniture, rugs, clothes and handbags, plus more. Early shopping is June 3 from 3-7 pm ($5 entry). Continues June 4-5 and 9-12 from 9 am-6 pm; also June 5 from 10 am-5 pm. spokanesymphonyassoc.org

COMEDY

COMEDY NIGHT FT. JEREMIAH COUGHLAN With his candid, conversational brand of self-deprecating humor, Jeremiah has become a regular performer at clubs all over the Northwest. May 27, 7:30-9 pm. $10. Ruby River Hotel, 700 N. Division St. fb.me/ e/13kqtsveV (562-544-4612) MARK NORMAND Mark is a New Yorkbased stand-up who recently released his first hour special “Don’t Be Yourself” for Comedy Central, EP’ed by Amy Schumer. May 27, 7 pm, May 28, 7 & 9:30 pm and May 29, 7 & 9:30 pm. $20-$30. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com MR. D Joe “Mr. D” Dombrowski is a comedian and kindergarten teacher best known for his viral social content where he humorously captures the chaos of elementary school. May 30, 7:30 pm. $25. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com

COMMUNITY

COMEDY LAUGHS APLENTY

If you’ve watched enough late night TV, you’ve likely seen Mark Normand at least a couple times. The New Orleans-based comic has become a regular on the small screen, having had featured sets on Conan, Colbert and Corden, and he even competed on the reality show Last Comic Standing. But even without those gigs, perhaps the biggest boost has come from none other than Jerry Seinfeld, who named Normand his favorite up-and-coming comedian. Once you hear his witty, rapid-fire routines that skewer relationships, friendships, weird social customs and his own personal habits, you’ll understand why.

Normand dropped a comedy special called Out to Lunch on YouTube a year ago, and in that time it’s racked up nearly 7 million views. Check him out for yourself when he hits the comedy club this weekend.

— NATHAN WEINBENDER Mark Normand • Thu-Sat, May 27-29 at 7 pm and 9:30 pm • $20-$30 • 21+ • Spokane Comedy Club • 315 W. Sprague Ave. • spokanecomedyclub.com • 509-318-9998

ROOTS OF WISDOM Children and families can discover the unique partnership between cutting-edge western science and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples. The exhibition offers visitors real life examples of how complementary solutions to ecological and health challenges are being applied to improve our world. May 29-Sept. 5.

Tues.-10 am-5 pm through Sep. 5. $5$12. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931) SUSTAINABLE ACTION SUBCOMMITTEE WORKSHOPS Join the Sustainable Action Subcommittee in exploring how different sustainability policies could shape our future - economically and socially in the face of rapid change. Register for Zoom workshops at my.spokanecity.org. May 29, 10-11:30 am and June 3, 6-7:30 pm. my.spokanecity.org ARE SALMON DOOMED? HATCHING A PLAN TO SAVE A NORTHWEST ICON With warming oceans, environmental degradation, and lowering genetic variability, wild salmon populations are dwindling. Climatologist Nick Bond explores the past, present, and pos-

sible future conditions for salmon in our state, and sees room for optimism. June 1, 6 pm. humanities.org SCC HAGAN CENTER DIVERSITY SERIES Featuring Hilton Als, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2017 and is a former staff writer for The New Yorker. His most recent book is “White Girls” and he teaches writing at Columbia University. June 2, 5-6 pm. Free. scc. spokane.edu/live (509-533-8883)

FILM

AVENGERS: ENDGAME TRIVIA “It’s not about how much we lost. It’s about how much we have left.” June 1, 7 pm.

Free. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com DINNER & A MOVIE See updates for each week’s title on website/social media. 7 pm. Globe Bar & Kitchen, 204 N. Division. globespokane.com A CALL TO LOVE This two-hour documentary was created to effect change while bringing hope and encouragement to those in the LGBTQ+ community that have been deeply hurt by the church and its teachings. This screening is hosted by the nonprofit Wonderfully Made. Through June 27. Free. eventbrite.com/e/a-call-to-love-registration-155739333539

FOOD

MEET THE MAKERS: CEDAR DRAW CIDER Meet the team behind Cedar Draw Cider, a nano-cidery in Buhl, Idaho.

Learn more about their process, passion and love of craft cider and sample five of their ciders. May 28, 5-7 pm.

