Inlander 12/16/2021 by The Inlander

THE NEW MOAB? NORTHEAST WASHINGTON’S TOURISM PLANS PAGE 12 SCREEN DREAMS LOCAL MUSIC STORY HITS THE BIG SCREEN PAGE 41 GREEN ZONE GIFTS SPECIAL PULLOUT SECTION INSIDE PAGE 25 SUPPLEMENT TO THE INLANDER

DECEMBER 16-22, 2021 | MAKING THE HOLIDAYS POP SINCE 1993

Santa Claus takes his Spokane Symphony visits very seriously.

The Sweeplings' Cami Bradley helps a special guest with the setlist.

The Sweeplings join the return of Holiday Pops to the Fox Theater By E.J. Iannelli page 16

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VOL. 29, NO. 10 | COVER PHOTO: YOUNG KWAK

COMMENT NEWS COVER STORY GREEN ZONE

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EDITOR’S NOTE

wo years ago I went to my first HOLIDAY POPS show at the Fox Theater. The opportunity to hear Vanessa Williams lend her considerable pipes to seasonal songs, Broadway standards and some of her solo hits was something I wasn’t going to miss, and the family ducked in for some appetizers at the historic Davenport after the show. All in all, a pretty amazing night, and pretty much the last big family night out on the town before the pesky pandemic came along a couple months later. Happily, the Spokane Symphony is back with its Holiday Pops show after a year away, and E.J. Iannelli chats with headliners the Sweeplings as well as conductor Morihiko Nakahara as part of our cover package (page 16) on the big shows coming this weekend. Also this week, we visit a Spokane classic in Knight’s Diner (page 51), learn about a major motion picture recently shot in Spokane about some longtime local musicians (page 41), and explore how northeast Washington hopes to become America’s next favorite outdoor-recreation playground (page 12). — DAN NAILEN, editor

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WHAT HOLIDAY SONG DO YOU NEVER NEED TO HEAR AGAIN?

MADISON MCELROY: “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” The vibe is too sus.

J. Jeremy McGregor (x224) GENERAL MANAGER

EDITORIAL

LAVINA HOUCHEN: That horrid Mariah Carey song...although I work in retail, and I’m getting pretty sick of hearing every version of “Santa Baby” ever...ew, and every version of “Last Christmas.”

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JO KEMME: “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey or any Mariah Carey Christmas song for that matter.

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CAYA BERNDT: Michael Bublé schmoozing up to Santa Claus asking for a Mercedes and a Rolex like he’s some sort of Wolf of Wall Street grifter can go. DEBRA ROSE: I must really love Christmas music! I can’t think of any that they play too much. That’s how you learn the words! SARA HITE: “Last Christmas.” Every version is WAY too overplayed, but especially from Taylor Swift. She cannot hit a single note. It’s like nails on a chalkboard! BIRDIE BYRD: “The 12 Days of Christmas.” The only reason why I DO NOT want to hear this song is because as kid that was 10 years old, I had to do the whole d*mn song in American Sign Language. UGHH!!!!!!!!!! SCOTT HOAGLAND: “Last Christmas,” just don’t like it. “Christmas Shoes”...maudlin to the Nth degree. “So This Is Christmas”...Yoko Ono’s voice. Nuff said. RUSTY SHACKLE FORD: Toby Keith has released two Christmas albums, which is two albums too many. What’s worse than Tobee Keef ruining your ears with non-Christmas music? Tobee Keef singing Christmas music! n

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 5

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Send the Rich Away Empty

Like the good book says, this Christmas let’s resolve to lift up the lowly and fill the hungry with good things BY TARA ROBERTS

he Christmas Eve I was 25 years old, I knelt by the couch, prying Matchbox cars out of their packaging and stuffing them into my almost-2-year-old son’s stocking. On the ratty carpet of our tiny rental house, my husband set up a figure-eight of wooden train tracks, right where H would see them when he woke up. Earlier that night, after tucking H into his crib, I’d driven across town to the lone open grocery store to buy a test. It was just a precaution. Just a little heartburn, a little stomach ache. I was definitely overreacting. But, sitting at a stoplight halfway to the store, I realized I had no doubt what the test would say. We were young, a grad student and a security guard, still reeling from the Great Recession, sitting on a pile of student loans, raising a toddler with the help of family and friends. No formal child care. No sick leave. Bare-bones medical insurance.

H was a planned baby, in the way two idealistic 20-somethings make liferewriting plans without really knowing what they’re getting into. I was a newspaper reporter when he was born, and I wrote a piece about how grateful I was that Medicaid saved us when I had complications early in my pregnancy that wiped out our savings. People — not strangers, but people I’d interviewed, people I knew — wrote to declare I did not deserve to have a child if I couldn’t pay for it. And now I was poor and pregnant again. We’d fretted over the cost of that train set. Bought H the $15 Buzz Lightyear action figure instead of the big one he’d admired in the store,

with its working buttons and lights. Topped his stocking off with socks and a toothbrush, because he needed them anyway. I remember thinking about a certain filthy rich reality TV star. I’d read in a magazine about a gift he’d bought his wife, some piece of extravagant jewelry that cost several times more than my family lived on in a year. And I was angry, furious, knowing how some people would look at the rich man’s gift compared to the beautiful, terrifying, unexpected one I got that Christmas Eve. I knew who they’d think was worthy, and who wasn’t.

very Christmas season, all those feelings come back. During Advent at my church, we sing “The Magnificat” — the verses from the book of Luke where Mary sings in celebration of the impending birth of Jesus. Mary was young, poor, socially compromised, facing the mother of all unplanned pregnancies. She wasn’t feeling too warm about rich people in her time, either. (God) has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. For Mary, my 25-year-old self and everyone for whom the holiday has ever been as much about fear as joy, I’d like to suggest we honor this ancient Christmas message. Let’s tax the hell out of the rich. Redistribute some unholy wealth. Do God’s work of bringing down the powerful from their superyachts and obscenely shaped spaceships and golden thrones (of various types) and making them fund a few good things for the rest of us. We wouldn’t even have to send them away completely empty. Just skim enough off the top of American billionaires’ $1.2 trillion of shiny new net worth added in just the past year to help pay for a few extravagant gifts like funding parental leave, or ensuring fair wages for teachers and nurses and grocery store workers, or making sure every person has a safe place to live and enough to eat, or making sure no one goes broke trying to pay for cancer treatment or insulin or a new baby. I know it’s a lot to ask when there are private islands and enormous diamonds to be had, but I feel like we could make it work.

“Mary was young, poor, socially compromised, facing the mother of all unplanned pregnancies. She wasn’t feeling too warm about rich people.”

f course I don’t know how to make it work. My mighty columnist powers have yet to give me nuanced insight into capital gains taxes and IRS loopholes — but they do give me a platform to call on the plenty of qualified people out there who can figure it out. I want to hear their plans, I want to vote for the people who support them, and I want the people I vote for to be brave enough to try it out. Is all this radical, idealistic, blindly optimistic, and disregarding of arguments about capitalism and liberty and bootstraps? Sure is. Indulge me in my wild ideas. Indulge yourself, if you want the same. Make it a prayer and a song; dig in to that feeling of ludicrous hope. Believe in the seemingly impossible. It’s Christmas. n Tara Roberts is a writer and college journalism adviser who lives in Moscow with her husband, sons and poodle. Her work has appeared in Moss, Hippocampus and a variety of regional publications. Follow her on Twitter @tarabethidaho.

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“We were running all the way, way beyond capacity,” says SNAP’s Carol Weltz of her office’s efforts to keep up with rental aid applications. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

HOUSING

The Rent Check Is in the Mail Eight simple flaws that have sabotaged Spokane’s efforts to provide rental assistance BY DANIEL WALTERS

he strategy itself was simple: Instead of evicting struggling renters in the middle of the pandemic, the federal government would help them pay rent and utilities. It would be up to local counties and cities to assist them. Between the City of Spokane and Spokane County, more than $60 million in federal aid had been earmarked for rent and utility assistance. But distributing millions of dollars worth of free money isn’t as easy as it may seem. “The challenge has been getting the money from the vendors out to the landlords and the tenants,” says Spokane City Council President Breean Beggs. “That seems to have dragged on locally, across the state and across the nation.” Some have done better than others. Spokane County, led by SNAP, the longtime local community organization, has already given nearly half of the about $35 million it’s been told to distribute. But the City of Spokane, with a Seattle-based company called LiveStories as the lead, has only distributed $9.3 million, just over a third of the amount they’d been assigned. In the meantime, both landlords and tenants were waiting for their checks to arrive. Some blamed LiveStories. “We should have gone out for a new [vendor] months ago,” City Councilman Michael Cathcart says. “We let bureaucracy, I feel, just run amok.” But the problems go far beyond just one agency.

1 THE CITY OF SPOKANE GOT A LATE START

Spokane County made a snap decision: Operating under emergency protocols, they were able to skip the lengthy bidding process and select SNAP as the agency to

8 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

hand out rental assistance to anyone outside the city limits. “We’ve got these dollars. Let’s get them on the street as soon as possible,” County Commissioner Josh Kerns recalls thinking. “We knew the need was there. It doesn’t do any good sitting in an account.” SNAP, through Spokane County, was able to launch its new round of federal 2021 rental assistance on March 24. But the city of Spokane — with more layers of approval and a more explicit focus on targeting aid to marginalized communities — took much longer to launch their version. It took another 69 days for the city to launch its own rental assistance process on June 1. “We had a lot of behind-the-scenes conversations around ‘should we have this rule or that rule and how difficult should it be,’” Cathcart says. Ultimately, Spokane selected three vendors to help with the rental assistance, giving the money to LiveStories, the Carl Maxey Center, and Family Promise, a homeless service provider. In June, the city managed to help more than 40 households. But that same month, the county helped almost 350. But Landlord Association President Steve Corker says he’d gathered the information to apply to help one of his tenants back in March. He finally got paid in September. By that time, he says, his tenant was so much deeper in the hole he had to apply for rental assistance again. “I can’t keep asking, ‘Why is it taking so long?’” Corker says. But things have gotten a lot faster, LiveStories CEO Adnan Mahmud tells the Inlander. “At the beginning we were processing $1 million a month, maybe,” Mahmud says. “Now we are at $1-1.5 million a week.”

HAD ENOUGH EMPLOYEES 2 NOBODY TO HANDLE THE INITIAL SURGE

As soon as you open the floodgates to rental applicants, in comes the flood. “When 2,000 people apply at one time, and you have five workers?” says Carol Weltz, who helps run the rental assistance program for SNAP. “We were running all the way, way beyond capacity.” But SNAP had the combination of size and agility to adapt quickly. They already had a crew of seasonal workers who helped them during the winter months with energy assistance. “We asked them to stay on for the summer to help,” Weltz says. Soon, they were up to nearly 20. “It moves a lot faster,” Weltz says.

3 LIVESTORIES PROCESSED PAPER APPLICATIONS FIRST

It may have been faster to start with the easier-toprocess online rental assistance applications, at least until LiveStories got fully up to speed. But Mahmud says the city had believed that starting with paper applications was a key part of the “equity piece” of their contract. “Let’s start with people who might not be as comfortable being online… Paper applications take longer to process,” Mahmud says. “So we processed the first set of those, and then we opened up the digital for everyone else.” It meant that some of the most vulnerable people got the first priority. That slowed down the process considerably right when the influx of applications was the largest. ...continued on page 10

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NEWS | HOUSING “THE RENT CHECK IS IN THE MAIL,” CONTINUED... But another piece of the city’s emphasis on equity may have paid off, Mahmud suggests. They partnered with groups like Latinos En Spokane and refugee resettlement agency World Relief to specifically work with communities that may struggle to navigate the rental assistance process. It took a long time to train everyone, but he says these groups are making everything much more efficient. “Before they were just getting the applications to us,” Mahmud says. “Now they’re actually doing the application vetting process and taking on more responsibility.”

AGENCIES INITIALLY HAD TO SPEND 4 SMALLER THEIR OWN MONEY BEFORE BEING REIMBURSED

LiveStories is a massive organization — Mahmud says his company is providing similar services to 50 or 60 clients. A company like that has enough in the bank that it can wait to be reimbursed. But that’s not the case for smaller agencies.

But he gives the city credit for quickly addressing the issue. Ader says that by September the city started fronting their organizations the money to pay the incoming applications ahead of time.

ASSISTANCE AGENCIES HAD TO AT LEAST TRY TO GET 5RENTAL A SIGNATURE FROM BOTH THE LANDLORD AND THE TENANT

If the landlord cooperates, the landlord gets the money to pay off the rent they’re owed. If the landlord doesn’t respond, that money is paid directly to the tenant. But that requirement itself adds time. “You have to spend three weeks to make sure the landlord has a chance to respond if they want the money,” says Mahmud. “You can’t go faster than that if the landlord is silent.” The money funneled through the Washington State Department of Commerce came with an additional catch: Landlords had to promise they wouldn’t evict their tenants for the next six months. And for some landlords — particularly larger landlords, Ader says — that wasn’t a promise they wanted to make. And Corker says that some landlords have struggled getting cooperation from the other end. “Something I’ll never understand is the fact that some of the evictions that have taken place are basically tenants that refused to participate in the process,” Corker says.

“There were so many ways people were affected by COVID.” “From June to September we were basically fronting the cost,” says Joe Ader, director of Family Promise, an agency the city had tasked to specifically help families. “We were spending out of pocket.” But their spending limit peaked at about $600,000 — they couldn’t afford to pay out any more reimbursements until they were reimbursed by the city, and sometimes that took weeks.

10 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

6 THE RULES WERE A BURDEN — AND KEPT CHANGING

But plenty of tenants were willing to work to get assistance, but they found themselves confronted with a thicket of red tape when they tried.

Everything, from their income to how much they were behind on rent, had to be documented, Weltz says. “And in a COVID situation, sometimes getting documentation can be very frustrating,” Weltz says. Some businesses have remained remote-work-only while others closed during the pandemic. “Maybe they couldn’t get verification they owed back rent,” says Terri Anderson, director of the Spokane Tenants Union. “Or they had to go to a job they lost three jobs ago to be able to get information about what their income loss was.” A huge part of the workload, Weltz says, was the time it takes to call back and help the hundreds of people who applied without submitting the required documents. “It really requires a lot of handholding,” Weltz says. “Even the workers weren’t that clear, because it was a little convoluted.” So everyone breathed a sigh of relief when, in August, the U.S. Department of the Treasury clarified that tenants could “self-attest” if they didn’t have access to all their paperwork. But Mahmud says that, overall, the perpetual rental assistance tweaks from the federal government — for everything from reporting rules to data collection requirements — create their own behind-the-scenes burdens. “They’re constantly changing the rules,” Mahmud says. “They’re still changing the rules. Reporting requirements, data collection requirements are constantly changing.”

OF THE RENTERS WHO NEEDED THE 7 SOME MONEY MOST DIDN’T KNOW THEY WERE ELIGIBLE

City Councilwoman Betsy Wilkerson says one of her

employees had previously received rental assistance. But when he was falling behind, he didn’t know he could ask for more. “He didn’t do anything because he had been told by somebody that he couldn’t apply again,” says Wilkerson. “I think there was confusing information out there of how many months you can get.” Similarly, Anderson thinks the community can do a better job of advertising rental assistance. And she’s particularly critical of a recent city video claiming that you needed to have suffered “lost jobs or wages due to the COVID-19” to apply for rental assistance. In reality, she says, you only had to show you’d been financially impacted by COVID, such as through increased expenses. “People had to take in their sister’s kids,” she says. “People were quarantining. There were so many ways that people were affected by COVID, it had absolutely nothing to do with losing your job.”

8 THE RENTAL ASSISTANCE HASN’T STOPPED THE BLEEDING

There’s a lot more rental assistance on the way, all the way through 2023. The City of Spokane is going to direct $10 million toward LiveStories, but will also spend about $5.5 million to seek out another vendor. “I’m hopeful SNAP can now have the capacity to come over and give us a hand,” Cathcart says. But the bigger problem isn’t rental assistance so much as rent: “People already couldn’t afford the rent before and it’s 30 percent higher,” Weltz says. In just the past nine months, according to Zillow estimates, the typical rent in the City of Spokane had increased by over $200. “People who have gotten aid now are behind,” Corker says. “It’s quantity of housing. We’re tens of thousands of homes behind, and we’re not building anywhere near enough to create the availability.” n danielw@inlander.com

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 11

NEWS | DEVELOPMENT

Thoughtful Invitations Northeast Washington to plan for tourism as state tries to replicate success of other PNW communities BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

uring the pandemic, while some out-of-the-way outdoor recreation areas saw visitation plummet (such as Denali National Park in Alaska), many other parks saw an influx of new and returning visitors anxious to get out of the house. Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in northeastern Washington, for example, got 160,585 more visitors than in 2019, with a near record 1.5 million total visitors in 2020, according to parks data that goes back to the 1940s. With campsites and trails in the area also proving popular, Pend Oreille, Ferry and Stevens counties got a taste of how tourism can benefit surrounding towns. “We have hundreds of lakes and huge waterways, and we know that those activities are well used,” says Shelly Stevens, who runs regional marketing for the Tri County Economic Development District, which covers all three counties. “One of the results of the pandemic has been this huge influx of people that maybe weren’t outdoor enthusiasts prior.” However, not every community has been able to manage the flow. Moab, Utah, once a uranium mining community, successfully rebranded in recent decades as a massively popular outdoor destination for hiking and biking. But with nearby Arches National Park so popular that it’s full all the time, vacation rentals driving up the cost of living, and illegal camping and dumping of human waste in the area causing issues, NPR reported this summer that the city is now trying to pump the brakes on tourism. Luckily, there are ways to plan ahead and design destinations that are welcoming to visitors while limiting their impact. From offering free shuttles to avoid overflow parking on busy roads to designing trail systems that provide great views while discouraging people from trekking through wilderness areas, many communities have designed creative workarounds for the problems that can arise. Now, Stevens, Ferry and Pend Oreille will start planning for the future in hopes of avoiding the pitfalls other regions have seen, as the first region in the state to receive a rural tourism support grant from the nonprofit Washington Tourism Alliance. “The timing of this project is great because we want to get ahead of that increase in tourism to the area,” Stevens says, “so that we don’t turn into a Moab or Jackson Hole or something where all of a sudden the locals can’t afford to live here.”

hen Washington became the only state in the country to close its tourism office in 2011 (amid ongoing budget concerns following the recession), the Washington Tourism Alliance stepped in to maintain some of the efforts to attract people to the

