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n life’s busy day-to-day, we often eat with little thought beyond the instinctual need to power our bodies and minds. More simply: to stay alive. Snacking on the go, microwaving cheap noodles in a foam cup, grabbing fast food at the drive-thru. Only when other responsibilities are not an immediate priority do we slow down and savor. We make conversation and connections, and find common ground through the sharing of culture and culinary traditions. This is how we approached this year’s DINING OUT, the Inlander’s annual fine dining issue. We took it a step further by featuring restaurants, chefs and culinary-centric events that add yet another layer to our human need for nourishment. These venues exemplify how there can be much more to a meal than the act of eating, like at Wanderlust Delicato, where cooking classes task guests themselves with crafting a meal that’s then enjoyed together, family-style. And at Candle in the Woods in North Idaho, diners are invited to an intimate, home-like setting, where mingling and getting to know a stranger is just as vital to the experience as the creatively concocted dishes on the table. Readers, we hope you finish this issue hungry, inspired and ready to experience these places for yourselves.
— CHEY SCOTT, Arts & Culture
The Little Garden is probably my favorite because when I lived on campus, I would walk from Duvall to this cafe every Sunday. I actually came here today because it’s raining now because it’s the place to be when it’s dreary out.
What’s your drink of choice today?
Today, I went kind of different! I got a dirty chai latte. Generally, I’m a rose latte girl.
Definitely McClain’s Pizzeria; I love pizza. Then, I’d have to go with Frank’s Diner. We go there every time my grandpa comes to visit us.
In your opinion, is pineapple a worthy pizza topping?
I’m going to have to go with no, it just doesn’t belong.
Sandy Williams planted a lot of seeds around here; helping them grow will soften the pain of her passing
BY INGA LAURENT
When I first read Sandy Williams had died, my brain immediately bounced to bargaining. A week of “magical thinking” in that stage of grief sounded akin to this: “Maybe I can convince myself that I missed her by mere minutes at the next community gathering where she was bound to be, most likely, escorted as always by her mother, Wilhelmina.” “Perhaps I can will myself into believing that her lack of presence at some upcoming meeting was due to a prior commitment, probably one on the Westside.” Knee-deep in plausible possibility and active avoidance, my head craved alternate realities for countless reasons.
Because Sandy was a friend, who put my heart and especially my thoughts at ease knowing she was in the world advocating for collective liberation. Because the Maxey Center, though already successful, still needed more time to blossom into her full vision. Because Sandy was a teacher, schooling us daily on the meaning of the word commitment — personifying lifelong advocacy for community and its advancement. Because she hadn’t been able to make it to my wedding, and if I had known what would unfold, I would have petulantly demanded the universe
deliver a do-over so I could catch a glimpse of her and Pat dancing. Because
Sandy’s cavernous well of institutional, historical, systemic, individual and neighborhood knowledge cannot just disappear.
Because Sandy was a partner in scores of crucial projects at various stages of completion. Because this time death had crossed a line — far too f---ing greedy, overreaching, grabbing up more than its fair share, and hitting way below the belt.
Each new loss piles atop the previous, com pacting sorrow into a steep mountain of grief. And this loss is monumental.
So yes, in those first few days, I felt rather entitled to my irrational and inventive responses — negotiating a tolerable tale that could prevent pain and delay the impending despair and despondence. Thus, while I would normally post and commiserate, I stayed silent. While I would naturally comfort and offer condolences, I cocooned. I westernized my coping mechanisms — kept it moving and worked
through it.
But those who know me well easily punctured the projections. Evidently, I was unwittingly signaling suffering. While I thought my silence read more peaceful, serene and placid, those closest to me saw it for what it actually was — steely, jagged and stony quiet. They warmly and gently nudged through calls, texts, check-ins and questions — consistently offering support. A week of magical reinforcement during that stage of grief sounded akin to this: “I’ll take the day off work and stay with you,” “Just checking in. How are you holding up,” “I’ll meet you at the memorial.”
Ultimately my loved ones’ sure footing was enough to persuade that grieving wouldn’t end me — that it needn’t be done alone or held at bay. Together, we faced the unfathomable — a new hill we must climb.
The moment I slowed to consider the sheer magnitude of this loss, emotion instantaneously brimmed over. Copious lip curling, nose-scrunching, eyes-screwed-shut crying commenced. In private and in public, I sort of quiet-wailed (especially at the Maxey Center Celebration of Life; thanks for the tissues, Maureen and Bridget). However, I have good news to report — apparently salty, steamy, snotty tears sliding down cheeks and shoulder-shaking sobs are superior to fiction. When I opened my heart to bereavement, well, the words, they started flowing and this is what I heard:
Grief is lost love’s most direct means of expression. Our hollowing out serves as an aching and sentinel reminder of the privilege of being loved and impacted. The chasm left behind is a testament of true measure. Acknowledging the new reality is what allows for the possibility of continued connection — keeping alive her legacy.
So when the next edition of the Black Lens drops — sustain ably funded and fostering new talent and voice — Sandy will be there.
In each started project we bring into fruition and in every promise we made to her fulfilled, we’ll see her slight nod.
The moment our city permanently fills, funds and fosters real accountability through an Office of Civil Rights, I can assure you we’ll hear the old spiritual refrain, “It’s about damn time.”
When knowledge rests squarely in the fingertips of East Cen tral in the new Maxey Library, you can bet we’ll get a glimpse of that small, smirky smile.
Every time a piece of SCAR’s mission is accomplished, Sandy will stand beaming.
In the next community symphony pop-up or Black Violin performance, in equitable access to and the enjoyment of art — we can sense her presence.
When damaging horizontal oppression is quashed, I guaran tee her rejoicing will be epic.
Hopefully this spring at the Black Owned Business Expo and voter drive, Sandy can rest feeling secure that the work she began continues.
In moments of Queer, BIPOC and, I say again, Blackity-BlackBlack and ally excellence, she is bursting with Pride.
When the entire East Side is thriving, vibrant, appropriately resourced, well-appointed, repaired from the harmful freeway frac ture, imbued with political agency and voice, she might be satisfied.
Through every success of her daughter, family, mentees or multiple communities, she remains.
In the finding, delighting, in the becoming, in being proud of who we are — as individuals and as a people — she celebrates alongside us.
When the Black Prisoners’ Caucus receives its Pulitzer, Sandy may do a little dance.
In any equitable city ordinance, county budget appropriation, criminal justice reform bill passed, her hands will lay atop those who sign them into being.
With each authentic story of transformation captured and told, Sandy Williams stays with us. n
Inga N. Laurent is a local legal educator and a Fulbright scholar. She is deeply curious about the world and its con structs and delights in uncovering common points of connec tion that unite our shared but unique human experiences.
It was a nightmare that, however briefly, left congressional Republicans shaken and wide awake. Indeed, like a nightmare, the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was a stream of images both horrifying and absurd: Chants of “1776” interspersed with “Hang Mike Pence.” An American flag wielded as a billy club. A guy in a horned, fur headdress screaming “freedom” after breaking into the Senate chamber. One cop beaten with a fire extinguisher. Another dragged down the steps and shocked with his own taser. A flashbang explosion turning a cloud of tear gas an eerie yellow.
This wasn’t like other riots. This wasn’t just an attack on a governmental building, it was an assault upon a peaceful transition of power itself. In the immediate aftermath, it sparked clear-eyed condemnation from many, though not all, Republicans.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declared “the president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” and privately said that he planned to tell the president who just lost the election that he should resign early. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that “the mob was fed lies” and was “provoked by the president.”
Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Eastern Washington’s representative, offered her own rebuke.
“President Trump showed a complete lack of leadership in the face of an attack on the U.S. government,” she said at the time in a statement, acknowledging that “people on the right have excused and defended President Trump, including me,” which meant “turning a blind eye to arrogant, prideful and bullying behavior.”
That approach didn’t last. In the same way a bad dream dissipates over breakfast, McMorris Rodgers and other Republicans quickly returned to their routine of playing defense for Trump: McCarthy, McMorris Rodgers and McConnell all opposed Trump’s
“President Trump showed a complete lack of leadership in the face of an attack on the U.S. government…”
impeachment.
In the year and a half since, McMorris Rodgers has hammered Biden on inflation, gas prices and Afghanistan. She’s accused “Big Tech of turning a ‘blind eye’” to the harm they’ve caused the youth, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee of turning a “blind eye” toward polluters in the Puget Sound.
But in a February 2021 interview with KREM, McMorris Rodgers was already backing off her criticisms by arguing that Trump didn’t explicitly tell the crowd to “storm the Capitol.” She ducked the Inlander’s repeated interview attempts on the topic of Jan 6. last year. She voted against impeachment, and she voted against forming the congressional committee to investigate the attack on the Capitol. Next month’s election is the first time voters have a chance to weigh in on how their leaders handled the attack. McMorris Rodgers has continued to try to walk the line between the party’s far right and its remaining, dwindling moderates — but as Trump continues to assert his role as the leader of the Republicans, that becomes increasingly difficult, if not impossible.
The Inlander requested an interview with McMorris Rodgers with a full week to spare — but were told she was only available three days after our deadline, and then only for 15 minutes. By contrast, her opponent, Natasha Hill, talked with us for an hour and a half.
“Even after everything we’ve seen come out of this investigation, she didn’t stand up and do the right thing,” Hill says of McMorris Rodgers. “Because she knows if she did, she’d get ousted from her own party.”
Dave Weigel, a longtime national political reporter who left the Washington Post for journal ism startup Semafor last month, said in a phone interview that most congressional Republicans have tried to strike a similarly murky compromise on their approach to the Capitol riot last year: Jan. 6 was a bad thing, but further investigation is unfair.
Weigel says the very few congressional Republicans who have continued to speak out forcefully against Trump after Jan. 6 have been “pretty contemptuous” of the Republicans who have refused to back them up. “It’s like you look back expecting an army behind you and you have no one at all,” Weigel says of those Republicans who’ve spoken out.
ven McMorris Rodgers’ greatest critics acknowledge the political wind she’s facing.
“Want to get reelected?” Hamilton says. “She’s doing it brilliantly. Remain wallpaper. Remain invisible. Don’t stick your neck out on anything. ‘Aw shucks.’ It is not a profile in courage.”
McMorris Rodgers could have been like her one-time protege, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Vancouver-area Republican who voted to impeach. During this year’s primary, Herrera Beutler was defeated narrowly by Joe Kent, a far-right radical who once said he didn’t find anything wrong with “a white people special interest group.”
Or McMorris Rodgers could have gone even further, following the route of Rep. Liz Cheney. In 2018, Cheney replaced McMorris Rodgers as the House Republican conference chair, promising to be more ambitious and aggressive in championing Republican positions.
ix weeks ago, Spokane photographer Don Hamilton mounted a billboard on the top of his Honda CRV that reads BigLieCathy.Com. Every morning, he drives it somewhere prominent, parks it, and then bikes home.
It’s one thing to disagree with McMorris Rodgers over, say, ecological policy and the Snake River dams, he says. But the “Big Lie” — the name some have used to describe Trump’s sweeping and false claim that Biden stole the election — is different.
“She is undermining our faith in our elections,” Hamilton says. “I fear that the republic is about to fall. … I may sound hysterical, but this is as serious as a heart attack.”
On this topic, McMorris Rodgers again attempted to find a line to walk.
“I don’t believe the ‘Big Lie’ as such,” McMorris Rodgers said at the Spokane Convention Center during her annual town hall meeting in August. Yet she immediately added a caveat, saying “there were significant irregularities in the election.”
McMorris Rodgers pointed to complaints about examples of election officials or governors requiring states to transition to vote-by-mail during the COVID pandemic — yet there hasn’t been any evidence that there was any meaningful amount of election fraud in those states. Then she touted her own efforts to pass “election integrity” legislation that would “require ID to ensure only citizens are voting in elections.”
“We must have election integrity, in order to have the peaceful transfer of power,” she said.
But Cheney’s frequent condemnation of Trump after Jan. 6, and her role on the Democratdominated Jan. 6 Committee, got her quickly booted as conference chair. She lost her re-election bid this year by nearly 40 percentage points, the worst showing for a House incumbent in decades. Considering her father was vice president under George W. Bush, her loss underscores the power Trump has over the GOP.
“I think it’s a sad day in America, when honest Republicans are turned out for being honest,” Hamilton says.
But there was a third possibility. McMorris Rodgers could have been like Rep. Dan Newhouse, the Republican congressman in the district directly to McMorris Rodgers’ east who voted for impeachment. Despite being in an even more conservative district — one that voted for Trump by 17 percentage points in 2020 — Newhouse survived. He was lucky enough to draw two rightwing Republican challengers. They split the vote, and he squeaked by.
But Spokane County Republican Party state
“Want to get reelected? … Remain
wallpaper. Remain invisible. Don’t stick your neck out on anything. … It is not a profile in courage.”
committee member Beva Miles, who has had a long history of standing up to more radical elements of the local party, says representatives always face a tension: “Do they vote their conscience or vote according to what their constituents want?”
Newhouse voting against his district, Miles argues, was the wrong decision.
By contrast, she heaps praise upon McMorris Rodgers’ choice to try to keep her head down on this issue of Trump.
“She’s not one to beat her chest or be out in public all the time,” Miles says. “If she wants to get anything done, she has to stay out of it. Getting into a spitfight when [Trump’s] not even on the ballot, it would be a total waste of time and effort.”
Hill, McMorris Rodgers’ opponent this year, argues that the congresswoman doesn’t accurately represent her constituents at all.
“Cathy is just completely out of touch at this point,” Hill says. “Because she’s out of touch, it’s allowed her to easily fall in line with more of the farright Republican extremism.”
It’s easy to tally up the contrasts.
McMorris Rodgers celebrated the defeat of Roe v. Wade as a victory for the “dignity and sanctity of every human life.” Hill calls for codifying Roe v. Wade’s standard of allowing abortion until the fetus can survive outside the womb into federal law.
McMorris Rodgers has condemned Biden’s attempt to forgive $10,000 of most students’ loans, while Hill is critical of Biden for not forgiving even more.
McMorris Rodgers decries legislation that gives preference to organized labor. Hill wants to pass a bill mandating federal and state governments to only contract with unions.
And in a campaign mailer sent out last week, McMorris Rodgers sought to establish another contrast: She supports law enforcement. Hill, during the 2020 demonstrations for racial justice, called for defunding the police. Hill says that’s not part of her official platform, though she supports investing more money in mental health services instead of law enforcement.
But as Hill notes, when it comes to the nation’s top law enforcement agency, the FBI, McMorris Rodgers suddenly becomes a lot more skeptical. In her August town hall, she said the raid on Donald Trump’s Florida mansion and club, Mar-a-Lago, raises questions about powers the FBI “may use to trample your constitutional rights as an American citizen.”
Hill pounces on the irony.
“God forbid, you stand up [against] disproportionate violence against Black Americans by police,” Hill says. “But gosh, when our FBI goes after somebody for espionage, for keeping documents?”
Hill points to the absurdity of Trump in a recent Fox News interview claiming he could declassify things with his mind, and suggests we’ll never hear McMorris Rodgers’ thoughts on Trump’s absurdities.
“Any questions regarding Trump, [McMorris Rodgers] always flips that back on what Biden’s doing,” Hill says.
A number of congressional Republicans, Weigel says, still have this odd kind of denial about Trump, that “maybe if you just behind-the-scenes wish him away, he’ll go away.”
But Miles, who watched a whole far-right slate of local Republican precinct committee officers get elected recently, says nothing suggests that Trump is confined to the party’s past.
“Half of the Republican party is insistent that Trump will be the next president,” Miles says.
“There’s no post-Trump world.” n
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If there’s one thing the powerful entities fighting over the future of Camp Hope seem to agree on, it’s that the camp can’t last forever. The debate is about “when” — not “if” — the East Central homeless encampment will come down.
If Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich has his way, Camp Hope will end sometime in mid-November. Campers will be offered shelter referrals, out-of-town bus tickets and other resources currently available in Spokane. Those who don’t accept will be forced to leave or face arrest.
The Empire Health Foundation, Jewels Helping Hands and state agencies say they want the camp gone too, but only when residents have been assessed and connected to housing and services that fit their individual needs. They argue that offers of bus tickets and congregate shelter beds do little to improve the situation for people facing homelessness, and that clearing the camp on such a short timeframe will just make the situation worse for everybody.
Maurice Smith, who helps manage the camp with Jewels Helping Hands, envisions Camp Hope ending with campers connected to pallet houses, transitional living facilities and low-income housing for the camp’s residents. The process will also involve identification
restoration, life skills classes and substance use treatment.
Organizers are hesitant to estimate publicly about what a longer-term timeline means. There have been private conversations about it, Smith says, declining to share the details. He does say the camp’s cooling tent is being turned into a warming shelter, and that he expects the camp to be there through the winter.
“We’re taking this one day, one week and one month at a time,” says Smith. “We build plans on reality, not on political rhetoric.”