Free. Coeur d’ Alene Cider Company, 1327 E. Sherman Ave. (208-704-2160) VIRTUAL WINE CLASS Rocket Market hosts weekly virtual wine classes; sign up in advance for the week’s selections to bring home and enjoy during a virtual tasting session. Fridays at 7 pm. 7 pm. Price varies. Rocket Market, 726 E. 43rd Ave. rocketmarket.com MEMORIAL DAY DRIVE-THRU: FREE PICNIC KIT TO-GO Visit Hennessey Funeral during its annual Memorial Day event, this year in drive-thru form. This event is for anyone who’d like to enjoy a meal on us to support and honor veterans on Memorial Day. May 31, 11 am-2 pm. Free. Hennessey Funeral Home, 2203 N. Division. facebook.com/HennesseyFuneralHomes (509-328-2600)

MUSIC

SPOKANE SYMPHONY @ HOME: ONDEMAND SPRING CONCERT SERIES Five concerts explore a different theme through music and other disciplines.

Once the concert airs, it’s yours to watch whenever you’d like. Next installment: May 28. $25. spokanesymphony. org SALUTE TO SERVICE BENEFIT CONCERT & CAR SHOW Featuring a performance by the Heather King Band from 5-7:30 pm. The Gents Auto Club is also displaying members’ hotrods and helping raise awareness of local food insecurities. May 30, 5-7:30 pm. Donation suggested. Greenwood Memorial Terrace, 211 N. Government Way. fairmountmemorial.com

SPORTS & OUTDOORS

RIVERFRONT MOVES: BARRE AT THE PAVILION Pulse and shake in the Barre Code’s 50-minute signature class that combines barre work and isometric movements to fatigue your muscles while remaining gentle on your joints.

Registration available six days prior to each session. Thursdays, 6-7 pm through June 10. Free. Riverfront Park, 507 N. Howard St. my.spokanecity.org RACE TO REMEMBER Pay tribute this Memorial Weekend by joining a race to fight senior hunger. The 5K run/walk benefits Meals On Wheels Spokane to provide warm, nutritious meals to veterans and their families. May 29, 10 am-2 pm. $20. Riverside Memorial Park, 211 N. Government Way. runsignup.com/Race/WA/Spokane/FMARaceToRemember 8 LAKES LEG ACHES BIKE RIDE The 23rd annual bike ride is again virtual.

Pick your favorite ride and take a journey from your own doorstep during the week of May 30-June 5. Proceeds benefit the programs of LCS Northwest, a nonprofit serving victims of trauma, including abused and neglected children, sexual assault survivors, child and adult victims of human trafficking, crime, and assault victims, refugee people and foster children. $40-$200. lcsnw.org COEUR D’ALENE MARATHON The scenic outdoor race offers marathon, halfmarathon, 10K and 5K routes, and this year includes live and virtual options.

May 30. $25-$115. McEuen Park, 420 E. Front Ave. cdamarathon.com

VISUAL ARTS

AMERICAN ORIGINAL: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN JAMES AUDUBON: An exclusive selection of original prints, paintings, manuscripts and personal possessions of an American icon. May 14-Sept. 19. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm. $5-$12. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931) FIGURE Artwork in a range of styles and mediums exploring the human form in contemporary, regional artwork. The group show includes Spokane-based artists Hannah Charlton, Janelle Cordero, Sally Jablonski, Posie Kalin, Kayleigh Lang, and Egor Shokoladov, as well as work from Idaho-based artists Lindsey Johnson and Meagan Marsh Pine. Currently online-only. June 1-July 30. Free.

Chase Gallery, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. spokanearts.org/chase-gallery LIONS & TIGERS AND BEARS, OH MY!: An invitational exhibit featuring eight ceramic and mixed media artists from across the U.S. presenting functional ceramics and one-of-a-kind sculpture.