12 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

Stevens, Ferry and Pend Oreille counties want to avoid the pitfalls of uncontrolled tourism. state. After the state reopened the office a few years ago, the alliance became a contractor for the state, continuing its work to encourage visitors while making sure impacts are managed responsibly. “We want to not only provide marketing for the state, but also try to build infrastructure and create tourism ecosystems that are not only great for visitors, but also for residents,” says Mike Moe, director of tourism development and strategic partnership for the alliance. “We hired a consultant who helped Oregon put their program together and we’re very excited to pilot this in northeast Washington. We have so many amazing assets up there.” The three heavily forested counties are sparsely populated: There are only seven people per square mile, and it’s hard to throw a rock and not hit a piece of land owned by a public government agency or tribal government. Stevens County is 62 percent privately owned, Pend Oreille County is 34 percent privately owned, and Ferry County is just 18 percent privately owned, according to GIS data from the Tri County Economic Development District. “Outdoor recreation is an asset that’s, for the most part, sitting there and is available,” Stevens says. “One of the exciting things about this program is that it’s very much based on public outreach and participation, and people coming to the table and helping decide what they want tourism to look like in a decade.” Consultant Kristin Dahl, who runs private company Crosscurrent Collective, formerly worked for Travel Oregon, where she created a process for developing tourist destinations and addressing issues in areas that are already visited regularly. “The Oregon tourism folks have it figured out,” Stevens says. “They have done a fabulous job especially with outdoor rec and mountain biking.” For example, when communities along the Columbia River Gorge went through the process, they were able to create car-free travel itineraries, launch an express shuttle

TRI COUNTY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DISTRICT PHOTO

for visitors, open a new trail segment and park, and more. Dahl says other communities that went through a similar process developed things like food tours, expanded trail systems, or maps of local points of interest. “It runs the gamut,” Dahl says. “Sometimes what our communities will do is also look at their heritage, whether that’s Indigenous or industrial heritage, and look at a way to bring that history to the forefront.” Through a series of workshops, Dahl asks communities what they want to look like in 10 years, with a “steering committee” of local leaders picking the starting points for those conversations. The public workshops in northeastern Washington could start in March. The region has already established its committee with representatives from the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, Spokane Indian Tribe and Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, as well as regional business leaders and recreation-oriented experts. As the process wraps up, that group is meant to be the backbone that ensures projects actually come to fruition, Dahl says. Through the process, community members will also be asked to address any tensions around tourism that already exist or that may come up in the future. “You can’t stop the flow, unfortunately, but you can manage it and use tools to up-play or downplay when you want visitors to come,” Dahl says. “How do you continue to develop visitation in places that aren’t seeing as much so you can kind of spread the love?” Stevens says it will be great to get the process going and to continue building the relationships that have already started to take shape in recent years in the region. “We want to be thoughtful about the growth and what that’s going to look like,” Stevens says. “The most important thing to remember is to make improvements for the people that are already here, and enhance their quality of life, and by virtue of that others will enjoy it, too.” n samanthaw@inlander.com

NEWS | ENVIRONMENT

Airway Heights tried treating contamination in its water, but they say this filtration system isn’t a long-term solution. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Well, Where to Get Water Now? Airway Heights asks to move its water rights from contaminated West Plains to the Spokane aquifer BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

ore than fours years after Airway Heights learned its wells are contaminated, the city has proposed what it hopes is a long-term solution to provide safe drinking water to its residents. Rather than try to treat the water that’s contaminated with chemicals once used to fight fuel fires at Fairchild Air Force Base, the city’s pitch is to shutter its West Plains wells and drill new ones in the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. But the state first needs to approve what Airway is calling a “transfer” of water rights there. The contamination in question involves a family of

14 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

chemicals called PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are man-made substances that can build up in the environment and in people over time. They may cause fertility issues, interfere with hormones or immune response, or make people more likely to get certain types of cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. They’ve been used in everything from furniture stain guards to grease-resistant fast-food wrappers, and the most common compounds would be found in the blood of nearly every person in the United States. But Airway Heights residents who participated in a Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention study in 2019 had PFAS blood levels that were six to 60 times the national average. Early on, Airway Heights looked into the possibility of treating the contamination. The Air Force paid more than $1 million to install a filtration system in 2018 on one of the city’s wells to test the method. But LETTERS the outdoor system can Send comments to only run in warmer editor@inlander.com. months, and while it’s somewhat effective, it’s not clear that the system would be able to filter the water to human health and safety limits that are being developed for PFAS at the state and federal levels, says Albert Tripp, Airway Heights city manager. “As a community, we don’t want to be responsible for long-term treatment of a water supply for something we didn’t create,” Tripp says. “At a fundamental level, water is as basic to a community as anything. … That’s why we’ve been charting a path out, back to a level of wholeness.” People shouldn’t have to wonder, “Is my water safe to drink?” Tripp says. With all that in mind, the city has worked with engineers to draft a new solution: Airway Heights wants to stop using its contaminated aquifers altogether and instead draw water from the Spokane Valley Rathdrum

Prairie Aquifer. The massive underground water store, stretching from Spokane through North Idaho, supplies a huge swath of the Inland Northwest. Since the contamination in Airway Heights was discovered, the city has been using water from the Spokane aquifer on an emergency basis through two interties connecting to the City of Spokane’s supply. Drilling wells to that same water source elsewhere, rather than continuing to pay Spokane, would save Airway Heights residents more than $30 million over the next 40 years, Tripp says. “This entire ordeal has had a significant financial impact on the Airway Heights community,” Tripp says. “We’re talking about an area of about 10,000 people who’ve paid well over $7 million to $8 million since this happened in 2017, for something they didn’t start and they didn’t contribute to.” But not everyone is convinced that allowing the city to draw from that aquifer, which connects with the Spokane River, is a good idea.

o get permission for new wells, the city has applied for water rights along the Spokane River on the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. It is currently undergoing a State Environmental Protection Act, or SEPA, process for that application, which includes several opportunities for the public to weigh in. Because of issues with the Spokane River getting so low at times that it can’t stay cool enough for fish to stay healthy or protect the rights of existing users, the state Department of Ecology adopted a minimum instream flow rule in 2015. “New water rights cannot impair existing users,” says Jaime Short, manager of water resources for Ecology’s Spokane office. “Any rights we issue would be conditioned to that flow and would have to stop when flows drop.” But municipal water rights can’t just be forced to stop, since people rely on water for health and safety, she says.

“The only way this package works is because of the mitigation they can bring to the table.” So in order to be treated like other senior water rights holders, Airway Heights has to make its case that it can mitigate the usage on the Spokane aquifer by “transferring” its existing water rights. “The only way this package works is because of the mitigation they can bring to the table,” Short says. For the application, hydrologists and engineers modeled how the city’s West Plains aquifers flow through an underground paleochannel and ultimately recharge the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. A 125-page “Alternative Groundwater Supply Assessment” estimates it takes four to 15 years for water from the city’s current sources to reach the larger aquifer. But Spokane Riverkeeper Jerry White thinks the city should be required to do a full environ-

mental study to further explore “that supposed connection” and ensure the West Plains water would truly make up for the new wells, since the Spokane aquifer and the Spokane River are interconnected. “I don’t want to come off as unsympathetic to the fact that the city of Airway Heights has PFAS in their drinking water — that’s a cruel, twisted fate that they were dealt,” White says. “But I also think we’ve got a river in trouble. It often doesn’t meet its instream flow in the summer anymore.” Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward and City Council President Breean Beggs also wrote a letter calling on Airway Heights to do a full study of environmental impacts. They question if a 1:1 water rights transfer is allowed under state policy. The river is tracked in water years that run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. For water year 2020 (October 2019 through September 2020), the Spokane River had 12 days below the minimum instream flow, says Patrick Cabbage, a senior hydrogeologist for Ecology. For water year 2021, there were 66 days below that minimum flow. While that may sound like a lot, Cabbage says it’s not unusual for the river to see 50, 60 or even 100-plus days under that minimum flow every five to 10 years. While the instream flow rule has only been in place since 2015, water data going back to the late 1800s shows many examples of years in that range, he says. “The aquifers that Airway Heights has been drawing from are all tributary to the Spokane Valley Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. They’ve been using that water for decades,” Cabbage says. “There’s kind of the temptation to look at this as a new water use, but this is a mitigated water right. They have the authority to use this water already, we’re basically just moving the location where they’re drawing it from.” Airway Heights’ city engineer Dennis Fuller says he doesn’t think it would be appropriate to conduct a full environmental study as White suggests. “I think it’s reasonable for the city to rely on the mitigation plan in the determination that there’s no impact to the aquifer or the river,” Fuller says. “Frankly, I don’t know that whatever we do would provide any more information than we currently have.” If the water rights application is approved, and another SEPA process for the infrastructure moves forward, the city would drill new wells and build about six miles of water pipes and pumps. That infrastructure would stretch from a spot near Seven Mile Road to connect with the city’s northernmost existing water infrastructure near Deno Road, Tripp says. The cost will likely run $22 million to $24 million, Tripp says, with much of that already funded with money from the Washington State Legislature, and federal assistance also on the way. Paying Spokane for water over the next 40 years, on the other hand, would cost about $53 million. But more important than the cost considerations, Tripp says, is a sense of safety for residents, who should have confidence in their water supply. “We want to set this community up to not have to continue to contend with chemicals affecting the water supply,” Tripp says. n samanthaw@inlander.com

HOME OF THE SPOKANE SYMPHONY

THE FOX THEATER THIS WEEKEND! Spokane Symphony

HOLIDAY POPS WITH THE SWEEPLINGS

Morihiko Nakahara, conductor Sat., December 18, 8pm • Sun., December 19, 2pm Artistry in Motion:

CHRISTMAS NIGHTS, CITY LIGHTS

Tues., December 21, 7pm • Wed., December 22, 7pm Spokane Symphony

NEW YEAR’S EVE: BEETHOVEN’S NINTH James Lowe, conductor Fri., Dec. 31, 7:30pm

Spokane Symphony Masterworks

ECKART RETURNS

Eckart Preu, conductor Sat., January 15, 8pm • Sun., January 16, 3pm Fox Presents

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LIVE: THE SECRET LIFE OF BEARS Wed., January 26, 7pm

Spokane Symphony Pops

PINK MARTINI

Sat., January 29, 8pm Spokane Youth Symphony

REJOICE IN CREATIVITY Sun., January 30, 4pm

Spokane Symphony Masterworks

PICTURED WITHIN

James Lowe, conductor Sat., February 5, 8pm • Sun., February 6, 3pm

FRI., JUNE 24, 2022 8PM

Box Office 624-1200

SpokaneSymphony.org • FoxTheaterSpokane.org DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 15

16 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

An Extra Sprinkle of Special

The Sweeplings will put their own stamp on Christmas classics when they headline Spokane Symphony’s Holiday Pops

By E.J. Iannelli

ased on discography alone, Cami Bradley and Whitney Dean were almost destined to be Holiday Pops guest artists from the moment they began working together as the Sweeplings. There was the folk-pop duo’s early single “Snow May Be Falling,” with its imagery of carolers, sleigh bells and brisk winter weather, released almost immediately after their eponymous EP debuted in late 2014 — not long, incidentally, after Bradley’s star turn on America’s Got Talent. Then came the four-song Winter’s Call in 2016, which featured their renditions of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Carol of the Bells.” A year later, a mix of seasonally inspired originals and standards like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “Deck the Halls” followed as the Merrier Days EP. Even bands with decades under their belt can rarely point to such a rich Christmas repertoire. But more than that, the Sweeplings have never been content with straightforward covers of well-known standards. “A lot of Christmas songs actually have a lot of depth in them,” Bradley says. “We hear the jingling bells, so we tend to hear them as happy or jolly. What we do is we really try to dig deep into the songs and figure out what the writer meant and how you could use that.” “Our approach is to take a song for its general intent and find out what else it could be used for,” adds Dean. “So, for example, ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ ... ours is like, what if it was like, ‘I’ll be home for Christmas, but this is going to be the last one?’ So we put a spin on everything where you can be more appreciative.” The Sweeplings’ slow, sparse, haunting take on that particular Christmas classic might sound worlds apart from the Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra versions that dominate holiday playlists, but neither Bradley nor Dean is out to reinterpret beloved tunes simply for the sake of it. “Christmas music is sacred to a lot of people,” not least because they find comfort in the familiarity, she says. “And I totally get that, because I am-slash-was one of those people. So we try really hard to take the melody, the structure, the lyrical content of each song, and ... keep a lot of the portions that are sacred, so that when people listen to it, they can connect and they don’t feel like they’ve lost a piece of their tradition.”

O The Sweeplings' Cami Bradley (left) and Whitney Dean COURTESY PHOTO

ver the past few months, the Sweeplings have been reapproaching their own Christmas compositions and arrangements in anticipation of their appearance with the Spokane Symphony for the Holiday Pops concerts on Dec. 18-19. From their respective homes here in Spokane and near Huntsville, Alabama, Bradley and Dean have been collaborating with David Armstrong, the symphony’s assistant principal second violin, to augment their songs with the full instrumental range now at their disposal. As part of the back-and-forth creative process, they’ve been

sending Armstrong tracks with digital orchestration inserted via software. He then fleshes out the charts based on his own experience developing arrangements with groups like the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. The result goes back to the Sweeplings for review and refinement. “It really is a collaboration of both parties trying to create something special and unique and different. He has a really good idea of what instrumentation they use and which sections could be fuller than what we gave him,” Bradley says. “And we’ve given him some freedom, too, to create and arrange in a way that will feature the songs we’ve given them but will also do what the symphony does best. “We’re just bringing our pieces with open hands and are super excited because we feel like it’s a special opportunity that not very many people get. To be able to play these songs live with a symphony as your backing track is pretty extraordinary.” The final setlist will include around a dozen songs, including “O Holy Night,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “White Christmas,” “Let It Snow” and “Winter Wonderland.” Roughly half will be performed alongside the Spokane Symphony under Morihiko Nakahara’s baton, with the rest performed by The Sweeplings alone. “We’ll be doing a bunch of classics redone and rearranged, a couple of standbys and then a few of our versions of what Christmas feels like in song form,” Dean says. “It won’t be exactly how you’ve ever heard ‘O Holy Night,’ but it’ll be our version of it.”

s befits the season, there’s an element of surprise in all this. Although Bradley recently visited Dean in Alabama for one last session of one-on-one in-person collaboration, the all-hands rehearsals in the 48 hours just before the concert will be the first time that either of them will have heard the final versions of their orchestrally backed songs. “For us as well as the audience, it’s going to be an experience,” Dean says. “It’s not just going to be where you walk in and hear the Christmas songs as you’ve always heard them. With this scenario, it’s going to be a little bit broader. You’re going to get a Broadway show meets a folk-pop concert.” “You know that feeling you have of being really satisfied after you ate something you liked? Or had a really good conversation with a friend? Or got something you wanted for a long time? Where you have that sigh — a little bit of relief, a little bit of joy, a little bit of hope? That’s what I want people to walk away from this show feeling,” Bradley says. “We’ve done Christmas shows off and on for the last eight to 10 years that we’ve been doing music, and there always is just an extra sprinkle of something special during the holiday season.” n Holiday Pops 2021 with The Sweeplings • Sat, Dec. 18 at 7:30 pm; Sun, Dec. 19 at 2 pm • $43-$92 • Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • spokanesymphony. org • 509-624-1200

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 17

Sing Along “I with Mike Mike Cantlon’s one-time favor became a 30-year gig as the Holiday Pops Santa Claus By E.J. Iannelli

18 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

’m going to tell you the truth,” Mike Cantlon says, as if there’s a murky, confidential reason why he’s been appearing as Santa Claus at the Spokane Symphony’s Holiday Pops concert for over three decades. “I did this gig for Mitch Miller.” Miller, who died in 2010, was known to a certain generation of Americans for his ripe-for-parody Sing Along with Mitch albums and TV series, as well as his more contentious dismissal of rock music as “musical baby food” and the “worship of mediocrity.” “He was doing the Holiday Pops concert, and he wanted a Santa,” Cantlon explains. “He said, ‘I’m going to give you a cue, and then I want you to walk up the aisle and throw candy canes to people. Then come up to the stage, and you can hand me a candy cane.’” But the cue never came. And Cantlon, perhaps true to form, erred on the side of overzealousness. “I was handing these little candy canes out to the audience, and instead of throwing them into the air and letting them float down over the people, I was really chucking them out there. People were afraid they’d get hit by one,” Cantlon says. Miller, also true to form, was a “kind of a curmudgeon” about the whole thing.

Despite the force of his throwing arm, Cantlon was still in the running when the same opportunity arose again the following year. During one of her volunteer shifts, Cantlon’s wife, Barb, an oboist and English horn player in the symphony, overheard that the organization needed someone to play Santa. “She volunteered me, you see. When I married Barb, I married the Spokane Symphony. That’s just the way it was. So she came home and she said, ‘Guess what you’re going to be doing for the Holiday Pops this year?’ I said, ‘No way! There’s no way I’m going to be Santa again!’ Because I’d had this bad experience. And then she said, ‘By the way, and Miss Spokane will be your elf,’ and I said, ‘Oh, OK, that will be fine. I think I can probably do that.’” Accompanied by the newly elected Miss Spokane, Brenda Grizzle, Cantlon did some off-the-cuff “schticky stuff” to amuse the Holiday Pops audience. That year, Randi Von Ellefson, now a professor of music and choral director at Oklahoma City University, was conducting. “At one point, as part of this schtick,” Cantlon says, “I walked up to him and I wanted to conduct the orchestra. He stood me on the podium and helped me do ‘Sleigh Ride.’ From that time on, I’ve been conducting ‘Sleigh

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Ride” every year.” He was allowed — nay, encouraged — to continue that annual tradition even after his candy cane baton flew out of his hand, hitting percussionist (and Cantlon’s good friend) Bryan Bogue. “Afterwards he handed it back to me very formally, like a weapon. It was terrifying, but that, to me, was one of the most enjoyable and memorable moments. And the audience absolutely loved it.” More recently, Cantlon has distilled the cumulative events of those 30 years of Holiday Pops shows into a children’s book titled Nym’s Sleigh Ride. The retired educator and founder of Spokane Public Schools’ Odyssey program for gifted learners worked with illustrator Emily Powell Gilliam, one of his former students, to realize the “whimsical, musical journey” of a North Pole elf who takes a spontaneous trip south and ends up co-conducting an orchestra alongside Santa. To a standing ovation, of course. “It gives me real joy to do this,” says Cantlon, describing the experience of performing with the Spokane Symphony in front of him and the audience at his back in terms that are nothing less than transcendental. “But I have to tell you, every time before I go onstage, my stomach gets all tightened up and I get really nervous. And I’ll say to Barb, ‘I just don’t want to screw up.’ And she’ll say, ‘You can’t. You’re Santa.’” n

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 19

DON HAMILTON PHOTO

Darkness and Light

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is a humdinger of music to close out a humdinger of a year

eethoven had been almost completely deaf for nearly a decade when his Ninth Symphony debuted in Vienna in 1824. It was the famously tormented composer’s last finished symphony, now regarded as a milestone in humankind’s long history of music, but not a note of the performance — nor, for that matter, a single handclap of the audience’s rapturous applause — ever reached his ears. And yet, with Friedrich Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy” on their lips, a multitude of singers and soloists celebrate life, hope and brotherhood in the symphony’s rousing choral finale. Though he had more than his share of reasons to wallow in bitterness and self-pity, Beethoven chose to end his masterpiece with an outpouring of affirmation and aspiration. “It’s a wonderful choice of music to perform at this time of year because it ends with this astonishing message of hope and unity. It’s not just about this hope for a great future. It’s also a piece that talks about when we all unite together, we can really experience joy and move humanity forward. And I think it’s a message we all need reminding of on an annual basis,” says James Lowe, the Spokane Symphony’s music director. In Spokane, performing Beethoven’s Ninth as one year yields to the next is a tradition that dates back to the arrival of Lowe’s predecessor, Eckart Preu, who himself imported the tradition from his native Germany. There, as well as in Japan, New Year’s Eve performances of the Ninth Symphony have been common since around the time of World War I, largely because of the work’s sense of uplift and renewal rather than its ease of execution. “Although it’s kind of a standard repertoire piece, it’s