Smith doesn’t think the sheriff will follow through on his pledge to clear the camp by mid-November.
Neither does Zeke Smith, the president of Empire Health Foundation, which is doing outreach work at Camp Hope with funding from the state Department of Commerce.
“We’re still working on that longer-term timeline,” he says. “The goal, from a funding standpoint from Commerce, is ultimately about better housing for people. It’s not just about clearing the camp.”
The slower, more methodical approach resembles the JustCARE model, a multi-agency approach to encampment removal in Seattle. Outreach workers spend weeks visiting camps on an almost daily basis, building trust and getting to know campers so they can be placed in housing or shelter that matches their specific needs.
Chloe Gale, the program director for REACH, a nonprofit involved in the JustCARE model, says the process takes weeks or months, but ultimately results in better outcomes for the campers. When her organization
worked to close large encampments in Seattle’s Woodland Park and Ballard Commons, a majority of campers ended up in shelters or housing that matched their individual needs. She says that’s in contrast to the usual, rapid-displacement approach to encampment removals, which usually just leads to campers being dispersed to other parts of the city.
When encampments pop up in cities, you’ll often hear neighbors express impatience and concerns about property crime associated with the camp. Gale says it’s still possible to work with the community to address those concerns and gradually decrease the more problematic aspects of an encampment — trash, drug use and property crime — without sweeping the whole thing all at once.
At Camp Hope, volunteers are hoping to address concerns about crime with a chain-link fence erected by the state Transportation Department, which owns the land, on Friday. There’s also a new 8 pm to 8 am curfew.
On Sunday afternoon, two men were working to patch holes in the fence. About three openings appeared overnight, pried off with a crowbar. The holes are small, just big enough for an illicit good — or a nimble person — to slip though undetected at night.
As they work to repair the holes, the men explain that they both live at Camp Hope and are employed by Jewels Helping Hands as security team members. Sam Marks has worked security since February. Gary, who asked that his last name not be included, worked security for a period earlier this year, quit and then rejoined the team over the weekend.
The men both seem unphased by the sheriff’s pledge
Population estimates vary for Camp Hope, but reach up to 700. YOUNG KWAK PHOTOThere’s more than one way to clear a homeless encampment
to sweep the camp. They don’t think he’ll actually do it, but if he does, they say they’ll just move their camper vans to other parts of the city. They’re not interested in going to a shelter.
Realistic population estimates for Camp Hope vary wildly, from 350 to 700, but even if you go off conservative estimates, there likely isn’t enough shelter space to accommodate everyone in the camp.
“It would be a huge strain on the system,” says Mike Shaw, CEO of the Guardians Foundation, which operates the recently opened shelter on Trent Avenue.
That might be beside the point, since many residents say they wouldn’t want to go to the current shelters available in the city of Spokane.
“A lot of us can’t do shelters,” Gary says as he works on the fence. “Like myself, I’ve tried over the years, and I can’t be around that many people.”
Gary is talking about trauma related to his military service in the ’90s. He also has two dogs — Scout and Pretty Mamas — who wouldn’t be allowed into a shelter.
If it comes down to it, Gary thinks a third of campers would go to a shelter. That’s an optimistic estimate. To date, Shaw says about 60 residents have accepted referrals to the Trent shelter. Of those, he says 90 percent stayed. Shaw is working with Knezovich to coordinate the outreach part of the sheriff’s plan, and he
“A lot of us can’t do shelters…
I’ve tried over the years, and I can’t be around that many people.”
predicts that 60 more campers will choose the Trent shelter as the weather worsens. Shaw says he’s counting on around 200 residents leaving town for warmer cities during the winter. He thinks others will pack up and camp in other parts of the city.
Gale says the key to successful encampment removals that result in residents moving indoors — not just other parts of the city — is desirable options for shelter and other housing. That means bathrooms and privacy, not rows of cots.
If Camp Hope does get taken down in mid-November, some resi dents will disperse to shelters across the city. The residents that don’t, or can’t, accept shelter referrals will move to small camps across the city. Life skills classes, ID replacements, addiction treat ment and other services are hard to offer when the people who need them most are miles apart without cars or an easy way to contact them.
“One of the things service providers talk about constantly in terms of what’s hard about working with the homeless population is just how transient — how mobile — they are as they’re doing their best to meet their needs,” Zeke Smith says.
Gale has seen this happen numerous times. She describes encampments that her team spent weeks working with, only to have an abrupt sweep scatter the residents across the city and erase weeks of progress. Gale says some campers who’ve been lost during sweeps have died while outreach workers were trying to find them.
“It’s beyond frustrating,” Gale says. “It’s really heartbreaking.”
Gale says the slow, methodical approach to encampment removals is ultimately better for everyone — campers and neighbors. Even then, the largest encampment her team cleared in Seattle had around 80 people.
“I can’t imagine closing an encampment with 600 people in less than six months or a year to be honest,” Gale says, “Realistically, I don’t know what community we have that can suddenly absorb 600 people inside. I just haven’t seen that in Washington.” n
Also, cops and their seized money; and one pass to ride them all
BY INLANDER STAFFEvery weekend, you’ll find live music at the Nighthawk Lounge with local bands playing past midnight. For a more relaxed vibe earlier in the evening, choose the option of live acoustic music in the Chinook Lounge.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7 TH & SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8 TH NIGHT HAWK L OUNGE
water quality report released last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that toxic metal concentrations in Lake Coeur d’Alene are declining over time. The lead, zinc and cadmium that continue to be deposited in the lake are the result of a century of mining, and the decline is partly thanks to cleanup work in the Bunker Hill Superfund area in North Idaho’s Silver Valley. Significantly, the report found the lake isn’t currently at risk of low oxygen levels, which could pull those toxic metals out of the sediment and suspend them in the water column. But cleanup efforts may need to continue for another century. Scientists on the committee who wrote the report say that more research is needed to monitor shallow areas of the lake that can serve as early warning signs of worsening conditions. More research on which types of phosphorus are entering the lake is also needed.
(SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL)
Spokane’s mayor and police chief aren’t thrilled about a new city law that changes the way police spend the money they take from suspected drug dealers. In years past, cops spent the seized money on undercover vehicles, drug buys and other police stuff that helps them arrest more bad guys. Progressives on the City Council argue that years of drug arrests have been ineffective and that the root causes of the crisis need to be addressed through youth anti-drug education. Under the new ordinance, which was introduced by Council President Breean Beggs and passed on Sept. 26, both endeavors must be funded equally. Police Chief Craig Meidl agrees that anti-drug education is a worthwhile cause, but claims there isn’t enough money to fund it in the department’s forfeiture account. The account is funded through civil forfeiture, a controversial practice that lets police seize cash and assets from people suspected of drug activity — even if they aren’t convicted of a crime. The mayor thinks the police chief — not the City Council — is best trusted to make decisions about how to spend the money. (NATE SANFORD)
Good news in transit land: Riding the bus just got easier and cheaper — depending on your age and how much you ride. The Spokane Transit Authority introduced the more modern “Connect” fare collection system. You can still pay with cash. Or you can pay with a QR code on your phone. Or you can use the STA Connect card, which links to your debit or credit card. No need to worry about paying for an all-day pass or a monthly pass, either. If you hit $4 of fares in a single day, the rest of the day is automatically free. And if you hit $60 of fares in a single month, the rest of the month is free. Best of all, through the rest of the year, everyone under 18 rides for free. Just tell the operator your age. Next year, you’ll have to fill out a little bit of paperwork to prove your age to get a “rider’s license card.” Nothing complicated. (DANIEL WALTERS)
Always get the latest on Inlander.com
8:30 PM – 12:30 AM
Enjoy Haze at the Nighthawk Lounge. A talented rock n' roll band that will have you dancing all night long. Ron Greene
FRIDAY , OCTOBER 7 TH & SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8 TH CHINOOK LOUNGE
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BY CARRIE SCOZZARO
’ve been fortunate to interview artist Mel McCuddin over the years. In 2021, he and Gloria, his wife of 69 years, allowed me to peek inside their Spokane Valley home for an Inlander Health & Home article. There, his artwork hung alongside works from local and regional artists, travel mementos, and drawings by the couple’s grandchildren.
Surrounded by this artwork and his loving family, McCuddin passed away peacefully at the age of 89 on Monday, Sept. 26, after a brief but rapid decline in health.
McCuddin was a big man, standing at least 6 feet, 2 inches tall, yet by all accounts he never made anyone feel small. Instead, he talked softly and carried a big paint brush, so to speak, letting his canvases speak. Over the
past 40 years especially, McCuddin crafted a universe of figures — humans, animals, birds, fish — emerging from glowing backgrounds with titles ranging from humor to irony.
“Top of the Food Chain” for a painting of a shark. “Flag Day” for an image of a squarish man with a small head and striped shorts. Mostly, however, McCuddin’s titles gave few clues to each painting’s meaning, which may be why his work has been so popular.
Extremely popular, says Sue Bradley, owner of the former Tinman Gallery. McCuddin was “one of the few artists in our region that could generate a buying frenzy at a show’s opening,” she notes. The other was Harold Balazs, McCuddin’s lifelong friend.
McCuddin didn’t seek notoriety, but obliged when asked to talk about his work, like for The Art Spirit Gallery, where he had shown since 1997. He is also represented at Mango Tango Gallery on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Mel and Gloria were longtime arts supporters, fre quenting exhibitions in North Idaho as well as Spokane, says Art Spirit’s Blair Williams, who curated McCuddin’s final exhibition at the gallery, planned before he died, and on display throughout this October.
ind, humble and generous. These are the words people I spoke with used to describe McCuddin, whom they admired both personally and professionally.
“All my life, I’ve never seen him be disrespectful to anyone,” says his son Neil McCuddin, noting that he and his siblings, brother Mason McCuddin and sister Colleen Cicarelli, “won the parent lottery.”
KSPS television producer Scott McKinnon met the McCuddins in 2021 for a Northwest Profiles feature. McKinnon describes Mel as “one of the most engaging
unassuming” people he’d ever interviewed.
“Mel is a gentle spirit, a rarity in today’s society,” says Beth Sellars, a former art curator for the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture (when it was the Cheney Cowles Museum), who helped jumpstart McCuddin’s career in 1987 with a twoperson show.
“When I hear Mel’s name I can’t help but smile,” adds Williams.
McCuddin started painting in the 1950s, influenced by modernists Willem de Koonig, Francis Bacon and Modigliani. Those early works were more abstract than the figurative paintings McCuddin has become known for and which bemuse some and bewitch others.
“[Mel’s] ability to reach out and get people’s imaginations racing is just fascinating,” says son Neil, who remembers how as little kids, he and Mason would scare themselves silly over his dad’s painting of a railroad worker.
Sometimes people’s imaginations got the better of them.
away others. He’d look at the painting in different ways — in the mirror, upside down, with smeared eyeglasses — then enhance shapes as he saw them emerge.
“[Mel] always discussed the finished paint ings with a sense of wonder, as though he were the conduit for what the painting wished to be,” Sellars recalls.
McCuddin’s success includes being featured on the cover of books, inside the Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena, and in McCuddin: The Inner Eye, by former Spokesman-Review columnist Doug Clark and his wife, Sherry.
Despite his success, the mostly self-taught Mc Cuddin remained humble and kept pushing the boundaries of what he could do with his art.
“[Mel] never really made sales his priority, preferring to make the art for its own sake,” says his son Mason.
Through
When “The Patriot” with its upside-down flag, a distress symbol, landed Mel’s painting in USA Today, McCuddin was dismayed at the supposed controversy. And when Neil asked if his father would capitalize on his newfound fame, the elder McCuddin declined.
“I just want to paint,” Neil recalls his father saying.
Karen Mobley, the former Spokane city arts director, loves how McCuddin’s “sense of humor emerges in his paintings — the quirky people, the animals with the human-like eyes, the curious juxtapositions of scale and pattern.”
McCuddin’s painting technique was un conventional and intuitive, paralleling how Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo described his process of releasing the figures from the marble he carved. After layering paint onto the canvas, McCuddin would smudge some areas, wipe
Mason started collaborating with his father in the 1980s, photographing the senior McCuddin’s artwork, including for his final exhibit.
Mel was concerned that some of his new paintings might not be received as well as the “usual” figurative paint ings, notes Mason, who was struck by his father’s humility. “He’s this big deal painter who it seems like everyone loves, and he’s worried that people might not like this new work.”
Mason also asked his father if he would change anything or had any art regrets, to which Mel replied that he would have played things less safe and taken a few more chances.
“The gist was pretty much ‘don’t wait and don’t stop growing.’” n
carries@inlander.com
Editor’s
It’s Halloween season, time to recommend some frightful TV. I’ve written about past favorites like Ash vs. Evil Dead, Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace, Hannibal, Bates Motel, and What We Do In the Shadows here before, so this year I dug journalistically deeper. I’m no hero, but feel free to refer to me as such. Here are six streaming shows that will chill and/or tingle your spine while you’re ignoring trick-or-treaters in the dark.
Scream Queens, which ran from 2015-16 on Fox, was the most over-the-top broadcast TV horror comedy ever With a killer core cast (including Jamie Lee Curtis, Billie Lourd, and Emma Roberts at the height of her glam-camp powers) and a pitch-black comic heart, it’s Ryan Murphy’s tightest non-American Horror Story production. Season 1 unleashes the Red Devil slasher on a college campus; Season 2, the Green Meanie in a hospital (makes just enough sense).
Speaking of Ryan Murphy, if you find his season-long American Horror Story arcs a bit exhausting (we’ve all been there), the bite-sized terrors of his American Horror Stories anthology series might be for you. Each episode tells a different story, kicking off at AHS’s original Murder House and wrapping its second season with a double shot of necrophilia and lake zombies. American Horror Stories is also way sexier than the original, if you’re into that.
Based on Creepypasta tales from the internet, the four-season anthology series Channel Zero ran on Syfy from 2016 to 2018, and just became more foreboding and weirder with each installment. Candle Cove, No-End House, Butcher’s Block, and The Dream Door each make the skin crawl in unique ways, and the six-episode
novelettes skirt the WTF? edge without going over it. No-End House in particular is like a waking nightmare of personal insecurity and dread — start there.
When Portland police detective Nick Burkhardt (David Guintoli) learns he’s a descendent of the Grimm, a bloodline of guardians who protect humans from supernatural monsters, a whole new version of Portlandia is born. Grimm ran for six seasons on NBC from 2011 to 2017, creating its own mythology while mashing up Law & Order, German folklore and a dash of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s dry humor. Not to be confused with the lesser fairytale drama Once Upon a Time
Remember WGN America? Salem was the cable channel’s first original in 2014, where it went mostly unseen due to Chicago Cubs fans’ general disinterest in 17th-century gothic drama. Salem stars Janet Montgomery as a powerful witch who keeps unsuspecting local Puritans occupied with witch trials while she tends to summon Satan, to whom she’s going to give her son to save her own life (great witch, not-sogreat mom). Caveat: Marilyn Manson does the theme song.
The devil-riffic debut season of Evil aired on CBS in 2019 without spurring a cancellation campaign from the religious right — maybe they were distracted by Euphoria. The show then moved to Paramount+, where it only got creepier and heavier on the F-bombs.
A forensic psychologist (Katja Herbers), a priestin-training (Mike Colter) and a tech expert (Aasif Mandvi) investigate demonic incidents, and you might as well binge Evil because you’re never going to sleep again. n
For all the off-camera drama and internet hubbub surround ing Don’t Worry Darling, the film itself is… fine. It’s completely disposable and just fine. In the psychological thriller about a housewife trying to figure out what exactly is off about her seemingly idealistic ’50s housewife life, Florence Pugh is her usual tremendous self. The production design is great, and Olivia Wilde’s directing is passable (she actually gets a better acting performance out of Harry Styles than she does out of herself). But the good parts get massively weighed down by a script that’s just unsubstantial. It feels like an undercooked reject of a Black Mirror idea. If only they spent as much time on rewrites as they did on bickering between takes. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
Sometimes we chase the news and sometimes it arrives at our doorstep. With photographer Don Hamilton at the helm (left), a film crew set up outside Inlander offices in Kendall Yards recently to record one of several spots for the upcoming End the Violence media campaign in collaboration with AmpliFi Advertising. Local PSAs for the effort will include billboards, radio, television and other formats to appear throughout the region during October, which is designated as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Ad ditional filming locations include in West Central, South Perry and the Garland District, but as we all know, domestic violence knows no boundaries. (CARRIE SCOZZARO)
Noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online Oct. 7:
ALVVAYS, BLUE REV The dreami est indie band around returns with more endorphin-sparking doses of Molly Rankin’s ever-ethereal vocals over lush guitar rock.
NNAMDÏ, PLEASE HAVE A SEAT The colorful multi-instrumentalist blurs the lines between R&B, rap and indie pop on his latest LP.
