No longer just a hobby, advanced drones are helping scientists, farmers and even police departments — and more innovation is underway
BY VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ
NOTE
hen we talk about some of the biggest technological advancements humans have made in the last few decades, the first thing that many people may think of is artificial intelligence or electric vehicles (and maybe self-driving electric vehicles). We see or even use these tools every day now, whereas something like DRONES are a bit more specialized, as this week’s cover story dives into.
Sure, you can buy a small camera-equipped drone and fly it around to take photos and video footage as many hobbyists do. But the scientific and even public safety applications of drones go super deep, from agricultural and ecological research to police work and professional cinematography. (The next time you watch a new movie or TV show, notice how many crisp aerial shots are captured by remote-controlled drones.) As drone technology rapidly advances, it’s fascinating to think about all the potential applications it could have and, even, what other totally new tech might change our world next.
— CHEY SCOTT, Editor
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WHAT
INDUSTRY WOULD BENEFIT FROM GOING NONPROFIT?
LANCE COPPO
Some kinds of mail.
Why?
I work at the post office and I think it would benefit going nonprofit because a lot of mail services ignore serving communities that don’t get good service because they’re not very profitable.
ELLA FRERICHS
Health care.
Why?
Because at the moment it’s all about money and insurance and profit. You have to go through so many hoops to get the health you need because it’s focused as a business.
NOAH WELLS
Skiing and snowboarding.
Why?
As a former employee of Mt. Spokane [Ski & Snowboard Park], I feel like our funds go towards the best possible benefits towards the actual park. Rather than ski resorts owning other resorts around the country, Mt. Spokane is very localized.
SAM PARKER
University education.
Why?
In an ideal world, education should be free for everyone and the quality of education shouldn’t be restrained by the money spent. Everyone should have access to education that allows for endless possibilities.
TEODORA NESHEVA
I would say health care. I think that’s the most important one, and as an international student, it’s really hard to have accessible health care in America.
Why?
The health care system in America is not good, and everything is so expensive.
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To erase diverse points of view, some American writers are having their creative works rewritten well after having been published
BY CMARIE FUHRMAN
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Would I be willing to meet to talk about the way the new administration was affecting an organization I had helped in the past? Of course I said yes. I was honored to be asked. I thought of the work we had done together in the past for the state of Idaho. A state with a contentious history around issues of social justice, climate science, Native rights, school curriculum and even what books are available at public libraries. It’s the kind of work I look forward to because I believe in people’s ability to think critically and to make good decisions when offered all of the information. Moreover, I think it’s our duty to obtain knowledge, to seek the truth in history and in science, and to be able to listen to multiple truths, multiple stories — even when they don’t align with our own. Exposure to knowledge develops empathy. Empathy gives us power. The power to forge deep connections, navigate complexity, and drive positive change through understanding and valuing the
I write for these reasons and to share stories and knowledge, to build empathy. And duty, too. When you investigate either side, you will find that, even though no race or genderbased law banned them from writing and publishing their thoughts, they were limited by cultural norms and opportunities. For women, there were limited opportunities to access education and publication. For the Indigenous on my father’s side, speaking one’s own language could lead to severe punishment — even death.
The first word taken from me was “colonization.” It was from an essay I had written about the importance of reading stories from Native people. An essay I had written to help guide readers in Idaho to texts that would inform them. Offer them insight into the Native experience. Help them understand what it feels like for people who have lived in an area for thousands of years to be physically, culturally, and linguistically removed from that area — and what it feels like still. This was not just about words; it was about silencing a history, a perspective, in Idaho.
“It’s a word they are going to look for when
George Orwell’s “doublespeak” from 1984 is just a click of an F9 wordsearch away. JUSTIN MUELLER
they F9 search our site,” I was told. “We can delete it or replace it.”
The next word — “equity” — was simply deleted. Other words of concern? “Racism.” “Diversity.”
“They” is the new administration. Those empowered by Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, with an executive order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which sought to eliminate “equity-related” programs. Fearing that their program would lose state and federal funding or be totally dismantled, the words that I offered them, and to the citizens of our state, would have to be changed or deleted. Not unlike a month earlier when a college I was scheduled to speak at advised that I should “stay away” from anything political even as I was about to teach about erasure. All the while, trying to write words that college administrators would consider “acceptable” that the administration might consider acceptable, a mentor’s words echoed in my head: “You have a First Amendment right, I expect you to use it.”
The boarding school era ended millennia of Indigenous languages in North America. Forcing Native youth to learn English. Theodore Fontaine recounts a moment of linguistic vulnerability turned into punitive isolation when he inadvertently spoke an Ojibway phrase while playing with other young boys at Alexander Residential School in Manitoba. Sister S, who was supervising the boys, “yelled that she’d wash out my mouth with soap but instead dragged me to where she’d been sitting. I was shoved into a closet behind her chair. It was under the stairs leading to the second floor and it was used to store brooms and other cleaning materials.” In the closet, Fontaine could not sit up without hitting his head on the overhead stairs. He sought light from under the door, sobbed to no avail and when, “Eventually she let me out. Her first word was ‘Tiens!’ [Take that!] followed by a warning not to speak my ‘savage’ language.”
“There is no replacement word for racism.”
Ithought it was a call for help. In the end, it wasn’t help they wanted. It was forgiveness for deleting words, changing them. My words. My truths. It wasn’t just my words that were being erased; it was my sense of trust, my belief in open dialogue. There is no replacement word for racism. While “unique points of view” might be used for diversity, this focuses on cognitive differences like thoughts and beliefs, not the representation of diverse groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, and other factors.
But removing the words doesn’t mean that any of these actual things go away. It just means that we aren’t allowed to name them. It means that our ability to exercise the First Amendment right is stymied. We are not able to point to what is currently happening to writers and educators and federal employees — and likely many of us — and name it.
It means that when we see a group of people exerting control over communities or individuals by limiting resources and creating economic dependencies, and excluding certain diverse groups from decision-making processes, and creating environments that can be hostile to certain marginalized groups, and creating situations where people are forced to communicate using the language of the dominant group, we cannot employ words like “colonization,” “racism” or “discrimination” to name what is happening.
“Colonization” was the first word they took from me, as if taking it would mean it wasn’t happening. So I am calling on my ancestors, their determination. They knew the feeling of being shut away, silenced. I am remembering how they used every weapon they had — art, story, dance — to speak their truths, save their language, no matter the cost, even with so many powerful hands covering their mouths. n
CMarie Fuhrman is the author of Salmon Weather: Writing from the Land of No Return, Camped Beneath the Dam, and co-editor of two anthologies, Cascadia Field Guide and Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Craft, and Conversations. She is the associate director of the graduate program in creative writing at Western Colorado University, and resides in West Central Idaho.
its a its a
apply today at apply today at
IMMIGRATION
No, Canada!
Offended by annexation comments and worried about immigration enforcement, Canadian tourists are staying away from Spokane
BY ELIZA BILLINGHAM
For over a century, the longest international border in the world has been virtually unprotected. The 5,525-mile boundary between the U.S. and Canada is demarcated mostly by a strip of cleared forest — nicknamed the Slash — or low stone monuments, typically markers of good neighborliness and trust.
But right now, some Canadians don’t feel that trust.