20 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

By E.J. Iannelli not an easy piece at all. There’s a lot of moving parts. With the last movement, it’s not so much that there’s a few tricky corners but that it’s all corner. That said, it’s the best piece to close out an old year and start a new one. It sets up all the best intentions.”

ut as with any tradition, every iteration has to tread the fine line between evoking the past and avoiding the staleness of overfamiliarity. And while Lowe has led orchestras in this work seven or eight times by his own recollection, this is his first time conducting the New Year’s Eve Ninth in Spokane since he assumed his current role in 2019. That naturally creates its own set of challenges and opportunities. “I had coffee with Eckart recently, and he said, laughingly, ‘Good luck.’ Every conductor has their own thoughts and angles on this piece, so I’m interested to see how that comes across. What does the orchestra want to do naturally, and how does that differ from my own interpretation? Any time an orchestra has a repertoire piece that they’ve played a lot, you always come across this feeling that they have baked-in instincts about how certain corners work.” Rather than being an irreconcilable source of friction, that creative push and pull could end up striking the crucial sweet spot between novelty and legacy. “I don’t like to go into any orchestra with really fixed ideas of how it’s going to be and have them bend to my will. I like to make music with any orchestra that I work with,” Lowe says, contrasting that collaborative sentiment with the infamous anecdotes of “Toscanini screaming at his double bassist.” “So, for me, that’s the approach. We’ll mold this piece

Music Director James Lowe (left) and composer Ludwig van Beethoven together, and the message that it ends with is so appropriate for that. I think making music through love and enjoyment gets far better results.” Whatever might be different under Lowe’s baton, one aspect that remains decidedly unchanged is that the Ninth Symphony is alone on the program. Unlike standard Masterworks concerts, there are no supplemental or juxtapositional pieces. The event begins with the symphony’s “pretty tragic” first movement and ends with the effusive fourth. “This does stand on its own two feet so well,” Lowe says. “It’s not as long as a normal concert would be, but it’s still a good hour’s worth of music, so you feel full afterwards,” with the added bonus that “the performance ends at a time when you can still go out and party and do what you want.” Within that relatively short amount of time, says Lowe, it’s possible to unplug from the distractions of modern life and experience the transformative effects of great music. “This is a piece that starts out with real darkness and despair. But ... the whole point of the last movement is dismissing all of this darkness and saying, ‘No, let’s unite together and experience the joy of hope.’ You’ll go in one person and come out another, and that’s such a great gift to give yourself and others at the end of a year. And I have to say, this particular year has been a bit of a humdinger.” n New Year’s Eve: Beethoven’s Ninth • Fri, Dec. 31 at 7:30 pm • $25–$62 • Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox • 1001 W. Sprague Ave. • spokanesymphony.org • 509-624-1200

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 21

Sacred Dates

Sometimes Santa steals conductor Morihiko Nakahara's spotlight. COURTESY PHOTO

Over nearly two decades, Morihiko Nakahara has conducted the majority of Holiday Pops concerts — with some being more memorable than others

orihiko Nakahara can’t remember exactly when he started conducting the Spokane Symphony’s annual Holiday Pops concert. It was likely in 2003, his first year with the organization. And by his own estimate, he’s led 13 or 14 of the orchestra’s Holiday Pops programs in the almost two decades since,

22 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

By E.J. Iannelli having ceded a handful of occasions to the music directors at the time or headlining guest artists traveling with their own conductors. “It was sort of in my job description, even though there really wasn’t a job description in a traditional sense,” he says. “It’s almost like I can count on being in

Spokane the first weekend after Thanksgiving for The Nutcracker and then a couple weekends later for Holiday Pops. Those were usually sacred dates in my calendar.” With the ever-accelerating passage of time, it’s understandable that the specifics may have started to meld and blur by now. On top of his regular appearances with

the Spokane Symphony, Nakahara took up the music directorship of the South Carolina Philharmonic in 2008 and was hired four years ago to teach orchestral studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which has led to constant bouncing between coasts and regions to fulfill his professional gigs.

Morihiko Nakahara

ut there are still Holiday Pops shows, for better or worse, that bubble to the top of the stew of memories. Like the one in 2005. Or was it 2006? Either way, it was still early in his tenure and long before smartphones and all their attendant technology. In a last-minute frisson of holiday spirit, the symphony’s then-director of marketing, Annie Matlow (today a major promoter of the Northwest BachFest), had urged him to pick up a Santa costume from a rental shop somewhere in Spokane Valley. After a few wrong turns down unfamiliar streets, Nakahara thought he’d found it. “This place, it looks like they sell tractors. But, I guess, during the cold months they do other things — including, apparently, renting out Santa costumes? So I go into this place, and the only size they have is extra large. It was literally the only one they had left. And I’m like, well, it’s just going to have to do.” Out of a sense of necessity, expediency and duty, he suited up in the oversized outfit as best he could and took his position center stage. “I’m wearing this thing at the concert, and obviously I’m swimming in it. It was way bigger than the size I needed. But I’m not going to do the entire concert in it, right? Usually, when you do the costume stuff, you do a piece or two and then you can change back out into your normal concert attire,” he says. “So I’m conducting — and when I conduct, I’m pretty active. And I’m starting to feel that sensation when things are kind of coming loose. It’s one of those wardrobe malfunctions where you can’t really stop and put your hands down and pull up your pants. Eventually, you know, I just gave up. I’m like, I’ve got a job to do here, so I’m just going to let gravity take its course.” Although he was spared some of the more acute embarrassment by the fact that he was wearing his tuxedo pants under the gargantuan Santa trousers, Nakahara nevertheless refers to the incident as the “infamous striptease.” And it had an upside: “Annie never asked me to wear any kind of costume after that.” Dressed safely in standard tailored formalwear, Nahakara will lead the Spokane Symphony at the Fox Theater once again for this year’s Holiday Pops performance. “I’m looking forward to being part of this collaboration with the Sweeplings. The orchestra is going to have their usual dazzling display of virtuosity with standalone pieces between these original arrangements we’re doing with the band. I’m very eager to see how it will all come together with the big orchestral backup,” he says. “But more than anything, I’m just looking forward to being back at the Fox. There’s something magical about the Fox, especially during the month of December. And it’s the first Holiday Pops in two years, so this one in particular is going to have a special meaning. It has a bit of a homecoming element. I can’t wait to be back there.” n

"I’m just looking forward to being back at the Fox. There’s something magical about the Fox, especially during the month of December."

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 23

How to use bums was called something like Classical Christmas, which featured this piece among many others.

HANDEL: “AND THE GLORY OF THE LORD” FROM THE MESSIAH Fun fact: This particular chorus from Handel’s annual holiday favorite was the very first piece of music I ever conducted. In my junior high school in Japan, there was a tradition of each classroom singing one of the choruses from the Messiah at the semi-annual Parent’s Weekend, conducted by one of the students. So it happened in the first semester of my seventh grade year. I was fairly terrible, but somehow I now get to do this for a living.

VIVALDI (RECOMPOSED BY MAX RICHTER): “WINTER” FROM THE FOUR SEASONS (MVMT. I) AND ASTOR PIAZZOLLA: “INVIERNO PORTEÑO” FROM FOUR SEASONS IN BUENOS AIRES Two of my favorites, built around or inspired by Vivaldi’s popular “Winter” from The Four Seasons.

BÉLA FLECK AND THE FLECKTONES: “TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS” I first had the privilege of working with Béla in 2008 when the SSO worked with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. I worked with them again a few years later in South Carolina, followed by performances of two of his banjo concertos in South Carolina, one of which we co-commissioned. Aside from the consummate virtuosity, I’m always inspired by Béla’s (and in this case the Flecktones’) incredible sense of groove. I don’t usually listen to a lot of “holiday” albums (partly because I find it difficult to separate work and leisure in this line of work), but this album is a sheer delight for me to listen to every year.

Take the conductor's advice in building the ultimate holiday playlist.

Nakahara’s

Notes 2 With selections for each of the 12 days of Christmas, the longtime Spokane Symphony guest conductor compiles some of his favorite holiday music

Tchaikovsky score with the Spokane Symphony and the State Street Ballet. The Fox is a truly magical setting for this annual tradition. Incidentally, I first heard this particular selection from the ballet in a Japanese car commercial. ELLINGTON: PEANUT BRITTLE BRIGADE (AFTER “MARCH” FROM THE NUTCRACKER) Speaking of the Nutcracker, I love Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s take on the Tchaikovsky, as evidenced here.

By Morihiko Nakahara

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR, “CHORAL” Another Spokane Symphony holiday tradition that also dates back to my childhood. There is a long tradition of performing Beethoven’s Ninth in December in Japan. The messages of joy, struggles and ultimate triumph over them, and universal humanhood will be especially powerful when James Lowe conducts this piece on New Year’s Eve.

TCHAIKOVSKY: “WALTZ OF THE FLOWERS” FROM THE NUTCRACKER I look forward to conducting the Nutcracker ballet every year. I’ve been so fortunate to conduct so many performances of this lush and exciting

CORELLI: CONCERTO GROSSO OP. 6, NO. 8 IN G MINOR (“THE CHRISTMAS CONCERTO”) My mom started building a basic classical CD library when I was in fifth or sixth grade, and one of the al-

24 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

THIS

PULL-OUT SECTION

Pull down then out

NOT an ice scraper

THE SWEEPLINGS: “WINTER WONDERLAND” I’m very much looking forward to working with Cami and Whitney and am eager to see how the new orchestral arrangements (made by SSO’s own David Armstrong) will bring us all together. I think there’s something in their voice and their style that speaks to our hearts.

SHE & HIM: “I’LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS” In addition to the aforementioned Flecktones album, I’ve listened to this album on multiple occasions during the long December flights and drives.

10 11 12

NOT a new puppy. YES a resource you keep and share with friends.

YUMI MATSUTOYA: “KOIBITO GA SANTA CLAUS” Along with Wham’s “Last Christmas,” this was one of the popular “pop” songs all over the radio in Japan during the ’80s. MIKI NAKASHIMA: “YUKI NO HANA” I’m not sure what it says about me (if anything), but I’ve always enjoyed these “sappy” Japanese ballads. PINK MARTINI: “AULD LANG SYNE” Another holiday album favorite. Final fun fact: “Auld Lang Syne” in Japan is associated with graduations, and therefore I always had a bittersweet association with the song, which makes Pink Martini’s samba-infused rendition even more striking. n

Now you know how!

PULL-OUT & KEEP! GREEN ZONE GIFT GUIDE

N E E GR

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S T GI F GE A R EDIBLES & M O R E!

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 25

26 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

GREEN ZONE GIFTS

HAPPY HOLIDAZE! GIFTS FOR THE TOKER ON YOUR LIST!

DAILY DEALS ALWAYS

GREENING OF THE SEASON

Alternative greenery to a Christmas tree.

he holidays, if we’re lucky, arrive accompanied with an extra measure of time off from work or a break from school. And while many of those suddenly free hours are often spent with friends and family doing things like decorating, cooking and even caroling, you might still find yourself with some quality “me time.” That’s where Washington’s legal cannabis industry shines, helping those who partake in making full recreational use of that time, whether it’s spent in front of a TV, sledding down a hill (please check for snow first) or warbling “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the delight — or not — of your neighbors. In this special Green Zone Gifts section, we introduce you to the hottest strains, new tools, even movies to enjoy during the holidays while under the influence. Whether the gifts are for you or someone else, we’re sure you’ll find something to enjoy in the comingπ≠ pages. — DAN NAILEN, editor

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PAGE 28

DEALS

PAGE 29

GEAR

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STRAINS

PAGE 34

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 27

GREEN ZONE GIFTS

EDIBLES

Eat, Drink & Be Merry

High for the holidays? Try some of these Christmas(ish) edibles you can find at Spokane dispensaries

BY QUINN WELSCH BROWN BUTTER CARAMEL HARD CANDIES FROM GOODIES, 10 10-MG CANDIES, $14

t’s that time of year when we stuff our faces with food and drink until it hurts. Unfortunately, the local weed market hasn’t included any candy canes, peppermint bark or gingerbread that’s been infused with THC. But we can make due. If you prefer to “vibe out” rather than collapse in a pool of eggnog and bourbon at your nearby holiday function, there are some great edible options to check out at a dispensary near you.

Nothing says holidays like tradition, and what could be more traditional than a hard candy? Check out the brown butter caramel edibles from Goodies for a holiday treat that will last more than a couple of chomps. These hard candies come 10 to a bag and are 10 milligrams of THC each. Lucky Leaf Co. • 1111 W. First Ave.

MR. MOXEY’S RELAX MINTS, 20 5-MG MINTS, $40

CATAPULT COFFEE FROM FAIRWINDS CANNABIS, ONE 10-MG SERVING, $10

Keep it classy with Mr. Moxey’s Mints. At just 5 milligrams of THC, Mr. Moxey’s Mints are a tasty way to keep a balanced high for you and your friends. These mints include all-natural flavors like cinnamon, hops flowers and linden blossom, and come in themed tins, like “Dream” and “Calm.” There are 20 mints in each of their oldfashioned tins, so you know you’ll have enough to spread the holiday cheer. Apex Cannagear • 1325 N. Division St., Suite 103

Fairwinds Cannabis asks the simple questions. Why have a joint and a cup of coffee when you could simply add the two things together? Its Catapult Mocha Coffee does just that. Simply add the 10mg, THCinfused coffee mix to a 12-ounce cup of hot water and enjoy. Bonus: Fairwinds partners with local coffee roasters in its hometown of Vancouver, Wash., to create these hot beverages. Pick some up in Spokane Valley. Green Light • 10309 E. Trent Ave.

BLOOD ORANGE TRUFFLES FROM SWIFTS, 10 10-MG PIECES, $24

Are blood orange chocolates considered festive? It’s not clear. At least the blood orange truffles from Swifts Edibles certainly look festive. Every box comes with 10 truffles, each with 10 milligrams of THC and a blood orange center wrapped in rich dark chocolate. From Swift’s: “The rich whipped crème chocolate ganache, wrapped in an artisan shell, melts the day away leaving you deliciously free.” Find yourself a box. Primo Cannabis • 21630 E. Gilbert Rd., Otis Orchards n

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28 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

oney can get tight this time of year, and cannabis products aren’t necessarily the most budget-friendly of items on your gift list. But fear not, because there are plenty of ways to score incredible deals on great products for everyone on your list, without coming across as a cheapskate. Most dispensaries around town offer daily specials like a “Wax Wednesday” discount on concentrates or a “Munchie Monday” deal on edibles. Frankly, with a slight amount of planning you should never have to pay full price for cannabis again. While there are too many great deals available to list in this space, we found three that deliver incredible bang for your buck this holiday season.

Sativa Sisters’ Wednesday deals are a must.

DEALS

GREEN LIGHT POWER HOUR

Some of the best deals in town require customers to make their way into a specific shop on a specific day of the week. Wax Wednesday, with its alliterative name, is perhaps the most prolific example of this. What if you can’t make Wednesday work, though? Are you out of luck when it comes to scoring an incredible deal? Thanks to Green Light on Trent, the answer is no. From 3-4 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, everything in store is 20 percent off. No need to remember what that day’s specific special is, because for that hour four days a week, everything’s on sale. Forget making two trips a week to get cheap munchies on Monday and discounted wax on Wednesday. You can pick them both up on Tuesday if you want. The week is your oyster. Green Light • 10309 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Valley

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

Finding the Sweet Spots Three stellar specials to help you save money this holiday season BY WILL MAUPIN

GEAR UP AT SATIVA SISTERS

Sharing the gift of cannabis with friends and family can be a wonderful experience. Eventually though, the edibles wear off or the flower runs out and as great of a gift as it may have been, it’s gone. If you’re looking for a gift that will stand the test of time, consider the gift not of something to smoke, but rather to smoke out of. Every Wednesday, Sativa Sisters offers 20 percent off all paraphernalia in stock. That covers everything from rolling papers and hemp wick lighters to pens, pipes, and bongs, and all the accessories in between. Sativa Sisters • 10525 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Valley

TOP SHELF ON THE MIDDLE SHELF

Every Thursday, Spokane Green Leaf takes the most premium of products, those normally smoked only by the upper-crust of cannabis consumers, and prices them for the masses. The so-called Top Shelf Thursday deal sees Spokane’s oldest cannabis dispensary mark 20 percent off a large selection of their most expensive and high-quality flower offerings. No decent person would complain if you showed up to the holiday party offering a bottle of cheap champagne, but on the other hand, no one would ever forget the time you rolled up with a 1996 Dom Perignon Rose Gold Methuselah — one of the top results in a quick Google search for “most expensive champagne.” The same can be said about anything, and cannabis falls within that broad category. Thanks to Top Shelf Thursday, you can treat yourself and your friends to a taste of luxury without breaking the bank. Spokane Green Leaf • 9107 N. Country Homes Blvd. #13 n

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SCAN For our menu

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Falcanna Eighth C&G 10" bong Phat Panda Pre-roll 1g Blazin Infused Pre-roll 1g Two Lighters

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

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 29

GREEN ZONE GIFTS

GEAR

Naughty and Nice

Spokane budtenders recommend these offbeat cannabis tools for your holiday shopping list BY QUINN WELSCH

ure, you can just buy weed for someone this holiday season. But that’s almost a little too easy. If you want to make an impression, get the stoner on your holiday shopping list something that will last for more than just a couple of days. We spoke with some Spokane area budtenders about some of the hottest items this year. Here’s what they recommended to us.

PUFFCO PEAK PRO

Stoner technology has advanced pretty far since the days of knifing it over a hot stove. Today, there are all kinds of specialized dab rigs to help you get the biggest, cleanest high. “For me when it comes to something like that, it’s the Puffco Peak Pro,” says Lucky Leaf Co. budtender AJ Fortunato. “It’s just basically an electronic dab rig. It’s convenient, and it’s just a quality product.” The rig includes all kinds of bells and whistles, such as a wireless charging, smartphone-enabled control and even LED lighting. “There’s a lot of e-rigs out there, and there are a lot that are just not very good,” he says. “This is one that I have found is the best.” These rigs aren’t cheap though. Expect to pay up to $400 for one. Lucky Leaf Co. • 1111 W. First Ave.