OPEN MIKE EAGLE, COMPONENT SYSTEM WITH THE AUTO REVERSE The progressive polymath MC’s latest collection harks back to the underground hip-hop mixtapes he used to make out of tunes played on Chicago college radio. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
There’s a new picture developing of Pullman’s visual arts scene, one that adds an additional focal point besides Washington State University and its venerable Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.
Over the past few years, several new arts-related entities have emerged in town: the new nonprofit Pullman Arts Foundation, the arts-forward Hotel McCoy, Terracotta clay arts studio, and a new art gallery. Added to Pullman’s existing venues, these newcomers are helping highlight the college town’s evolving arts community.
Two years ago, Pullman had scant arts entities, beyond public artwork on the WSU campus and in its museum. Studio 509, located inside the Gladish Community & Cultural Center, offers all-ages arts instruction, while Art Niche is an artist cooperative.
Pullman’s Arts Commission still exists, although six of the seven board positions have remained vacant since a kerfuffle ensued over an apparently controversial public artwork in 2020.
“Part of the genesis of [Pullman Arts Foundation] was, honestly, the difficulty of creating some kind of public art project here in Pullman that connected with the Black Lives Matter movement,” says WSU art professor Joe Hedges, who co-founded the nonprofit with his wife and fellow artist, Jiemei “May” Lin.
The backstory to the BLM mural, which played out in the press and on social media, involved a back-and-forth between the Pullman Arts Commission and City Council. Caught in the middle were local artists and community members wanting to draw attention to systemic racism in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder by Minnesota police.
After the council reversed course on even the idea of a mural, the Arts Commission all but disbanded. In the meantime, Hedges and Lin created the Pullman Arts Foundation (pullmanartsfoundation.org), tapping artist and fellow WSU educator June T Sanders and Pullman School Pantry Program co-founder Margaret “Meg” Gollnick to serve on the board.
Quickly, the grassroots group raised necessary funds and secured another location for the BLM mural, the former Mimosa building on Main Street near Pine.
In addition to murals at Kamiak and Jefferson elementary schools and the Palouse Discovery Science
Center, the foundation also realized it could fulfill other needs for artists, arts supporters and the community-atlarge, Hedges says.
“We had started to meet people that were really engaged locally and really cared about the arts,” he adds.
The foundation created arts-centric meetups, and this past April it stepped into the breach to help organize an art festival, dubbing it the Sunset Artfest and working in collaboration with Lumberyard, Art Niche and Hotel McCoy.
Hotel McCoy is the second of two boutique hotels from development company Preface (its other hotel is in Tucson), and it’s proven to be an ideal partner in many Pullman Arts Foundation initiatives.
Art is part of their concept, says the hotel’s operations manager, Amanda “AR” Rochelle.
“We want art to be accessible to people of all socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Thus the Pullman hotel is full of art, inside and out. In addition to five exterior murals, the hotel features paintings, prints and other artwork throughout its rooms and shared spaces, all of it for sale.
“We are a commission-free hotel,” says Rochelle. “So anything that we sell goes directly back to the artist, which is a really awesome deal.”
The murals include Jaz Gonzalez Cerda’s vibrant “Be Amable” on the Paradise Street side of the hotel, as well as murals by Lin, Hedges, Rebecca Lloyd and Sarah Barnett.
Barnett credits the mural experience with helping keep her in Pullman after she’d completed her master’s degree in fine arts at WSU, she says.
“I think the collaboration aspect was really valuable for me as a person,” says Barnett, who also stayed to take a job as an adjunct art instructor at the university.
Like Barnett, Candace Baltz formed strong ties to the university while a student. She met her husband in the ’90s when both were students and he was editor-in-chief of WSU’s student newspaper, The Daily Evergreen, a title she would eventually hold, too.
Like a boomerang, the couple left and returned. Left and returned.
“During the pandemic, I think like a lot of people, we got a chance to do deep reflection on ‘what do we want in
life?’” The answer for the couple was Pullman.
And for Baltz personally, the answer was also pottery, like the joyful, healing experience of being in a clay art studio while growing up in Oregon.
“To get to spend unstructured time in a studio, day after day, and work under a professional potter” had a profound impact on her, Baltz says. “It prepared me for life.”
“My hope is to pay that forward and [help others] make that kind of reconnection with ourselves and each other,” says Baltz.
Her business Terracotta (terracottapullman.com) offers loosely structured classes and open studio time for any level potter.
The Greystone Grand Gallery and Gifts (greystonegrandgallery.com) is the most recent addition to Pullman’s arts scene, slated to open in October.
When her wife, Holly, was hired as executive director of Pullman Downtown Association, says gallery founder Desirée Greystone, it cemented her decision to look for studio space in town.
The next thing Greystone knew, she was signing the contract for a two-story, 8,000-square-foot building that’s now being transformed into a gallery for local, regional and international artists.
“I love Pullman and I’m excited that I get to be a part of the growing art scene,” says Greystone.
Hedges echoes that sentiment.
“Selfishly, because we live here, we really want to see the arts thrive here [and] of course not just for us but for other folks in the community,” says the WSU art professor.
“We really believe that having artists around and having public art to see just makes a community more vibrant, richer and provides opportunities for conversations.” n
BY CARRIE SCOZZARO
Sometimes you realize the thing you most want to do is not the thing you’re doing at the moment. That’s what happened to Bjorn Thompson at moments throughout his culinary journey, like after high school when he left the restaurant industry to do construction but discovered it wasn’t a good fit. Thomp son returned to the kitchen but didn’t get serious until his mother nudged him toward Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Minneapolis/St. Paul. After graduating from culinary school, Thompson decided Las Vegas was where he could best evolve his culinary talents, so he moved to the Entertainment Capital of the World. Thompson thrived in Las Vegas, eventually landing a job opening LAVO inside the The Venetian Resort. He then spent five years in various businesses under cel ebrated chef Wolfgang Puck’s considerable umbrella. All told, he made sushi, tended bar and worked in numerous kitchens — French, Italian, Latin, Jamaican — while hon
ing his craft.
Since 2019, Thompson has worked in Idaho, started a family and maintained nine years of sobriety. As execu tive chef at Terraza Waterfront Café in Coeur d’Alene’s Riverstone development, Thompson’s unique spin on Latin American cuisine has won fans, including three “Best Of” wins from Inlander readers in 2022. During its debut at Inlander Restaurant Week, Terraza wowed diners with dishes like tequila clams, churrasco steak and arroz con leche flan.
INLANDER: When did you know you wanted to become a chef?
This is an early memory, and I couldn’t place it exact ly, but probably somewhere between 4 and 5, helping my grandmother make her meatballs and barely being able to reach the counter. I don’t know how true this is, but if you ask my parents, they’ll say I watched more cooking
shows than I did cartoons when I was a kid.
Fast forward into early high school, I started washing dishes at my uncle’s restaurant. I left that, worked in a little bit of fast food … and then kind of just stayed in restaurants because I knew what I was doing.
What’s your favorite thing to eat from your own menu?
I love the market fish. I’ve done everything on [the menu], from raw tuna or seared tuna to octopus to … cod Veracruz. It’s something that we can continually change.
Marie Callender’s pot pies. It’s filling and tasty enough. Throw a little hot sauce on there, [and] the small ones are five minutes, the big ones are nine minutes, and I got dinner.
Favorite kitchen gadget?
A lot of people, they’ll say their knives, but for cooking, my most valued thing that I have all the time is a spoon, because you’re tasting, stirring, plating, whatever [shows the tattoo of a spoon and a fork on his hands]. I have a fork and a spoon so I can eat with my hands and nobody can say anything.
Where would you travel to for the food? And why?
Argentina or Spain. I’ve been to Costa Rica. I’ve been to Mexico, and I’ve been to Canada. To me, Argentina is an epitome of why I don’t like the word “authentic,” because there’s no such thing. Who’s to discern what authentic is? To me, the idea of “authentic” is back when the Incas and Mayans and native tribes of America [existed]. That’s authentic and traditional. I respect tradition. But authenticity? I think it’s an overused word.
So, with that being said: Spain, because of all the coastal [foods] and all the different areas there and the Basque region or San Sebas tian, the French and Spanish border. And then Argentina because of the Spanish and German influence.
What’s missing from the Northwest culinary scene?
Modernize it. I think generally speaking — and this may be just previous generations that I have had the experience with — but it’s a very meat-and-potatoes area still. And even with the new people moving here, there are a lot that are adventurous with the food, but I guess I come from a skewed perspective of being in Minneapolis, being in New Orleans, being in Vegas, like to where it’s a constant competition.
In a perfect world, I get to a point where me and the partners of this restaurant can open two or three more places, to where I can be a little bit more [focused on] oversight and have time to spend with my family. And then eventually open up a place similar to Candle in the Woods [a prix fixe dining venue in Athol, Idaho] to where the other three or four [businesses] support that. Seasonally, nothing sourced outside of 100 miles from here and tasting menus … all the fun stuff.
What would you be doing if you weren’t in the culinary industry?
Probably engineering. I love how things work. I love to take things apart, both mentally and physically, and understand how things work. I was taking [apart] toasters and bicycles and motorcycles when I was a kid and putting them back together. My dad was a mechanical inspector for Clark County in Vegas for years, and as a side project, he fixed his buddies’ cars, so I was always learning about engines and stuff when I was a kid. And I just, I love how things work.
Candle in the Woods’ Smoked Shrimp
f eating were only about the food, a huge component of the culinary industry would not exist. Besides the food, dining out is very much about the experience, the countless special touches that elevate a good meal to great one.
How, you might ask? Luke Barrey, a consummate server and bartender who has worked or dined at all the venues the Inlander is featuring in this year’s Dining Out issue, has the answer: people.
The cuisine, he says, is top priority, “but also the service, the ambiance, the way we present ourselves as servers or bartenders, and just creating that special occasion and making every customer feel like they are the most important customer to us.”
Also important? The people with whom we choose to share a meal. When pandemic shutdowns and other factors over the past few years meant we couldn’t dine out (or didn’t want to), that situation heightened the importance of human interaction.
While we’re not totally out of the woods yet — people still have health concerns, the culinary industry faces continued challenges, and rising food costs impact everyone — the four chefs we interviewed for this year’s Dining Out take the act of eating out to new levels. The experiences they’ve created transcend the ordinary and remind us that our shared meals nour ish more than just our bodies.
BY CHEY SCOTT
When it comes to most things in life, we don’t want others to decide for us.
But if we’re talking about the “Chef’s Marathon” dinner at Gander & Ryegrass, diners should gladly cede all freedom of choice to chef Peter Froese and his culinary team.
During one of my own visits, for example, I was utterly delighted by the quaintness of a tiny, lidded cas serole dish served as part of a flight of appetizers. Inside, a few spoonfuls of pea and duck cassoulet. The presenta tion was so charming it nearly overwhelmed my apprecia tion of the carefully crafted dish within.
Offered since Froese opened the downtown Spokane fine-dining restaurant in late 2019, Gander & Ryegrass’ multi-course meal consists of between 10 and 15 total dishes of varying portion sizes on any given night. None of these dishes are listed on the menu. Instead, diners enter into an agreement with the kitchen to continuously send food to their table throughout the two-hour-or-so meal.
“I think that’s a little bit of the challenge that we’ve slowly been overcoming, the sense of ‘What? How are you just gonna feed me and I don’t know what it is?’” Froese says while taking a break to chat with me between lunch and dinner service on a recent Friday afternoon.
the chef may be intimidating. But even selective eaters can rest assured that the culinary journey they’re about to embark on at Gander & Ryegrass will be full of surprises, delights and even familiar sensations.
Take it from me. Since initially trying the marathon in early 2020 for my birthday, it’s now tradition for my partner, Will, and I to treat each other for the occasion.
404 W. Main Ave.,
Executive Chef Peter Froese
He anticipates it’ll be a busy night, as it usually is on weekends. An hour before dinner begins at 5 pm, there are eight cooks in the kitchen prepping for the night: cutting veggies, making sauces, prepping their stations.
“I think we got a lot more pushback early on,” Froese continues. “There are a lot more people settling into the marathons, and they are like, ‘Yep. Cool. I don’t even want to think about it.’”
If you’ve never experienced a chef’s choice meal before, the thought of leaving all decision-making up to
Froese’s dining marathon has caught on with other diners, too, and he estimates between 60 and 70 percent of all diners on weekends come to Gander & Ryegrass solely for the experience.
He hopes even more diners come to embrace the concept so that his team can direct most of their focus there, resulting in more creative freedom to change the menu on a whim while also giving diners a reason to return more often.
Gander & Ryegrass’ Chef’s Marathon menu is cur rently priced at $107 per person, with the option to add wine pairings for $65 more, or $104 more
with the expert guidance of its sommelier team. For din ers seeking a lighter option, both in quantity and price, the restaurant also offers a three-course meal — with a few bites in between — for $75 per person, and with optional wine pairings for $50 more.
Diners are given their choice of the Chef’s Marathon or three-course dinner menu (the latter has two or three options per course) as they’re seated for dinner. At this point, the server also explains any optional upgrades or nightly specials.
Reservations for the marathon are not required, but
Froese encourages them, especially for those with dietary requests that may depart from what he’s planned. Ad ditionally, all guests in the group must participate in the marathon.
“If we know you’re a vegan coming in, even with an hour’s notice, that totally changes everything,” Froese says. “I love eating things with butter and meat and cheese and all that, but we also really love vegetables, and we spend a fair amount of time locating good vegetables.”
To kick off the marathon, the kitchen sends out four to six amuse bouche “bites” to warm up the palate. Some
are very small, like a wine cork-sized slice of fingerling potato topped with salmon roe and a creamy sauce, garnished with a tiny pea shoot. Or a smear of duck liver pate between two tiny circular cutouts of soft, crustless white bread, topped with sweet jam, Froese’s elevation of the classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“One of my mentors said, ‘Food should be delicious, it should be beautiful, and it should be fun,’” he says.
A few larger portions begin appearing next, each per fectly timed with the intent that diners can slowly savor and enjoy, and even reflect about it — each bite, ingredi
ent, texture and flavor — among themselves before the next plate comes out. Each dish is complex yet nuanced, and I often feel compelled to take handwritten notes — and definitely photos, which Froese says are always welcome — to record what the server tells me I’m eating lest I forget.
For these early courses, Froese likes to start with a few vegetable-forward dishes, which arrive before the middle of the meal: a bowl of house-made pasta to be shared by the table, like his unctuous pork-shoulder ra gout in ribbon-like tagliatelle noodles. House-baked bread and infused butter accompanies the pasta.
Before the “main” entree, usually a turf-based protein like steak, duck, pork or chicken, is a chilled cup of tart and icy housemade sorbet to refresh the palate.
What’s served for each iteration of the marathon
“For me, it’s a very different type of experience and transaction from the usual dining experience, where you order your food and they bring you that,” Will says. “You’re trusting an expert, and they’re choosing for you.
varies by season and availability, as Froese and his team seek to highlight what’s regionally freshest. This summer, for example, oil-poached tuna with heirloom tomatoes was a menu standout, crafted by one of the restaurant’s sous chefs, Wyatt Campbell.
“We have a lot of conversations about how dishes get built,” Froese says. “I love that. And I want people to be able to cook their food within our [restaurant’s] param eters. I think that’s really important. You get the best of people when they’re shooting after what they’re excited about.”
As I sit down to write this piece, I decide to ask Will what he enjoys most about Gander & Rye grass’ Chef’s Marathon, now that we’ve both enjoyed it together several times. Beyond the memories of the incredible food we’ve eaten — dishes like that tiny cas soulet, which I still recall often — past meals slowed down time to simply connect, without the distractions of digital devices, life’s responsibilities, or anything else.
You’re experiencing their take on things in a more fully realized way than getting their interpretation of the dish you picked out.”
Though I’m a writer, I’m not sure I could have said it better.
While the Inland Northwest is home to many ventures serving multi-course fine dining, in many cases also with a full menu predetermined before diners arrive, Gander & Ryegrass is one of a handful offering this expe rience year-round, every night.
“We did this restaurant the way it is because I felt like there was a gap in the market that we could corner,” Fro ese says. “My objective doing what we’re doing right now is to cook the way that I want to cook. I love the idea of coursed meals, but growing up, we didn’t do course meals,” he continues.
“All food came out at the same time, but we would sit there for three or four hours, and that’s really a lot of the inspiration. I love that. Where you can tell all your stories, and then tell the stories you forgot about.” n
Culinary Dope creator Joe Morris combines hip-hop and high-end cuisine in a dynamic new series of pop-up events
BY CARRIE SCOZZAROThere is no marijuana on the menu of a Culinary Dope event, because although consumption is le gal in Washington, cooking with it in a commer cial restaurant setting is not. Chef Joe Morris, the event’s creator, however, doesn’t have anything against cannabis.
“Dope can be anything,” says Morris with a shrug, adding that anything can be addictive, including good food or music.