First, President Donald Trump offended northern neighbors with unprovoked comments about annexing Canada. Then, reports started circulating of Canadians and Europeans detained for days by American customs and immigration officers. An April travel advisory from the Canadian government told travelers to “expect scrutiny” from U.S. border agents, who have “significant discretion” at ports of entry.
Plus, in March, the “Buy Canadian” movement started gaining momentum — a push to purchase Canadianmade products to boycott the on-again, off-again tariffs laid out by Trump. It’s a new tune for the States’ largest trading partner that imported nearly $350 billion worth of American products in 2024.
The new atmosphere has created an emotional chilling effect for tourists. Combined with a slightly weaker Canadian dollar, some Canadians are thinking twice before heading south.
Spokane has just started to feel those effects. Visit
Spokane and Best of Broadway by WestCoast Entertainment have both been contacted by Canadians who are canceling plans or no longer booking summer road trips to Eastern Washington. Canadians make up at least 5% of Spokane tourists. Losing those visitors could renew struggles for an entertainment district finally bouncing back from pandemic restrictions.
Immigration experts say that Canadians have nothing to fear while traveling in the U.S. and that common best practices can help people cross the border without issue. But if they have the option, plenty of Canadians are choosing to stay on their side of the Slash for now.
THROWIN’ AWAY THEIR SHOT
So far, more than 4.5 million tickets have been sold for Hamilton since it opened in 2015. The hit show about the immigrant American founding father has grossed over $1 billion in sales in almost 10 years.
Thousands are still flocking to see it every week. Nationally, more than 10,000 tickets were sold between April 7 and April 13 alone — that’s close to 98% of all tickets available.
Best of Broadway by WestCoast Entertainment brought Hamilton back to the First Interstate Center for the Arts in Spokane this year for 16 performances from April 8 through April 20. Despite national averages for ticket sales
holding relatively steady, tickets for the Spokane show sold below expectations.
“Hamilton is obviously a monster driver of tourism and brings a lot of people into town,” says Justin Kobluk, president of WestCoast Entertainment. “Our numbers have been a little soft, and we’re trying to understand why. We’re finding that normally we get between 5% and 10% of our ticket sales from Canada … a lot of our [current] numbers are not normal numbers coming from Canada.”
Spokane is the biggest entertainment district in the Inland Northwest, including for plenty of small towns across the border in British Columbia. About 30% to 40% of Best of Broadway’s ticket sales usually come from people outside a 50-mile radius of Spokane, Kobluk says, and 15% come from outside 100 miles.
Losing just 5% to 10% of normal ticket sales for a show with a $3 million budget can significantly hurt the bottom line of a production, Kobluk says, not to mention Spokane’s future ability to attract other in-demand shows.
Not only are ticket sales down, but Kobluk has received at least half a dozen requests — very polite ones, he notes — for refunds from Canadian ticket holders.
Refunds are nearly nonexistent now, Kobluk says, since bots and scalpers redefined ticket sales by abusing refund clauses. Most theatergoers know that, but some
River Park Square is a major shopping destination for tourists. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
folks believe this is a special circumstance.
“In solidarity with millions of other Canadians, I cannot cross the border into a country whose administration continues to threaten us with annexation,” one refund requester wrote.
“The Spokane theatre is absolutely lovely and honestly one of the best places to see a good show,” another wrote. “That said, I am hopeful you can help me. You can probably understand that it is a bit on the nose for us to attend a performance celebrating the birth of US democracy while the US government threatens to annex Canada, Greenland and conducts a trade war with our own country.
“Under such conditions we hope you understand we cannot be traveling to the US despite our appreciation for the generally wonderful residents of Washington state, Spokane or your wonderful theatre.
“Would it be possible to refund these tickets to the card used for the purchase? I understand this is not something the theatre has any obligation to do, however any accommodation you are willing to make in this situation would be very much appreciated.”
Another requester was worried enough about entering the States that she already decided not to see Mamma Mia! in June — “I am now concerned about travelling to the USA, given the recent events and travel advisories about our safety crossing the border.”
Kobluk said that these are not the special types of situations that require refunds, and he’s spoken to each requester about how Hamilton encapsulates exactly the type of pro-immigrant and diversity sentiments that some are concerned about.
“When you’re pulling dollars away from Hamilton, that’s not the administration,” he says. “As a matter of fact, [the show] is in solidarity with your beliefs … but it’s still travel to the United States, and that’s the tough part.”
ATTENTION!
One Canadian told Kobluk how disturbed she was that officers at the border could go through her phone at a port of entry. The Canadian government posted a travel advisory
BY THE NUMBERS
1,653
How many Canadians stopped by Spokane’s Visitor Information Center in 2024
Visit Spokane can’t keep track of every single tourist in Spokane, but they can count how many stop by the visitor center in Riverfront Park. Last year, 699 visitors came from Alberta, and 954 were from British Columbia. The visitor center welcomed about 35,000 tourists total, so Canadians made up about 5% of the total. The most traveled months were July, August and September.
in April that drew attention to that possibility in a paragraph about entry requirements, which reads:
“Expect scrutiny at ports of entry, including of electronic devices. Comply and be forthcoming in all interactions with border authorities. If you are denied entry, you could be detained while awaiting deportation.”
A recent episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s podcast Cross Country Checkup, a call-in radio show, also discussed the power of Customs and Border Protection officers. The episode titled “Are you worried about traveling to and from the U.S.?” was released on April 6 — just days after the travel advisory was released.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has had the power to search electronic devices for digital contraband like child pornography or classified materials, terrorism-related information, or data related to transnational financial crime for decades. Electronic searches have been rare — less than 0.1% of travelers arriving to the U.S. had their electronics searched in fiscal year 2024, which ended Sept. 30.
But Canada’s reminder about electronic searches came a few weeks after the high-profile story of a Canadian detainee seriously eroded trust in American goodwill.
In March, Jasmine Mooney was detained by U.S. immigration for 12 days. The Canadian actress, who has no
The Metaline Falls port of entry is the closest to Spokane. Its traveler numbers for early 2025 have been similar to last year’s counts. Meanwhile, the 24-hour port of entry at Frontier, Washington, saw 6,000 arrivals this March, down about 8% from 6,500 arrivals in March 2024. And arrivals through Porthill, Idaho, fell to 8,400 this March, down about 25% from 11,200 the same
4,690 29
How many people arrived in Washington through Metaline Falls in March 2025
month a year ago.
But people don’t just cross the border for tourism. For example, some Canadians close to the border have American P.O. boxes to save on shipping costs from American companies. Since arrival numbers don’t illuminate why people are legally crossing the border, it’s tricky to determine any tourism patterns from port of entry notes.
The maximum number of days Canadian tourists can stay in the U.S. without registering with the U.S. government
Any foreign national who’s 14 years old or older now has to register with the U.S. government if they plan to be a tourist in the States for 30 days or more. This is espe-
cially surprising to Canadian snowbirds who have spent plenty of winters in Florida, Arizona or other warmer climates without being required to register before.
criminal history, was reapplying for a U.S. work visa at the southern border between Tijuana and San Diego. She had experience getting work visas at that popular port of entry before, and her immigration lawyer was based there, too. Her visa application was unexpectedly denied. She was then sent to ICE detention centers in both Arizona and San Diego. Mooney told NPR that she was originally told to be prepared to stay in detention for months, but credits media attention for getting her out within two weeks.