BUDDIES TORO

Looking for a dab rig that’s a little more portable? Primo Cannabis budtender Cade Barranco

recommends checking out the Buddies Toro e-rig. Unlike others, this one can be held with a single hand and is way more affordable than some of the others, coming in at about $100. “It’s like a miniature e-nail. It’s really great for on the go,” Barranco says. “It’s great for someone who smokes a little flower and has been smoking flower for a while and wants to try something stronger like dabs, but is afraid of something like the whole nail and torch. There’s a big barrier to entry. This device makes it an all in one. You don’t have to worry about starting a fire or an explosion.” Primo Cannabis • 21630 E. Gilbert Rd., Otis Orchards

CANNABIS & GLASS GLASS BONGS AND PIPES

If you’re shopping for the classic stoner, you might head over to one of Cannabis & Glass’s three locations, where you can pick up a three-chambered glass bong for under $50. According to Taylor Reilly, the company’s online presence manager, you can also pick up some more discreet small glass pieces that are on sale there. Even better, everything is 25 percent off right now at Cannabis & Glass Spokane Valley and its north store. Cannabis & Glass • 605 E. Francis Ave.; 9403 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Valley; 25101 E. Appleway Ave., Liberty Lake

7.4” wide by 2.6” high

PROMETHEUS PIPE FROM PYPTEK

Glass pieces might not be the best gift idea if the person on your gift list is a little clumsy. For that, Treehouse Club budtender Travis Henry recommends checking out the metal and glass Prometheus pipes from PypTek [pictured above]. “They’re really durable, and they’re all machine threaded so you can take it apart and clean it,” Henry says. “It has a built-in screen that you can wash when you take it out and clean it.” Although these are on the pricier side at about $85, these pipes are gifts that will last. Treehouse Club • 14421 E. Trent Ave., Spokane Valley

LEIRA CANNAGAR

Although this isn’t technically gear, the Leira “cannagars” are definitely something different and come highly recommended from Megan Van Orsow, budtender at Piece of Mind. “They burn for like five to six hours,” Von Orsow says. “It’s crazy. They’re like a quarter[-ounce].” Each cannagar, coming in at $105, is packed with 4 grams of weed and is wrapped in all-natural marijuana leaf. “It would be good for like a Christmas party, or if you have a bunch of your stoner family over because you can all watch multiple movies together,” she says. Piece of Mind • 9301 N. Division St. and 4103 N. Division St. n

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WARNING: This product has intoxicating affects and may be habit forming. Smoking is hazardous to your health. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product. Should not be used by women that are pregnant or breast feeding. For USE only by adults 21 and older. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination and judgement. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug.

30 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

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

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6 DR INKS

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Blue Roots Cannabis Blue Roots Cannabis focuses on one thing above all: Attention to detail. That means handcrafted products, expert staff, and outstanding customer service.

ounded in 2013, the tier-three producer and processor based out of Airway Heights has become a favorite among the cannabis industry in Eastern Washington and across the state. That well-earned popularity has demanded a recent million-dollar expansion that brings its operations to a total of 40,000 square feet, along with

32 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

Blue Roots Cannabis Co.

the very latest grow technologies. The expansion is just the beginning of the business’s early efforts bearing fruit — or buds, rather. The company has big plans for 2022 and beyond.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT The management team attributes the company’s success in part to its ability to stay ahead of the curve. Blue Roots Cannabis is currently developing facilities within its campus to accommodate proprietary strains that will be released in 2022. “Blue Roots is constantly researching and developing new and exciting strains, and it will continue to do so,” Lead Growers Mike Bowman and Mike Davis state. They are in charge of the grow, plant R&D, and have a combined 50 years SPONSORED CONTENT

of experience. “We have a full research and development staff, and we will be releasing new concepts and products every quarter. You have to do that to be cutting edge.”

HANDCRAFTED, ECO-FRIENDLY A big part of the appeal of Blue Roots Cannabis products is that all are handcrafted, made

without any ecologically harmful packaging and are pesticide-free. Plants are watered by hand, and the water system uses reverse osmosis to maximize purity. While many producer/processors will opt to use machine trimmers, Blue Roots employs a team of hand trimmers who work diligently to lovingly give each bud that personal touch. Plants are hand trellised and defoliated, while joints and cannatellas are handcrafted as well. “We grow it, we trim it, we package it, we market it,” says Davis. “We do it all.”

TAKING THE TEMPERATURE Additionally, Blue Roots Cannabis monitors the parameters of its grow operation with precision through its dedicated staff, and cutting-edge technology. “The plants are mothered on a daily basis,” Bowman and Davis say. Blue Roots constantly measures the moisture content of the soil, along with the environmentals of the room via a state-ofthe-art control system, Bowman says. The management team points out that the company’s staff of less than 50 employees, most of whom have been there for multiple years, creates a fun, friendly workplace and are motivated by being part of something bigger than themselves. The team also works diligently to stay in compliance with the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board and to maintain a pristine reputation for its existing and growing customer base. “At the end of the day, our priority is to produce extremely high quality products and maintain our reputation for world class cannabis,” management adds. “Customer service is paramount for Blue Roots. We will move mountains to make sure our customers are satisfied.”

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 33

GREEN ZONE GIFTS

STRAINS

Bud With Buzz

Recommendations on the best current strains from local dispensaries BY WILL MAUPIN

he end of the year is a time for reflection, and with all that looking back comes a torrent of best-of lists. What if you’re more of a forward-looking person, though? This time of year, just before the start of a brand new trip around the sun, is also perfect for looking ahead at what’s to come. Here are a five locally available strains that you are likely to see on best-of lists a year from now — for those of you who want to be able to say, “I smoked that before it was cool.”

TROPHY WIFE

Phat Panda products are all the rage everywhere it seems, but especially at The Vault on Spokane’s South Hill, and these days Phat Panda’s Trophy Wife takes top honors. This indica-dominant hybrid is a cross of The Wife and Cherry Wine and presents a skunky smell but sweet flavor. It’s a mood-enhancer when dosed properly, but take care with it because at higher doses its sedative side comes on strong. The Vault • 2720 E. 29th Ave.

WEDDING CAKE

“My current favorite smoke is probably Budwise’s Wedding Cake,” says Austin Larsen, supervisor at Cinder Spokane Valley. “It’s fullflavored and smooth-smoking, very stoney. Won’t necessarily knock you out, but it won’t make you feel wired or jittery. It’s an awesome blend of chill and creative, perfect for a quiet evening at home or kickin’ it with some friends.” Wedding Cake is a hybrid strain with a solid punch of around

NOTE TO READERS

COME

STAY

CANNABIS

VIEW

f the

Pend Oreille Cannabis Co. is a small family-owned I-502 Recreational Retail Marijuana Store that sits on the banks of the beautiful Pend Oreille River. We carry cannabis-infused drinks, concentrates, and edibles, as well as having many great strains of Indica, Sativa and Hybrid Flower. Come up and give our top-shelf bud from local growers a try.

124 Riverside Ave • Ione, WA pendoreillecannabis.com • (509) 442-3420 Warning: This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination and judgement. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product. For use only by adults twenty-one and older. Keep out of reach of children.

34 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

Be aware of the differences in the law between Idaho and Washington. It is illegal to possess, sell or transport cannabis in the State of Idaho. Possessing up to an ounce is a misdemeanor and can get you a year in jail and up to a $1,000 fine; more than three ounces is a felony that can carry a fiveyear sentence and fine of up to $10,000. Transporting marijuana across state lines, like from Washington into Idaho, is a felony under federal law.

NEW YEAR NEW PRODUCT NEW SPECIALS

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 24 percent THC and limonene as its dominant terpene. Cinder Spokane Valley • 1421 N. Mullan Ste. B • Cinder Downtown Spokane • 927 W. Second Ave. • Cinder North Spokane • 6010 N. Division St.

ANIMAL GAS

An indica-dominant hybrid cross of Chem 91 and the always popular Animal Cookies, the Animal Gas offerings from Freddy’s Fuego are true to their name and light on the brakes. At just under 24 percent THC, this chemical and gasoline-smelling strain is a go-to for those looking for the most euphoric of highs from Royals Cannabis on Division. While there might be no brakes, it’s not all gas, either. A strong limonene presence among the strain’s terpenes helps to cut the automotive smell with refreshing citrus notes. Royals Cannabis • 7115 N. Division St.

Top Shelf Tuesday 20% OFF all Top Shelf Flower

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OPEN EVERYDAY! (509) 919-3470

2424 N. Monroe St Spokane www.greenhandrecreational.com Warning: This product has intoxicating effects and may be habit forming. Smoking is hazardous to your health. There may be health risks associated with consumption of this product. Should not be used by women that are pregnant or breast feeding. For USE only by adults 21 and older. Marijuana can impair concentration, coordination and judgement. Do not operate a vehicle or machinery under the influence of this drug.

SLYMER

The Green Nugget on Francis offers two varieties of Slymer grown by Smokey Point Productions, a sugar wax and an infused pre-roll. This concentratefriendly sativa is one of the rare strains to have terpinolene as its most dominant terpene. Terpinolene helps contribute to the fresh and fruity aroma of Slymer and is thought to contribute to its uplifting effects. The infused pre-roll is a great way to go for those looking to enjoy concentrates without investing in all of the equipment needed for wax. The Green Nugget • 322 E. Francis Ave.

DO-SI-DOS

Sometimes you need to look back before you can look forward, and Greenhand on Monroe is a great place to do just that with their multiple offerings of indica-dominant hybrid Do-Si-Dos. Named Strain of the Year 2021 by cannabis publication Leafly, Do-Si-Dos will surely have a continued impact well into 2022 and beyond. Born in Portland, Oregon, less than a decade ago, Do-Si-Dos has become a big hit in the cannabis scene thanks to its powerful flavors and strong effects. The brilliant purple, green and gold buds covered with sticky trichomes don’t hurt the strain’s case, either. Greenhand • 2424 N. Monroe St. n

1325 N DIVISION ST. STE 103

OPEN DAILY

DECEMBER 4TH - 25TH, 2021 D O U B L E - U P O N DA I LY D E A L S

YOUR TEEN ASKS WHY

IS LEGAL FOR YOU, BUT NOT HIM. AND YOU SAY? Now that marijuana is legal for those 21 and over, it’s more important than ever to talk with your kids.

STARTTALKINGNOW.ORG DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 35

GREEN ZONE GIFTS

BASKETS

Fancy Tastes

A basket full of goodies could be just the thing for your high friends BY CLAIRE MUNDS

or every enthusiast, there’s an ideal gift basket — the classy go-to gift that says “I want you to know I care a lot, because this is wrapped in cellophane.” For wine lovers, it’s a nice bottle, some cheese, perhaps a salami and a wine aerator. For cocktail enthusiasts, it’s a bottle of spirits, a shaker and some bitters. Gift baskets are somewhat competitive. They are designed to be displayed, a billboard to the world that flaunts exactly how good you are at picking presents. Here is a bougie weed-themed gift basket that will do exactly that.

WRAPPING MATERIALS

If you’re going to invest in a gift basket, it needs to be gently enveloped in the shiny iridescent swaddling of cellophane. The basket needs a bow. You cannot compromise on the importance of the cellophane, a statement that can even become philosophical. Nothing is worth doing unless it’s packaged in a way to be appreciated. If you are environmentally averse to cellophane, get an extra-super-great bow. The actual basket is often the unsung hero in these types of gifts, but in addition to its contents, your giftee also receives a new hip household container. In theory, you could skip the basket and put the gifts in a sad, floppy shoe box. That would be a shameful disservice to both the gifts and the giftee. Prices vary

THE VEGAN STONER COOKBOOK

There’s a three-point triangle of suffering for foodie-stoners, as follows: 1. I am high 2. I want something tasty because I’m a food snob 3. I can’t follow more than, say, five instructions right now The Vegan Stoner Cookbook by Sarah Conrique and Graham I. Haynes targets exactly this struggling demographic. Each recipe has fewer than 10 (adorably illustrated) ingredients and numbered instructions in a large font. These munchie recipes are tasty and cute, even for nonvegans. Cream-o-shroom soup? A sloppy Jane sandwich? Veggie sushi? Bahnwich? Animal cookies? Flip through the book and pick a recipe you like. Add the shelfstable ingredients to the gift basket with a little note that says “See recipe on Page 11!” $13, theveganstoner.com

ORGANIC HEMP WICK

The cellophane says “I care about presentation.” Lighter wicks say “I care about your lungs.” Nothing sucks more than sucking up a hit of butane when you take a hit. These cute pocket-sized wicks are good for the road. If you do happen to put bud in your gift basket, the wicks are an excellent touch. $15, twistedbee.com

DARK CHOCOLATE AND SEA SALT-COVERED PUMPKIN SEEDS

These pumpkin seeds are a bingeable snack that pump you full of protein and don’t taste like gravel. Giftees over 30 simply cannot binge Taco Bell Doritos Locos tacos anymore — give them a snack with fiber. $9, superseedz.com

PICKLED FRUIT BOX

Pickles are exciting. Fancy pickles are absolutely thrilling. Think back to the last time you saw a jar of unique canned goods. Was it a funky flavor that whetted your taste buds? Were there bits of garlic and herbs packed neatly around oddly cut veggies? Perhaps a fun label? Perhaps an odd fruit? A bangin’ jar of pickles bumps the basket up a level. Mouth, an online pickled goods retailer, serves up some interesting vinegary brews. The pickled blueberries start quite a conversation. Grab a pickled fruit box and sample a few unexpected pleasures. $37, mouth.com n

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Great Gifts at Green Light

rom the very beginning, this Spokane Valley cannabis retailer has been giving customers, both new and old, the “green light” for enjoyable consumption. Green Light prides itself on its knowledgeable and friendly staff, says Green Light General Manager Carli Durick. They love to show customers the best product they can get for their money. Here are some of Carli’s favorite Green Light gift ideas to make your holiday season as lit as your Christmas tree.

SIX FIFTH’S 1:1 CBD/THC BATH BOMBS, $10 Coming in multiple different greenlightspokane.com scents, each with an equal ratio of CBD to THC these bath bombs are “high-quality products,” Carli says, even as standalone bathroom products.

GOLD LEAFS LEIRA 4G CANNARILLO, $105 Looking for luxury? Carli recommends this “cannarillo” - that is, a cannabis cigarillo - stuffed with four grams of high-quality cannabis and an average smoke time of about 45 minutes each.

FAIRWINDS 10MG INSTANT HOT MOCHA COFFEE, $10 Stay sweet and warm this holiday season with these infused hot cocoa packs from Fairwinds Cannabis. “The flavor is amazing,” Carli says.

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PAX ERA BATTERY+ HOUSE OF CULTIVAR PAX POD, $40 (BATTERY) AND $45 (POD) The newest PAX ERA will provide users with about 200-250 puffs, about two to three times more than your standard vape pen. But with PAX, you also get sleek, high-quality gear from a top brand. SPONSORED CONTENT

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38 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

MOVIE NIGHT

Cinematic Stoners

Pairing a worthy flick with some serious snacks for those munchies

BY CLAIRE MUNDS ast gift idea — pair a movie with a snack and a joint! Here are some film favorites and their corresponding munchies. Whether you rent a flick or buy a Blu-Ray, the real gift is some high time together.

HIGHER BY TETON GRAVITY RESEARCH (2014)

PAIR WITH: PRETZELS AND CHEESE Snowboarders and weed, an everlasting love story. Everyone in the audience was definitely high when I saw Higher in theaters. Teton Gravity Research reliably pumps out vaguely emotional snowsport movies with cool hipster soundtracks. First, your heart is warmed by the whimsical tellings of childhood memories. The next minute, you’re sideswiped by the adrenaline face blast of big mountain snowboarding. In this installment, the crew scrambles to the top of the Himalayas and Alaska Range to satiate the unyielding thirst of adrenaline. The first mountain they board is 13,000 feet, with five spots where they must rock climb and repel as they move downhill. There is very little plot to keep track of aside from “watch them go down until gravity stops.” (Rent on demand/free with Prime subscription)

KOYAANISQATSI (1983)

PAIR WITH: RARE STEAK This non-narrative film is requisite for anyone who does drugs. Quite literally without a plot, the movie presents shots of nature, urban life and how humans interact with both. Time lapses of clouds dancing across the sky. Images of cities. Top-down views of computer microchips. People filing in and out of subways. Hotdogs in a factory. Building demolition. Really nice rivers. Philip Glass composed the film’s entire score, and it’s a behemoth of technique. Do you like sitting in a dark room high, contemplating modern industrialization? You’re in luck, this movie gives you two hours of just that, with absolutely no dialogue to interrupt your internal processing. (Rent on demand/free with Prime)

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PAIR WITH: CANISTER OF MIXED NUTS There is a substantial enclave of ’90s families that choose Mixed Nuts as their yearly Christmas movie tradition. Steven Martin, a suicide hotline worker, meets interesting characters on Christmas Eve. Without giving away too much, it’s a silly goofy movie for a silly goofy mood. Make it your own family tradition! (Rent on demand)

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ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW (2013)

PAIR WITH: ICE CREAM This absolutely unhinged independent film was shot illegally inside Disneyland and unceremoniously presented at the Sundance Film Festival. The beauty of the film isn’t the film itself, it’s the sneakily illegal process that birthed it. The plot is not great — I struggled to figure out what precisely the director was hinting at with the surreal fantasy film. It might be a bad trip. To this day, I could not give you a synopsis, which is perfect for stoners who won’t be needing the plot anyways. (Rent on demand)

OPERATION AVALANCHE (2016)

PAIR WITH: CHEESE AND CRACKERS Operation Avalanche, a film also shot in a legality gray zone, is a vastly better story than its Disneyland counterpart. After sneaking into NASA headquarters, filmmakers posed as students in order to capture real footage and interviews. The footage was then used to create an entire unrelated story — how the moon landing was faked. After some crafty splicing and borderline abuse of fair-use laws, the result is a conspiracy-theory thriller about CIA moles uncovering deep truths. More of a spectacle of its origins, take this film for what it is — a taunt of legality and conspiracy. (Rent on demand/free with Prime). n

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LOCAL LEGENDS

DREAMIN’ BIG

Local homemade rock stars Donnie and Joe Emerson see their unlikely success story filmed for the big screen, right here in Spokane BY CHASE HUTCHINSON

n upcoming film shot and set in Spokane recently wrapped filming, one of a scant few projects to actually bring a big Hollywood production to our humble yet beautiful neck of the woods in Washington. The film is Dreamin’ Wild, sharing the name of the record that local brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson made together more than 40 years ago when they were teenagers. Unsung artists of their time, the album wouldn’t gain critical acclaim until the early 2010s, when a low-key 2012 reissue garnered it new praise among music geeks everywhere. In an interview, Joe reflected on his story turning into a movie, which was “quite an experience” that even included him playing a small role. “Filming went good on my end,” Joe says. “They had me in a couple cameos.” The film was written and directed by Bill Pohlad, who most recently made the outstanding 2014 film Love & Mercy about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.

In Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild, Donnie Emerson is played by Oscar-winning actor Casey Affleck, and Joe is portrayed by Walton Goggins, known best for his roles in the television series Justified and Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. Zooey Deschanel plays Donnie’s wife, Nancy, and Beau Bridges is Emerson patriarch Don Sr. Joe had the chance to meet Goggins and even played the actor a drum solo in their time together. “He’s really gracious,” Joe says. “He’s very personal, very intense. We hit it off really good. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend together, but maybe a day and a half.” The teenage version of Donnie is played by Noah Jupe from the recent A Quiet Place films. The younger version of Joe is being played by Jack Dylan Grazer, memorable for his wisecracking role as Eddie in the recent It films. Joe had the chance to meet both of the younger counterparts. “I gave them some driving instructions on the tractor,” Joe recalls, laughing. “They were good.” ...continued on next page

Walton Goggins (left) and Casey Affleck play unlikely music stars and Lilac City legends Joe and Donnie Emerson.

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 41

CULTURE | LOCAL LEGENDS “DREAMIN’ BIG,” CONTINUED...

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he film is based on a 2016 article by Steseems on-brand that this story would come from ven Kurutz published in True Story that Eastern Washington and have a movie made went long on how the brothers became about it.” overnight musical sensations decades after they Sottile had sought out the story as she had first made the album. always seen the Emersons’ presence as being a The Emersons’ winding road to success “fixture of music in the Northwest” worthy of seems like a natural for the silver screen. The attention. brothers recorded their first and only album at “A lot of times those types of people didn’t get their homemade family studio in Fruitland, near written about a lot,” Sottile says. “I just saw that Lake Roosevelt. They released Dreamin’ Wild in there was some interest in that and more national 1979, though it didn’t find an audience and all coverage of it. I was just like ‘Wow, this is really the copies soon began collecting dust. weird that this dude in the music listings all the Their work was at risk of being forgotten on time is a sleeper hit.’” the family farm until 2012, when Seattle-born label Light In The Attic Records reissued it. Label co-owner Matt Sullivan, who will also show up in the film played by actor Chris Messina, loved his own rare original copy and set out to make it his mission to share it with a broader audience. Sullivan did just that, and nearly 33 years after it was first released, Dreamin’ Wild became the talk of the music scene. It received a glowing review from Pitchfork, which called it “a godlike symphony to teenhood.” The initial investment in the music, one that didn’t come without a cost to the Emersons, had finally paid off. It showed how the brothers’ dream, even after all these years, was still alive. The story was so distinct that it drew Kurutz to write about it. Now a New York Times features reporter, he says it is the first time a film The album that made the Emersons famous among music hipsters everywhere. has been made from his work. For Kurutz, the most significant and unexpected aspect of working on the story was Sottile says she made a trip to Post Falls to that he formed a connection with the Emerson see Donnie perform at a hotel bar as part of her family that’s grown over the years. reporting. She remembers how it was surreal to “That’s the best thing that’s come out of this. witness how he was gaining national acclaim for Beyond the article or the movie or anything,” Kuhis work while he still fit right in with the local rutz says. “In the case of the Emersons, in the 20 music scene. years I’ve been doing this, I’ve probably become “It was a really weird experience in that he closest with them than anybody I’ve ever written was starting to get this crazy national buzz and about.” people were freaking out about this record that Kurutz says he’s looking forward to how the had been dug out of the basement of his family story is adapted for the big screen. It will mark a farm,” Sottile says. “But at the bar, he was just unique moment where Eastern Washington actutotally normal to everyone.” ally plays itself. For Joe, the experience of making music all “It isn’t like they’re in Canada as a standthose years ago was a learning experience as in for Eastern Washington. I hope by filming they set out just wanting to make a record and in Spokane and in Fruitland that it lends the didn’t know much about the business side of the movie a reality,” Kurutz says. “It’s beautiful. The industry. journey from Spokane to Fruitland is a really “We had no idea what it was about and how pretty drive. Where the Emerson farm is, it’s very much effort it takes to get yourself known or picturesque.” your music heard,” Joe says. “Everything was brand new to us.” hat value of capturing a place was echoed Seeing his and his brother’s story now in the by Leah Sottile, a past Inlander writer who spotlight, Joe says it was all about being patient in was one of the first to write about the the hope that their music would catch on. Emersons’ story back in 2012. “Finally, you get people who are interested,” “It’s actually really appropriate. I feel like Joe says. “That resparks things, and then you Spokane is filled with these kind of insanely inhave hope for something is going to happen.” n teresting people, particularly artists. I remember at the time, people were really excited about that A release date hasn’t been set for Dreamin’ article,” Sottile says. “It fits to me that these really Wild. Visit focusfeatures.com/dreamin-wild exceptional stories are found in unlikely places. It for more information.

T Learn more at Inlander.com/Insider 42 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 43

CULTURE | DIGEST

THE BUZZ BIN

What to do with the time given you? Maybe read the book that inspired the film.

ONE TRILOGY TO RULE THEM ALL

Finally reading The Lord of the Rings as the trilogy’s first film adaptation turns 20 BY CHEY SCOTT

ne year ago, I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series for the first time. Curled up in the warm glow of the Christmas tree, I don’t know what took me so long. I’ve adored the LOTR films since I saw them, though I confess my first watch — just like my first read — was also incredibly late, more than a decade after the first film was released. The Fellowship of the Ring celebrates its 20th anniversary Dec. 19. I’ve since seen the trilogy’s extended cuts — all 11plus hours — countless times. For our household and so many others, the cinematic series is emblematic of lazy weekends snuggled up on the couch. After becoming so familiar with the films, I put off reading the source material. Friends told me it was a slog. (Besides, reading something you already know is usually not very exciting.) I knew the films’ director Peter Jackson took creative liberties, but until I cracked open the books last winter, I was blind to just how much had to be left out, even in the extended releases. Reading the books only added a deeper sense of appreciation to both works: Tolkien’s magnificent prose, world-building and characters, and Jackson’s and his cast’s nearly flawless interpretations of them.

y LOTR reading journey began unexpectedly, like Frodo Baggins’ quest into the darkness of Mordor to destroy the Ring of Power. During a late-2020 shopping pilgrimage to a local vintage shop, I stumbled upon an early-1970s paperback of the series’ first two installments: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. The printings happened

44 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

to exactly match my partner Will’s own tattered set, passed to him by his late father. But because those copies are too fragile for much handling, I decided to purchase my own (albeit incomplete) set as motivation to finally dive in. I spent the following dark winter weeks devouring every word. Reading the books was an even richer experience than the films, more so than I ever imagined. While purists may chide me for picturing the film’s legendary cast as I read their characters on the page, it only enriched the story for me. My heart leapt each time I recognized a line of dialogue transferred directly from page to screen. I nearly wept with joy when my favorite line of all time was discovered, on page 82 of The Fellowship: “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” As for the scenes and characters that didn’t make it into Jackson’s retelling, well, there are many. But I now comprehend fellow fans’ disappointment over the inimitable Tom Bombadil’s omission. Perhaps what surprised me most, however, while reading The Lord of the Rings is that I didn’t find it tedious or sluggish. Quite the opposite: Tolkien is a true master of epic storytelling. I finished the final chapter of The Return of the King, “The Grey Havens,” early this year in a epiphanic trance over the timeless relevance Tolkien’s tale holds, reveling in the pure joy of discovering his fully realized fantasy world, and the lasting impact it will continue to have on human culture and creativity. n

WESTERN STARS New Netflix streamer The Harder They Fall is absolutely loaded with talent. Among the all-Black cast are Idris Elba, Regina King, LaKeith Stanfield and Zazie Beetz, and director Jeymes Samuel crafts a hyper-stylish tale of two warring outlaw gangs, and one man’s search for revenge. That one man is Nat Love, and he’s played by the brilliant Jonathan Majors, who would be reason enough to watch this movie even if you’d never heard of anyone else. If you didn’t catch him in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, you should: 1) track down that movie right now — you missed out, and 2) fire up The Harder They Fall and witness a seriously skilled actor capable of conveying utter sex appeal and charm one second, and his own emotional destruction the next. (DAN NAILEN) SPOKANE’S CHAMP Spokane native Julianna Peña has finally done it. The mixed martial arts pro ecstatically claimed the UFC women’s bantamweight division belt Saturday, Dec. 11, at UFC 269 in Las Vegas. Peña’s victory was immediately declared one of the UFC’s biggest upsets, after she submitted her opponent and the division’s former longtime champ Amanda Nunes in the second round. Though Peña’s currently based out of Chicago, she still trains with coaches from Spokane MMA gym Sik-Jitsu. (CHEY SCOTT)

DANCING IN THE STREETS It turns out this Stephen Spielberg guy is pretty decent at directing. Despite never helming a musical before, his new West Side Story sings. While the 1961 cinematic classic still holds up and this remake remains fundamentally unnecessary, it’s also one of the best films of the year. Spielberg directs with a propulsive energy that makes the tensions between the rival ’50s New York youth gangs the Jets and the Sharks pop. The period piece’s cinematography shimmers with the color of the city and sways with the tight choreography. Also, the racial and class themes at the heart of this Romeo and Juliet adaptation still hold up 60 years later (which is a bummer). The only thing that ever took me out of the movie was that they cast a Young John Mulaney doppelganger (Mike Faist) as Jets leader Riff, which was 100 times more distracting than “old” Ben Platt playing Evan Hansen. (SETH SOMMERFELD) n

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Downtown Spokane for the Holidays DowntownSpokane.org

BRUTTLES SWEET FROSTINGS

Sweet and Scrumptious

he winter holidays always offer some welcome opportunities to indulge a sweet tooth. When you’re shopping for gifts at River Park Square, you can get a refreshing pick-me-up at TEA’S COMPANY (808 W. Main Ave., teascompanyspokane.com), which specializes in the Taiwanese drink trend known as boba (or “bubble”) tea. Boba are the little tapioca pearls that are used to sweeten a variety of milk- and fruit-flavored teas. This new brick-and-mortar retail location opened recently to accommodate the incredible demand that this sister-owned business experienced at their mobile pop-up events. Whether you’re entertaining or you just want

a special treat for every occasion the season offers, SWEET FROSTINGS (15 S. Washington St., sweetfrostingsbakeshop.com) makes the holidays memorable with delicious baked goods and decadent delights. “Brand new this year,” says Jessica Winfrey, who co-owns Sweet Frostings with her mother, “is our custom box of colorful iced gnome cookies with a sticker that says, ‘There’s gnome place like home for the holidays.’ This season we’re also doing a Rudolph cake that has cute chocolate antlers. And it can be ordered in your favorite flavor,” such as salted caramel or red velvet. Along with rich hot cocoa bombs that dissolve in warm milk, there are long, skinny sugar cookies

designed for dipping. The shop is featuring seasonal classic and pumpkin cinnamon rolls, too. “It’s a homemade family recipe from my grandma,” says Winfrey, “and we wanted to share it with everyone.” Home of Spokane’s original soft peanut brittle, BRUTTLES (828 W. Sprague Ave., bruttles.com) still follows Aunt Sophia Gerkensmeyer’s classic secret recipe to achieve a rich, flaky consistency. For that added bit of TLC, they even make and wrap their in-house confections by hand. Bruttles’ signature samplers, toffees, barks and brittles are available in different sizes with festive packaging that’s perfect for the holidays. 

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IT’S SANTA!

Don’t Miss the Man in Red!

t’s the busiest time of the year for SANTA CLAUS and his team at the North Pole, but that doesn’t stop him from visiting with his adoring public right up until he has to depart for his round-theworld journey on Christmas Eve. You can catch him throughout the holiday season at River Park Square during opening hours — just listen for the sound of “Ho, Ho, Ho” and look for the glittering 50-foot Christmas tree in the atrium. While walk-ups are okay (availability permitting, of course), if you want to get a keepsake photo with the man in red, it’s best to make a reservation. Visit whereisstanta.com and enter your ZIP code to claim your time slot in advance. STCU members can receive $10 off holiday photo packages when using an STCU credit or debit card to make their purchase in person or online. Find out more at riverparksquare. com/events/santaphotos. 

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CRESCENT HOLIDAY WINDOW DISPLAYS

Downtown Holiday Events

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On the corner of Main & Washington, across from the Grand Hotel

HOLIDAY PIANO MUSIC

Free skate rentals are included with each paid admission, every Tuesday through Feb. 22 during regular hours. $5.95-$7.95. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. my.spokanecity. org/riverfrontspokane(509-625-6600)

Enjoy holiday music played on the Davenport lobby’s grand piano by pianist Danek Black. Daily from 3:30-6:30 pm through Dec. 23. Free. Historic Davenport Hotel, 10 S. Post St. davenporthotelcollection.com (800-899-1482)

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Park With Ease

arking in downtown Spokane is more plentiful and more affordable than you might think. There are approximately 37,000 total parking spots in the downtown area, with about 3,200 of them located on‑street. Two-hour spaces operated by the City of Spokane are just $1.20 per hour, and that hourly rate falls to just 40 cents for all-day spaces. And if you’re short on change, the Passport Park‑ ing Mobile Pay app for iOS and Android offers convenient contactless payments as well as handy expiration reminders. Plus there are a number of ways to get your fees comped. Every Sunday is a Free Parking Day, as are holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Outside of those times, many of your favorite retailers can offer you EasyPark validation whenever you make a minimum purchase. Want an extra insider tip? The Grand Hotel’s parking garage often has available spaces that other shoppers have overlooked. 

CRESCENT HOLIDAY WINDOW DISPLAYS

Five window bays on the south side of the Grand Hotel display scenes featuring refurbished figurines rescued from the basement of the former Crescent Department Store. Windows were designed by local artists Stephanie Bogue, Melanie Lieb, Derrick Freeland and Jazmin Ely under the creative direction of Tiffany Patterson, with window painting by Mallory Battista. See more found display items from the Crescent in windows at the Fox Theater and the MAC. Through Jan. 2; Fri-Sat from 12-10 pm and Sun-Thu from 3-8 pm. Free. Davenport Grand Hotel, 333 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. davenporthotelcollection.com (800918-9344)

CUP OF JOY

Trackside’s 8th annual group invitational of drinking vessels features over 150 ceramic cups in many forms, colors and treatments. Forty invited artists participate alongside 13 new artists from across the U.S. Gallery open Wed-Fri from 11 am-5 pm; show on display through Jan. 7. Trackside Studio, 115 S. Adams St. tracksidestudio.net (509-863-9904)

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Koy is fresh off the release of his highly anticipated Netflix special Comin’ In Hot, and currently on his Just Kidding World Tour with all-new material. (Rescheduled from 2020.) Dec. 17, 8 pm. $39.50-$79.50. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. firstinterstatecenter.org/event/jo-koy (509-279-7000)

LIGHT UP THE NIGHT IN RIVERFRONT PARK

Along with enjoying the Numerica Skate Ribbon and the Looff Carrousel, all holiday season long Riverfront Park is the place to Light Up the Night. Part of this event is the Trail of Lights, a self-guided tour that wends through existing features like the spectacular Holiday Tree and the Balazs Fountain, all illuminated for the holidays. In addition, the Community Tree Display showcases about 40 trees around the park that local nonprofits have decorated. Over at the Pavilion, you’ll be able to catch a spectacular LED light show every evening from sunset to 10 pm through Jan. 3.

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s the cold-weather indoor counterpart to Terrain’s summertime outdoor Bazaar event, BRRRZAAR brings together dozens upon dozens of artists and craftspeople from across the area. That makes it the ideal time to shop local and for unique gifts. You’ll find jewelry, pottery, prints, skincare goods, leather- and woodwork, photography and lots more. Plus there’s live music and free activities for the kiddos. This year BrrrZaar takes place on Saturday, December 18, across all three floors of River Park Square (808 W. Main Ave.) and runs from 10 am to 8 pm. Visit terrainspokane. com/brrrzaar for info and the full roster of participating artists. 

Downtown Holiday Events BING CROSBY HOLIDAY FILM FESTIVAL

Watch a selection of Bing Crosby’s beloved holiday films in the theater where he got his start in show business. Films shown this year include White Christmas (10:30 am and 7 pm), Holiday Inn (1:30 pm) and Road to Bali (4 pm). An all-day pass allows in-and-out access. Sun, Dec. 19 from 10:30-7 pm. $21. All ages. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. bingcrosbytheater.com (509227-7404)

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The German American Society of Spokane hosts its special Christmas dinner of gesiedetes hühnchen, simmered chicken in a rich cream sauce, prepared by chefs Donna and Harold Kellams. A special recipe for a traditional German-style warm spiced wine from member Eberhardt Schmidt is also served. Sat, Dec. 18 from 6:30-10 pm. $20; reservations limited. Deutsches Haus, 25 W. Third Ave. germanamericansociety-spokane.org (509954-6964)

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A night of classics and originals, featuring performances by local musicians Scott Ryan, T.S the Solution, Jenny Anne Mannan, Water Monster, Caroline Fowler, Automatic Shoes, Blake Braley, Bob Riggs and more. Proceeds benefit Compassionate Addiction Treatment - CAT Spokane. Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm. $20-$25. Ages 21+. Lucky You Lounge, 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. luckyyoulounge.com (509-474-0511)

COMING NEXT WEEK

Check out everything Downtown Spokane for the Holidays in next week’s final 2021 installment of CITY SIDEWALKS. Direct from Broadway, the First Interstate Center for the Arts hosts the spectacular musical Anastasia, and find even more nightlife options at the Spokane Comedy Club and Ridler Piano Bar.