Morris is an imposing figure, mostly muscle at age 40, a plastic pick side-angled off the back of his head. He talks with his hands like a New Yorker (though he’s actu ally from the southeast) and is at turns funny, garrulous, and even a bit guarded, like the streetwise kid he used to be before he became a streetwise father of four.
Culinary Dope is hip hop-meets-haute-cuisine with amazing food, but also the vibe Morris creates through music and at buzzy locations like Inland Pacific Kitchen or Wanderlust Delicato, both in downtown Spokane. Inspired in part by pop-up dining events like The Wan dering Table, before chef-entrepreneur Adam Hegsted turned the experience into a brick-and-mortar location, the occasions Morris orchestrates are higher-energy and
multi-sensory, more like a party.
“Like an organized party,” he says, adding, “I want you to relax. I want you to meet people and get out of your comfort zone.”
Although he talks about dishes he’s made for past iterations of the series, like his version of salad caprese with tomato gelée, what Morris is most interested in is the way Culinary Dope impacts people.
“When you’re working every day to build something, you don’t know how far you’ve come,” Morris says. “It kind of hurt to see everything closing down.”
una, like many places, was able to pivot, but others weren’t faring so well, Morris says. So he created the first of three types of Culinary Dope events in June 2021 to get things “poppin’” in the culinary industry.
CulinaryDope.com
“I like seeing people eat,” he admits, knowing that he can provide an experience they might not get elsewhere. “[Diners are] gonna get a vibe and experience that I feel like they wanted but didn’t know they did.”
Morris created Culinary Dope to expand his identity beyond Luna restaurant, where he’s been executive chef since 2019, turning out delightful dishes like tuna tartare and oxtail sliders. His other motivation, however, was re sponding to the pandemic shutdown that decimated local businesses and isolated people from one another.
Culinary Dope’s “food champs” events are friendly chef-to-chef competitions, with guests determining the winner using whatever criteria they see fit.
“Everyone wants to be a judge,” Morris says. “Every body watches Iron Chef.”
For $150, attendees get three dishes from each chef, like the crab legs with morel mushrooms and a pea puree Morris created for the inaugural 2021 competition pitting him against former Inland Pacific Kitchen chef Austin Conklin. Drinks flowed, the place pulsed with hip-hop beats on high volume, and the event was a hit.
Even though Morris lost, he learned a valuable thing: Patrons want to engage with not only one another, but
also the chefs.
“It was who I was,” says Morris of that first event, which solidified in his mind that his vision of a culinary street brand could work.
In a later rematch with Conklin, Morris took back the big blingy trophy necklace. He successfully defended his title a second time during a summer 2022 throwdown against chef Peter Froese of Gander & Ryegrass.
Morris also hosts a “Dope” brunch ($150). The first was held at Durkin’s Liquor Bar, highlighting what Durkin’s does best, including craft cocktails.
The third event Morris does under the Culinary Dope umbrella is a restaurant takeover. In August 2022, Morris collaborated with Wanderlust Delicato to offer a five-course, wine-paired meal ($200) served on the downtown restau rant’s rooftop terrace.
Morris liked one of the featured dishes so much — seared seabass with a rich, concentrated broth called fumet, braised fennel and marinated cherry tomatoes — he’s adding it to Luna’s menu.
“Like the left hand feeding the right,” Morris says, “all connected.”
Sometimes Morris does an event that’s neither brunch, nor takeover, nor competition.
Channeling his own Southern background, the menu for Shantell Jackson’s and Tracy Poindexter-Canton’s 2021 Ter rain gallery show, “Her Words to Life: A Celebration of Black Women’s Voices,” included fried green tomato salad and chicken and dumplings ($150).
Every Culinary Dope event is different, says Morris, but they all have a theme. And his ulterior motive, if you can call it that, is to create and strengthen community through food.
“Unifying people,” he says, “whether you’re Black, White, hip, young, old, food lovers … whatever.”
Look for the next Culinary Dope event later this fall. It might be brunch or a food champs event, says Morris, or it might be something else he’s cooked up. That’s just how he rolls. n
BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL
From the moment you step in the door at Candle in the Woods, you’re made to feel right at home as someone hands you a drink — in my case, sommelier Noelle Loparco holds out a glass of sangria — and tells you to go mingle with the other guests “out back.”
The restaurant originally started in a bed-and-breakfast owned by chef David Adlard and his wife, Lisa, near Athol, Idaho. So when they renovated and opened a more formal version of the restaurant in town in 2019, they wanted to keep that spirit alive.
As guests explore the venue, it’s hard not to feel like you’re at a relative’s place. A game room upstairs has a pool table and small hangout space, while the dining room on the ground floor centers
on a long table, with perhaps a few more wine racks along the walls than most would be lucky enough to have at home. “Out back” feels like a suburban backyard, with fenced privacy, sun shades, cornhole boards and cozy seating around gas fireplaces.
With only about 20 guests served each day, you’ll soon find that Adlard wants everyone to get comfortable with one another from the start. Throughout the evening, these are the people you’ll share drinks, amazing bites of food, and conversation with, so the happy hour before the meal offers the chance to say hello. There’s little room to hide in a corner as you’re encouraged to embrace the family-style meal of a lifetime, which will include breaks for games, socializing and maybe even sing-along songs around the fire.
Adlard’s crass humor throughout the evening seals the vibe of hanging out at your foodie uncle’s house. But unlike the potluck or barbecue you might normally get at family gatherings, the gourmet chef’s table meal of 15 (or more) courses is a chance to splurge for an extra special occasion. Current pricing is $169 per person, with reservations booked through at least March 2023.
“We have people booking hotel reservations in Coeur d’Alene after they get reservations with us,” Adlard says.
On a recent Thursday night, the crowd of 21 is almost entirely newcomers, but a few are back for a repeat visit. Adlard explains that any returning guests are affectionately called “cousins,” a term that harks back to when the once home-based restaurant was only able to serve friends and family.
“You wouldn’t believe how many cousins we had come to visit us,” Adlard tells guests with a laugh.
As the sangria glasses start to empty, servers bring the first small bite to diners outside, a small potato with a creamy filling topped with caviar.
Then the dinner bell rings, signaling everyone to head inside and find their name card at their chair. Most of the guests sit at the long
table in the middle of the room, but there are also a few small tables for couples. The focus throughout the night is drawn to the head of the long table, where chef Adlard and his staff explain each of the courses. Thoughtful pairings of white and red wines come with each bite, and guests can note any bottles they may want to buy on their way out.
5751 E. Hwy. 54, Athol, Idaho Executive Chef David Adlard
Staff come around to stir up edible glitter in the champagne flutes waiting in front of each guest, and everyone joins in a toast before diving into the next course, which is encouraged to be devoured as finger food. A delectable combina tion of asparagus, savory goat cheese, crispy prosciutto and sweet berry sauce is paired with one of the restaurant’s most popular recurring dishes: a thin rectangular s’more with the surprise filling of thinly sliced steak.
As the evening goes on, Adlard tells stories about how he went from decades of serving in the military and teach ing gymnastics to jumping on this crazy idea to open a restaurant despite having no formal culinary training.
“We have some things that are on our menu every time,” Ad lard tells me as he explains how the menus differ each day. “But they’re categories, so it changes every time.”
While you can probably expect a ravioli, for example, the fill ing and sauce may be wildly different from the day before.
As he shares stories, servers bring out tuna tartare on frozen salt blocks, and a Monte Cristo sandwich that guests are encour aged to drench in ancho maple syrup. Everyone gets to reveal one dish together as they simultaneously lift a glass dome to release clouds of fragrant smoke (taking video of the experience is also encouraged) and find scallops in a phyllo dough cup.
Throughout the meal, more whimsical food tricks are in store, as Adlard calls for help making tableside ice cream through the magic of liquid nitrogen and guests get to pick a bite from a “smoking” serving dish.
The chef teases people not to try to “save room” through the night, as each course, whether licked from your fingers, slurped from the bowl, or enjoyed with cutlery, is meant to be fully enjoyed and not overwhelm anyone by the end of the three- to four-hour stay.
In keeping with the approachable, family-style mood, at the end of the night Adlard likes to wrap up by passing a wine bottle that serves as a talking stick as each guest says a little bit about their favorite course. Melt-in-your mouth sous vide steak in garlic butter is a popular vote-getter on this visit, but so is the special created by one of Adlard’s culinary team, Casey Brandel, who grew heirloom tomatoes in his own garden over the summer and transformed them into a complex sauce for a salmon course.
Renowned critics have rated the restaurant among their top experiences, and Adlard says one told him why: At some of the most expensive Michelin-starred restaurants, where a single diner may pay $1,000, it’s just, well, food. But at Candle in the Woods, it’s fun.
Amber Park’s passion for travel drove her to open Wanderlust Delicato, a wine and cheese shop in the heart of downtown Spokane that highlights international cuisine with its expansive selec tion of charcuterie offerings.
Combining her love of jetsetting with her desire to create community, Park also developed a diverse series of cooking classes that are held at the shop, which she opened in 2019.
“The community that we’ve built at Wanderlust is something I’m very proud of,” Park says. “There’s something special about bonding over food and shar ing that experience with others. It’s so much more rewarding than just going to a restaurant and ordering off of a menu.”
Park grew up outside Okanogan in north central Washington, living near farms and going to barter fairs. Once she moved away from small-town life and into Spokane, the travel bug took over and she found herself heading around the world to different countries while experiencing new foods.
“I noticed a hole in the market for international
cuisine in Spokane,” Park says. “I really wanted to bring the delicacies that I found on my travels back home and share them with the community.”
Whether the COVID pandemic put a wrench in your plans to explore what’s across the pond, or international travel is a bit too costly at the moment, Wanderlust Delicato’s cooking classes offer the chance to try new foods, meet new people and make memo ries at a fraction of the cost — no passport required.
The classes vary in theme from week to week. One day you might be kicking it Hawaiian-style with a class dedicated to making Spam musubi. The next day might bring you to Italy, where you can learn how to make a proper fettuccine alfredo.
Outside of Wanderlust’s front entrance is bus tling Main Avenue, but once the door closes, it’s like guests have traveled thousands of miles to a quaint European town.
Park’s love for travel is evident the moment you step over the threshold. The shop’s eclectic, mis matched furniture is placed throughout the room, and
tabletops where customers sip wine are covered with maps. The homey and welcoming vibe of the interior is reminiscent of a grandmother’s kitchen: antique knick-knacks and inviting smells all around.
421 W. Main Ave., Spokane
Owner & Cheesemonger Amber Park
WanderlustDelicato.com
When guests enter for a cooking class, they’re offered a glass of wine and a table to wait at while ingredients are prepared and organized in the back. Class sizes vary, but usually, the group ranges from about eight to 12 people. Sharing a kitchen with a dozen people may sound like chaos, but Wanderlust’s kitchen accommodates that amount comfortably and provides ample room for chopping, stirring and sautéing.
All classes are led by one of Wanderlust’s many instructors.
“Some of our instructors have owned their own restaurants,” Park says. “Others have published recipes
in books and worked in professional kitchens. Some are just hobby ists. But for most of them, this is their ‘fun job’ on the side. Their creative outlet.”
During the class I attend, Ashley Bechtel transports us to the Caribbean.
The menu for the evening includes jerk chicken, red rice and beans, a cabbage-based slaw, and fried plantains. Every detail is laid out for guests on an itemized recipe sheet, which you can take home at the end of the night.
Instead of putting your head down and making one meal for yourself, classes are a group effort. Together, you and your class mates create a part of the finished meal.
Roles are quickly doled out, and the cooking commences.
Bechtel floats around to each station, checking on guests and ensuring that everything is going smoothly. Aromas of mango, peppers and allspice waft from full pans sitting on the two stovetops supervised by myself and my mother, whom I bring along for this cooking adventure. On the other side of the counter, a married couple prepares the fixings for the main entree.
No one is standing still. Everyone is hands-on, preparing their part of the meal. My hands smell like garlic and onion, but I’m not complaining about it. Every once in a while, someone lifts the lid off of a pot and exclaims to the room, “Everyone, come smell this!” So we gather around and pat the person who cooked the chicken on the back because the mango glaze came out just right.
Quickly, a camaraderie forms between everyone in the class. Groups chat back and forth about what brings them to Wanderlust.
“We’re celebrating our wedding anniversary,” one couple says. Another duo is visiting from Pennsylvania. Others just thought it would be fun to get out of the house.
Soon enough, the meal is ready to be plated. The group deaprons and heads out into Wanderlust’s main dining room, where we sit and continue chatting. Everyone is talking like old friends. Glasses make a pure “ting” as we cheer in celebration of this wonderful group effort.
Plates are set down in front of everyone, and the food is gone in an instant. The unassuming beans and rice were the stars of the show, and the chicken was juicy, blackened and spicy thanks to the homemade jerk seasoning. A chorus of “mmm” and “yum” passes over the table from the mouths of newfound friends.
Once everyone is full and to-go boxes are packed with our leftover creations, hugs and waves goodbye are exchanged. We thank our instructor and part ways, though I wouldn’t mind see ing these people again.
Making your own fancy and delicious meal is an accomplish ment in and of itself, but when that feeling coincides with new friendships and teamwork, it makes the food taste that much better.
BY CARRIE SCOZZARO
Remember that time you were dining out and surprised by your server singing “Happy Birth day” and carrying a cake? Special moments like that are built into today’s culinary industry.
When it comes to creating an elevated culinary ex perience, for example, few places excel like the COEUR D’ALENE RESORT. In addition to Beverly’s for special occasions — or just because — and lakeside dining at Dockside, which has reinstated its popular Sunday brunch, the Resort regularly curates culinary events like its recent Whiskey Barrel Weekend (pictured above).
The two-day event featured whiskey tastings ($85), a cocktail-making class ($50), a whiskey-themed dinner ($150) and, of course, overnight stay and golf packages. Visit cdaresort.com for more info on the Resort’s next food and drink focused event, like regularly scheduled beer- and wine-pairing dinners at Beverly’s and other venues.
In addition to the four venues featured in this year’s Dining Out issue, we collected a range of other eventful culinary experiences for our readers to enjoy at various price points and levels of immersion.
Thirsty for more events? PURGATORY CRAFT BEER & WHISKEY BAR (thepurgatory.com) has a bourbonpaired dinner ($120) coming up on Oct. 12. A week or so later, Spokane-based DRY FLY DISTILLING (dryfly distilling.com) is presenting a spirit-forward, four-course dinner, on Oct. 20 ($100).
Many of our region’s fine dining spots regularly host special wine pairing dinners. In Spokane, check out
(clinkerdagger.com) and TAVO
LÀTA (ethanstowellrestaurants.com) for such events. In North Idaho, special dinners are occasionally hosted by VINE & OLIVE (vineandolivecda.com), COLLECTIVE KITCHEN PUBLIC HOUSE (facebook.com/collective kitchenpublichouse), SATAY BISTRO (sataybistro.com) and DISH AT DOVER BAY (dishatdoverbay.com).
Beer drinkers should also keep tabs on their favorite breweries, including locals like LUMBERBEARD BREW ING (lumberbeardbrewing.com), YAYA BREWING (yayabrewing.com), and WHISTLE PUNK BREWING CO. (whistlepunkbrewing.com), which have collaborated with local chefs and restaurants to showcase their crafts.
tive chef Tanya Broesder guides them through an as sortment of interesting and exotic dishes. Costumes are optional at this spooky culinary event.
Located in Moscow, LODGEPOLE (lodgepoleres taurant.com) also offers seasonally-inspired, five-course meals ($90), with optional wine pairings.
The Japanese equivalent to chef’s choice is omakase, whereby the chef chooses which nigiri, sashimi and other sushi to serve you. Ask about this option at your favorite Japanese restaurant, like TAKARA JAPANESE CUISINE & SUSHI in Coeur d’Alene and WAVE SU SHI ISLAND GRILL in Spokane, among many others.
With great risk comes great reward, as the saying goes. Adventurous diners at MASSELOW’S STEAKHOUSE (northernquest.com) can be rewarded with a one-of-akind culinary experience on Oct. 31 when the restaurant presents “See No Evil” ($75), literally a blind tasting event. Diners will be asked to don a blindfold as execu
It’s never too late to learn something new. For mastering mixology, RAISING THE BAR founder Renee Cebula (raisingthebarnw.com) regularly teams up with local ven ues like HOGWASH WHISKEY DEN (drinkhogwash. com) to create cocktail-themed events. On Oct.16, Cebula will be at EMMA RUE’S (emmarues.com) for a hands-on exploration of absinthe ($85).
Head to the source for a cocktail class ($50) featuring UP NORTH DISTILLERY’S assortment of spirits, held the third Wednesday of every month at the North Idaho distillery’s Bee’s Knees Whiskey Bar (upnorthdistillery. com).
For cooking classes, check the calendars at CULI NARY STONE (culinarystone.com) in Coeur d’Alene and THE KITCHEN ENGINE (thekitchenengine.com) in Spokane.