Even though Mooney’s detention happened at the southern border, her story instilled plenty of distrust for American officers on the northern border, too.
But Blair Hodgman, an immigration lawyer certified in both Canada and the U.S. who was featured on Cross Country Checkup’s travel episode, thinks the general risk for most Canadians traveling to the U.S. is still low.
“You should use due caution when you travel to the States … but I don’t think it’s necessary to cancel all your plans,” she said in the episode. “I think that as long as you’re straightforward at the border and you have a valid purpose and you don’t have any issues in the past that could affect your admissibility, you should be able to travel to the States safely.” n
elizab@inlander.com
10 billion
Yes, that’s billion with a “b,” according to economists at BMO, the Canadian bank and investment firm. That’s not a
huge percentage of the $350 billion that Canada imports from the U.S. every year, but it’s certainly not nothing.
The year the Penticton Peach Festival started sending its float to the Spokane Lilac Festival
The picturesque town of Penticton in British Columbia started advertising its peach festival at the Spokane Lilac Festival eight years ago. It sent a decked-out float and peach pageant princesses to join Miss Spokane and her royalty at the glamorous Armed Forces Torchlight parade.
But this year, Penticton’s pageantry won’t be at the parade due to concerns about crossing the border. It’s one more slice of evidence that neighborly relations aren’t quite peachy anymore.
— ELIZA BILLINGHAM
Some Canadians decided they didn’t want to be in the room where it happens this season. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
How many dollars some economists think the “Buy Canadian” movement could add to the Canadian economy in one year
Camping Ban Blocked
WA Supreme Court blocks Spokane’s voterapproved camping ban. Plus, Spokane reacts to Pope Francis’ death, and WA blocks other states’ armed forces
BY INLANDER STAFF
At its height in summer 2022, the homeless encampment in East Central dubbed “Camp Hope” was home to about 600 people. The surrounding neighborhood saw an uptick in crime, including near Frances Scott Elementary, the closest primary school. This prompted local attorney Brian Hansen to initiate a proposal for the 2023 ballot to prohibit public camping within 1,000 feet of sensitive areas like schools, parks and day care centers, effectively banning camping in the vast majority of the city. Spokane voters passed Proposition 1 with 75% of the vote. But on April 17, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that Prop 1 “exceeds the proper scope of the local initiative power,” ruling voters didn’t have the right to make that type of law change, and overturning lower courts’ decisions to let it move forward. The city’s anti-camping “ordinance, which pre-dated Proposition 1, remains in effect and is being enforced as demonstrated by Spokane Police Department data,” said Mayor Lisa Brown in a statement released a few hours after the decision. “We know that enforcement alone is not going to solve homelessness.” (ELIZA BILLINGHAM)
THE JESUIT POPE
The day after Easter, Pope Francis, the first Latin American and Jesuit priest to become pope, died on April 21. The Vatican said the 88-year-old died from a stroke, coma and irreversible cardio collapse. He was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his family had fled from fascist Italy as immigrants. In a post on Inland Catholic magazine’s website, Bishop Thomas Daly of the Spokane Diocese reflected on the pope’s emphasis on mercy and acknowledged his local impact through appointments. “The fact that he designated three priests to be Missionaries of Mercy in the Diocese of Spokane demonstrated his fatherly care for our local church,” Daly said. “It is not lost on me that it was Pope Francis who appointed me to Spokane and gave me the privilege of serving as the Chief Shepherd for the people of this diocese.” Thayne McCulloh, president of Gonzaga University, praised the pope’s leadership approach in a statement. “As a Catholic, Jesuit and humanistic institution, we are especially grateful to Pope Francis for his modeling of the values of humility, mercy, solidarity with the poor and vulnerable, and his relentless advocacy for peace and justice, and an end to violence in our world,” McCulloh said. A special Mass for the pope will take place at noon Thursday, April 24, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes, at 115 W. Riverside Ave. (VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ)
NO OUTSIDE ARMED FORCES
This week, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed House Bill 1321 into law, limiting any other state’s National Guard from entering Washington without authorization from the governor, unless mobilized by the president. At a press conference, Ferguson said the bill was modeled after similar laws in Idaho, Montana and Texas. “The new law does not restrict the National Guard from supporting disaster response recovery efforts through mutual aid agreements,” Ferguson said. “We just cannot allow as a state to have armed forces come into our home and enforce policies that are against our core values.” Ferguson thanked Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma, for sponsoring the bill because of its importance in maintaining state autonomy. In December, 26 Republican governors (including those of Idaho and Montana) released a joint statement that they’re ready to utilize the National Guard to support President Donald Trump’s mission to deport undocumented immigrants. “We stand ready to utilize every tool at our disposal — whether through state law enforcement or the National Guard — to support President Trump in this vital mission,” the letter stated. (VCM)
Extra! Extra! Donations Welcome!
The Spokesman-Review plans to go nonprofit, maintaining subscriptions and ads while asking for donors
BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL
For the first time in more than 130 years, Spokane’s sole surviving daily newspaper is preparing for new ownership — the Cowles family announced last week that they will donate the Spokesman-Review to a nonprofit formed by the paper’s executive editor, Rob Curley.
On Tuesday, April 15, Spokesman Publisher Stacey Cowles announced that his family’s Cowles Company plans to transfer the paper to the nonprofit Comma Journalism Labs and to donate $2 million to the effort. The deal is contingent on the nonprofit pulling together $2 million in matching donations from the community.
Members of the Cowles family have owned and led Spokane’s daily print media market since the 1890s. In 1894, the Spokane Falls Review (founded in 1883) merged with the Spokesman, to become the Spokesman-Review under the Cowles Company. In 1897, Cowles Co. also purchased
the competing afternoon daily paper, the Spokane Daily Chronicle, but kept the papers separate for decades. A century later, the morning and afternoon dailies combined their staffs completely; the Chronicle stopped printing in 1992.
Under Comma, which could take control of the paper later this year if sufficient donations are secured, the plan is to keep printing six days per week (at least for now), maintain subscriptions and a paywall for online content (with free access to stories by grant-funded reporters and some major breaking news), and continue to sell advertising.
The ability to accept donations will add another revenue stream to what Cowles says has been essentially a break-even model in recent years.
“Time will really tell, but the idea is we’re a marginally successful operation at this moment, meaning we’re breakeven-plus. So to have that cushion means we can afford a
bad year or two,” Cowles tells the Inlander. “We’re committed to staying in business, and the philanthropy becomes the rainy day fund and the path to give us a little extra to invest for the future.”
Cowles will serve on the nonprofit’s board of directors. He started out on the advertising/sales side of the paper in 1989, quickly working his way up to classified advertising manager. But he took the publisher’s chair sooner than anticipated in 1992 after his father died of a heart attack while jogging.
When asked if donating the paper after four generations is bittersweet, Cowles says the next generation in his family hasn’t shown a passion for the media business.
“If that was different, maybe we’d make a different decision,” Cowles says. “But I think it’s partly financial, too. I mean, the promise that newspapers offer as a financial asset is not great.”