LOCAL LANDMARK

A Hearty

History Spokane’s iconic train car restaurant Knight’s Diner settles into new ownership while preserving its storied past BY HANNAH MUMM

arket Street’s historic Knight’s Diner is once again open for business, this time under the leadership of Spokane native Doug Gariepy. “I grew up in this neighborhood,” Gariepy says, so when the opportunity to purchase Knight’s Diner arose, “it was a no-brainer.” Although he grew up nearby, Knight’s Diner’s status as a community staple became even more evident to Gariepy when he took over. The restaurateur previously operated a Zip’s Drive-In in Colville before purchasing Knight’s, which he reopened in early fall. “So many people are coming in here telling stories about this diner,” he says. “I’m proud to be a part of this history.” The history of Knight’s Diner is rich indeed. The restaurant’s railcar was manufactured in 1906 by the Pullman Car Company. Serving as Northern Pacific car No. 988, it endured two accidents on the Yellowstone Park Line before retiring to Spokane Valley to be converted into a classroom for soldiers during World War II. As the war neared its end, President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally arranged for No. 988 to be gifted to a Spokane resident who’d traveled cross-country as “Uncle Sam” selling war bonds. Several years later, No. 988 caught the attention of Jack Knight, a head waiter at the Davenport Hotel. Knight purchased the passenger car for $600 (potentially with cash made from bootleg liquor sales), and in 1949, it made its official debut as Knight’s Diner. The diner transferred ownership several times before its most recent owner, Vicki Green, bought it in 1982. Green operated Knight’s for 37 years, until its closure in 2019. Since Gariepy took over, a portion of the rail car was expanded to include a new kitchen, and a 1907 Northern Pacific caboose was added to accommodate a food prep area. Windows were rehabilitated, handicap ramps were added and, perhaps most noticeably, a section of counter was removed to make way for family-friendly booths. Knight’s Diner has been listed on the Spokane Register of Historic Places since 1991. ...continued on next page

Doug Gariepy is new owner and chef of Spokane’s historic Knight’s Diner. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 51

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52 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

oday, Gariepy’s Knight’s Diner honors eopening Knight’s Diner has been no the rail car’s rich history and iconic small feat, Gariepy says. “It’s a seven-dayantique roots in part by carrying forward a-week job. I just want to make sure I can the classy, old-fashioned look signature to the be everything to everybody.” diner. Retro music plays in the background, and But Gariepy knows he can’t do it all alone. Gariepy’s menu offers classic breakfast and lunch Running Knight’s Diner has been a team effort, items, as it has for decades. Plus, most of the food through and through. is cooked from scratch. “I brought my mom in from retirement. She “I cut my own vegetables. We do everything retired six years ago, and I asked if she wanted from scratch,” he says. “I’m washing dishes all to come in and be a hostess,” he says. “My mom day, then I get on the line cooking.” is my hero. She did this her whole life. Having Gariepy says customers can expect to see her in the house really uplifts the crew. Everyone Green’s free brown gravy and onions, as well loves her.” as her silver dollar pancakes, remain on the In addition to his mother, Patty Wilks, Garimenu. Aside from those beloved staples, the new epy’s girlfriend, Trish Malizia, also serves as the Knight’s Diner menu is all Gariepy’s own. There diner’s manager. are the traditional breakfast combinations, which Gariepy says the aspect of reopening he worinclude items like eggs, sausage links, hickoryried about most was finding staff for the rest of smoked bacon, hash browns and toast. There’s his team. also a selection of burgers, served with “But I knew they’d ENTRÉE fries, plus sandwich options. come out of the woodGet the scoop on local To leave his own mark, Gariepy work,” he says. “The food news with our weekly named some menu items after himself ones who are here are Entrée newsletter. Sign up and his family. The Baylian Burger, for aces. You see how much at Inlander.com/newsletter. instance, is named after Gariepy’s son. they take care of you… And the Gariepy “My Specialty” omelet just very uplifting. That’s is, of course, named for the owner himself. the biggest compliment I get from everyone: Topped with a generous layer of cheese, the hefty ‘Your staff is just amazing.’” four-egg omelet includes ham, andouille sausage, Gariepy and his team are proud to make onion, pepper, tomato and mushroom, served their own mark on Knight’s Diner’s legacy, where with hash browns and hot, buttery toast. so many memories have been made, and where I ordered the “My Specialty” omelet myself, many new ones will be created. n and therefore feel entitled to my personal belief that Gariepy’s Knight’s Diner serves warm, tasty Knight’s Diner • 2909 N. Market St. • Open comfort food at its finest. Plus, the portions are Tue-Sat 7 am-2:30 pm, Sun 8 am-2:30 pm • big, and who doesn’t love leftovers? Facebook: Knights Diner • 509-319-2247

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ESSAY

Back to Wonderland I’m a Matrix superfan. Why am I not more excited for Resurrections? BY WILSON CRISCIONE

hen I was 10 years old, I had no idea how much The Matrix was about to change my life. At the time, I was just excited my parents were letting me watch an R-rated movie while they fell asleep on the couch next to me. Since then, I’ve seen the movie more than 60 times — I’ve kept count. It’s by far the most influential movie of my life. And each time I see it, I’m blown away again, like I’m still that 10-year-old kid. When the trailer dropped for The Matrix Resurrections, the new franchise reboot, you’d think I’d have been ecstatic. Truthfully, I thought I’d be ecstatic. But as it gets closer to the release date, I’ve realized a big part of me is actually dreading this resurrection. The reason I became a Matrix superfan in the first place has as much to do with my age as the movie itself. Certain movies just hit you at the right age, and they become your reference point for all other movies. This is hardly unique to the Matrix. I imagine kids decades before went through a similar experience with Star Wars, and kids today are likely going through it with Marvel movies. Still, for a 10-year-old, the Matrix was trippy as hell. Never before had I seen action sequences so mind-bending. Until then, I’d never considered a world where everyone lives in a computer simulation, that the mundane life of everyday society was in fact controlled by something far more powerful. Not once had I seen a mechanical bug planted inside someone’s belly button. Much like Neo in the original film, it opened me up to an entirely new way of thinking. It shaped my

ALSO OPENING SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME

After his secret identity was revealed, our friendly neighborhood webslinger turns to Doctor Strange to try to fix the problem. Unfortunately, issues with multiverse lead to prior Spider-Man film franchise villains suddenly entering the MCU, much to Peter Parker’s peril. (SS) Rated PG-13

54 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

worldview in more ways than I’d like to admit, framing my perspective on morality and religion, provoking a long-held distrust for authority figures, and guiding my judgment on film and art. I was so enamored with The Matrix that for years I even defended the sequels, something I now attribute to being a teenager with bad takes. Any Matrix sequel that came out after my favorite movie ever was going to be good in my book. The still-awesome car chase in Reloaded was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen on a screen, and I was fully invested in the plot. More importantly, liking the Matrix had become part of my very identity. If anyone criticized one thing about it, even the sequels, I defended it as if it were personal.

ooking back, the sequels had me fooled. The Matrix genuinely was groundbreaking, but the sequels ended up as unimaginative plot cloaked with CGI and philosophical allusions. To top it off, while Reloaded at least pulled off ambitious action sequences, the third movie, Revolutions, perplexingly took away everything that made the action fun, replacing it with robots firing guns and a cartoonish showdown between Agent Smith and Neo. If the Matrix momentarily freed me from the typical Hollywood formula, the sequels plugged me right back in. Maybe that’s partly why I, a Matrix superfan, am not getting my hopes up for the new installment. If it’s anything like the sequels, I won’t be able to

defend them anymore. And there’s still a small part of me that identifies too much with the Matrix, so if it’s bad, I’ll take it personally. Or maybe this movie won’t be meant for fans like me. It might go the route of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and target a new generation of fans instead of trying to please the old ones. No matter how many callbacks to the original it sprinkles in for nostalgia, the reboot’s very existence would feel like a betrayal of the first film. But I suspect Resurrections is going to be made exactly for superfans like me. This doesn’t appear to be a brand new character arc set in the same universe. Rather, from the trailers, it looks to be the same main characters following a familiar path — one that puzzles the characters themselves. Neo is back in the Matrix, again finding his way to (a younger) Morpheus. We see Neo grappling with a past he once knew but he’s detached from, confronting a former self that he doesn’t recognize. And that’s the exact same feeling I have about the movie coming out now. I believe being a Matrix superfan remains a part of my identity, buried somewhere deep down in my past. I fully expect to be in the theater opening day, trying desperately to summon that feeling I had when I first saw the original Matrix, sandwiched between my parents watching it on pay-per-view. I’d guess that Resurrections will explore whether or not Neo will find that part of himself that he once was. And if I know movies at all, then he will. But in my eyes, the movie’s success hinges on a different question. Will I? n

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The conniving Stan (Bradley Cooper) and the kind-hearted Molly (Rooney Mara).

Carnival of Souls Guillermo del Toro channels the spirit of film noir in the gorgeous, engrossing Nightmare Alley BY JOSH BELL

Guillermo del Toro movie set at a square-jawed all-American hero, only to slowly traveling sideshow in the 1940s sounds uncover the deep rot in his soul. Cooper’s Stan is like the perfect formula for one of the clearly rotten from the start, in an opening scene filmmaker’s signature fantasias, but there’s that shows him burning down his own house as nothing supernatural happening in del Toro’s he stoically walks away from it. The audience Nightmare Alley. Based on the 1946 novel by knows to be wary of Stan from the beginning, William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley is del even as Molly and the other carnies take him at Toro’s take on film noir, following in the footsteps face value, and it’s not until he teams up with of the 1947 adaptation directed by Edmund unscrupulous psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Goulding. Del Toro has said he was first drawn Blanchett) in the movie’s second half that he truly to the story by the novel, but his Nightmare Alley meets his match. is clearly informed by both Goulding’s film and Cooper possesses the same kind of classical the larger noir tradition, and then fused with del Hollywood charm as Tyrone Power, and he efToro’s flair for lush, colorful visuals. fectively balances Stan’s demons with his obvious There’s a bit of tension between the stark charisma. Blanchett proves a perfect match for noir story and del Toro’s eye for beauty, but it’s him, and del Toro wisely expands Lilith’s role in largely productive tension, enhancing rather than his version, giving Blanchett more screen time to detracting from the story. That’s especially true dig into the part of the gorgeous, ruthless femme in the first half, which takes place at a fatale. Consequently, Mara carnival run by veteran huckster Clem a bit overshadowed as NIGHTMARE ALLEY is Hoately (Willem Dafoe). Clem takes the kind-hearted dreamer Rated R pity on troubled drifter Stan Carlisle taken in by Stan’s wiles. Directed by Guillermo del Toro (Bradley Cooper), offering him a job Freed of the constraints Starring Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, on the crew. Stan soon becomes an of the 1940s production Cate Blanchett integral part of the carnival, working code, del Toro can be more with mentalist Zeena Krumbein (Toni explicit about the story’s Collette) as her crowd liaison, and wooing young nastier elements, especially as Stan and Lilith try performer Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara). to pull a con on dangerous gangster Ezra Grindle Stan is more of a calculating hustler than (Richard Jenkins). At the same time, he allows for he first appears, and he ingratiates himself with a bit more depth and sympathy for Stan, without Zeena and her husband, Pete (David Strathairn), ever excusing his destructive behavior. learning the complicated secret code that they deDel Toro makes the grotesque world of the veloped for their successful former nightclub act. carnival immersive and intriguing, and he does Later, Stan leaves the carnival, taking Molly with the same with the harsher urban noir setting of him and setting himself up as a master mentalist. the second half. Del Toro’s co-writer (and wife) What at first comes off as genuine curiosity and Kim Morgan is a film historian who’s written exwonder about performing starts to reveal itself as tensively about noir, and she provides the perfect greed and narcissism, as Stan uses his newfound foundation for del Toro’s world-building. That mentalism prowess to sell himself as a genuine world more closely resembles a 1940s movie than medium. it does the actual 1940s, and in that sense NightThe genius of Goulding’s film was in presentmare Alley fits in perfectly with del Toro’s other ing Stan (played by Tyrone Power) as a familiar fantastical visions. n

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 55

Spokane’s Water Monster fleshes out its live sound with prerecorded elements. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO

UPCOMING SHOWS HEAT SPEAK, MADELINE MCNEIL Fri, Dec. 17 at 8 pm Lucky You Lounge $10-$12 HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: A BIG BAND CHRISTMAS Dec. 17-18 at 7:30 pm & Dec. 18-19 at 2 pm Spokane Valley Summer Theatre $39

LIVE SOUND

DIGITAL BACKING

THEORY, 10 YEARS, EVA UNDER FIRE Fri, Dec. 17 at 8 pm Knitting Factory $25-$35

BANDS

BRUCE COCKBURN Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm Bing Crosby Theater $35-$45 FENIX FLEXIN Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm Knitting Factory $35-$50

How prerecorded backing sounds have become more prevalent in live music

BRUCE COCKBURN Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm Bing Crosby Theater $35-$45

BY HOWARD HARDEE

SPOKANE SYMPHONY: HOLIDAY POPS Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm & Sun, Dec. 19 at 2 pm The Fox $43-$92

ive music delivers a more powerful experience than listening to recordings. Seeing and hearing the physical performance of your favorite songs, while sharing a space with your favorite musicians, can be exhilarating. But the not-so-secret reality of many modern musical performances — especially those with elaborate stage shows synced with visuals — is that at least some percentage of the sound coming from the speakers isn’t produced in real time. That is to say, many artists boost their sound with prerecorded elements. Take, for example, the New York-based rock band X Ambassadors, which scored a hit with the 2015 single “Renegades.” As keyboardist Casey Harris recounted during a 2017 interview, he and his bandmates got tired of inconsistent tempos and sacrificing the full sound of their 2015 album, VHS. Though each member generates as much sound as possible — Harris often plays two keyboards simultaneously — they also play to a click track and about 20 percent of the group’s sound isn’t actually “live,” which isn’t unusual on the festival circuit.

56 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

“It’s one of those things where most bands do it but won’t admit it,” Harris said. Water Monster, the solo electronic rock project of Spokane musician Max Harnishfeger, also incorporates prearranged elements during live performances. He’s accompanied onstage by guitarist Scott Ingersoll, while Harnishfeger sings, plays bass and manipulates a sampler that provides a backing track with percussion and various sonic augmentations. He’d prefer to have a full band performing each instrumental part — and did add Caleb Ingersoll on drums and Branden Cate on synthesizers for the release of Water Monster’s full-length debut, Tensus — but says it’s not always possible for his solo project to have so many hands on deck. “It’s a necessary thing for a project like Water Monster, which is a singular vision throughout the composing, writing and recording process,” he says. “That’s something I’m doing all by myself, so there’s no way I could do that live without having some sort of prerecorded or prearranged elements playing along behind me.”

THE DEAD SOUTH Tue, Dec. 21 at 8 pm Knitting Factory $28 PIT, NAT PARK AND THE TUNNELS OF LOVE, FUN LADIES Thurs, Dec. 23 at 9 pm Baby Bar $5 Be sure to check with venues about vaccination/COVID test requirements.

Rob Kolar, frontman of the indie rock duo Kolars, said in a 2018 interview with The Inlander that his band’s embrace of “additional production elements” during live performances was partly because they couldn’t afford to bring more musicians on tour. With Kolar singing and playing guitar and Lauren Brown on percussion, the duo found power in a stripped-down sound. But infusing the second half of their sets with prerecorded bass accompaniment, piano parts and background vocals also lent mystique to their stage shows. “Some people don’t understand what’s going on and it’s kind of fun; kind of a Wizard of Oz vibe,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Wait, is there someone behind the curtain?’ But a lot of audiences don’t even notice, which is kind of interesting.” Pop duo Sofi Tukker cares more about creating shared experiences than impressing audiences with their fine motor skills. Speaking shortly after the release of the insidiously catchy 2018 single “Best Friend,” which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s dance chart, Sophie Hawley-Weld and Tucker Halpern discussed blurring the lines between live and recorded sounds during performances.

Sofi Tukker plays its “book tree.”

EKATERINA BELINSKAYA PHOTO

They sing and play bass and guitar onstage, but the rest of the sounds are programmed. In fact, they reserve some sections of their set for totally hands-free dance routines. Sofi Tukker’s form of performance art is represented by their self-made, 8-foottall stage apparatus called the “book tree,” which acts as both a percussion instrument and a visual cue that the audience can associate with the triggering of certain sounds. “At first, we tried to do everything, trying to trigger every beat and play every part,” Hawley-Weld said. “But we realized that’s not really the point. There’s a performance art and interactive element that also really matters to us: It’s bringing the music to life, trying to embody the music through movement, and really focusing on connecting with the people who showed up.” Not to mention, the bar has been raised for general sound quality over the past decade or so. Many concertgoers expect to hear spot-on performances of the songs they love, Harnishfeger says: “When people see a touring band that has put a lot of work into the production of their music, with the use of Auto-Tune and lots of the electronic elements that are popular today, people expect to go to the show and have the song sound like the Spotify track they listen to.” There’s always the potential for musicians to suck the sense of spontaneity out of their sets by leaning too hard on backing tracks, Harnishfeger acknowledges. But he believes that creating a shared experience with audiences should always be the overriding goal, and he’s unwilling to compromise his vocal performances for the sake of doing everything himself in the manner of a one-man band. “I think if I tried to make it all work in real time, my focus wouldn’t be on the audience and I wouldn’t be able to make a connection with people,” he says. “It might be impressive, but I find that I’d rather watch a show that makes me feel like I’m a part of something.” n

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DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 57

FILM SING WITH BING

What’s more classic Christmas than White Christmas? OK, sure, there are plenty of holiday films that hold up just as well, but here in the Inland Northwest White Christmas is extra special, as it stars beloved Spokane son Bing Crosby. Thus, the 1954 musical makes its return to the local big screen for not one, but two showings during this year’s Bing Crosby Holiday Film Festival, back after its 2020 pause. Those screenings (10:30 am and 7 pm) bookend afternoon showings of two other Bing holiday flicks, the classic Holiday Inn (1:30 pm) with costar Fred Astaire, and the less-familiar Road to Bali (4 pm). See all three or just one — tickets to the fest come with in-and-out access so you can do some last-minute shopping, grab lunch or hit up happy hour in between shows. — CHEY SCOTT Bing Crosby Holiday Film Festival • Sun, Dec. 19 from 10:30 am-7 pm • $21 • All ages • Bing Crosby Theater • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • bingcrosbytheater.com • 509-227-7638

MUSIC GOLD ANNIVERSARY

Bruce Cockburn is serious songwriting royalty in some circles, thanks to a career that spans a whopping 50 years now. The artists who’ve covered his tunes through the years are a diverse lot, including k.d. lang, Barenaked Ladies, Jerry Garcia, Anne Murray and Jimmy Buffett. In 2020 the Canadian was set to tour for the 50th anniversary of his debut album, but of course COVID put the kibosh on that. So now he’s back on the road giving it a go again, just as a double-album of his greatest hits arrives in stores this month, providing an expansive look at his topical folk and jazz-influenced rock sure to make up much of the setlist when he drops by Spokane a week before Christmas. — DAN NAILEN An Evening with Bruce Cockburn • Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm • $35$45 • All ages • Bing Crosby Theater • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • bingcrosbytheater.com • 509-227-7638

58 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

COMMUNITY ALL IS BRIGHT

The historic Campbell House is an exquisite experience any time of year, but things amp up even more for the holidays when the Kirtland Cutter-designed mansion is completely decked out. Decorated trees, evergreen garlands and poinsettias fill the main living spaces — a treat to see during any December visit, but that’s made even more memorable during the MAC’s special Campbell House Holidays event. This year’s three-day festivities include an onsite craft activity making an early 1900s-inspired calling card, and a scavenger hunt. Living history actors also appear as members of the Campbell family’s household staff, including their amiable cook Hulda, who’s making Christmas cookies in the kitchen. Reserve a time slot online, or stop by the admissions desk for tickets. — CHEY SCOTT Campbell House Holidays • Fri, Dec. 17-Sun, Dec. 19 from 12-4 pm • $9-$14 • All ages • Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture • 2316 W. First Ave. • northwestmuseum.org • 509-459-3931

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SPECIAL— e r o t S n I —

E e r F 1 t e G Buy 4

MUSIC HARK THE HERALD LOCALS SING

What’s the message at the end of pretty much every Christmas movie? The most important thing during the holiday season is being around those who you care about! With that in mind, Lucky You once again hosts a holiday special to bring the Spokane musical community together under one roof for a night of seasonal cheer. The lineup features indie rock and pop by Scott Ryan, Water Monster and Automatic Shoes, country from Jenny Anne Mannan, hiphop via T. S the Solution, singer-songwriters Caroline Fowler and Bob Riggs, and more guests performing both original tunes and Christmas classics. The concert raises funds for Spokane nonprofit Compassionate Addiction Treatment. The show is also being livestreamed, so if you don’t feel like braving the wintry weather, you can curl up in a blanket and watch from home. — SETH SOMMERFELD

Shop Online!

Watch product being made in s store with natural ingredients.