Also known as “dinner theater,” this is a throwback to a time when people sat around tables to watch per formances, versus in stadium or theater-style seating. Modern versions manifest locally in such events as raqs sharqi performances, better known as bellydancing, which you can find alongside Mediterranean food at LEBANON RESTAURANT & CAFÉ (facebook.com/lebanon509). Al though there is no cost for the events, which are typically held once a month, reservations are required.
If you plan to attend Crime Scene Entertainment’s murder mystery events, be prepared to play the part. Tickets to both “Cranberries, Turkey and Murder!” on Nov. 12 and “T’was the Night Before Murder” on Dec. 10 ($57 each) at COEUR D’ALENE FRESH WINE BAR (freshwinebar.com) include a beverage of choice and tasty charcuterie.
Food-paired entertainment isn’t just for dinner. Start your Sundays with Nova Caine and company for a rous ing good time at GLOBE BAR & KITCHEN (globespo kane.com) for its popular drag brunch. Get there early (doors open at 10 am) to get a seat and order off the special brunch menu, including “topless” mimosas. n
Court
Street
First there was Baba, which brought Mediterranean flavors to Kendall Yards in 2021, followed by the opening of the French-inspired Française in South Perry earlier this year.
As of Sept. 28, chef, entrepreneur and Eat Good Group founder Adam Hegsted has put another pin on the culinary map with the Spanish-inspired de España in the former Incrediburger & Eggs location downtown, at 909 W. First Ave.
Menu headlines at de España are in Spanish and dishes reflect a range of regions, from Barcelona to
Basque Country. Pinxtos (also spelled pincho or pinchu) are small bites often found in Basque eateries, like salty and tender marinated white anchovies called boquerones ($9).
Additional small plates — tapas — are divided into four groups on the menu. Vegetable-forward tapas de terra includes classic Spanish patatas bravas ($11) or fried potatoes in a spicy tomato sauce, while del mar, or seafood dishes, include salt cod fritters ($14) and octopus à la plancha ($22), meaning grilled. There are also ham (jamónes) and cheese plate collections.
For larger appetites, try paella ($36 or $72), a savory and versatile rice dish from the Valencian region, or bone-in ribeye ($58) with marrow and a fall-apart oxtail jam.
Don’t forget dessert, like dense, custardy flan ($8) rimmed in rich dulce de leche.
The drink menu is not to be ignored, either. Française General Manager Nicole Seaman, doing double-duty as Eat Good’s wine director, has curated a wide range of Spanish varietals from sparkling cava to full-bodied tempranillo.
Other specialty drinks include house-made san gria by the glass ($12) or pitcher ($40), with a nonal coholic version, too. Cocktails emphasize presentation as much as the palate, like the El Portal de Martinez ($16), featuring infused Mahón gin delivered in an artful flask and small martini glass. Additional nonal coholic drinks include a Spanish version of horchata ($8) and house-made sodas ($8).
The bar menu and the bar itself are a significant focal point of the revamped, former Incrediburger space. The plan, says Hegsted, is to include a small
on
of free tapas
as late at night,
The decision to transform Incrediburger was driven by a decline in lunch traffic, due in part to the COVID pandemic and ensuing shutdown.
The inspiration for de España, however, dates back nearly 15 years when Hegsted was executive chef at the former Brix restaurant in Coeur d’Alene. Hegsted’s entry into a culinary contest requiring him to use Spanish foods — a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with manchego cheese, marcona almonds and jamón — earned him a trip to the French Culinary Institute in New York. During the two-week adventure,
Hegsted visited New York’s best tapas bars, met Spanish chef José Andrés and began collecting elements of what would one day become de España.
A trip to Barcelona exploring the food, from street vendors to fine dining, further shaped his vision for de España, Hegsted says.
Pretty much everywhere you walk, you see someone selling little dishes like the ones he’s put on the menu at de España, Hegsted says.
“Those are my favorite kind of places.” n
de España • 909 W. First Ave. • Open Sun-Thu 3:30-11 pm, Fri-Sat 3:30-midnight • espanaspokane.com • 509-4434215
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The horror of the massive deadly ava lanche in the Lake Tahoe area and the rescuers’ efforts to save the buried get examined in this harrowing documen tary. Not rated At the Magic Lantern
Before the theatrical arrival of Hal loween Ends, the final film in director David Gordon Green’s modern Hal loween trilogy, Universal is rereleasing the prior two entries to get your fear levels properly piqued. Rated R
At AMC River Park Square
A young boy who’s struggling with his family’s move to New York City gets an injection of adventure in his life when he discovers a singing crocodile living in his attic. Rated PG
is listless and underdeveloped.
BY JOSH BELLFor a movie meant to be a lively romp, writer/direc tor David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is remarkably laborious — an overlong, overstuffed windup that amounts to very little. Set in 1933, it takes its time bring ing together the main players in a convoluted conspiracy loosely inspired by a real-life plot to enact a fascist coup in the United States. That doesn’t come into focus until the movie is nearly over, though, and for most of the running time it’s hard to tell what anyone is trying to accomplish or why.
Woodsman (John David Washington) to investigate. Soon Elizabeth is dead, too, and Burt and Harold have been framed for her murder. In their efforts to clear their names, they reach out to wealthy scion Tom Voze (Rami Malek) and his wife, Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy), and to renowned retired Gen. Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro). Eventually, they reunite with Tom’s sister Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), a former nurse who treated both of them after the war and was in love with Harold.
Russell can’t seem to decide whether he’s making a caper comedy or a political drama or a period romance or a war movie or something else entirely, so he lurches from one to the other, throwing as many famous faces as possible at the audience. The packed cast also includes everyone from Mike Myers and Chris Rock to Michael Shannon and Andrea Riseborough, most of whom don’t make much of an impression. It doesn’t help that Bale sucks up all the air in nearly every scene, giving one of his worst performances as the chatty, overbearing Burt. He puts on a broad New York Jewish accent and is con stantly fidgeting or mumbling, making himself the center of attention in every scene, whether he warrants it or not.
As the movie begins, wounded World War I veteran Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is running a New York City practice dedicated to treating both the phsyical and mental trauma of his fellow soldiers. He’s drawn into the labyrinthine plot when his former com manding officer, Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), turns up dead under suspicious circumstances. Meekins’ daughter Elizabeth (Taylor Swift) is convinced that her father was murdered, and she hires Burt’s old Army buddy Harold
Starring Christian Bale, John Da vid Washington, Margot Robbie
The movie stops cold for a lengthy flashback to 1918, when Burt, Harold and Valerie first met, moving from an Army hospital to an apartment in Amsterdam, where they spent an idyllic post-war period together. Amsterdam becomes a sort of talisman for the three characters, holding on to a time in their lives when they were happy and free, unburdened by familial expec tations, racial prejudices or economic hardship. But the supposed deep bond among the trio is never particularly convincing, and the romance between Valerie and Harold
Washington and Robbie are comparatively under stated, and they each find small amounts of pathos in their vaguely defined characters. Russell can’t make room for any genuine emotion, though, always falling back on snarky quips and exaggerated mugging rather than anything heartfelt. He also stages many of the scenes awkwardly, having actors deliver dialogue directly to the camera, making it difficult to tell where characters are in relation to each other.
Russell previously used a real-life conspiracy as the source material for an entertaining saga with colorful characters and sharp humor in 2013’s American Hustle, but there are only occasional sparks of that cleverness in Amsterdam. By the end, Russell simply delivers nonstop exposition in dialogue and voiceover, seemingly desper ate to explain the story’s themes and importance to the audience. His characters talk and talk, but nothing they say matters. n
by David O. RussellDavid O. Russell’s comedic thriller Amsterdam is all bluster
BY JOSH BELL
Clive Barker’s 1987 horror film Hellraiser, based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, is a twisted personal vision that combines BDSM experimentation with extreme gore. It’s not the kind of movie that seems poised to launch a franchise, but that’s exactly what happened, with nine sequels of varying (mostly poor) qual ity between 1988 and 2018. Aside from 1988’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II, none of those sequels come close to recapturing the unique style and artistry of Barker’s original.
stay clean while living with her brother Matt (Brandon Flynn) and his boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison). Desperate for money, Riley agrees to help Trevor (Drew Starkey) break into a ware house holding supposedly valuable merchandise, although all they find is Hellraiser’s familiar puzzle box, the Lament Configuration, which summons the Cenobites when it’s solved. The puzzle box gets a slight makeover here, with mul tiple configurations, each given its own suitably ominous name.
Directed by David Bruckner Starring Odessa A’zion, Jamie Clayton, Adam Faison Streaming on Hulu
That’s meant to change with the new fran chise reboot, also titled Hellraiser, which counts Barker as one of its producers and is directed by The Night House’s David Bruckner. This new Hellraiser is a marked improvement over the post-Hellbound sequels, especially compared to the micro-budget quick ies of the franchise’s later years. It’s slickly produced and well-acted, and it would have been worthy of becoming the first Hellraiser movie in 25-plus years to be released in theaters, if it weren’t going straight to Hulu.
At the same time, it’s structurally fairly similar to many of the direct-to-video Hellraiser sequels, which graft series villain Pinhead onto a story of torment and redemption with no con nection to any previous installment. This isn’t a new adaptation of The Hellbound Heart, but rather a new story that incorporates Pinhead and the other hellspawn known as Cenobites. It’s slowpaced (at 121 minutes, it’s easily the longest Hell raiser movie) and grim, without any of the kinky sexuality that was essential to Barker’s original and has shown up sporadically since then. Its use of the Cenobites as an allegory for addiction is questionable, and it doesn’t embrace the series’ grotesque nastiness until its belated climax.
Before that, it follows recovering drug ad dict Riley (Odessa A’zion) as she struggles to
Screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Pi otrowski, who worked with Bruckner on The Night House, make some updates to the Cenobite mythology and the rules of the puzzle box, but that has never been consistent from movie to movie anyway, so there’s no reason this couldn’t function as a sequel rather than a new beginning. The idea of the Cenobites as infernal pleasureseekers summoned by deviant hedonists has long since fallen away, and once again they’re just nasty demons with unusually poetic speech patterns.
After two subpar replacements for original Pinhead Doug Bradley in the last two sequels, Sense8’s Jamie Clayton makes for an excellent new Pinhead, without attempting to mimic Brad ley’s mannerisms. The designs for all the new Cenobites are fantastic, upholding the tradition of horrific beauty established in the first movie. Goran Visnjic shows up in a prologue as a mogul with eccentric tastes who seeks the puzzle box, and he’s the only one with the kind of manic weirdness that a Hellraiser movie really needs.
The Hellraiser movies have been so bad for so long that it’s tempting to praise Bruckner’s film purely for its competence, but it’s still a step down from the first two Hellraisers, and a step down from the layered, genuinely terrifying The Night House. Riley’s personal difficulties aren’t particularly compelling, and the Cenobites, as awesome as they look, are rarely scary. Bruckner delivers a passable modern horror movie, but Barker’s original vision remains unique — and uniquely unable to be replicated. n
After years as a Spokane scene staple, Matt Mitchell is going all-in on music and mobile living
BY SETH SOMMERFELDHow does it feel? To be without a home? Like a complete unknown? Like a rolling stone?
Ask Matt Mitchell.
The singer-songwriter had carved out a nice little musical niche for himself in Spokane. For about a decade he had been fronting the Americana band Folkception (later renamed Trego), which was popular enough to be voted Best Original Band in the Inlander’s Best Of readers’ poll for 2018 and 2019.
Mitchell was an established player in the scene… but he didn’t just want to be the lead singer of a local band.
“It got to the point where, for me, this is what I’m really passionate about — music making,” says Mitchell. “And I was in a situation where I was trying to work with five other people who all had careers and families — clas sic thing.”
Feeling creatively and personally adrift, Mitchell decided to uproot his life and hit the road in the most literal sense.
“At the start of 2020, I packed up the house and moved into a bus,” he says. “And I really didn’t have a plan for the band. I felt pretty burnt out. And then COVID happened. And I sort of went through COVID with no music. I really missed music, and I missed the band. And I came back with all these new songs, pretty motivated, and I just couldn’t get anything to happen [with the band].”
The disconnect between his goal to be a career musician and the rest of the band treating it more as a fun hobby halted any sense of forward momentum for Trego. It was a frustrating experience for Mitchell. And real life intervened to remind him that our time is
precious, so we should make the most of it.
“In 2021, I had two close deaths of friends,” Mitchell says, “it just put everything in perspective. It’s like, I want to do music. And I want to be serious about it. And I want to play with serious people.”
And so began the Matt Mitchell Music Co.
Mitchell’s solo project began in earnest with the February 2022 release of the first MMMC album, Captive of the Mind. Seeking a strippedback sound similar to Bob Dylan’s self-titled debut album, it’s an incredibly inviting collection of warm, thoughtful folk songs featuring little more than Mitchell, his acoustic guitar, and a couple of pals adding some mandolin and backing vocals.
But Mitchell’s commitment to going all-in on music can’t be contained by one mere record in a year. MMMC’s second album of 2022, Ramona, is set to release on Oct. 7. To celebrate the occasion, MMMC is playing an album release show on Saturday, Oct. 8, at Lucky You Lounge.
Ramona boasts a starkly different sound than Captive of the Mind. Inspired by his bus-living travels up and down the West — Arizona, Mexico, etc. — the new record definitely leans into more of a dusty desert, Americana rock feeling.
“I definitely knew I wanted a more rockin’ feel. I knew the songs were less introspective and more just jammy and fun,” says Mitchell. “Vibe wise, I spent a lot of time in the deserts in the Southwest in 2020-2021. A lot of the songs are written down there. So I definitely wanted this sort of psychedelic rock and roll Southwest feel.
And, I think, mission accomplished there.”
Mitchell’s itinerant lifestyle seeps into the songs
intense summer for the troubadour. But true to himself, he’s processing everything through more songwriting.
“There are some definite topical influences,” he says. “One is the pandemic and lockdowns, just that weird time we’re in. Two is sort of embracing traveling and being nomadic. I wrote ‘Gravity’ on the way down to Mexico and just sort of feeling stoked about life that night.”
The transient bus-living life has so far been working out for Mitchell. He basically just drives until he finds a scenic spot that still has some cell signal so he can use a little router in his rig and work for a bit. Touring wise, his model is to just say yes to gigs and figure out who might serve as accompanying players later.
“I feel like I’m nimble. And I can go wherever I want. And I’m not asking a lot of people around me,” says Mitchell.
He’s also become more involved in the Portland Americana music scene. In addition to recording Ramona at the Echo Echo studio in the Rose City, he also draws a lot of the MMMC players from their local scene. When you’re liv ing in a van you don’t really have a home base, but between Spokane and Portland, Mitchell still considers himself a Northwesterner.
That’s not to say there aren’t bumps in the road — both literally and figuratively — as a result of Mitchell’s artistic lifestyle. He separated from his partner in July after a year and a half on the road, so it’s been a very emotionally
That’s right… he’s set to record a third 2022 Matt Mitchell Music Co. album in October.
His creativity might be zipping along at highway speeds, but Mitchell’s mind is often focused on where these artistic roads are taking him. He knows there’s not exactly a map he can use to trace his current musical trajectory, so he’s just making the most of the spiritual road trip.
“I’m sort of wrestling with the question of ‘What do I want from music?,’” Mitchell says. “I think in my younger days, it’s more like, ‘We’re gonna be huge!’ or whatever. But being crazy famous doesn’t sound that great. I know I don’t want to work a corporate job. I just want to write songs and I love sharing that energy with an audience. I don’t think there’s a destination, it’s just sort of a journey.”
“I feel like I’ve been in transition for a few years now,” he continues. “And music has really been a lifeline throughout all of that. I’ve been reflecting as my life’s gotten really intense, I’m just so grateful for this practice. Even if no one were to hear the songs, being able to sit down and mold emotion into music is just so valuable to me.” n
Matt Mitchell Music Co.: Ramona Album Release Show • Sat, Oct 8 at 8 pm • $12-$15 • 21+ • Lucky You Lounge • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • luckyyoulounge.com
A common birth defect leads a Gonzaga graduate back to Spokane for heart valve surgery
Feeling chilled to the bone while fishing in January is an endurable compromise for doing something you love. But when Brian Forth struggled to recover from the cold back in 2020, he began to wonder if something more serious may be the culprit.
An avid trail runner and rock climber, Brian also noticed that he couldn’t run or climb as well as he used to. He initially suspected these changes were part of aging.
“I did notice I was slowing down a little bit,” Brian says. “But I also was 50 and I wondered, was this just part of being older?”
After an appointment with a cardiologist in Olympia and a subsequent stress test in Seattle during the 2020 pandemic, Brian discovered that one of his heart valves was failing. Without treatment, it would permanently damage his heart.