INDUSTRY CHALLENGES
Various pressures in the newspaper industry have significantly reduced profits in recent decades. Since 2005, the country has lost more than 3,200 print newspapers, or one-third of all papers in just two decades, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Between the advent of the internet and the Great Recession, newspapers lost virtually all classified advertising, which accounted for roughly one-third of their revenue, Cowles says. Google and other search engines, which may drive traffic to newspaper websites, also don’t pay to run their headlines, he says.
“In the old days, you know, you could look at the top half of the paper and you could get three headlines for free, but you had to put your money in to get the whole
The Spokesman-Review is going nonprofit. It’s not clear yet what the future holds for the Review Building. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
thing,” Cowles says. “Now the whole thing is indexed and in today’s world of short attention spans, often that’s all anybody needs.”
Online shopping’s impact on brick-and-mortar retailers has also played a large role, with the closure of stores that were traditionally big advertisers. Cowles says that in the 1960s, advertising by Spokane’s Crescent department store alone accounted for maybe 10% of the paper’s revenue.
“It’s hard to kind of parse out how much of newspapers’ shrinkage has occurred because of that traditional retailing going away,” Cowles says. “The model used to be that 70% of a newspaper’s revenue was advertising and 30% was subscriptions and single copy [purchases]. That’s pretty much flipped on its head now.”
As the price to subscribe grows, and younger generations are less willing to pay for news — a major goal for the Spokesman moving forward is to convince people in their 20s, 30s and 40s that subscriptions are worth it, Cowles says — another option seemed necessary.
The idea to go nonprofit came together over the last few years, and Cowles says he polled family shareholders to get their thoughts about the paper’s future. He says about 40% said if it’s not losing money to hang onto it, and about 40% said if a nonprofit would make sense and get more resources, they’d favor that. There was no interest in selling to a business that might come in and fire reporters to try to squeeze more profit out of the operation, Cowles says.
“Zero said, ‘Sell it, and watch it get reduced to eight pages a day,’” Cowles says. “We’ve had 132 years of stewardship, but we plan to see it last another 100 years. And our thinking is, you know, it’s sort of the public mission, and it seems right that the public would own it and carry it forward.”
“As a subscriber you pay so you can read. As a donor you pay so other people can read. It is fundamentally different.”
HYBRID NONPROFIT
The hybrid model under Comma will be similar to that used by the Salt Lake Tribune, which was the first legacy newspaper to become a nonprofit in 2019.
With a similarly long history, the Salt Lake Tribune saw various changes in family ownership until 2010, when hedge fund Alden Global Capital bought the paper and renegotiated a partnership the paper had with the Deseret News, which is owned by the Latter-day Saints church. Since the 1950s, the newspapers had a joint operating agreement in place to share advertising, delivery and production. In 2014, Alden renegotiated the agreement “to the Tribune’s financial disadvantage, prompting layoffs, a lawsuit and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation,” according to the Tribune’s website.
After Utah businessman Paul Huntsman bought the paper in 2016, they worked to become a nonprofit, gaining that status in 2019. The paper now prints two days per week.
Tim Fitzpatrick, whose grandfather shepherded the publication as its publisher in the mid-20th century, worked at the Tribune for 45 years and served in various leadership roles.
Fitzpatrick says he helped create the paper’s paywall as more content shifted online. It didn’t result in the loss of many readers, he says, and it made sense while the paper was for-profit.
“But when you go nonprofit, you’re in a different dynamic, you’re a public service,” Fitzpatrick says. “The analogy we’d use is if you go to the opera or symphony, it’s a nonprofit, but they still charge you $50 to go.”
In the same way the symphony might then offer free concerts ...continued on page 14
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at schools and in parks as a public service, he says the Tribune similarly offered the paper without a paywall to libraries and schools.
“I’m assuming at this point the Spokesman has a paywall, and they’ll probably keep it because the economics of dumping it on Day 1 are a little rough. But I also think they should work on dumping it, which I think the Tribune is working to do by the end of this year,” Fitzpatrick says. “As a subscriber you pay so you can read. As a donor you pay so other people can read. It is fundamentally different.”
Fitzpatrick, who retired about a year ago after a final stint as an energy reporter — a position funded by a major utility that ultimately decided not to renew its funding — also warns about the potential for donors to pressure newspapers in the same way advertisers might threaten to stop advertising if they disagree with coverage. He says just as traditional newsrooms maintain editorial independence from their sales departments, nonprofit newsrooms need to do the same.
“That’s a dance. I did things the utility wasn’t always thrilled with, and they didn’t want to continue. I never got feedback from them, they just decided not to continue,” he says. “Absolutely the rule is still the same, you absolutely have to maintain your editorial independence, same as with advertisers. You can’t be pressured by these people, you walk away from their money. You have to, ’cause otherwise your credibility is dead.”
PHILANTHROPY AND BEST WISHES
Former Spokesman writers say they’re hopeful about the announcement that the paper is going nonprofit.
Shawn Vestal, who was an editorial writer for the paper for almost 25 years, says he wishes the paper well with the new move.
“I think it’s a creative idea, and I hope it works because I live here and want a vibrant daily newspaper,” Vestal says. “It’s definitely a time that alternative approaches to help journalism survive are needed.”
Vestal says he was surprised at how robust the nonprofit news industry already is when he worked as an editor at nonprofit InvestigateWest over the last year (he’s now working at a local university).
“I underestimated just how far down the road we are with that,” Vestal says. “I felt like maybe this is kind of a future idea that a few people are trying, but it’s a much more robust, fleshed out thing that’s happening across the country.”
Pia Hallenberg, who worked as a reporter and editor for the Spokesman from 2004 to 2017, says she appreciates that the paper is staying local.
“I feel certain that the paper could have been sold to the highest bidder, and I also feel certain that whoever the highest bidder was would’ve slaughtered it for the tax writeoff, and then we wouldn’t have a paper left at all,” Hallenberg says. “I’m happy they’re staying here and it gives us a chance to keep it.”
Hallenberg now works as a freelance grant writer, applying for funding for clients. She says the matching requirement for the $2 million donation is a typical request in the nonprofit world, as donors like to see the community have some skin in the game. But with so many federal grants currently paused or under threat, she says it could be
difficult to raise the match.
“I think raising $2 million in Spokane under any circumstances is difficult, it’s challenging. Do I think it’s impossible? Hopefully not,” she says. “I think they really have their work cut out for them.”
Sharon Smith and Don Barbieri are some of Spokane’s best-known philanthropists. Their charitable organization, the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund, has been giving out grants to local nonprofits since 2010, sometimes to the tune of $1 million a year.
The Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund currently supports RANGE Media, a Spokane-based, worker-owned news outlet, and in the past has given grants to the Spokesman to help fund racial equity and health reporters.
Smith is cautiously optimistic about the Spokesman’s shift. Since a board of directors guides a nonprofit, the makeup of that board is key, she says.
“In our minds, the path would be to make sure that the composition of your board is appropriate,” she says. “That would mean somebody from every walk of life, and also that there is incredible transparency and honesty in terms of how they influence the news that’s reported.”
Smith expects Comma will seek major funding dollars from institutional givers — like local banks, power companies or other large companies with substantial marketing dollars — and says the newspaper would therefore need to be very clear about how those dollars do or don’t affect reporters’ work.
Smith also says the paper should work to eliminate its paywall as it becomes a nonprofit that gets tax breaks.