Open reception June 4 from 5-8 pm and June 5 from 12-4 pm. Show open Wed-Sat during gallery hours or by appt. through June 30. Trackside Studio, 115 S. Adams. tracksidestudio.net SPOKANE QUEER ARTWALK Held as part of June’s First Friday events across six downtown locations and featuring more than 20 LGBTQIA+ artists. Locations include Dean Davis Studios, Kolva-Sullivan Gallery, Trackside Studio, Yes is a Feeling, Riverfront Pavilion and Chase Gallery. June 4, 5-8 pm. Downtown Spokane. spokanearts.org

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 33

29th street & last Saturday when I laid my pink frozen food bag down on the cement by the Shadle Safeway. I haven’t an explanation for why all of “this” took place, good luck or divine intervention?

What I do know is not only was I saved heartache twice, but the two thoughtful & honest souls must have felt proud for their kind actions. Thanks & best wishes go out to both of them.

LORD OF THE GARAGE SALES Cheers to the folks who referenced Tolkien on their garage sale sign!

YOU SAW ME NO LIFE: HILLYARD CAR WASH Me washing my Delta 88, you saw me. You caught my eye when you pulled up next to me by the vacuums checking me out. I could not help but notice how sexy you are, waiting patiently. When I walked around to sit at the wheel you was looking hard; smiling, you said hello I am Michael, and I said hello I am Melissa. You looked into my soul, melting me like butter. You persistent, me so flustered, I gave you the first three numbers wrong.

So if you’re out there and you read this, the first three numbers are 558 NOT 588.

Michael, call me or see me at the car wash. Melissa (youwantmetositwhere@ gmail.com)

SWEET FURRY FELINE Cheers to Gertrude the Cat at Northwest Seed and Pet. My daughter had just had a super rough day at school so when she spotted you snoozing in the greenhouse and you allowed her to pet you and scritch your ears, you improved her day by a significant percentage. Thank you, dear Gertrude.

RE: SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN CALIFORNIA I couldn’t agree more. They can go home anytime. Most that I have come across are rude, pushy and think they have the right to change how life here is. We are proud of our state and city and do not need your kind here. I have come across the California snobs on many of my walks, and they acted like you are someone to be looked down upon. I have a son that lives in California, and he has to deal with it there. Believe me he feels sorry for us having to endure their holier than though attitude. Go home and leave us in peace

JEERS

CHEERS RESTAURANT OWNERS Looking forward to a fully operational and vibrant restaurant scene. Some food for thought. The people who want vaccine passports are the ones who were happy to let you go bankrupt because they were afraid to go out for a year. The people who kept you in business are the ones you’ll be banning.

GOOD DEEDS Not once but twice within a month I have been thought of by two extremely honest people. The first time was when I left my purse on a bench & it was found & taken into the Rite Aid on

KOOTENAI COUNTY KAREN POLITICKING AT NONPARTISAN ELECTION Can we just have a nonpartisan election for health board trustees without a wild-eyed redhead trying to hand out “Republican ballots” from the trunk of her car parked outside the polling place?

She stationed herself just beyond the no-politicking limit (the poll workers checked). When I told her this was a nonpartisan election, she called me the worst name she could think of (Democrat) and chided me for wearing a COVID mask. The irony of trying to mask-shame me outside an election for people who

SOUND OFF

determine health policy was obviously lost on Karen. Apparently she believes Republicans need to be told who to vote for rather than trusting them to look at the qualifications of the candidates and think for themselves.

RUDE PATIENTS Boo to the patients who think it’s OK to talk down and be

“

type of thing. Really? A costly ambulance ride to an urgent care.... and a doctor who didn’t have much experience... my son arrived home around 9:45, no better than when he got to the UC Still in pain, but now also frustrated and angry... my husband and I could have saved time and money by driving him ourselves... so this is emergency care in Spokane.

the store or when you get home at night.

Maybe you’re involvement can simply be... don’t litter or close the neighbor’s trash lid so the birds don’t pick through it. Saving it for the city to take care isn’t practical. Do me at least one favor, the next time you go outside, pay attention to what’s on the ground. Thanks, Bobbi & Abby

What happened to the ‘golden rule’ of treat others as you want to be treated?

incredibly rude to nursing staff, office staff and other support staff and then smile suck-up the providers. We are ALL exhausted from the last year and a half of COVID. There is not one day we are fully staffed. Most days we do the work of two or more people. What happened to the “golden rule” of treat others as you want to be treated? Yes, your care is important; so is the patient before and after you. Understand we chose this profession because helping people is important to us. But the mistreatment we get on a daily basis is pushing us out of health care in droves. A little kindness goes a long way.