Born with congenital heart disease (CHD), this wasn’t Brian’s first-time facing heart issues. While CHD is one of the most common birth defects, Brian was born with a rare form of CHD called Tetralogy of Fallot. As a result, he underwent open heart surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles 18 months after he was born to correct multiple defects in his heart caused by the condition.
Growing up with a pediatric registered nurse as a mother, Brian’s parents encouraged him to play it safe when it came to contact sports (opting to play baseball over football) and reminded him to never miss an annual cardiac check-up. Otherwise, Brian says life
was fairly typical thanks to the success of his procedure as a baby.
“I never really felt like my heart disease was a limiting thing to me. It was just part of who I was. I don’t remember being sick. I just remember being me.”
When Brian turned 18, he spent a year at Loyola Marymount University before moving from southern California to Spokane to attend Gonzaga University and play baseball. He recalls establishing care at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center and going through a battery of tests in order to be cleared to play for the university.
Brian spent the next four years playing baseball for Gonzaga. After graduating and ending his baseball career in 1994, he relocated to western Washington where he took a teaching job in Seattle and later started a digital agency in Tacoma.
Once Brian left Spokane, he also left behind his routine check-ups with his cardiologist at Providence Heart Institute.
“When I graduated, I was 24 and I was invincible,” says Brian.
He didn’t begin seeing a cardiologist again until years later when he was required to in order to receive a life insurance policy.
After that cardiologist retired, Brian received more in-depth testing under the care of a new cardiologist. While Brian was asymptomatic for many years and seemed to be doing well in life, the tests revealed that decades of a leaking pulmonary valve had led to heart enlargement.
After several virtual consultations with doctors in Seattle and Spokane, it was evident that he needed surgery, and Brian didn’t want to wait until he became sicker.
“My wife said you’re going to get the best care in the world—we’ll go anywhere,” says Brian.
“Dr. Worrall exudes credibility and can-do confidence,” says Brian. “I felt like I was in the presence of a super star meeting him the first time.”
Brian elaborates to say the “entire process was seamless; the Providence team was just fantastic from beginning to end.”
At Providence Heart Institute and Providence Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital, the Providence Adult and Teen Congenital Heart Program (PATCH) was developed for patients like Brian to create a seamless transition from pediatric to adult care.
Considering himself fortunate, Brian says that not many people have lived as long as him with the surgery he had as a child. “Seeing a cardiologist that understands pediatrics and understood what would have happened to me at that point in time is key.”
“Patients like Brian,” says Dr. Worrall, “with complex reoperative situations are generally better off when they’re in a program and with a surgeon who’s done this frequently before.”
“Decades ago it was not common for patients with heart defects to survive to adulthood,” says Dr. Nicolarsen. “Now more than 90% of adults make it to adulthood. There’s a new need for adult congenital heart patients to be cared for in specialized centers. These centers are team-based, multidisciplinary care centers. Our program is one of the nationally accredited programs and we were one of the first to comprehensively care for these patients.”
"We can take care of patients from newborn diagnosis through surgery and infancy through another possible surgery as they get older—and continue taking care of them through their teenage and adult years because of the symbiosis between our pediatric and our adult congenital program,” says Dr. Worrall.
“I was considering places like Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, etc. But I kept being referred to Providence Heart Institute and Dr. Jeremy Nicolarsen because he is the best at what he does. A lot of that had to do with him being a congenital heart disease cardiologist and his experience with Tetralogy of Fallot, the heart defect that I had.”
"After talking to everyone, it was clear that the best care in the world was in Spokane, Washington, where I was already talking to Providence doctors.”
Together, Brian and Dr. Nicolarsen made the decision to do the surgery as soon as possible.
“It was a breath of fresh air,” Brian recalls. “The entire Providence team was so reassuring. It felt like they were listening and what mattered to me mattered to them.”
Brian remembers the welcoming feeling of walking back into the same hospital where he was treated earlier in life, and meeting Dr. Neil Worrall, his congenital heart surgeon.
More than a year after his successful open-heart surgery in May of 2021, Brian is back to life as usual, only better.
“I feel like I’ve gained years back on my life,” says Brian. “I’m still very active and doing all the things I love to do. The reason I’m able to enjoy life like this is because I got the best care in the world. The thing I am most grateful for is the entire staff at Providence.”
Dr. Nicolarsen offers a final encouragement for anyone who was born with a congenital heart defect and had a surgery or some type of intervention as a child. “Even if you’re feeling well, it’s really important that you connect with us so that you receive the best heart care from a team of trusted experts.”
ADVERTISER STATEMENT: From heart conditions diagnosed
“After talking to everyone, it was clear that the best care in the world was in Spokane, Washington, where I was already talking to Providence doctors.”
There are so many pockets of local musical talent in the Inland Northwest that it can often be tough to keep tabs on the more niche realms. Thankfully, Spokane Guitar Collective is bringing one such group to the forefront — our area’s classical guitarists. This seated show at Lucky You features three string plucking stand outs who have taught their craft at regional universities: Michael Millham (Gonzaga/Eastern Washington, right), James Reid (Idaho, left), and John Paul Shields (Yakima Valley College, center). After solo sets from each man, they will all come together for a trio set highlighting their dexterous interplay. With decades upon decades of experience to lean on, it should make for an enchanting musical evening. (Spokane Guitar Collective will also play a benefit concert in Moscow on Friday at One World Cafe.)
— SETH SOMMERFELDSpokane Guitar Collective • Thu, Oct. 6 at 7 pm • $10$12 • 21+ • Lucky You Lounge • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • luckyyoulounge.com • 509-474-0511
Fri, Oct. 7 at 7 pm • $10 • One World Cafe, Moscow
BRICK WEST BREWING CO., Kyle Richard
CHECKERBOARD TAPROOM, Weathered Shepherds
J LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, Spokane Guitar Collective
THE MASON JAR, October Open Mic
J QQ SUSHI & KITCHEN, Just Plain Darin
STEAM PLANT RESTAURANT & BREW PUB, Pamela Benton
STEAM PLANT RESTAURANT & BREW PUB, Wiebe Jammin ZOLA, Desperate8s
THE BEE’S KNEES WHISKEY BAR, Pamela Benton: StringzOnFire! BEST WESTERN COEUR D’ALENE, The Black Jack Band
J THE BIG DIPPER, No Bragging Rights, Torture Culture, No Home, Clay City CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, Rusty Jackson
COEUR D’ALENE CASINO CHINOOK LOUNGE, Ron Greene
COEUR D’ALENE CASINO CHINOOK LOUNGE, Haze
J LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, Sam Lachow, Jango, Zaeshaun Haze
J J ONE WORLD CAFE, Spokane Guitar Collective
OSPREY RESTAURANT & BAR, Sam Leyde
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Ron Kieper Trio
J PONDEROSA BAR AND GRILL, Gil Rivas
THE RIDLER PIANO BAR, Just Plain Darin
SEASONS OF COEUR D’ALENE, Son of Brad
J THE BIG DIPPER, Fit For an Autopsy, Dead Low, Manifesto
CHAN’S RED DRAGON ON THIRD, Cary Fly
COEUR D’ALENE CASINO CHINOOK LOUNGE, Ron Greene
COEUR D’ALENE CASINO CHINOOK LOUNGE, Haze
J KNITTING FACTORY, Bad Suns, Last Dinosaurs, Quarters of Change
J LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, Matt Mitchell Music Co.: ‘Ramona’ Album Release Show
LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, Alcohol & Feelings (Covers Show)
OSPREY RESTAURANT & BAR, Pamela Benton
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Chris Lynch and Lauren Kershner
J PONDEROSA BAR AND GRILL, Jessica Haffner
WHISKEY GLASSES BAR & GRILL, The Black Jack Band
ZOLA, Blake Braley
J THE BIG DIPPER, Tithe, Xingaia, Gekiretsu, Big Knife
J J BING CROSBY THEATER, Todd Snider, Ryan Montbleau
LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, Carbon Leaf
RED ROOM LOUNGE, Open Mic Night
LITZ’S PUB & EATERY, Shuffle Dawgs ZOLA, The Night Mayors
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Dwayne Parsons
J PONDEROSA BAR AND GRILL, Dallas Kay
There’s a weathered quality to Todd Snider’s voice that makes the characters he sings about just feel more real. The rootsyness in his timbre opens up a world of exploration for his folk rock tunes. A bit of a polymath (who’s done everything from write a memoir to voice a character on the Adult Swim show Squidbillies), Snider can play guitar, banjo, harmonica, bass and piano, and also excels at spinning amusing yarns between songs in a live setting. Those gifts can be heard on the veteran singer-songwriter’s 2021 studio LP First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder and his new concert album Live: Return of the Storyteller. He’ll be spreading that endearing rambling troubadour spirit when he swings on into the Bing.
— SETH SOMMERFELDTodd Snider • Sun, Oct. 9 at 8 pm • $30-$40 • All ages • Bing Crosby Theater • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • bingcrosbytheater.com • 509-227-7638
RED ROOM LOUNGE, The Roomates ZOLA, Runaway Lemonade
J J MARTIN WOLDSON THEATER
AT THE FOX, Everclear, Sponge, Oct. 13, 7:30 pm.
J SPOKANE ARENA, Scorpions, Whitesnake, Thunder Mother, Oct. 13, 8 pm.
J J THE PODIUM, A Day to Remember, The Used, Movements, Magnolia Park, Oct. 14, 6 pm.
J J THE BIG DIPPER, The Queers, Teenage Bottlerocket, Oct. 18, 7:30 pm.
J J BING CROSBY THEATER, Judy Collins, Oct. 18, 8 pm.
J NORTHERN QUEST RESORT & CASINO, Peter Cincotti, Oct. 18, 8 pm.
J J THE BIG DIPPER, Nixon Rodeo 10 Year Anniversary Party, Oct. 21, 8 pm.
J J THE BIG DIPPER, Monumental Shows: Halloween Cover Show, Oct. 28, 8 pm.
J J THE BIG DIPPER, Itchy Kitty, Biblioteka, Gotu Gotu, Oct. 29, 8 pm.
J NORTHERN QUEST RESORT & CA SINO, Night of the Rocking Dead, Oct. 30, 7:30 pm.
J LUCKY YOU LOUNGE, MAITA, Nov. 4, 8 pm.
J J SPOKANE ARENA, The Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction, Poppy, Nov. 9, 6:30 pm.
J COEUR D’ALENE CASINO, The Commodores, Nov. 10, 7 pm.
J SPOKANE ARENA, Walker Hayes, Parmalee, Nov. 10, 7 pm.
219 LOUNGE • 219 N. First Ave., Sandpoint • 208-263-5673
ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS • 4705 N. Fruit Hill Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-927-9463
BABY BAR • 827 W. First Ave. • 509-847-1234
BARRISTER WINERY • 1213 W. Railroad Ave. • 509-465-3591
BEE’S KNEES WHISKY BAR • 1324 W. Lancaster Rd.., Hayden • 208-758-0558
BERSERK • 125 S. Stevens St. • 509-315-5101
THE BIG DIPPER • 171 S. Washington St. • 509-863-8098
BIGFOOT PUB • 9115 N. Division St. • 509-467-9638
BING CROSBY THEATER • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-227-7638
BLACK DIAMOND • 9614 E. Sprague Ave. • 509891-8357
BOLO’S BAR & GRILL • 116 S. Best Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-891-8995
BOOMERS CLASSIC ROCK BAR • 18219 E. Appleway Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-368-9847
BUCER’S COFFEEHOUSE PUB • 201 S. Main St., Moscow • 208-596-0887
THE BULL HEAD • 10211 S. Electric St., Four Lakes • 509-838-9717
CHAN’S RED DRAGON • 1406 W. Third Ave. • 509-838-6688
COEUR D’ALENE CASINO • 37914 S. Nukwalqw St., Worley • 800-523-2464
COEUR D’ALENE CELLARS • 3890 N. Schreiber Way, Coeur d’Alene • 208-664-2336
CRUISERS BAR & GRILL • 6105 W Seltice Way, Post Falls • 208-446-7154
CURLEY’S HAUSER JUNCTION • 26433 W. Hwy. 53, Post Falls • 208-773-5816
EICHARDT’S PUB • 212 Cedar St., Sandpoint • 208-263-4005
FIRST INTERSTATE CENTER FOR THE ARTS • 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. • 509-279-7000
FOX THEATER • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-624-1200
IRON HORSE • 407 E. Sherman, Coeur d’Alene • 208-667-7314
IRON HORSE BAR & GRILL • 11105 E. Sprague Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-926-8411
JOHN’S ALLEY • 114 E. Sixth St., Moscow • 208-883-7662
KNITTING FACTORY • 911 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-244-3279
LEFTBANK WINE BAR • 108 N. Washington St. • 509-315-8623
LUCKY YOU LOUNGE • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • 509-474-0511
MARYHILL WINERY • 1303 W. Summit Pkwy. • 509-443-3832
THE MASON JAR • 101 F St., Cheney • 509-359-8052
MAX AT MIRABEAU • 1100 N. Sullivan Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-922-6252
MILLIE’S • 28441 Hwy 57, Priest Lake • 208-443-0510
MOOSE LOUNGE • 401 E. Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene • 208-664-7901
MOOTSY’S
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We don’t want to jinx it, but it seems as if all of the commu nity’s most-beloved annual events have started back up for good. Terrain’s flagship event has been sorely missed in the past two years, but this weekend, IT’S BACK! The 13th iteration of Terrain takes place at 314 W. Riverside Ave., a new venue for the one-night arts extravaganza. The massive space will be filled with local art that ranges from photography to interac tive art, as well as poetry and film. Almost every medium in the artistic spectrum is represented at Terrain, which is what makes it one of the best cultural events of the year and a must-see for anyone who can appreciate the time and dedica tion of an artist. Best of all, it’s free, but donations to support the nonprofit — or the purchase of an art piece you completely fall in love with — are always welcome.
— MADISON PEARSONTerrain 13 • Fri, Oct. 7 from 5 pm-midnight • Free • All ages • 314 W. Riverside Ave. • terrainspokane.com
When 70 percent of U.S. hops are grown just a couple hours away, what local brewery wouldn’t want to take advantage of the opportu nity to make fresh beer while said buds are still verdant off the vine? That’s the reason for this new craft beer fest, featuring more than 20 local breweries’ creations made with freshly harvested Yakima Valley hops that are less than eight hours from the vine. The featured brew ery list is long, and includes Common Language, Iron Goat, Brick West, Bellwether, TT’s, YaYa, Post Falls and Millwood Brewing. There will also be food trucks, entertainment and a competition to crown the event’s top brews. VIP tickets offer admission an hour early, and designated drivers can come for $10. All beer-drinker tickets include a stainless steel mug and eight tasting tokens.
— CHEY SCOTTSpokane Fresh Hop Festival • Sat, Oct. 8 from 4-8:30 pm • $50 general; $75 VIP (entry at 3 pm) • 21+ • Millwood City Park • 9241 E. Frederick Ave. • spokanefreshhop.com
While the U.S. Men’s National Team has been in horrid form during its tune-up matches for the upcoming World Cup in Qatar, at least we know the Women’s National Team is always elite. Brick West is hosting a viewing party for the lasses’ international friendly tilt against England (FIFA’s fourth-ranked team in the world) on the hallowed pitch of Wembley Arena, which would make for an ideal extended Friday work lunch. More importantly for Spokane footy fans, there will be representatives on hand from USL Spokane, which will be bringing an expansion team to Spokane’s new downtown stadium in 2023. So grab a beer and some grub (food trucks will also be on-site), and watch some top-tier futbol while dreaming of Spokane soccer to come.
— SETH SOMMERFELDUSWNT vs. England: Watch Party • Fri, Oct. 7 at 11:30 am • Free •
All ages • Brick West Brewing Co. • 1318 W. First Ave. • brickwest brewingco.com
GET LISTED!
Submit events online at Inlander.com/getlisted or email relevant details to getlisted@inlander.com. We
week
America’s story started long before traditional recorded history started keeping track. This fact is the focus of Spokane’s One Heart festival, concisely summed in its tagline: “The ongoing story of America, told by American Na tives.” The weeklong festival was created to share and celebrate empowering Native-told stories in media such as film, art, poetry and music. Among the 2022 event’s slate is According to Coyote, a theatrical telling of the trickster coyote myth — read more about it in next week’s Inlander — with two free, public showings at Riverfront’s Pavilion on Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Oct. 10 at 11 am and 6 pm). Also on the program is an Intertribal Poetry Slam (Oct. 13 at 8 pm) and live music by Native artist Deekon Jones (Oct. 14 at 8 pm), both at Lucky You Lounge. Wrapping up the week is a Native films program at the Magic Lantern, including the premier of local filmmaker/director Misty Shipman’s Handsome Man, pictured above (Oct. 14-15 at 6 pm).