“Taxpayers really are participating in this. So if you’re going to be a community entity, then we believe it should be no barrier,” she says. “It shouldn’t have a subscription fee. Because then you are immediately just eliminating a large segment of the population.”
Still, she applauds the Spokesman for trying to adapt to a new world.
“I’m not sure that traditional media has a choice anymore,” she says. “They can either stay like they are and potentially not exist, or they can find different ways to operate. I think it’s incumbent, actually, upon media who want to do a good job and remain relevant to find new avenues.”
NEXT STEPS
Curley started the process of setting up Comma as a nonprofit in 2023, and it received official 501(c) (3) status in September 2024.
Last year, as the Spokesman helped the Black Lens newspaper relaunch, Comma was announced as a nonprofit partner, sharing office space with the community newspaper on Gonzaga’s campus. In a statement, Gonzaga University congratulated the Cowles family on their decision to donate the paper to Comma.
Cowles confirmed the plan is to ultimately have the Spokesman’s staff leave the Review Building on Riverside Avenue and work out of a space on Gonzaga’s campus, and he said they’ve been working on a deal to renovate a building on campus to house the newspaper staff.
The university says they’re still in talks about a potential partnership.
“Gonzaga has actively supported Northwest Passages, space for staff of The Black Lens, and an
After four generations leading from the Review tower, the Cowles will donate their flagship paper, in hopes it can remain viable for another century.
office for Comma during its start-up phase, at the Schoenberg Center on campus,” Gonzaga’s statement reads. “We have had discussions regarding the possibility of supporting Comma through additional space resources, but no commitment has been made. The University and Comma will continue to evaluate the feasibility of this concept during the upcoming months.”
One of the big pushes under the nonprofit model will be to expand partnerships with local schools, Curley says. He says the paper’s paid high school intern program, which was funded by a grant from Bank of America over the last four years, has been one of the greatest joys of his career. He hopes to work with other school districts and is talking to universities throughout the region as well.
“Education is a key part of what we’re working towards, both from an information standpoint and from a skill set standpoint,” Curley says. “I don’t believe in my heart that it’s a 50-year-old guy from Kansas who’s going to figure out how to connect to a 16-year-old. I feel like you have to have 16-year-olds who understand what journalism is and what they need to know.”
Comma has hired a full-time development director who is taking over the efforts to raise money for the nonprofit, and the plan is to keep all of the more than 50 full-time newsroom staff on board at the same or better pay.
With subscriptions currently accounting for about 70% of the paper’s revenue, those will remain key, he says. Working with Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm, Curley says they learned that people may be even more willing to subscribe with the paper becoming a nonprofit, which is hopeful.
“We feel confident that our numbers are going to go up, not down,” Curley says. n samanthaw@inlander.com Eliza Billingham contributed to this story.
ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
DANCE
Choreographing History
After founding and leading Gonzaga’s dance program for 25 years, Suzanne Ostersmith is retiring
Suzanne Ostersmith’s office is a time capsule commemorating Gonzaga University’s 25-year-old dance program. Starting near the floor of one side, a line of posters climbs up and halfway around the room showcasing every single spring concert and dance performance she’s produced for the university.
She keeps them as a reminder of all the change and growth she’s fostered for dancers at Gonzaga since she founded the program in 2000. Once she retires at the end of this school year in May, all of these posters will find their way onto an already designated wall in her Browne’s Addition home.
At the start of the millennium, Ostersmith was working as an adjunct dance professor at Whitworth University. However, after the head of Gonzaga’s theater program saw her choreography, they asked her to consider teaching at GU. She jumped at the opportunity and started teaching there soon afterwards.
“I really fell in love with the students immediately and just started teaching one class a semester, then it became two, and then it became producing the spring dance concert, and then it became more and
BY COLTON RASANEN
more,” she says.
After teaching classes for years, Ostersmith founded the university’s dance minor in 2006. A few years later, in 2010, dance and theater became a joint department. In 2018, the program expanded further to begin offering a major in dance.
This weekend, Gonzaga’s two-day Spring Dance Concert at the Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center honors those achievements and many others that have made Ostersmith proud over the years. She also hopes the concert and festivities around it reach people who aren’t necessarily dance fanatics.
“Dance can be very abstract, and I think that that’s hard for some audience members, but what’s so powerful about this spring dance concert is there is a real variety,” she says. “It’s a really energetic celebration of our last 25 years, and over 60 alumni are taking time off work and flying here from all over the nation to see the concerts and to reconnect with us and our
current students.”
Fighting for the arts is often challenging, but through the years Ostersmith took it all in stride. Every Gonzaga dance class, production and afterschool program are pieces of a puzzle that she began putting together 25 years ago.
“We had to be scrappy to create this program,” she says. “We’re sitting in a building that was used for fixing trucks back then, and now it’s our theater and dance building with beautiful studios and offices next door.”
In her time at Gonzaga, cultivating a community of thoughtful, talented dancers who can gracefully interact with the public has been at the forefront of Ostersmith’s mind. It’s why she worked hard to build programs like Dance for Parkinson’s, where folks with Parkinson’s disease and their care partners come every Saturday for a dance class, and ZagDance, a free afterschool program for elementary school kids.
She says it’s also been a place where dancers of all skill levels can feel supported and enjoy their education.
“An important part of Gonzaga dance over the years is that we’re not a conserva-
Gonzaga dancers perform choreography by Sarah Glesk.
SCOTT MARTINEZ PHOTO
tory program. It’s not only students who are going to dance professionally that can be here,” she explains. “We really believe that everyone’s desire to dance needs to find a home, and we can be a home for those students.”
When Angela Boulet graduated from high school and went to Seattle University to study psychology, she says she became more depressed than she’d ever been. At first she assumed it was just the new situation she was struggling to adapt to, but she soon realized her woes were caused by a lack of tapping toes.
Boulet, who began dancing when she was a toddler, felt this way because for the first time in nearly two decades she didn’t have anywhere to dance.
“I just didn’t get at 18 that going to college and putting that aside would be a big deal. But then it was like my whole life is different and not in a good way,” Boulet explains. “I always say that emotion is energy in motion, and so therefore, when you’re not moving you have stuck energy in your body.”
Once she made this realization, she moved back home to Spokane and transferred to Gonzaga. She continued studying psychology but added a dance minor to her studies. Boulet graduated with her bachelor’s in 2018 but came back to school the next year to turn her dance minor into the recently created dance major.
In 2019, Boulet earned her second degree and became the first person to graduate from Gonzaga with a bachelor’s in dance. Now working as a San Diego-based health and wellness specialist, Boulet credits Ostersmith with helping her succeed.
“She was my anchor. She was the reason that I propelled so deeply into dance,” she says, choking back tears. “There is no one like that woman. She is perseverant. She is resilient, and she is the biggest shining star of the whole university because she literally dedicated her everything to this program.”
Ostersmith loves every aspect of her job. Those relationships with her students (and now alumni) are a huge reason for her longevity at Gonzaga, but 25 years is a long time for anything. While she admits that she’s tired after all these years, Ostersmith feels like Gonzaga Dance is ready to be molded by a new hand.