EMERGENCY CARE IN SPOKANE My son woke up yesterday needing medical care.

With several symptoms that seemed quite acute. We live in Spokane County, in Elk. When we called 911 (before 11:50 am) I explained what was going on and then was asked if we were in Spokane County.... well yes... they transferred my call... so I needed to start all over again.

We waited while on the call answering the same questions repeatedly. Fire Rescue was first responder... Deer Park ambulance was next. Evidently 2 hospitals in Spokane said they were too busy to see him. Ultimately my son was taken by ambulance to Deaconess Urgent Care on Division near the Y. He sat in the waiting area after being dropped off for nearly 4.5 hours. The doctor who finally saw him did not know what to do, and told my husband and son, that he didn’t have a whole lot of experience with this

1. Visit Inlander.com/isawyou by 3 pm Monday. 2. Pick a category (I Saw You, You Saw Me, Cheers or Jeers). 3.

Provide basic info: your name and email (so we know you’re real). 4. To connect via I Saw You, provide a non-identifying email to be included with your submission — like “petals327@yahoo.com,” not “j.smith@comcast.net.”

DON’T BE A MASK-HOLE If you are still giving service workers grief over having to wear a mask in their establishment a YEAR after the pandemic has begun, you are absolutely the worst kind of person inhabiting this planet. Don’t be rude to people literally just trying to do their jobs. What is wrong with you? Who raised you?

MANITO PARK MANAGEMENT Spokane’s #1 tourist attraction is falling into ruin: weed and grass-choked borders, dead plantings along Grand Boulevard and Mirror Pond’s noxious aquatic weed infestation are an embarrassment to our city. Instead of most park resources going to Riverfront Park development, why not throw some maintenance funding at the Grand Old Dame of our city parks?

30-DAY LITTER CHALLENGE We’ve become so oblivious to our surroundings that most of us don’t even notice how bad the litter is. It’s in the store parking lots, on the side of the roads, in front of our houses, and we all simply step over it. Instead of joining a gym, I now walk and pick up trash everywhere I go. I challenge Spokane to join me in the month of June picking up litter., taking an extra bag and a glove when walking your dog or when you take the kids to the park.

It’s a great lesson to teach the young kids that this is OUR city, our world, and WE are all responsible for it. You don’t necessarily have to go out and make a point in doing it, rather, on your way into

”

NEW MASK MANDATE While the new mask mandate claims to be a step in the right direction, I think it has started leading to even more judgment in terms of being vaccinated or not. As we now know, vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks at some places. As a vaccinated person myself, I am still choosing to wear a mask. Unfortunately, some people are now considering the sign of wearing a mask to be that of someone who has not been vaccinated. While this is definitely the case for some, it isn’t for everyone. You are almost scoffed at or get disgusted looks for still wearing a mask. Maybe people still want to remain cautious. Is there anything wrong with that? At this point, you are either judged for wearing a mask because it is “what the sheep do” or you are judged because “you haven’t been vaccinated? ! you must be one of those people. I realize the irony in these stereotypes, but that is how our society has become. And it isn’t right. n

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B O S O M S

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REGULATION

COVID’s Cannabis Fog State regulators reverse one change made amid the pandemic, but fate of the rest remains unclear

BY WILL MAUPIN

A

s vaccination counts climb and guidance on masks and distancing rolls back, the end of the coronavirus pandemic is starting to come into view. Businesses continue to reopen, life is steadily returning to normal, and the cannabis industry is starting to see some tangible effects from these positive changes.

Last week, the state’s Liquor and Cannabis Board, or LCB, announced that it would resume compliance checks. Compliance checks are when the LCB visits a retail store and sends in a minor who tries to buy cannabis or another age-restricted product. The LCB hasn’t done in-person compliance checks since March 2020, when the pandemic first took hold.

The suspension of compliance checks was one of a handful of changes that came to the cannabis industry on the heels of Gov. Jay Inslee’s stay-home order in the early days of the pandemic.

Curbside pickup, walk-up window service and free giveaways of masks and sanitizer were the three most visible customer-facing changes that the pandemic spawned. They’re still in place. Now that compliance checks are back, what’s next for those other changes made last year?