— CHEY SCOTTOne Heart Native Arts & Film Festival • Oct. 10-16, times, locations and prices vary • All ages • Details at oneheartfestival.org/schedule
To commemorate national “Coming Out Day,” local nonprofit Spark Central is weaving together its festivities with national “I Love Yarn Day.” Project Yarnbomb invites yarn-enthusiasts and LGBTQ+ folks and allies to create colorful, symbolic pieces using rainbow colors so fondly associated with the LGBTQ+ community. “Wait, but what’s yarnbombing?” you ask. Answer: Usually, yarnbombing is a nondestructive form of street art in which knitted or crocheted fiber is wrapped around objects like trees or lamp posts. At this event, volunteers are on hand to teach yarn weaving with straws, how to make rainbow turtles and butterflies, and finger knit. Feel free to bring your own materials or use those provided. Bring the kids along to learn a valuable life skill, too! Coming out is such a vulnerable moment for individuals of the LGBTQ+ community, and what better way to celebrate than engaging in a creative and welcoming activity?
Project Yarnbomb
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NORTHERN QUEST CASINO 3-CARD Matt, I saw you at Northern Quest Casino on Aug. 14. I’m the blonde gal who was there with my friend (who is a dealer @ a different Casino). We sat next to each other @ the 3-Card Poker table.
NOT, I DIDN’T SEE YOU, MR. FRENCH I didn’t see you attending Board of Health meetings for at least the first 10 years of your career as a county commissioner. This is according to the attendance as recorded in the Spokane Regional Health District’s meeting minutes from those years of nonservice on your part. You were elected to do a job, and you were paid for that job. Why?
NO, F--- YOU Me: riding my bike north on Mayfair, far to the right of the median around 5 pm. A median is a line (often marked and sometimes partitioned) that divides a road or street down the middle. We’ll get back to that later. You: making a left turn in your sporty red Toyota twodoor south from Crown Avenue entirely too sharply. I saw you barely enter the intersection to turn left, and I hit my brakes as you drove at me behind the stop line. I shouted, “Yooo!” at you because your head was turned the other way. Your window was open so you heard me and stopped before driving over me. I took a breath to regain composure because that kind of thing is scary. I take a lot of measures to avoid it. Always staying to the right of the median and keeping my head pointed in the direction I’m going, for example. The way a driver would. A good driver, anyway. As you were going back to your side of the
road, I heard you say, “F--- you.” That was rude. I didn’t care for that. I shouted, “Eat shit, motherf-----.” because I’m a straight shooter and you deserved to hear it. You slammed on your brakes like you were going to turn around and say something (“Sorry,” one could hope), but you didn’t say anything. Anyhow, enjoy the dent that rock left in your trunk. You deserve that, too.
CHILDREN OF MEN Hooray! Look at all the faces — pink and scruffy. Oh, how white men have returned to the pages of my beloved newspaper! The opinion section? Full of white men again. Thanks, Mr. MacGregor. The front page of the arts section? The return of another white dude who used to work at the paper. The next arts story? Bearded white dude. Food? White dude. Screen? A movie directed by a white dude. Music? Two white dudes. Way to make the paper great again!
TO THE BEST WORDS Every word has a flavor — and a level of salt, fat, acid or heat. And the thrill of writing is all about foraging for the perfect ingredients and combining them in the right order and the right time. Sometimes you want to use sparse words and short sentences. Clean. Fresh. Other times you want a rich and sumptuous feast of seven-course sentences that indulgently unfold over a long and luxurious procession of decadence, absolutely dripping with sinfully purple prose. Or, wait — should that be, “every word has a flavour?”
PATIENT HEART Today you sat with your loved one at Cancer Care Northwest. I listened as you became the target of her bad mood and anger. Possibly agitated by a long day on top of the anger that a cancer diagnosis, which — trust me — makes all of those affected angry. You kept your calm. You continued to be kind and gentle with your very bitter loved one. I want you to know that I see you; I acknowledge your heart and all the difficulties being a caregiver is and can be. She does not realize how lucky she is to have you. Kudos to you ♡
QUALITY INN PROJECT We need to have more compassion and support this project and others like it. If neighbors are concerned, start a block watch or similar. The guidelines for the project are great. Those people that “don’t want to be told
what to do” may have warrants, back child support or IRS problems. Maybe partial amnesty and work off the rest. Outlaw begging.
PAY IT FORWARD I would like to thank the awesome woman at the Valley Walmart on 10/1 around 1:30 pm who paid the difference on my bill because I did not have enough money. My son and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts. The World needs more people like you! We will pay it forward. God bless.
of was smelling up the whole street. Glad we don’t have to stay. We will be reporting that you lied to parking enforcement about us parking for longer than 72 hours. Luckily for you, the authorities here will do nothing about real crimes because I doubt you can afford a fine with the rent you’re paying.
are. The fact that kicking the can around would be your best solution is pathetic.
UBER EATS RECIPIENTS Dear Uber Eats Recipients: Is there some special reason you feel its OK not to tip the driver? Are we not performing a service for you? We pick up your food, and sometimes it’s quite difficult to find a spot to park. We then run in to get your food, run back to our car, and drive as fast as we can safely to get your food to you warm. Sometimes I have delivered food 20 miles out. We don’t always get a lot of calls for trips, and that
CHEERS TO GRAIN SHED Gotta say the bread that is being baked at the grain shed is pretty good stuff; way to go guys. Went in there and got a “Breakfast Sando” sandwich and was not disappointed. And pretty rare to see so many attractive people working in one place outside of a Walmart or a Target. ... But I digress, this place also looks good just in terms of decor; they got a wall covered in Texas stuff (I love that cause my aunt is from Texas), and they even have a guy who looks just like Willie Nelson who will go around meeting people and sing a song sometimes.
“THIS IS A NICE NEIGHBORHOOD! GET OUT!” Nothing says nice neighborhood like some lady leaning out her window (at night, possibly with a bullhorn) screaming her head off. Then she comes down to scream in our window, forcing me to tell my son not to roll his down. Not the first, just the worst. My family is trying to move and finding somewhere to park our RV while we do has really reminded me what kind of neighborhood Browne’s REALLY is. Our RV is not the rolling PoS you see ppl dealing drugs out of (maybe she wanted it to be; she sure seemed like an out-of-hermind tweaker). We just bought it and are renovating, but it IS nice. Frankly, if I lived in the pricey condos across the street from this lady, I’d have more of a problem with her. The property she was screaming out
RORSCHACH TEST Ink, like beauty, is only skin deep. Neither has ever contributed toward making anybody a better person. At least it makes it much easier to tell the conformists from the nonconformists.
RE: “FART SMELLER” Jeers to the person last week who mocked the person who complained about the noise at Comstock Park while the Spokane Symphony was performing. I think you missed the point. I’m pretty sure the symphony was there to perform. I’m also pretty sure the people who were gathered were there to hear. There are plenty of other places for people to make noise at the park, perhaps away from the symphony. Your response was laughable, and the “fart” reference was imbecilic but fitting. But then again, what do I know? Perhaps those who were playing enjoy it when people aren’t there to hear them play or can’t hear them. Now that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Dumb!
RE: TO WEST HILLS NIMBYERS First of all, you write comments acting like the brilliant person you’re not. To put all of WEST HILLS in one catagory is arrogant. Grab a map and figure out where exactly you are talking about. I find it funny that everyone has a comment on homelessness when it doesn’t affect their neighborhood. To write such a wasteful, uninspired response when the homelessness is a citywide issue shows little care and understanding of the actual problem. Sure that response was easy to write because of the closet Christian you
hurts. You are not taking your time to do this job. You are not putting hellacious miles on your car. You are not putting wear and tear on your car. Most of you women get your hair and nails done, and always tip the person who worked on you. So, please tip your Uber Eats driver. We don’t make much these days with the high-priced gas. It would be most appreciated if you consumers would please give us Uber Eats drivers tips. Thank you for listening.
SMOKING IDIOT I was heading out of Liberty Lake back to Spokane after volunteering at the visiting Vietnam Wall in September. You were the jerk speeding through traffic to get to the east bound on-ramp. Not only reckless and tailgating on that awful curved on-ramp, you flicked your cigarette out of your window into 2-foot-high dry grass. Thank goodness you didn’t start a fire. You win biggest jerk of the year! Now grow up. n
PEOPLE WHO CARE Transitions’ biggest fundraiser of the year. Get a glimpse into the world of Transitions, hear inspiring stories from the community and help support its mission. Oct. 6, 12-1 pm. Free. The Centennial Hotel, 303 W. North River Dr. help4women.org/pwc2022
HOEDOWN FOR HOPE A gala benefit ting deaf and hard of hearing children and their parents. Oct. 7, 5:30 pm. $80. Spokane Convention Center, 334 W. Spo kane Falls Blvd. spokanehope.org
TION SCRAMBLE Golfers and spectators are invited to golf, enjoy food and partici pate in a silent auction. Oct. 8, 10 am-3:30 pm. $110-$500. Liberty Lake Golf Course, 24403 E. Sprague. (509-255-6233)
WALK TO END ALZEHIMER’S Held an nually in more than 600 communities nationwide, the Walk to End Alzheimer’s is the world’s largest fundraiser for Al zheimer’s care, support and research. Oct. 8, 10:30 am. By donation. Riverfront Park, 507 N. Howard St. alz.org/walk
CHRIS FRANJOLA Chris has a podcast, Cover to Cover, and has regularly ap peared on Chelsea Lately. Oct. 6, 7:30 pm, Oct. 7-8, 7:30 & 10 pm. $20-$28. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com
NURSE BLAKE: PTO COMEDY TOUR
Blake is a registered nurse who’s worked in various healthcare roles. Oct. 6, 7:30 pm. $40-$50. Knitting Factory, 919 W.
Sprague Ave. sp.knittingfactory.com
NO CLUE! When the evening is over, de cide who’s responsible for all the dead bodies. Fridays in October at 7:30 pm. $8. Blue Door Theatre, 815 W. Garland Ave. bluedoortheater.com (509-747-7045)
SCOTT BAIO: HOW DID I GET HERE? Baio is most well-known for playing Cha chi Arcola on the sitcom Happy Days. Oct. 7, 7 pm. $75-$175. The Coeur d’Alene Re sort, 115 S. Second. cdaresort.com
NICK HOFF The nationally touring standup comedian also makes comedy al bums. Oct. 9, 7:30 pm. $10-$16. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokan ecomedyclub.com (509-318-9998)
EAGLE FAMILY HOMECOMING COMEDY NIGHT Featuring Meanroth Ny and Nate Jackson, with a meet-and-greet to fol low. Free for EWU students. Oct. 12, 7 pm. $10. Eastern Washington University, 526 Fifth St. ewu.edu/efh
JOHN HEFFRON Heffron shares relatable experiences from childhood and his life as a married father. Oct. 13, 7:30 pm, Oct. 14-15, 7:30 & 10:30 pm. $15-$30. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokan ecomedyclub.com (509-318-9998)
AMERICANS & THE HOLOCAUST This traveling exhibit from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum examines the mo tives, pressures and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism, war and genocide in Europe during the 1930s and 40s. Mon-Fri from 3-8 pm and SatSun from 1-5 pm through Oct. 6. Free. Gonzaga University, 502 E. Boone Ave.
gonazga.edu (509-328-4220)
FINDING RESILIENCE IN NATURE Master Gardener Cathi Lamoreux teaches how nature can be used for healing, health, resilience building, solace and more. Oct. 6, 4-6 pm. Free. Shadle Library, 2111 W. Wellesley. spokanelibrary.org
MASTER GARDENERS OF SPOKANE
FALL BULB SALE Choose from a wide selection of bulbs. See website for full list of bulbs offered and pick-up locations. Through Oct. 10. mgfsc.org/bulb-sale
THE GREAT PUMPKIN FEST A twoweekend event that includes line dancing, live music, a petting zoo and hundreds of pumpkins in Brick West’s pumpkin patch. All raffle ticket benefit charity. Oct. 7-9. Brick West Brewing Co., 1318 W. First. brickwestbrewingco.com
HOME IDEA SHOW This 43rd annual event features vendors and local busi nesses focused on home decor and DIY. Oct. 7, 12-8 pm, Oct. 8, 10 am-7 pm and Oct. 9, 10 am-5 pm. $8-$10. Spokane County Fair & Expo Center, 404 N. Ha vana St. spokanehomeshows.com
PUMPKIN PATCH & FALL FEST This fall festival includes U-Pick pumpkins, hay rides, a petting zoo, live music and more. Oct. 7-30, Fri-Sun from 10 am-5 pm. $3-$5. 7412 S. Keene Rd., Medical Lake. Rusty-truck-ranch.com
PET ADOPTION EVENT Cats and dogs from SpokAnimal are on-site and are ready for adoption. Adoption fees vary. Oct. 8, 11 am-3 pm. Free. Subaru of Spo kane, 423 W. Third. subaruspokane.com
CEDARWOOD MARKET FALL FESTIVAL
A fall festival including live music, food
trucks, drinks, fall-themed treats and various vendors. Oct. 8, 12-11 pm. Free. Cormana Building, 1100 W. Idaho St., St. Maries. threadedmagnolia.com
EBRATION An evening of Asian cultural performances, dancing, food and pot lucks. Oct. 8, 6-10 pm. Free. The Philan thropy Center, 1020 W. Riverside Ave. (509-315-1323)
HARVEST FEST CRAFT FAIRE Includes arts and crafts vendors, food trucks and more. Oct. 1-16, Sat-Sun from 10 am-4 pm. Free. Green Bluff Grange, 9809 Green Bluff Rd. greenbluffgrowers.com
LAKE CITY COMICON This fifth an nual event features exhibitors, special guests, programming and more. Oct. 8, 9:30 am-4 pm. $8-$12. Kootenai County Fairgrounds, 4056 N. Government Way. lakecitycon.com (208-765-4969)
NORTH IDAHO’S GREAT PUMPKIN
FEST This fall event features pumpkin picking, food, hay rides and more. Oct. 8-9, 10 am-4 pm. Free. Kootenai County Fairgrounds, 4056 N. Government Way. kcfairgrounds.com (208-765-4969)
SPOCANOPY TREE PLANTINGS Three days of tree planting in neighborhoods around Spokane. Oct. 11-13 from 9 am-1 pm. Free. Info at landscouncil.org
OPEN STUDIO AT THE HIVE Check out artist-in-residence studios, tour the facil ities and explore programming options. Oct. 12, 4-7 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. spokanelibrary.org
ELECTRIC TRANSPORTATION PROJECT CELEBRATION Spokane Regional Trans portation Council, Avista, project part
ners and community members celebrate an electric transportation grant from the Dept. of Commerce that provides 50 electric charging stations throughout the region. Oct. 13, 3-4 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. srtc.org/ev
MULHOLLAND DRIVE Moscow Film So ciety presents this screening Mulholland Drive as part of their “Cronenberg vs Lynch” series. Oct. 6, 7-9:30 pm. $5. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. kenworthy.org
THE POWER TO TELL An original docu mentary by MiA (Mujeres in Action), a local agency that advocates for survivors of domestic violence within the Latinx community. In Monroe Hall, WAGE Cen ter Lounge. Oct. 6, 3-4 pm. By donation. Eastern Washington University, 526 Fifth St. bit.ly/3qDwTFF
BLOODSPORT An action-packed night following Moscowberfest, presented by the Palouse Cult Film Revival. Oct. 8, 8:30-10:15 pm. Free. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. palousecultfilms.org
FINDING LOVE IN BIG SKY An inde pendent country girl takes on the task of turning her grandfather’s ranch into a camp for kids. Based on the book by Angela Ruth Strong, proceeds support Community Cancer Fund. Oct. 10, 7 pm. $10. Hayden Discount Cinema, 300 W. Centa Ave. angelaruthstrong.com
TOTALLY TUBULAR TUESDAY A weekly screening of a throwback film. See the website for each week’s film. Tuesday at 7 pm. $2.50. Garland Theater, 924 W. Garland Ave. garlandtheater.com
MAGIC HOUR Teton Gravity Research kicks off the season with a new featurelength ski and snowboard film. Oct. 13, 7:30-9 pm. $9-$17. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague. bingcrosbytheater.com