“I have an entrepreneurial spirit. I was raised with that. And so this idea of creating a program and building it over time was very natural for me. Now we’re at this really gorgeous, thriving position,” she says. “This has been a heck of a 25-year journey, so there’s a sense of fatigue. But more than that, Gonzaga Dance is ready for different leadership to see where it’s supposed to go next.”
Although she’s retiring, Ostersmith isn’t quite finished with Gonzaga Dance. After watching ODC Dance perform the whimsical children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit in February, the department’s new leader, Cynthia Gutierrez, asked Ostersmith whether she was willing to come back and craft a similar performance.
“So I’m retiring, but I’ve been hired back as an adjunct coming full-circle to create Thumbelina, a story ballet,” Ostersmith says. “I love musical theater and creating stories through dance, so it’ll be based on that idea of The Velveteen Rabbit. It teaches our students how to create dance for children audiences and even how to work the kiddos into the show.” n
Gonzaga Spring Dance Concert • Fri, April 25 and Sat, April 26 at 7:30 pm • $8-$15 • Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center • 211 E. Desmet Ave. • gonzaga.edu/dance
Suzanne Ostersmith
ROCKIN’ THE BOAT
Inspired by Hollywood as much as Broadway, Aspire’s Guys and Dolls is going for fast-paced zaniness
BY E.J. IANNELLI
When Aspire Community Theatre approached Thomas Gandy about directing the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods, he made them a counteroffer instead.
“I said, ‘Well, I see you’re doing Guys and Dolls. If you don’t have anybody for it, I’d rather do that.”
To pass up Sondheim’s modern riff on Brothers Grimm fairy tales in favor of a Golden Age chestnut from the 1950s might strike some directors as a missed opportunity. But Gandy already had a solid fix on what he wanted from a musical based on the humorous stories of Damon Runyon, a writer with a style so singular that it spawned its own adjective: Runyonesque
“Guys and Dolls is so over-the-top, all these kooky characters. I thought, what better opportunity to try and take an old-style, Hollywood-picture-slash-Broadway show and do a revival where we’re not trying to modernize it. I’m actually trying to do the opposite,” Gandy says.
“If the normal person’s emotional range on any given day operates between a four and a six, these people operate between a two and an eight. Everything is bigger.”
Under his direction, the Guy and Dolls that opens this
weekend at Coeur d’Alene’s Salvation Army Kroc Center will revel in what Gandy calls the “cartoony and campy” vibe of Runyon’s picaresque tales of gamblers and hustlers in Prohibition- and Depression-era New York.
As a movie buff and the grandchild of a Hollywood art director, Gandy also wants to pay homage to the screen. His conception of Guys and Dolls takes certain cues from the 1955 film adaptation starring Vivian Blaine, Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Frank Sinatra, and when he discusses the guidance he’s giving to his actors, it’s full of film and TV references.
One on-stage relationship, he told his cast, should have a similar flavor to the interactions between Star Wars’ R2D2 and C3PO. The core trio of gamblers — NicelyNicely Johnson (played by Nick Lyons), Benny Southstreet (James Wigdahl) and Rusty Charlie (Abel Siemens) — should channel aspects of The Three Stooges. And when it comes to double takes, he doesn’t rule out the exaggerated qualities of “the Scooby-Doo reaction.”
His decisions on pacing might owe more to Hollywood than Broadway, too.
“I’m really just trying to take that cinematic approach of tightness and storytelling and then apply that. I want this to move like a feature film. I don’t want any dead spots. I want it to feel as busy as a New York street.”
But that doesn’t mean this production is being glib with its source material. Gandy’s reasoning is that, by leaning into its madcap qualities, Guys and Dolls becomes truer to itself and the world it depicts.
“I don’t want any dead spots. I want it to feel as busy as a New York street.”
“This show has to be grounded in a reality that doesn’t exist,” he says. “With that, what needs to happen is that everybody needs to be on board because the audience has to know it’s deliberate and loving.”
Guys and Dolls is built around two parallel love stories. Charming risk-taker Sky Masterson (played by Duncan Clark Menzies) is pursuing prudish Sarah Brown (Sarah Noble) while the hapless schemer Nathan Detroit (Jeffrey Parsons) and showgirl Miss Adelaide (Annabelle Brasch) work through their sense of commitment to one another.
Menzies is a Coeur d’Alene-based interdisciplinary conceptual artist who’s been involved with the Drawn Together Arts series at the Art Spirit Gallery as well as regional productions of Falsettos and West Side Story
“There’s lots of things I can sink my teeth into,” he says of his lead role. “It’s been cool to explore [Sky] as the epitome of this really suave, masculine guy, but deep down there’s tenderness.”
Noble says that her prim, moralizing character in Guys and Dolls is a fun departure from the “hyperfeminine” and “glamorous” roles she’s had in the past — Tanya in Mamma Mia! being the most recent example. And despite sharing a first name with Sarah Brown, Noble says she’s more “spunky” in real life than her onstage persona. Those differences have manifested themselves in unusual ways, like footwear.
“I wear a lot of boots. And for a lot of my other shows, I’ve worn stilettos. I’m used to the gliding nature of heels in those roles. So at first it was a little hard to really get into the more structured way that [Sarah Brown] walks,” she explains. To better settle into the character, she’s been coming to rehearsals wearing her character’s more old-fashioned flats.
There is, however, one key scene where Sarah — both character and actor — is able to let loose, and that’s when Sky flies her down to Havana for an evening getaway. After sipping on an unfamiliar Cuban beverage, her inhibitions fall away, and she sings her bubbly solo “If I Were a Bell.”
That scene marks a turning point for their characters that Gandy says is central to the story of love, respect and compromise that Guys and Dolls is trying to tell. And, fittingly, he references another stage-to-screen musical to make the point.
“This is [like] Grease, right? You have two people from very different worlds. Ultimately, one tightens up, and one lightens up.” n
Guys and Dolls • April 25-May 4; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 2 pm • $23-$29 • Salvation Army Kroc Center • 1765 W. Golf Course Rd., Coeur d’Alene • aspirecda.com • 208-696-4228
Duncan Clark Menzies and Sarah Noble
PHOTO COURTESY ASPIRE
THE BUZZ BIN
FROM SCREEN TO STAGE
If, like us, you’re still humming Hamilton’s catchy tunes, then get excited for the next hit-filled season of Spokane’s Best of Broadway series. Five shows coming to the Lilac City as part of the series’ 2025-26 season were announced earlier this week, united by a common theme: All are adapted from films.
Starting off the season is the 1920s-set comedy Some Like It Hot (Sept. 23-28). If you love that early 20th century glitz and glamour, the next show on the lineup is for you, too: Moulin Rouge! The Musical (Nov. 19-23). Starting off 2026 strong is an all-ages favorite, when Disney’s The Lion King (Jan. 28-Feb. 15) returns to the First Interstate Center for the Arts’ stage (it was last here in 2019). Then, two beloved stories based on their contemporary cinematic counterparts head our way in the spring: The Notebook: The Musical (March 17-22) and Back to the Future: The Musical (May 26-31).