BeyoutifulBathbombsandMore.com 509-315-9608 • In Northtown Mall

Lucky You Holiday Special • Sat, Dec. 18 at 8 pm • $20-$25 • 21+ • Lucky You Lounge • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • luckyyoulounge.com • 509-474-0511

ARTS SUPER CHILL SHOPPING

Terrain’s BRRRZAAR is back at River Park Square for 2021, having been canceled in the chaos that was 2020. The one-day event runs 10 hours — plenty of time to check out nearly 80 local artisans working in clay, jewelry, bath products, wearable art and more, and still have time for a bite. Or a beer in the beer garden ($1 of which comes back to Terrain). Let the kids hang at the Mobius Discovery Center area while you listen to live local music from Caroline Fowler, Scotty Ingersoll and others. And if you’re thinking artsy gifts sound expensive, Terrain’s artisans offer a range of price points so everyone has a chance at snagging some chill this year. — CARRIE SCOZZARO BRRRZAAR • Sat, Dec. 18 from 10 am-8 pm • Free • River Park Square • 808 W. Main Ave. • terrainspokane.com/brrrzaar • 509-624-3945

COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER I FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW TO APPLY GO TO SREC911.ORG OR CALL (509) 532-8911

• ANSWERS EMERGENCY & NON-EMERGENCY CALLS • OUTSTANDING CUSTOMER SERVICE SKILLS • FULL TIME - $47,632 - $57,886 ANNUALLY • EXCELLENT BENEFITS • APPLY HERE: WWW.GOVERNMENTJOBS.COM/CAREERS/SREC FOLLOW US

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 59

FOUND CELLPHONE On 12/5 or 12/6 an iPhone was found in the parking lot of Prairie View Park on South Hill. It was turned in to the Spokane County Parks Department administration office located at 404 N. Havana St.

heart apart. I don’t expect that you’ll see this, but maybe it will help others when they need to have difficult conversations about ending friendships – just have the conversation.” PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT You find yourself heading west on I-90. You

PAY IT FORWARD A generous person spent $100 to cover the cost for everyone at Starbucks/Ash St on 12/8. A great reminder that even a cup of coffee can make someone’s day. Spread the love.

JEERS

CHEERS CHEERS AND JEERS AND CARTOON CHARACTERS Cheers to KREM 2 for talking about climate change as reality and hiring a well-educated morning weatherman who knows his stuff. And jeers to all the local weather girls, blond and otherwise, apparently hired for their Betty Boop “assets” prominently on view in tight dresses, cooing through their forecasts. It’s time to get serious about the weather, Betty. Catch a clue from Mr. Magoo, who is not nearsighted at all. ICY CONDITIONS ARE HERE. THANKS, CAREFUL DRIVERS! Two things: 1) Thank you, Dear Patient and Careful Drivers, for understanding that 4WD does NOT protect you and others from black ice when you slam on your brakes. Every person who decides to wake up 20 minutes earlier to de-ice, warm up and slowly drive his/her vehicle is most respected and appreciated. The rest of you need to SLOW DOWN and APPLY BRAKES CAREFULLY. 2) Cold weather brings about more illnesses — THANK YOU to those of you who have selflessly vaccinated for anything, especially flu and COVID. Oh, yes, and parents who refuse to vaccinate or mask in public — you need to STOP sending your sick kids to school and/or leaving empty shoes on the doorsteps of each building.

TO PEOPLE WHO GHOST OR FADE AWAY “To the friend (former friend?) who has been brushing me off/ignoring me altogether: I’m not sure this is the right column for this, but I wanted to say a few things, since I am respecting your wish to give you space and not contact you directly right now. What you did when you ignored my texts a few weeks ago was outright cruel. Giving someone the silent treatment is inexcusable. You did finally reply, for which I am grateful. I suffered a horrendous day thinking I’d never hear from you again, and I’m glad I did. I know it could have been worse. Although I did hear from you, I am grieving the very real possibility that that was the last communication we will ever have. I still don’t know why I went from being one of your closest friends (your words) to being completely dismissed. I think it finally dawned on me, after giving you months of the benefit of the doubt, that you didn’t want much or anything to do with me anymore when you didn’t even bother to text me happy birthday. I cried for weeks over that. You remembered me so kindly the past two years – what changed this year? I have some idea that maybe I was demanding more than you are willing or able to give, and you felt smothered? Exhausted? Just not interested anymore? I do think I deserve an explanation, although it won’t make the hurt go away or make the loss of our friendship easier to accept. ... Have you drifted away because you think it’s easier on both of us if you don’t tell me why you want to cut ties? Maybe it’s easier on you, but it’s ripping my

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never step foot inside their store nor will I recommend their tires to anyone especially their flat repair. By the time I got home, the tire had 15 pounds of pressure, I’ll take it off myself and take it to someone who will charge me to repair it, but at least it will be someone who cares for their customers.

of your short life. Everything comes and goes to the same place. Show some humility, and stop being such a worthless draw of breath. JUNK ARTISTS’ Jeers to the talentless “artists” who keep defacing public property. One of the many disappointing

It’s time to get serious about the weather, Betty.

take the Evergreen exit. You take a right turn. Behold, the lane is yours and yours alone. You need not stop to yield. In fact, it is the northbound Evergreen traffic that must yield to you. You ask how could this be? You ponder: don’t they have a green light? Yes, yes they do, but it is for their existing lanes, not for your brand new lane that was made just for you, dear user of the Evergreen exit. You may proceed, and while proceeding with caution is certainly warranted, stopping in the middle of an offramp is surely the more dangerous move here. Notice that there is no stop sign. Notice that there is no yield sign. Once you’re all together on your three lane northbound track, you can all change lane as necessary to get to your destination. Keep it moving, my good traveler. [Please don’t stop in the middle of the offramp.] NO GOOD DEAL I bought my tires and they said I can have free flat repair, but they didn’t say only if it didn’t inconvenience them. Three months later, today, I must’ve picked up a nail, so I drove over to the shop on Northwest Boulevard in Spokane and said I needed a flat tire repaired on my truck, I bought the tires here. They said they wouldn’t do it today as they are too busy until at least 10 pm tonight. So that means the $1,000 I spent on tires and their mediocre free flat repair is only good if it doesn’t inconvenience them. I will

SOUND OFF

1. Visit Inlander.com/isawyou by 3 pm Monday. 2. Pick a category (I Saw You, You Saw Me, Cheers or Jeers). 3. Provide basic info: your name and email (so we know you’re real). 4. To connect via I Saw You, provide a non-identifying email to be included with your submission — like “petals327@yahoo.com,” not “j.smith@comcast.net.”

THE DIVIDED STATES 12/9 I could not agree with you more. The order from the secretary of Health requires Washingtonians to wear face coverings in public indoor spaces, regardless of vaccination status with limited exceptions and exemptions. People are individually responsible to comply with this order; however, businesses (including COSTCO) are also responsible to enforce this with their employees and customers. NOTE: To the blonde maskless primadonna who was verbally attacking an older man over this issue this past Wednesday at Costco on Sprague, STAY HOME or WEAR A MASK. Get a grip... JUSTICE FOR TURKEYS To the a@#$holes running over the Turkeys near Manito Park. You really are unempathetic and worthless humans. What would possess you to maim an innocent life? No doubt you feel pride as you murder, or permanently cripple, a living soul to get somewhere five seconds earlier. Instead of slowing down and taking time to appreciate something that makes our neighborhood unique, you run over their legs or crush them with your car. You are everything that is wrong with human nature. No wonder life on our planet is disappearing at an alarming rate. I try to believe human beings aren’t a plague to all other life, but you really make that difficult. I hope you shatter your femur, and have to walk with that for the rest

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aspects of this is that the graffiti around Spokane isn’t even interesting. Rather, it looks like pathetic infant scribbling. At least in larger cities, it’s at least interesting; but those who deface property in Spokane seem to be so devoid of talent that their garbage just looks like that. It’s too bad cameras can’t be set up to capture the images of these fools. If possible, we could have a Top 10 List of the most talentless “artists” in Spokane w/ a Facebook page devoted to their idiocy. Currently my top picks for talentless fools would be the person who writes “love” all over town as well as the fool who scribbles all over the supports of the Greene Street Bridge. Thank you to city crews who continue to paint over their garbage. It must be mundane to continue to have to paint over garbage again & again. n

THIS WEEK'S ANSWERS R E E L

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A M E S A L L U A G R A M M A I R P I G D A Y S S I C C H A R N E R T W O T R D O I N S O D A

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A R N L O P R F O R O R M H E R S A O C O T T R N E T O E S O P I P L I N E S A D A L I H E A H Y D

CALENDAR GIVEAWAY

Fri. 12/17 vs Portland Winterhawks

Sat. 12/18 vs Portland Winterhawks

First 1,000 fans through the gates will receive a Spokane Chiefs poster courtesy of Avista Utilities.

First 3,000 fans through the gates will receive a Spokane Chiefs wall calendar courtesy of Fred Meyer.

Game Times:

60 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

WALL

POSTER GIVEAWAY

Presented By:

7 PM

C A S K

P E P E

NOTE: I Saw You/Cheers & Jeers is for adults 18 or older. The Inlander reserves the right to edit or reject any posting at any time at its sole discretion and assumes no responsibility for the content.

Thur 12/16, Inlander

WAY TO SAVE

O E D

Buy Tickets @ spokanechiefs.com

Buy Tickets

RELATIONSHIPS

EVENTS | CALENDAR

BENEFIT

FILL-THE-BAG BOOK SALE Visit any branch of the Spokane County Library District to buy a bag full of books (while supplies last). Reusable totes are $5 at the service desk; fill it with used books, CDs, DVDs and more from the “Fill the Bag” shelves. Through Dec. 31. scld.org HUTTON SETTLEMENT CHRISTMAS TREE SALE The Hutton Tree Farm offers a wide selection of pre-cut wild and farmed trees, u-cut options, fresh garland and wreaths for purchase. All proceeds fund Hutton’s on-campus youth-led education programs. Mon-Fri 12-6 pm, Sat-Sun 10 am-6 pm (while supplies last) through Dec. 17. Hutton Settlement Children’s Home, 9907 E. Wellesley Ave. huttonsettlement.org SANTA EXPRESS This locally organized holiday retail store is for kids ages 4-12 (encouraged), many of whom make this shopping experience part of their holiday tradition. With the assistance of an elf, kids shop for everyone on their list from a wide selection of gifts priced from $1 to $10. For those who prefer to shop from home, an online shopping experience is also available at santaexpress.org. Proceeds benefit Vanessa Behan. Open Mon-Fri 11 am-7 pm, Sat 10 am-7 pm, Sun 11 am-5 pm through Dec. 23. River Park Square, 808 W. Main Ave. santaexpress.org (509-415-3506)

COMEDY

JOSH BLUE Following his groundbreaking win on NBC’s Last Comic Standing in 2006, Blue has risen through the ranks to become a well-established headliner. Dec. 16-18 at 7:30 pm; also Dec. 17-18 at 10:30 pm. $15-$23. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com (509-318-9998) HA!MARK HOLIDAY SPECIAL The BDT players improvise a holiday movie full of twists, turns and romance. Dec. 17 at 7:30 pm. Rated for general audiences. $8. Blue Door Theatre, 815 W. Garland Ave. bluedoortheatre.com JO KOY Koy is fresh off the release of his highly anticipated Netflix special “Comin’ In Hot” with all-new material. Dec. 17, 8 pm. $39.50-$79.50. First Interstate Center for the Arts, 334 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. firstinterstatecenter.org (509-279-7000) SAFARI Blue Door’s version of “Whose Line,” a fast-paced improv show with a few twists and turns added. Rated for mature audiences/ages 16+. Reservations recommended. Saturdays from 7:30-9 pm. $8. Blue Door Theatre, 815 W. Garland Ave. bluedoortheatre.com

COMMUNITY

A CONTEMPLATIVE CHRISTMAS... THROUGH TREES Walk through an indoor forest of beautifully decorated live Christmas trees that tell the story of mankind and God, leading up to Christmas day and beyond. Includes Christmas music, hot cocoa and cookies. Dec. 15-19 from 4-8 pm. Free. Undercliff House, 703 W. Seventh Ave. contemplativechristmas.com (509-994-6305) CRESCENT HOLIDAY WINDOWS Five window bays on the south side of the Grand display scenes featuring refurbished figurines rescued from the basement of the former Crescent Department Store. Windows were designed by local artists Stephanie Bogue, Melanie

Lieb, Derrick Freeland and Jazmin Ely under the creative direction of Tiffany Patterson. Window painting by Mallory Battista. Through Jan. 2; Fri-Sat from 12-10 pm and Sun-Thu from 3-8 pm. See more found display items from the Crescent in the windows at the Fox Theater and the MAC. Davenport Grand Hotel, 333 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. davenporthotelcollection.com DROP IN & PLAY Join staff, volunteers and members of the community to play board and card games together in a relaxing, positive environment. Play a game you already know or learn how to play a new one. Thursdays from 12-2 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org THE FESTIVAL OF TREES The community is invited to view trees on display at The Center adjacent to the Colfax Library. Cast a vote for your favorite tree in-person or online for the “People’s Choice” award. Mon-Fri 10 am-6 pm, Sat 1-5 pm through Dec. 28. Free. Colfax Library, 102 S. Main St. whitcolib. org/events (509-397-4366) JOURNEY TO THE NORTH POLE A festive lake cruise across Lake Coeur d’Alene while viewing more than 1.5 million twinkling holiday lights, and a visit with Santa Claus and his elves at the North Pole waterfront toy workshop. Daily departure times are 5:30, 6:30 and 7:30 pm, through Jan. 2 from the Resort Plaza Shops. $10.50-$26.50. The Coeur d’Alene Resort, 115 S. Second. cdacruises.com (208-765-4000) LIGHT UP THE NIGHT Riverfront’s holiday tree walk shines a light on Spokane’s nonprofit, community-centered organizations. Groups were invited to decorate a tree highlighting their organization’s mission. View the window display and outdoor trees at the Riverfront Pavilion and visit the Trail of Lights all around the park. Through Jan. 2. Free. Riverfront Park, 507 N. Howard St. riverfrontspokane.org LOUIS COMFORT TIFFANY: TREASURES FROM THE DRIEHAUS COLLECTION A celebration of the artistry and craftsmanship of the Tiffany artworks from Chicago’s distinguished Richard H. Driehaus Collection, highlighting masterworks never before presented in a comprehensive exhibition. Open Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through Feb. 13. $7-$12. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931) MAKING SPIRITS BRIGHT Each year, the Extreme Team lights up Cowley Park for kids at Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital. This year, a few additional trees were decorated, and inspirational messages fill the sidewalks. Through Jan. 31; site music daily from noon9 pm. Free. Cowley Park, Sixth Ave. and Division St. kxly.com/features/ extreme-team/ MANITO HOLIDAY LIGHTS This event transforms the decades-long Spokane tradition of holiday lights in the Gaiser Conservatory into a more COVIDfriendly experience by moving outdoors. Dec. 10-16 (drive-thru only) from 6:30-9:30 pm and Dec. 17-19 from 6:308:30 pm (walk-thru only). Donation accepted. Manito Park, 1800 S. Grand Blvd. thefriendsofmanito.org/holiday NORTHWEST WINTERFEST A holiday lantern display and cultural celebration featuring dozens of lighted holiday lantern displays and immersive experiences in holiday cultures of the world.

Open daily from 5-9 pm through Jan. 2. $12-$18. Spokane County Fair & Expo Center, 404 N. Havana St. northwestwinterfest.com (509-477-1766) SMART GOALS FOR SMALL BUSINESS Prepare your business for the new year by setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) goals and building a plan to achieve them. Registration required. Dec. 16, 12-1 pm. Free. Online at scld.org THURSDAY NIGHT LIVE! Join the MAC each third Thursday of the month. December’s event features the Riley Gray Trio playing piano jazz and more from 5:30-7:30 pm. Purchase a drink (water, beer and wine available), wander the galleries, see one of the Crescent displays and enjoy an artist reception for Jeff Weir and Tanden Launder. Dec. 16, 5-8 pm. $6; free for members. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org WINTER GLOW SPECTACULAR The annual outdoor holiday lights display returns, offering the option to drive and view the display, or walk through the park. Daily through Jan. 1. Free. Orchard Park, 20298 E. Indiana Ave. CAMPBELL HOUSE HOLIDAYS Celebrate the holidays in the historic Campbell House. Enjoy the Christmas tree, decorations, an activity and craft project, plus interactions with living history characters Hulda Olson, the cook and other members of the household, as they prepare for the holidays. Dec. 17-19 from 1-4 pm. $9-$14. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931) LGBTQ+ SENIORS OF THE INW All LGBTQ+ seniors are invited to join weekly Zoom meetings, Fridays at 4 pm. “Senior” is roughly ages 50+. If interested, email NancyTAvery@comcast.net to be added to the email list. Free. facebook. com/SpokaneLGBTSeniors WHEATLAND BANK HORSE & CARRIAGE RIDES Enjoy an 8-minute loop through the scenic Riverfront Park. Preregistration required. Through Dec. 24; Fri from 3-8 pm, Sat-Sun from 12-5 pm. Special Christmas Eve hours are 12-3 pm. Free. downtownspokane.org ELVES WORKSHOP Drop in to make cards and gifts for your loved ones and yourself. Activities include decorating a doll and glitter art. Dec. 18, 12-5 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org/events/elvesworkshop (509-279-0299) TRIVIA: DISNEY IN THE WINTER Trivia includes questions about Disney films that take place in winter, are about winter sports and have characters who thrive in the chilly frost. All ages. Registration required. Dec. 18, 2-3 pm. Free. Online at scld.org WINTER WONDERLAND The Wonder Building’s inaugural winter market with activities, live music, movies, arts and gifts, Christmas trees, complimentary hot cocoa and more. Dec. 18 from 10 am-2 pm. Free. The Wonder Building, 835 N. Post St. fb.me/e/1T4pVlbVM TURMOIL IN SANTA’S WORKSHOP: A FAMILY MYSTERY EVENT It’s time for the annual pre-Christmas toy production meeting in Christmas Village. As expected, Dank the Elf staged an enormous protest about the elves having a break, but Santa had the final say. Dec. 22, 6-9 pm. $19. Crime Scene Entertainment, 1701 N. Fourth St., CdA facebook. com/events/243049457792963 (208369-3695)

Advice Goddess BED OVER HEELS?