The LCB’s stance is: “Unless indicated otherwise, these temporary modifications are effective immediately and in place through Gov. Inslee’s Emergency Declaration period or until rescinded by the LCB, whichever is sooner.”

That is to say, these changes weren’t meant to be permanent. Unless the LCB takes action to make them permanent, the changes will revert to their prepandemic normal as soon as the governor declares the pandemic to be over, if not sooner. ...continued on next page

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 35

GREEN ZONE

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.

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It makes sense that compliance checks have returned now that they can be done safely. The rationale for rolling back the other changes isn’t as clear. If a customer can buy a product at a walkup window or from their car in the parking lot during a pandemic, why shouldn’t they be able to after the pandemic is over?

As of yet, the LCB hasn’t suggested that it will allow any of these changes to stick. But it has been lobbied by people within the industry. “Cinder has expressed how much we love it to the LCB. I’m sure others have as well,” Keegan McClung, marketing director at the Spokane cannabis retailer Cinder, told the Inlander in April.

While pandemic-related uncertainty is fading in most aspects of life, some specific issues, such as these changes to the cannabis industry, remain up in the air. n

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Warning: This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination and judgement. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product. For use only by adults twenty-one and older. Keep out of reach of children.

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 37

RELATIONSHIPS

Advice Goddess

GREEN ZONE

FRAUD PRINCE

I broke up with a guy I was dating after discovering he’d lied about his age on the dating app we’d met on. (He’s 48, not “39.”) I’d told him honesty’s a big deal for me.

He claimed he’s honest with those he cares about and at work and argued that everybody lies on dating sites.

I’m not buying that. Isn’t someone either honest or not?

—Skeptical

AMY ALKON

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There’s that saying, “act your age,” and he is — as a guy cresting 50 who wants a girlfriend who still some-

times gets carded.

Chances are you consider yourself an honest person. But you’re not. None of us is. In the words of TV’s Dr. House, “Everybody lies.” Social psychologist Bella DePaulo concurs. In her research on lying, she explains that people can’t be “tossed into one of two moral bins, one for the people who are honest and the other for the liars.”

In fact, we all lie in ways we don’t even recognize as lies. Do you wear controltop tights or Spanx? A push-up bra or a squish-you-down bra? How about under-eye concealer? (Note that it isn’t called under-eye revealer: “All the better to show off my ginormous, dark, puffy eyebags!”)

These less-than-truthful forms of self-presentation are a lighter shade of the lie this guy told: an “instrumental” lie — a lie used as an “instrument” to get others to give us “material rewards or other personal pleasures or advantages” they wouldn’t if we told the truth.

But consider that people who don’t lie their way through life might see lies in an online dating profile as sort of Spanx-type fibbies: a way to game an unfair system, a la, “I’m so much younger than my real age, and the hot young women I want would see that — uh, if only I could get around their searches where they cut out my age group.”

Getting a realistic sense of a man’s true character probably takes listening and watching over time, especially when he doesn’t know you’re doing it. That should help you avoid missing out on good guys who occasionally retrofit the truth with a little Spandex. And you’ll know to ditch those who are ethically iffy — or worse: for example, some other 48-year-old dude who has the firm body of a man half his age — and if he keeps it in his basement freezer, no one will be the wiser.

STEREOTYPE SHAMING

I’m a senior in college, and the woman I recently started seeing is a sophomore. My buddies told me she has a “reputation,” as in, she’s hooked up with half the men’s soccer team. She’s beautiful and intelligent, and I don’t understand why she has the low selfesteem to behave that way. —Rethinking Our Relationship Turn the tables, and imagine a guy who’s hooked up with half the cheerleading squad. Your first thought: “Dude must have a huge...” (and correct me if I’m wrong) “... set of mommy issues.”

There’s a pervasive stereotype (held by both men and women) that women who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem, explains evolutionary social psychologist Jaimie Arona Krems. The underlying assumption: Women who have casual sex don’t really want it; they’re just settling for it. However, Krems and her colleagues find that this insulting stereotype persists even when women are “explicitly described as choosing to have casual sex.”