THE POWER TO TELL (EL PODER DE CONTARIO) An original documentary produced by MiA (Mujeres in Action), a local Spokane agency that advocates for survivors of domestic violence with in the Latinx community. Oct. 13, 6-8 pm. By donation. Gonzaga University, 502 E. Boone Ave. gonzaga.edu
ONE HEART NATIVE ARTS & FILM FES TIVAL This program includes the world premiere of Handsome Man directed by Misty Shipman and more. Oct. 14-15, 6 pm. Magic Lantern Theatre, 25 W. Main Ave. oneheartfestival.org
ITALIAN WINE DINNER Gander & Rye grass teams up with ANW Distribution for this five-course meal featuring Ital ian wines. Oct. 6, 4:30-9 pm. Gander & Ryegrass, 404 W. Main Ave. ganderan dryegrass.com (509-315-4613)
COOKING DEMO: HEALTHY & INEX PENSIVE MEALS This cooking demon stration features three meals using one ingredient. Oct. 8, 2-3 pm. Free. Shadle Library, 2111 W. Wellesley Ave. spokan elibrary.org (509-444-5390)
CRAFT BEER & COOKIE FESTIVAL An evening of cookie and beer pairings and an opportunity to invest in girls. Also features local musicians, games and food. Oct. 8, 2-5 pm. $25. Girl Scouts of Eastern Washington and N. Idaho, 1404 N. Ash St. gsewni.org (747-8091)
RED, BLACK & BREW BEER FESTIVAL
The inaugural festival features vendor booths, food and beer from local brew eries including BrickWest, Inland Ale Works, YaYa and more. Oct. 8, 12-6 pm. Free. Sutton Park, 805 Washington St. westplainschamber.org/brewfest
SPOKANE FRESH HOP FESTIVAL This new celebration offers fresh-hop beer from 20+ local breweries, food and live entertainment. Oct. 8, 4-8:30 pm. $50$75. Millwood Park, 9205 E. Frederick Ave. spokanefreshhop.com
ALL YOU CAN EAT PANCAKE BREAK FAST: A pancake breakfast with eggs, sausage, homemade apple sauce and orange juice. Children five and under are free with a paying adult. Oct. 9 and 23 from 8-11 am. $5-$10. Green Bluff Grange, 9809 Green Bluff Rd. green bluffgrowers.com (509-979-2607)
COLOMBIAN & VENEZUELAN FOOD FUNDRAISER
All profits benefit men tal health services at a medical center in Colombia serving women fleeing Venezuela. Dine-in or takeout; pre-or dering begins online on Oct. 4, walk-ins welcome. Oct. 9, 11 am-2 pm & 4-7 pm. Feast World Kitchen, 1321 W. Third Ave. feastworldkitchen.org (509-608-1313)
DOCKSIDE SUNDAY BRUNCH Back by popular demand, this brunch is crafted by Dockside’s chefs and features views of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Oct. 9, 9 am-2 pm. $25-$50. Dockside Restaurant, 115 S. Second St., Coeur d’Alene Resort, Lobby Floor. cdaresort.com
BIRRIA TACO COOKING CLASS Chefs at Second Harvest teach how to choose the right meat and seasonings for birria tacos, and how to make tortillas from scratch. Oct. 12, 5:30-8 pm. $25. Second
Harvest, 1234 E. Front Ave. secondhar vestkitchen.org (509-252-6256)
FIVE-COURSE BOURBON DINNER A meal prepared by chef Josh Dunbar. Oct. 12, 6-8 pm. $120. Purgatory Whis key, 524 W. Main. thepurgatory.com
CDAIDE CHEF CHALLENGE A battle between six local chefs, each compet ing to win the 2022 Chef Challenge title. Oct. 13, 5:30-8:30 pm. $125. Hagadone Event Center, 900 S. Floating Green Dr. cdaide.org/events (208-217-4851)
The Spokane Folklore Society hosts an evening of finger-style blues guitar and old-time banjo by Larry Unger. Oct. 6, 7-9 pm. $15-$20. Sinto Activity Center, 1124 W. Sinto Ave. sintocenter.org
A recital of works by Borne, Clarke, Linthicum-Blackhorse, Mouquet and Rocherolle, with WSU School of Music faculty member Dr. Yoon-Wha Roh. Oct. 6, 5:10-6 pm. Free. Bryan Hall The atre, 605 Veterans Way. wsu.edu/music
BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS The complete Brandenburg Concertos by J.S. Bach, presented by the North Idaho Philharmonia under the direction of Jan Pellant. Oct. 7, 7:30 pm and Oct. 8, 2 pm. $15-$30. Panida Theater, 300 N. First Ave. sandpointconservatory.org
WA-ID SYMPHONY: AUBIN & KUBO
Spotlighting guest conductor Matthew Aubin and guest soloist Mitsuru Kubo, viola. Oct. 8, 7:30 pm. $10-$25. Pullman High School, 510 NW Greyhound Way. wa-idsymphony.org
GONZAGA CHOIR CONCERT: IN MEET ING WE ARE BLESSED This is the first concert of the season for the Gonzaga Choral program. The choirs perform songs about togetherness, new begin nings and unity. Oct. 8, 7:30-9 pm. Free & Open to the Public. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/mwpac
JANESE & FRIENDS This concert fea tures R&B and gospel singer JaNese Howard, who’s been featured by the Spokane Indians, Gonzaga and more. Oct. 8, 7-9 pm. Free. The Gathering House, 733 W. Garland Ave. bethelyen tertainment.com (509-710-1338)
SPOKANE SYMPHONY MASTER WORKS 2: LOWE CONDUCTS RACH MANINOFF As a prelude to Rach maninoff’s 150th birthday in 2023 the Spokane Symphony performs his Sec ond Symphony, a work full of melodic intricacies. Oct. 8, 7:30 pm and Oct. 9, 3 pm. Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, 1001 W. Sprague Ave. spokanesympho ny.org (509-624-1200)
WSU FLUTE DAY Featuring guest artist Dr. Daniel Velasco, associate professor of flute at the University of Kansas. Oct. 8, 10 am-6 pm. $10. Kimbrough Music Building (WSU), WSU Pullman. wsu. edu/music (509-335-7696)
SAXOPHONE WORKSHOP & CON CERT Award-winning saxophonist Jaleel Shaw shares knowledge to mu sic students and community members. Oct. 11, 4:30-7 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. spokanelibrary.org
SOIREÉ 1 Musician-curated chamber music is accompanied by refreshments, wine, coffee and dessert. Oct. 12-13, 7:30 pm. Barrister Winery, 1213 W. Rail road Ave. spokanesymphony.org
OKTUBAFEST Featured works in clude world premiere performances of Dance-Sonata for tuba and piano and Juantio Becenti’s Fantasy for tuba and piano. Oct. 13, 7:30-9 pm. Free. Kim brough Music Building, WSU Pullman. wsu.edu/music
PATCH Navigate a 12-acre corn maze, choose a pumpkin from the pumpkin patch, and more. Daily from 11 am-7 pm through Oct. 31. $6-$8. 73 Oakshott Rd. colvillecornmaze.com
OIL KINGS Promotional events in clude the Numerica magnet schedule giveaway. Oct. 7, 7:05 pm. $12-$30. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com (279-7000)
This watch party event includes food trucks, swag and a special announce ment by Justin Papadakis and Amanda Vandervort. Oct. 7, 11:30 am. Free. Brick West Brewing Co., 1318 W. First. brick westbrewingco.com
NPOV LIONS CLUB RAILRIDERS Enjoy the unique experience of a four-seated, pedal-powered, railroad bicycle along the scenic Pend Oreille River in Ione, Wash. Oct. 8-9. Times vary. $12/$24. lionsrailriders.com
SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. PORTLAND
WINTERHAWKS Promotional events include Neurodiversity Awareness Night. Oct. 9, 5:05 pm. $12-$30. Spo kane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spo kanechiefs.com (279-7000)
STATE LAND FREE DAYS Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission invites visitors to enjoy a state park for free on Oct. 10, Nov. 11 and Nov. 25. parks.wa.gov
SIGNIFICANT OTHER Jordan Berman would love to be in love, but that’s eas ier said than done. Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm through Oct. 16. $10-$25. Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St. spokanecivictheatre.com
TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND This Chicago theater tradi tion features 30 plays in 60 minutes. Oct. 6-9, Thu-Fri at 7 pm and 8:30 pm, Sat at 6 pm and Sun at 2 pm. $10. Gon zaga Magnuson Theatre, 502 E. Boone. gonzaga.edu/theatreanddance
THE WIZARD OF OZ Follow the yellow brick road in the stage adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s beloved tale. Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 2 pm through Oct. 16. $10-$35. Spokane Civic Theatre, 1020 N. Howard St. spokanecivictheatre.com
BARBECUING HAMLET A dinner the ater production with comedy and tragedy. Oct. 7-8, 14-15 and 21-22, daily at 7:30 pm, also Sat also at 2 pm. $5$25. Circle Moon Theater, 3642 N. State Route 211, Newport. northwoodsper formingarts.com (208-448-1294)
Solve a murder while enjoying dinner watching local actors. Oct. 7-8, 6 pm and Oct. 9, 2 pm. $30. Cutter Theatre, 302 Park St., Metaline Falls. cutterthe atre.com (509-446-4108)
Some things can’t wait until Monday. That’s why Asuris is here for you on Saturdays. From your kid’s boo-boo to a baffling medical bill, you can call us for help. Because life doesn’t happen only on weekdays.
PROV
The student comedy group showcases family-friendly humor in this improvised stage show. Oct. 8, 9:30 pm. $1. Gonzaga Magnuson The atre, 502 E. Boone Ave. gonzaga.edu/ theatreanddance (509-313-6553)
ACCORDING TO COYOTE This produc tion is an encounter with the richness and vitality of Native American cul ture using age-old traditions of music, dance and theatre. Oct. 10, 7 pm. Pa vilion at Riverfront, 574 N. Howard St. spokaneensembletheatre.com
TERRAIN 13 The flagship arts event features new works by 100s of lo cal artists and a celebration of all art forms. Oct. 7, 5-11:59 pm. Free and all ages. At 318 W. Riverside Ave., down town Spokane. terrainspokane.com
L.R. MONTGOMERY ART SHOW & SALE Meet the artist who paints Dish man Hills in vivid colors, enjoy refresh ments and take a short hike. Registra tion required. Oct. 8, 10 am-6 pm. Free. Wilson Conservation Area, 6712 E. Wil low Springs Rd. dhnaa.wildapricot.org
MEL MCCUDDIN
The late Spokane artist’s last solo exhibit features many new paintings. Wed-Sat from 11 am-6 pm through Oct. 31. Free. The Art Spirit Gallery, 415 Sherman Ave. theartspirit gallery.com (208-765-6006)
AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM: TREA SURES FROM THE DAYWOOD COL LECTION
This exhibition features 41 paintings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries with distinct impres sionistic brushstrokes and subjects ranging from landscapes to portraits. Oct. 7-Jan. 8, Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm. $15-$20. The MAC, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org
ARCHIE BRAY RESIDENT SHOW Functional and sculptural ceramics and mixed media by long-term and summer residents at the Archie Bray Foundation. Oct. 7-28, by appoint ment. Free. Kolva-Sullivan Gallery, 115 S. Adams St. kolva-sullivangallery.com
HANNAH CHARLTON: CITY OF LA DIES Charlton creates medieval-style illuminated manuscripts, recreating a historical art form using modern mate rials. Oct. 7-28, Mon-Fri from 10 am-12 pm. Free. Spokane Art School, 811 W. Garland Ave. spokaneartschool.net
FIRST FRIDAY Art galleries and busi nesses across Spokane host receptions to showcase new art. Oct. 7, 5-8 pm. Details at firstfridayspokane.org
FIRST FRIDAYS WITH POAC First Friday arts events in Sandpoint, orga nized by the Pend Oreille Arts Council. Oct. 7 from 5:30-7:30 pm. artinsand point.org (208-263-6139)
KAREN MOBLEY Mobley’s watercolor “doodles” all have themes of the natu ral environment and garden. Oct. 7 and 15 from 4-6 pm. Free. Craftsman Cel lars, 1194 W. Summit Pkwy. craftsman winery.com (509-328-3960)
LILA GIRVIN: GIFT OF A MOMENT Liv ing and working in Spokane since 1958, Girvin uses vibrant color, form, and un assuming techniques with oil paint in her ethereal, abstract paintings. Oct. 7-Feb. 12; Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm. $7-$12. The MAC, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org
KURT MADISON & ROGER RALSTON Madison exhibits new discrete sculp tural objects made of found weathered wood and materials. Also features recent works by Roger Ralston. Oct. 7-29, Fri-Sat from 12-8 pm. Free. Sara nac Art Projects, 25 W. Main Ave. sap gallery.com (509-350-3574)
FRIDAY SOIREE Meet artists featured in the 15th annual auction, along with demos and live music. Oct. 7, 5-8 pm. Free. CenterPlace Regional Event Cen ter, 2426 N. Discovery Place Dr. spoka nevalleyarts.org (509-688-0300)
ORBITING MISFITS A group show highlighting 70+ regional artists and celebrating 10 years in business for New Moon. Oct. 7-29, Wed-Fri 11 am-5 pm. Free. New Moon Art Gallery, 1326 E. Sprague. newmoonartgallery.com
PROJECT YARNBOMB Spark Central invites all yarn enthusiasts and LGBTQ+ folks to create colorful, expressive projects to take home or yarn bomb the tree out front. Oct. 8, 1-3 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org (509-279-0299)
JULIE GARCIA/JEWELS HELPING HANDS: CAMP HOPE & BEYOND
Learn about Julie’s drive, motivation and vision for serving the homeless population in Spokane. Oct. 6, 6:30 pm. Free. Rockwood Retirement Com munity, 221 E. Rockwood Blvd. (509995-2264)
WHEN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
IS AT RISK After becoming director of Boundary County Library in January 2022, Kimber Glidden was immediate ly faced with resistance and extreme requests for censorship. Glidden and current affairs specialist Shane Gron holz discusses these important topics libraries across the U.S. continue to face. Oct. 6, 7 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main Ave. spokanelibrary.org
3 MINUTE MIC Auntie’s first Friday poetry open mic, with guest host Chris Coppen. Readers may share up to three minutes of poetry. Oct. 7, 7-8 pm. Free. Auntie’s, 402 W. Main Ave. aun tiesbooks.com (509-838-0206)
HOMERATHON An all-day reading of the epic poem, “The Aeneid.” Sign up for a 10-minute shift of reading. Oct. 7, 9 am-9 pm. Free. Gonzaga University Hemmingson Center, 702 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu (509-313-6942)
CARROLL W. MCINROE: DEATH
CAME WITH THE POSTMAN A book singing for McInroe’s recent novel. Oct. 8, 1-3 pm. Auntie’s, 402 W. Main Ave. auntiesbooks.com (509-838-0206)
TEDXSPOKANE Speakers cover a variety of topics impacting the com munity in 10-minute talks. See website for complete list of speakers. Oct. 8, 6:30-9:30 pm. $22-$30. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. tedxspo kane.com (509-227-7404)
TIMOTHY CONNOR: BEAUTIFUL WOUNDS Connor discusses the Chan neled Scablands of Eastern Washing ton; how they came to be and how the terrain impacts ecosystems around them. Oct. 8, 2 pm. By donation. The MAC, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmu seum.org (509-456-3931)
BROKEN MIC Spokane Poetry Slam’s weekly open mic series. Wednesdays at 6:30 pm; sign-ups at 6 pm. Free. Neato Burrito, 827 W. First Ave. bit. ly/2ZAbugD (509-847-1234) n
Hemp-derived THC is illegal in Washington.
Last week, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) settled and closed a nearly yearlong investigation into a cannabis producer that extracted THC from hemp. The investigation is the latest example of the struggle for regulators to determine what is cannabis and what isn’t, and by extension what is legal and what’s not.
Unicorn Brands of Raymond, Washington, vio lated rules governing license, extraction and THC tracing, according to notices issued by the LCB in October 2021. Another charge alleged criminal ity, but last week the LCB dropped the criminal conduct charge, and Unicorn Brands admitted to the remaining three charges.
According to the settlement, Unicorn “shall not use its license to produce or manufacture delta‑8 THC, delta 9 THC, or any similar synthetically produced THC from any hemp based sources in the State of Washington unless explicitly authorized by a subsequent change in state law that allows the licensee to do so.”
Delta 9 is the compound in cannabis common ly referred to as THC. Delta 8 is chemically similar to delta 9, the only difference being the location of a double bond between two of the carbon atoms on their molecular structure.
Delta 8 has seen its profile rise dramatically in recent years. When hemp was legalized federally in 2018, it was defined as cannabis containing under 0.3 percent delta 9 THC by weight. There was no mention of delta 8, which does not occur naturally at the level of delta 9, though it can be synthesized from compounds occurring in legal hemp such as CBD.
As a result, delta 8 products began to appear on the market across the country. In the wake of that explosion, the LCB issued a policy statement in July 2021 clarifying that synthetically derived versions of THC that came from hemp, including delta 8, were illegal in Washington. However, ear lier this year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that delta 8 products were legal due to the compound being not specifically mentioned in the hemp legalization.
That ruling allowed delta 8 products to stay on the market — just not in Washington. The court’s opinion doesn’t change state laws, and delta 8 remains illegal in Washington’s regulated market, which means licensed producers and retailers are still prohibited from producing or selling it.
Confused? You’re not alone, as this settlement and the winding path that led to it make clear. n
for
21 and older under Washington State law (e.g., RCW
HB0001 Initiative 502 and Senate Bill
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 intox icating effects; there may be health risks as sociated 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.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18 TH 7 PM | $40 GENERAL ADMISSION
Upstairs Conference Area.
is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Health