I’m a 29-year-old guy with a “keep it casual” relationship history, but I can’t stop thinking about this new girl at work. Beyond not wanting her to date anyone else, I don’t want someone to hurt her or make her sad. No other woman has ever made me feel this way. How do I know whether this is lust or the beginnings of falling in love? —Confused

AMY ALKON

It’s easy to believe you’re “in love” when you’re really just in lust. To be fair, lust is a form of love...if you broaden the field to stuff like “I love, love, LOVE your boobs in that inappropriately tight sweater.” In other words, lust is animal attraction, so the “inner beauty” that’s elemental to loving somebody is immaterial. I know this firsthand, having repeatedly been the target of interspecies sex predators, large and small. A giant male goat chased me across my friend’s parents’ farm, trying to mount me — while my friends looked on laughing. A previous perv was six inches high and green: a friend’s lorikeet (a kind of parrot). He ran after me on his little bird feet all around another friend’s apartment, squawking the oh-so-sensual pickup line, “Otto, bird! Otto, bird!” I bolted into the bathroom, slammed the door, and refused to come out till he was behind bars. #beaktoo Complicating the detangling of “love or lust?” is another important question: “Love or infatuation?” Falling in love is not love. It’s infatuation — an intense, usually lust-fueled obsession with our idea of who a person is: a projection of our hopes and romantic fantasies that often has little relationship to who they really are. That said, the sheer strength and intoxicating nature of infatuation — like being blind drunk on romantic possibility instead of Jim Beam — often leads to premature feelings of “We’re perfect for each other!” People tend to believe the more they learn about a new person they’re into, the more into them they’ll be — a la “to know them is to love them.” However, psychologist Michael I. Norton finds that when we have the hots for someone we barely know, we’re prone to read ambiguity — foggy, partial information about them — as signs the person is like us. These (perceived!) similarities amp up our “liking” for them — at first. However, as time goes by, we can’t help but notice all the dissimilarities poking up, which leads us to like them less and less — a la “To know them is to loathe them.” In other words, rushing into a relationship of any permanence is the stuff dreams are made of — if you’ve always dreamed of being financially and emotionally incinerated in a grotesquely ugly divorce. “Buyer beware” in love is best exercised in two ways: The first is “buyer be seriously slow.” Consider putting the person you’re dating on secret probation for a year (or more). This will give you time to not just see the best in them but give it much-needed company: glimpses of the worst. Second, explore whether your compatibility with a person is surface — “I love sushi! She loves sushi!” — or sustainably deep. The ideal tool for assessing this is the best definition of love I’ve ever read, and by “best,” I mean the most practically useful. It’s by Ayn Rand. (And no, I’m not one of the glassy-eyed worshippers of everything she ever said or wrote, but she nailed it on this.) “Love is a response to values,” writes Rand. “It is with a person’s sense of life that one falls in love — with that essential sum, that fundamental stand or way of facing existence, which is the essence of a personality. One falls in love with the embodiment of the values that formed a person’s character, which are reflected in his widest goals or smallest gestures. ... It is one’s own sense of life that acts as the selector,” identifying one’s own core values in the other person. Using this “values model” to determine compatibility requires some preliminary work: figuring out your own values, meaning the principles you care most about — the guiding standards for the sort of person you want to be. If you’re in the “gotta get started on that” stage, recognizing what isn’t love — those love fakers, lust and infatuation — should help you avoid sliding into the committed relationship nightmare zone. Ultimately, love is nautical: It’s both the ship that launched a thousand sappy cliches and, more vitally, a lifeboat. In lifeboat form, it gets romantic partners through the worst of times, major and, um, somewhat less major — like when your bae spends your entire date night searching Hulu for a movie to watch. Love is dropping your phone in the goldfish bowl to keep yourself from whispering, “Hey, Siri, where’s the legal line between murder and involuntary manslaughter?” n ©2021, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. • Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405 or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)

DECEMBER 16, 2021 INLANDER 61

EVENTS | CALENDAR WINTER MARKET AT THE PAVILION Riverfront’s second annual Winter Market hosts 35 local vendors and artisans offering a variety of goods, including handmade items, prepared food, gifts and more. Wednesdays from 3-7 pm through Dec. 22. Free. Pavilion at Riverfront, 574 N. Howard St. riverfrontspokane.com

FILM

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE Free hot chocolate is available before each showing of this holiday classic. Each showtime limited to 125 guests; masks required regardless of vaccination status. Dec. 16-19 at 6 pm. $6. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127) THIRD THURSDAY MATINEE MOVIE: THE ART OF THE STEAL KSPS Saturday Night Cinema co-host Shaun Higgins revives his popular classic movie series featuring four films from different genres that focus on art. “The Art of the Steal” is a documentary about the relocation of Philadelphia’s Barnes Museum of Art from its original location in the suburbs, to the cultural heart of Philadelphia. Dec. 16, 1-3 pm. $7. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931) UNITED BY WATER In conjunction with the MAC’s exhibit “Awakenings,” are regular public screenings of the documentary “United by Water” created by the Upper Columbia Unified Tribes (UCUT). Saturdays at 1 pm; first and third Wednesdays at noon through Jan. 31. Included with admission. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org (509-456-3931) BING CROSBY HOLIDAY FILM FESTIVAL Watch a selection of Bing Crosby’s holiday films in the theater where he got his start in show business. Films shown are White Christmas, Holiday Inn and Road to Bali. Dec. 19, 10:30 am-7 pm. $21. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. bingcrosbytheater.com (509-227-7404)

FOOD & DRINK

COCKTAIL CLASS An evening with the Tavolàta bar team to learn three new recipes. Dec. 16, 5:30-7 pm. $65/person; $120/pair. Tavolata, 221 N. Wall St. ethanstowellrestaurants.com (509-606-5600) GINGERBREAD BUILD-OFF The largest fundraiser of the year for Christ Kitchen. Vote for your favorite gingerbread creation and purchase your own cookie decorating kit to take home. Kits available through Dec. 23. Northern Quest Resort & Casino, 100 N. Hayford Rd. northernquest.com (877-871-6772) THE GOLDEN HANDLE PROJECT ANNIVERSARY PARTY! Join The Golden Handle project in celebrating its first anniversary. A portion of proceeds fund scientific research in areas such as neurodegenerative disease and cancer. Celebrate and enter to win door prizes and special merchandise with every beer purchase. Dec. 17, 4-8 pm. Free. The Golden Handle Project, 111 S. Cedar St. goldenhandle.org ROCKET WINE CLASS Rocket Market hosts weekly wine classes; sign up in advance. Fridays at 7 pm. Price varies. Rocket Market, 726 E. 43rd Ave. rocketmarket.com (509-343-2253) BREAKFAST & PHOTOS WITH SANTA Have breakfast with Santa and get affordable, professional photos available before you leave. Breakfast includes pan-

62 INLANDER DECEMBER 16, 2021

cakes, eggs, sausage, juice, hot chocolate, applesauce, milk and coffee and tea. Also includes activities and gifts for children, and live Christmas music by Taylor Belote on steel drums. Free parking. Dec. 18 from 9 am-noon. Prices vary. Southside Community Center, 3151 E. 27th Ave. soutsidescc.org (509-535-0803) GERMAN-AMERICAN SOCIETY OF SPOKANE CHRISTMAS DINNER The society hosts its special Christmas dinner of “gesiedetes hühnchen,” simmered chicken in a rich cream sauce, prepared by chefs Donna and Harold Kellams. A special recipe for traditional German warm spiced wine is also served. Reservations limited, call 509-954-6964. Dec. 18, 6:30-10 pm. $20. Deutsches Haus, 25 W. Third Ave. germanamericansociety-spokane.org KILL THE KEG & SERVICE INDUSTRY NIGHT This weekly special includes $2 off select GHP beer, $1 off select guest beer and a 20% discount for service industry patrons. Tuesdays from 3-9 pm. The Golden Handle Project, 111 S. Cedar St. goldenhandle.org (509-868-0264) MEDICAL PERSONNEL APPRECIATION NIGHT All medical and healthcarerelated personnel, students, staff and professionals receive a 20% discount off all GHP beer and food. Wednesdays from 3-9 pm. The Golden Handle Project, 111 S. Cedar St. goldenhandle.org

MUSIC

DICKENS CAROLERS Dressed for the occasion with top hats and bow ties, the Coeur d’Alene Dickens Carolers sing warming holiday melodies in and around the resort. Wed-Sat from 6-9 pm, Sun from 11 am-2 pm through Dec. 23. Free. The Coeur d’Alene Resort, 115 S. Second. cdaresort.com (208-765-4000) PIANIST DANEK BLACK Enjoy live holiday music on the Davenport lobby’s grand piano. Daily from 3:30-6:30 pm through Dec. 23. Free. Historic Davenport Hotel, 10 S. Post St. davenporthotelcollection.com (800-899-1482) DJ NIGHT ON THE ICE Get your ‘skate’ on with DJ A1 for themed nights, music, lights, contests and more every Friday from 6-9 pm (excluding 12/24) in December and January. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. riverfrontspokane.com (509-625-6600) HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: A BIG BAND CHRISTMAS Sixteen of the region’s top performers join a 16-piece orchestra for a 1940s/50s-style Christmas cabaret featuring favorite holiday songs. Dec. 17-18 at 7:30 pm, Dec. 18-19 at 2 pm. $22-$39. Central Valley High School, 821 S. Sullivan Rd. svsummertheatre.com AN EVENING WITH BRUCE COCKBURN Since his self-titled debut in 1970, the Canadian singer-songwriter has issued a steady stream of acclaimed albums every couple of years. Dec. 18, 8 pm. $35-$45. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. bingcrosbytheater.com SATURDAY WITH THE SYMPHONY: FIDDLE ME THIS A string quartet demonstrates the various string instruments found in the orchestra including the violin, viola, cello and bass. After the musical lesson, enjoy a holiday book reading. Dec. 18, 11 am-12:30 pm. Free. Coeur d’Alene Public Library, 702 E. Front Ave. cdalibrary.org (208-769-2315) SPOKANE SYMPHONY HOLIDAY POPS WITH THE SWEEPLINGS Holiday Pops is an annual favorite with Christmas music, carol singing and a visit from Santa.

This year’s special guests are Spokane’s talented Cami Bradley, finalist from “America’s Got Talent,” and her musical partner Whitney Dean. Together, they’re the nationally acclaimed pop-folk duo, The Sweeplings. Dec. 18 at 8 pm and Dec. 19 at 2 pm. $43-$73. Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox, 1001 W. Sprague Ave. spokanesymphony.org (509-624-1200) HOLY NAMES’ HOLIDAY CONCERT SERIES Tune in to Holy Names’ YouTube channel for a holiday concert featuring faculty, students and friends. Dec. 19 at 2 pm. Free. youtube.com/channel/UCu4TPEyVChJVmVld7uGwBYQ WEDNESDAY EVENING CONTRA DANCE Join the Spokane Folklore Society each Wednesday for contra dancing. First-time dancers get a coupon for a free dance night. Contra is danced to a variety of musical styles: Celtic, Quebecois, Old Time, New England, or Southern Appalachian music from live bands. All dances are taught and walked through, then called to live music. Wednesdays from 7:30-9:30 pm. $7/members; $10/general (18 and under free). Women’s Club, 1428 W. Ninth Ave. (509-869-5997)

SPORTS & OUTDOORS

HOLIDAYS AT SCHWEITZER Enjoy all the holiday season has to offer on the mountain and in Schweitzer Village. Special events and promotions for the holidays offered Dec. 17-Jan. 2. See website for details. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com SPOKANE CHIEFS VS. PORTLAND WINTERHAWKS Regular season match. Face coverings required for all guests ages 5+. Special: Avista “Way to Save” poster (Dec. 17) and Fred Meyer wall calendar (Dec. 18) giveaways. Dec. 17, 7 pm and Dec. 18, 7 pm. $17-$37. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanechiefs.com CROSS COUNTRY SKI LESSON Learn the basics of cross-country skiing at Mt. Spokane. Lessons are taught by Spokane Nordic Ski Association’s certified instructors. Additional information emailed after registration. Sessions offered on select dates from December through March. $34/$59. Register at spokanerec. org (509-755-2489) EAGLE WATCHING CRUISES A two-hour cruise on Lake Coeur d’Alene to view some of the 100s of American bald eagles on their annual migration, stopping to feed on lake-bound salmon. Cruises offered Sat-Sun from 12-2 pm between Dec. 4-19, and daily from 12-2 pm Dec. 26-Jan. 2. $16.50-$22.50. Coeur d’Alene Resort, 115 S. Second. cdacruises.com MT. SPOKANE SNOWSHOE TOUR Learn the basics of snowshoeing during this guided hike on snowshoe trails around Mount Spokane. Pre-trip information emailed after registration. Fee includes snowshoes, instruction, walking poles, trail fees, guides and transportation. Meet at Yoke’s Fresh Market in Mead. Ages 13+. Dec. 18-19, Dec. 26, Jan. 1, 8, 22 from 9 am-1 pm. $25/$29. spokanerec. org (509-755-2489) CHEAP SKATE TUESDAY Free skate rentals are included with each paid admission, every Tuesday during regular hours through Feb. 22. $5.95-$7.95. Numerica Skate Ribbon, 720 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. my.spokanecity.org/riverfrontspokane YOUTH WINTER ADVENTURES Spokane parks hosts this winter break camp where kids can learn how to cross-country ski

and snowshoe at Mt. Spokane State Park, plus partake in other outdoor winter activities. Transportation, trail fees and equipment provided. Ages 9-12. Sessions are Dec. 21-22 and 28-29 from 9 am-4 pm each day. $99. Northeast Community Center, 4001 N. Cook St. spokanerec.org SKI WITH SANTA Santa is skiing around Schweitzer before he begins his travels around the world. Catch him on the slopes with Mrs. Claus, cruising around several beginner and intermediate runs. Dec. 23-24 from 1-3:30 pm. Schweitzer, 10,000 Schweitzer Mountain Rd. schweitzer.com/event/ski-with-santa

THEATER

THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER! A holiday comedy adapted from the best-selling young adult book, featuring roles for children and adults, a few favorite Christmas carols and lots of laughs. Dec. 10-11, 16-18 at 7 pm, Dec. 11 and 18 at 3 pm, Dec. 19 at 2 pm. $15/adults; $13/students, seniors, military. TAC at the Lake, 22910 E. Appleway Ave. tacat thelake.com ELLEN TRAVOLTA PRESENTS: SAVING CHRISTMAS Ellen Travolta, Molly Allen and Abbey Crawford read and tell stories, sing songs, and bring a little brightness to your holiday. Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sun at 5 pm through Dec. 19. $30. The Coeur d’Alene Resort, 115 S. Second. Cdachristmas.com (208-765-4000) BABES IN TOYLAND Wicked Uncle Barnaby runs a toy shop with his comicruffian assistants and turns children into dolls and sells them for gold in this Christmas classic. Nov. 26-Dec. 19; show times vary. $12-$16. Spokane Children’s Theatre, 2727 N. Madelia. spokanechildrenstheatre.org (509-328-4886) TRADITIONS OF CHRISTMAS A Radio City Music Hall-style show for all ages. Throughout the show, favorite Christmas classics are brought to life with song and dance, including choreographed kick line tap numbers and a cast of who don over 300 costumes. Dec. 10-22; shows are Friday-Sunday (times vary). $23-$36. Kroc Center, 1765 W. Golf Course Rd. traditionsofchristmasnw.com (208-667-1865)

VISUAL ARTS

CUP OF JOY Trackside’s 8th annual group invitational of drinking vessels features over 150 ceramic cups in many forms, colors and treatments. Wed-Fri from 11 am-5 pm through Jan. 7. Trackside Studio, 115 S. Adams St. tracksidestudio.net FAST TRASH The final Chase Gallery exhibit of 2021 invites viewers to look in a new way at something that participating artist Thom Caraway describes as having become “so ubiquitous as to be invisible.” Namely: trash. Mon-Fri from 8 am-5 pm through Dec. 30. Free. Chase Gallery, 808 W. Spokane Falls Blvd. chasegallery. org (509-321-9416) ON THE EDGE: LIVING THE ANTHROPOCENE The artwork of Northwest artists Ann Chadwick Reid and Natalie Niblack recognizes the impact of climate change on marine and forest environments of the Pacific Northwest. Mon-Fri from 9 am-5 pm through Jan. 13. Free. EWU Gallery of Art, 140 Art Building, Cheney campus. ewu.edu/cale/programs/artORNAMENT & SMALL WORKS SHOW This annual show features small works and ornaments made by over 35 local artists, and most pieces are under $50 each. Mon-Fri from 10 am-5 pm and Sat from 10 am-4

pm through Dec. 23. Free. Spokane Art School, 811 W. Garland Ave. spokaneartschool.net (509-325-1500) UNWRAP THE CREATIVE: 25TH SMALL WORKS SHOW This two-month-long, yearly exhibit is displayed up until Christmas, and features more than 100 new artists, consisting of approximately 1,500 pieces total, all by local artists. Through Dec. 24, open daily from 11 am-6 pm. Free. The Art Spirit Gallery, 415 Sherman Ave., Coeur d’Alene. theartspiritgallery. com (208-765-6006) SARANAC ART PROJECTS: ANNUAL SMALL WORKS SHOW & SALE: This annual show features small, affordable, original works of art by Saranac members and invited guests. Come browse and buy original art for your personal collection or for unique gifts this holiday season. Participating artists: Ann Porter, Chris Tyllia, Jenny Hyde, Josh Hobson, Kurt Madison, Lisa Nappa, Mariah Boyle, Posie Kalin, Reinaldo Gil Zambrano, Tobe Harvey, Margot Casstevens, Roger Ralston, Dan McCann, Mary Farrell, Harry Mestyanek and Dustin Regul. Open FriSat from 12-8 pm through Dec. 31. Free. Saranac Art Projects, 25 W. Main Ave. facebook.com/events/437957524590018 BRRRZAAR Terrain’s annual winter arts marketplace showcases locally handmade goods and artwork from dozens of artists and makers whose booths are spread across the three levels of River Park Square. Dec. 18, 10 am-8 pm. Free. River Park Square, 808 W. Main Ave. terrainspokane.com (509-624-3945)

WORDS

AUNTIE’S BOOK CLUB: BOOKS IN TRANSLATION Host Jai (he/him) has been selling books for a little over half a decade and reading books for a little over three decades. He has a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from EWU and a particular fondness for Angela Carter, Thomas Bernhard, Jean Genet, Marguerite Duras, Julio Cortazar and his cats. Meets monthly on the third Friday at 7 pm; see website for current title. Free. Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main Ave. auntiesbooks.com (509-838-0206) DROP IN & WRITE Aspiring writers are invited to be a part of a supportive writers’ community. Bring works in progress to share, get inspired with creative prompts and spend some focused time writing. Hosted by local writers Jenny Davis and Hannah Engel. Tuesdays from 5:30-7 pm. Free. Spark Central, 1214 W. Summit Pkwy. spark-central.org BROKEN MIC Spokane’s longest-running weekly poetry open mic. All ages, however, this is a free speech event. Food and drink specials available. Wednesdays from 6:30-9 pm. Free. Neato Burrito, 827 W. First Ave. facebook.com/pages/ Neato-Burrito/115509695145435 AUNTIE’S BOOK CLUB: SCI-FI & FANTASY Host Ness (they/them) has been reading science fiction and fantasy books since they were a kid, finding those stories to be one of the only places they could find other people as weird as they are. This love has only increased as speculative fiction has become a haven for queer authors, characters, and queer-normative settings. Ness’s goal is to provide an inclusive space for people of all identities to discuss fiction that represents them, with a focus on fantasy and science fiction. Meets on the fourth Saturday of the month at 7 pm. See website for current title. Free. Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main. auntiesbooks.com

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Inlander 12/16/2021

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NORTHEAST WASHINGTON’S TOURISM PLANS