The researchers surveyed participants (about their own self-esteem and their perception of others’) using the generally accepted definition of self-esteem: “feeling good about oneself and having a solid sense of one’s self-worth.” The stereotype — that women have casual sex because their self-worth is in the dumpster — “appears to be unfounded.” (Women’s “sexual behavior was not significantly correlated with their self-esteem.”)

They speculate that the stereotype might stem from evolutionary “mismatch”: our living in a modern world with a sometimes-outdated psychological operating system. The psychology guiding us today evolved back when locked knees were the only reliable birth control. It would’ve served ancestral women with high mate value — those with their pick of men — to hold out for commitment before having sex (and possibly offspring) with a man. Thus, we might have “default assumptions that women pursue casual sex only when committed sex is unavailable to them.” (In simple terms, despite all the birth control technology of today, the dial of human psychology is still set to “slut shaming.”)

As for your situation, assuming the rumors aren’t just “guy-perbole,” maybe your girlfriend worked her way through the soccer boys not because she’s a human broken toy but because she’s hot, enjoys sex, and wanted some naked fun while looking for her Mr. Boyfriend. What does this say about her? Well, after the initial steamy phase of the relationship, the sort of animal she’s most like in bed probably won’t be shrink-wrapped supermarket salmon. n

SativaSisters_AmsterdamCoffeeClub_052721_CPR-NEW

38 INLANDER MAY 27, 2021

©2021, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. • Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405 or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)

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EndTheViolence_04.08.21_2HBB_JI

1

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8

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“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”

9. Wild things 15. Olympics event since 1936 16. Jamaican stew ingredient 17. Thai chili sauce 18. End a lawsuit, say 19. “If ____ doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for?”: Alice Walker 20. End of many URLs 21. “The Hurt Locker” danger, for short 22. Noted family of German composers 25. Riboflavin’s group 28. Talk Like a Pirate Day word 29. A ring bearer may go down it 31. Western town that inspired Georgia O’Keeffe 33. “____ unrelated note...”

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65. Luis who was the first Venezuelan inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame 66. Tin star wearers 67. Geode’s insides

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43 46 50

DOWN 1. Rap battle VIPs 2. Regatta implement 3. Prefix with cycle 4. Bar mitzvah recital 5. San Francisco Chronicle’s owner 6. Book store sect.

7. Granite State sch.

8. Airport NNW of JFK 9. Chests 10. Archetype 11. One arguing in court: Abbr.

12. “Gymnopédies” composer Erik 13. Bathroom cleaning brand

20

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34. Do some improv 38. “The Time Machine” author 40. Almost kaput 42. Ominous note from a teacher 43. Like Wookiees 45. Finishes 46. “Be With You” singer Enrique 49. “Skedaddle!”

50. Speaks like Daffy Duck 52. “March Madness” games, informally 54. Cosmo, e.g.

55. “Dancing With the Stars” judge Goodman 56. Narc’s org.

57. Citrus-flavored soda, on its labels 59. Earned a load of money ... or filled in each line of circles in the grid 64. Like some pizza

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ACROSS 1. Like the word

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14. Vehicle that travels in only one direction 20. 50-50 chance 22. They’re drawn in a tub 23. Flew into ____ (got really mad)

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THIS W ANSWE EEK’S I SAW RS ON YOUS

27

27. Mountaineer’s resting spot 30. Dec. 25 or Jan. 1 32. Tournament rounds 34 35 36 37 35. Feature of Canaan, but not Canada 36. “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” 40 41 locale 37. Outdoes 44 45 39. Contract terms, at times 48 49 41. #1 of 50, alphabetically: Abbr.

44. Numbskull 52 53 47. “Inside ____ Davis” (Coen brothers film) 56 48. Villainous expressions 59 60 61 62 63 50. ____ yoga 51. Politico who called the press 65 “nattering nabobs of negativism” 53. Go by taxi, in slang 67 54. 2150, to Claudius “MADE BANK” 56. June 6, 1944 58. AOC, e.g.

24. “Gladiator” star 59. PC alternative 25. Economist who shared a Daytime 60. National Poetry Mo. Emmy with Jimmy Kimmel in 1999 61. Fed. law known as Obamacare 26. Major talent grp. representing 62. Zero athletes and entertainers 63. Laila Ali’s 21, in brief

MAY 27, 2021 INLANDER 39

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