More special engagements will also be announced as the 2025-26 season approaches. New for the upcoming season is the addition of Saturday matinee shows for Best of Broadway season ticket holders. Those packages are also already on sale; get all the details at broadwayspokane.com. (CHEY SCOTT)
REFOUND SOUND
Longtime Inland Northwest music lovers might recall the band Manito Park from the early ’90s, but fewer probably remember the band’s prior melodic rocking under the name Gotham. Back in 1989 the group released a soaring collection of tunes — which called to mind bands like Journey and Styx — as the cassetteonly album Home Sweet Home. Now, more than 35 years later, Gotham is getting a second life after Australian reissue-focused label Melodic Rock Classics found that tape. On May 30, the imprint is rereleasing that Gotham album on CD (and digital download) under the retitled name Pictures. The reimagined LP also features three songs from the band’s Manito Park era, all remastered to optimize sound. If you want to dive into some vintage Spokane sounds from the ’80s AOR era, preorders are available via Melodic Rock Classics. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST
Noteworthy new music arriving in stores and online on April 25.
BEACH BUNNY, TUNNEL VISION
Get ready for summer as the sunniest indie power pop band around unleashes another collection of wildly infectious and catchy jams.
VIAGRA BOYS, VIAGR ABOYS
Coming off a high-energy Coachella set, the Swedish post-punk band prescribes another dose of satirically cutting songcraft.
VARIOUS ARTISTS, HEART OF GOLD: THE SONGS OF NEIL YOUNG
This all-star tribute to the legendary singer-songwriter includes renditions of Young tunes by Fiona
and more. (SETH SOMMERFELD)
Apple, Brandi Carlile, Eddie Vedder, Mumford & Sons, Sharon Van Etten
MATTHEW MURPHY PHOTO
A Daughter’s Duty
Spokanite Clarice Wilsey shares an old family secret to fight against hate and ensure the Holocaust is never forgotten
BY MADISON PEARSON
We are all someone’s child, and our parents are no different. Our parents live complex lives full of highs and lows for decades before even considering bringing children into the world. Clarice Wilsey had this realization at 6 years old.
In 1953, Wilsey, her parents and her two siblings moved to a new house in Spokane. While rifling through boxes, Wilsey found a stack of photos that she describes as “horrifying.”
“There were dead bodies,” she says. “Piles of them.”
At 6 years old, she had never experienced the death of a pet or relative. She had never experienced loss or grief. So she approached her father, U.S. Army Capt. David B. Wilsey, and asked about what she had seen.
“He grabbed them out of my hand,” she recalls. “He told me, ‘Little girls don’t need to see this.’ And he was right.” She lived with that memory through her childhood and teenage years, knowing she would never ask her parents or tell her siblings about the photos again.
Wilsey’s father, who was a practicing anesthesiologist in Spokane from 1949 until his death in 1996, never spoke about his experiences serving in an Army field hospital during World War II.
his time at the camp.
The first American doctors to enter Dachau after its liberation were with the 116th Evacuation Hospital. One of them was David Wilsey, who served as an Army physician on the front lines of Germany and France in 1944, including during the Battle of the Bulge. Clarice says the letters describe her father’s role in performing lifesaving surgeries on Dachau’s survivors.
“He writes that he would have seven people on operating tables arranged around him like spokes on a wheel,” she says. “He would be monitoring all seven at the same time, but it was necessary. There were so many wounded.”
David Wilsey was eventually awarded the Bronze Star for developing this unique technique to manage the extraordinarily large patient loads.
By June 1945, David Wilsey left Dachau a changed man. He spent five weeks at “dastardly Dachau,” as he called it in his letters.
After he was back in Spokane, Clarice says her dad did what most war veterans did — tried to completely move on with their lives, ignoring the trauma they had just gone through.
And by the time she visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2006, her father was 10 years gone, and her memories of those photos had been pushed to the furthest corners of her mind. But the moment Wilsey stepped out of the elevator into an exhibit on the Dachau (pronounced daw-cow) concentration camp in southern Germany, all those memories came rushing back.
There, just feet from the elevator door, was a video of her father walking past two recently liberated prisoners.
“I started to have a war with myself,” she says. “Was it actually him? I didn’t know him until after the war, and my memory of him was not of a 30-year-old man, because I never saw him at that age. I started shaking, my heart was pounding, and I was sweating.”
Wilsey asked her mother about what she’d seen, but her mother wouldn’t speak about her husband’s experiences at Dachau.
After her mother’s death in 2008, Wilsey and her siblings returned to her family’s Spokane home to clear out their belongings. Once she was back home in Eugene, Oregon, she opened some boxes and again found the photos she’d first discovered as a 6-year-old, along with over 300 letters her father had sent
to her mother over the course of their lives. She quickly realized some of these letters were sent while he was working at Dachau in the five weeks following the camp’s liberation by American troops.
The letters recounted nightmarish conditions and unimaginable atrocities that occurred there during the Holocaust. Using her father’s words, with help from her friend Bob Welch, Wilsey wrote the memoir Letters from Dachau: A Father’s Witness of War, a Daughter’s Dream of Peace
On Saturday, April 26, in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Dachau’s liberation — April 29, 1945 — Wilsey is sharing her father’s story, as recounted in the book, with community members at the Spokane Valley Library.
Since releasing the memoir in March 2020, Wilsey, now 78, has given over 150 talks across the United States, bringing awareness to the Holocaust and the horrors her father witnessed at Dachau.
“My life as an author doesn’t surround selling the book,” she says. “It’s all about telling people the experiences of my dad.”
In the book, Wilsey details her father’s life leading up to the liberation of Dachau and, based directly on the letters, discusses
Her father started his anesthesia practice, became a founding member of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, helped create Spokane’s first Sister City relationship with Nishinomiya, Japan, and became involved in the planning for Manito Park’s Japanese Garden.
Wilsey says she’s had plenty of “emotional earthquakes” throughout the entire process of finding her father’s photos, seeing the video of him at the Holocaust Museum, finding his letters and writing the book, but it’s been worth it because she gets to tell her father’s story every day.
“I cannot tell you what my heart does when I’m talking to these young people,” she says. “I’m not just telling them about World War II and Dachau. I’m talking to them about countering Holocaust denial, countering bigotry, hate and antisemitism.” n
Daughter of Dachau: Sharing the Voice of Her Father • Sat, April 26 from 1-2 pm • All ages • Free • Spokane Valley Library • 22 N. Herald Road, Spokane Valley • scld.org
Also on Sat, April 26, from 10-11 am at the North Spokane Library (44 E. Hawthorne Rd.) and Sat, April 26, from 6-8 pm at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church (5720 S. Perry St.) Call to RSVP: 509-220-6727
Clarice Wilsey (left) has documented her father’s story as one ofthe American troops who liberated Dachau. COURTESY PHOTOS
U.S. Army Capt. David B. Wilsey
140 years of expanding access to quality local care
For 140 years, we’ve been partnering locally to support communities in the ways they need it most. Because healthy communities need more than health care.
Taking to the Sky
Drones help with everything from real estate photography to protecting crops and tracking pygmy rabbits across the Inland Northwest
BY VICTOR CORRAL MARTINEZ
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a drone hovering above Guy Wicks Field at the University of Idaho in Moscow.
Just minutes earlier, a group of about 20 students stepped out of the Agricultural Engineering Building into the bitter cold wind of an early April afternoon and headed to the field to set up for today’s lesson. With checklists in hand, they’re ready to practice piloting three drones, from small entry-level models to the $40,000 Astro model drone produced by Firefly, a company based in Woodinville, Washington.
