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56 20TH ANNIVERSARY OCTOBER 24, 2013
RAJAH BOSE PHOTO PUBLISHED 9/10/09
JESS WALTER JUST RUINED SOMEONE’S LIFE We profile local author Jess Walter, as his book The Financial Lives of the Poets hits it big BY LUKE BAUMGARTEN
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wo men walk into a 7-Eleven. (Stop me if you’ve — are rummaging around the snack food aisle. High as hell, heard this one.) making an incredible racket. Because they’re out of milk, and because their Both of these men were once respected newspaper journalchildren will want milk in the morning, and because it’s too ists. Each is now, admittedly, a mediocre poet. With their damn late to get milk anywhere else — keen, reportorial eyes for detail and their two men walk into a 7-Eleven. bush-league ears for meter, they spin the Both have left their stately, hundredscene into a herky free-verse poem that year-old homes, bought at relative begins: bargains because they sit on lots at the Here they are again — the bent boys, baked brink of a steep real-estate precipice and buzzed boys, wasted, red-eyed, dry-mouth SPECIAL SNOW NEWS PULLOUT CULTURE BYRNE RETURNS called the “transitional neighborhood.” high boys, coursing narrow bright aisles FOOD WINES FOR VALENTINE’S The men have left their beautiful wives hunting food as fried as they are … and their sleeping children. They’ve And then the paths of the two men slalomed down that metaphorical black diverge. diamond called the American dream The first, a guy named Matt Prior, in late-model Nissan Maximas, making is offered a hit from a glass hash pipe. the descent from upper-middle-class He declines at first, but gets hustled into neighborhood to near-ghetto in four city driving the bangers to a party. On the blocks. Flat. way, he yields to their advances, getting They’ve gone out looking for 2%, ripped on weed that is orders-of-magnitude SOLO MISSION A LOCAL MAN’S RACE AGAINST TIME, FROSTBITE AND INSANITY and one or two more esoteric things, but more potent than the nut-brown shake he 18 we’ll get to those later. What matters remembers smoking as a youth. Feb. 12, 2009 right now is this: As the men enter the Over the course of — how many hours convenience store, they are shocked and again? 24? 36? — half to completely high maybe a little frightened, but also inefthe whole time, Prior convinces himself fably drawn to the spectacle they find. that all the problems in his life, numerous and suffocating, A group of ruffians, burnouts — gang bangers, maybe can be solved by buying this plant-derived, hydroponically
OUR FAVORITE COVER
FEBRUARY 12 — 18, 2009 FREE
The year began much as the previous one had, with much talk of the RECESSION and building/housing woes, including the stalling of KENDALL YARDS (1/1), later to become the Inlander’s new home. We enlightened readers by finding 10 local JOBS that were thriving because others were not (3/5). They included repo man, goldmonger and arms dealer. SPOKANE VALLEY’S sixth birthday offered plenty of food for thought; we discussed in a cover story (2/26) how it would like to become a more “vibrant, walkable city.” In another community, we reported on the Kalispel tribe’s fight to rescue their native language, SALISH (5/28). In music, BEN FOLDS turned his songs into “big, fat sound explosions” thanks to a collaboration with the Spokane Symphony at the Fox (10/15). MICHAEL JACKSON’S death had a profound effect on us, even if he wasn’t a hometown son (7/2). We also met the mothers, accountants and medical students behind the (still popular) PASTIES AND PADDLES burlesque troupe (5/28). The SUMMER GUIDE that year (6/11) went DIY, teaching folks how to make Slip ‘n Slides, hold backyard garden parties and build their own guitars. For those not wanting to go DIY, Silverwood Theme Park opened a screamin’ new ROLLER COASTER called Aftershock that had us in an uproar. Because of lean times, more people tapped into a renewable resource — their own PLASMA (10/22). On the subject of needles, the SWINE FLU (H1N1) vaccine arrived in Spokane in late October (10/29), but some people were still fearful of it. Sen. Maria Cantwell spoke with us (6/18) about how to change HEALTH CARE in our state after President Obama’s “landmark speech on reform.” The EMPYREAN, a popular downtown coffeehouse and arts venue, made steps to move to another location, thanks to a new statewide building code requiring it to put in sprinklers (11/26). It would never quite recover. Closing out the year, we described FACIAL HAIR (on men) as being “cool again,” encouraging every male physically able to “free the beard” (12/24). — LAURA JOHNSON
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