The students take turns practicing a list of maneuvers and training protocols. They’re learning to use drones for hobby or in career paths, like photography or agriculture.
Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or unmanned aircraft systems, have drawn international attention for their transformation of warfare — the New York Times reports that 70% of injuries and deaths in the Ukraine-Russia war are now caused by drone attacks.
In the United States, you may have heard of the UFO sightings that caused public concern in New Jersey in 2024. White House officials later confirmed that the unidentified flying objects were part of a Federal Aviation Administration research project using drones.
While drones first appeared in the 1930s — the British Royal Navy coined the term “drone” with bees in mind when they named the unmanned aircraft they used for target practice — the technology has improved dramatically over time, both for military and personal use.
Since 2013, everyday people have been able to buy hobby drones to take photos and videos, and developments in recent years have allowed for improved GPS, HD video, longer battery life, and anti-shake technology to permit crisper images.
Now, even greater advancements in drone technology allow for a wide variety of applications, from law enforcement to scientific research.
The Spokane Police Department uses drones to mitigate risks to officers looking for potentially dangerous suspects, and to help with search and rescue operations.
Content creators and photographers in the region have added drones to their photography arsenal for real estate shoots and filmmaking, catapulting what was once a hobby into a robust industry.
Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife uses drones to track fish and rabbit nesting grounds and to identify habitat for restoration. The Washington Department of Ecology has also used drones to help prevent exposure to harmful chemicals while tracking environmental hazards.
Agricultural scientists at Washington State University are developing drone systems to protect crops from animals.
And, at the University of Idaho, professors have developed a drone curriculum to prepare students for roles as certified drone pilots in various applications.
...continued on page 24
Jason Karl, director of University of Idaho’s drone lab, instructs students during a class on drone maneuvering. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
ABOVE: Drone equipment for research projects requiring aerial imaging is stored in the lab at University of Idaho. ERICK DOXEY PHOTOS
BELOW: A drone lifts off during class.
“TAKING TO THE SKY,” CONTINUED...
DRONE LAB
The University of Idaho developed its drone lab, which is run by Jason Karl, a professor of rangeland ecology, in late 2017. Through the lab, Karl teaches students about the various tools they’ll need for aerial-based research, from using software systems to operating unmanned aircraft systems.
The lab offers courses on safe piloting, FAA regulatory compliance, and data collection and analysis. It also supports other university research in areas such as crop health mapping, post-fire recovery, and herbicide application.
With a $110,000 grant, the lab purchased a drone-carried light detection and ranging system, commonly known as LIDAR, putting it on the cutting edge of research sciences. LIDAR uses an advanced sensor that emits laser pulses and measures the time it takes for the reflected light to return, enabling precise mapping of hard-to-access terrain.
Karl has mapped geographic information systems for 30 years. Previously, it was expensive to find an airplane to produce aerial imagery for analysis. He says drones have democratized the field and made aerial mapping available on demand.
“You can do some great, high-quality mapping with a fairly reasonably affordable drone — like $1,000 — and you can go out and get that imagery whenever you need it,” Karl says. “It’s really opened up that flexibility of getting the imagery you want, at the place you want, when you want it, in a way that was never really affordable or possible before.”
Karl says University of Idaho’s drone lab is working to become the Inland Northwest’s hub for drone use. Before its founding, there was a hodgepodge of research drone users with different equipment and skill levels. As software and sensors become more complex, centralized drone facilities become essential to understanding how to use the technology for advanced research.
LEFT: Students learn about complex drone controls during a class with Jason Karl.
It’s really opened up that flexibility of getting the imagery you want … in a way that was never really affordable or possible before. “ ”
The goal is to go beyond flight training to also teach researchers and students to use software, collect data and interpret that data, he says.
“The easiest part of the whole process is to go fly a drone and collect a bunch of data,” Karl says. “The hardest part of the process is actually analyzing that data and interpreting it.”
University of Idaho’s drone lab classes include students from different degree programs, including many studying precision agriculture, which focuses on crop systems, nutrient management and irrigation. Karl says students from geography and engineering also participate in the courses.
Beyond students in STEM programs, the lab’s courses have attracted journalism and mass media students interested in using drones for cinematography.
Back on Guy Wicks Field, students are setting up a drone course and running through their checklists for aerial maneuvers. They’re reviewing how to angle their drone, and checking the rotate and dial down button sensitivity settings to make sure their image capturing will be smoother.
One student eager to test the pricey Astro drone is Katherine Mo, a fine arts graduate student who’s been interested in flying quadcopter drones from a young age. Mo says they’re taking the course to prepare for FAA certification and to ultimately fly commercially for photography services.
The Remote Pilot Certificate, known as Part 107, is the certification you receive after passing the FAA certification test. Karl says the lab prepares students for that test and also teaches them how to pilot.
The best way to think of the certification test is the equivalent of a written test for a driver’s license.
“You can get your FAA remote pilot certification without ever having flown a drone at all, it’s just a knowledge test — it’s not a skills test,” Karl says. “We try to provide as much experience as possible flying all sorts of drones, from little Tiny Whoop [drones] that you fly indoors, all the way up to big agricultural spray drones that weigh 100 pounds.”
Even with all the advancements in technology and training, Karl says improvements to payload or battery life are still a concern for scientific drones, but the future looks promising. He predicts, for example, that we will eventually see significant agricultural businesses like John Deere developing systems to automate drones for spraying crops.
“I think that once we start to get more integrated systems, where the software and hardware are a little
bit better developed and integrated, you’ll start to see these companies getting into that as well,” Karl says.
FROM REAL ESTATE TO FILM
The Inland Northwest is a beautiful place to live and work, and many hobbyists and professional photographers capture its beauty every day. The affordability of drones as tools for cinematography and panoramic photos has allowed local photographers like Teuvo Orjala, owner of Fixed Focus Media, to capture visually stunning images of Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.
Orjala’s background is in design and multimedia arts. When he first learned about popular Chinese drone manufacturer DJI’s latest Phantom 4 drone, he knew it was the next frontier for photography. He sold one of his electric guitars for $1,800 to buy his own Phantom 4.
Orjala quickly looked into the FAA regulations and pursued certifications to be able to use the drone for business. He learned the information required for testing, which he passed, and tracks state, county and city regulations that he may need to know for his drone photography.
He’s used his drone to cover protests in Spokane and has spoken to FAA officials about the rules for drone use during thunder and lightning storms. For instance, he says you’re not allowed to fly a drone at night, when your line of sight is obstructed.
“I feel like the FAA has been really great about working with drone pilots and our [photography] industry,” Orjala says.
Orjala has been able to use images he’s captured via drone for art shows, as well as commercial and real estate work.
“I’m a professional high-end real estate photographer,” Orjala says. “Whenever I go out to shoots like that, I photograph the property, [and] I’ll also photograph big lots of land for some businesses. But I’ve also been hired to shoot for movies.”
Orjala’s drone pilot license has allowed him to accept gigs from production and documentary companies because he has the knowledge and ability to safely and legally shoot these videos with drones.
He says the widespread acceptance of affordable DJI drones, however, has also created new concerns. Less experienced hobbyists may violate privacy rules while using the consumer-grade drones. Orjala says he tries to educate those he sees violating privacy rules about local laws and FAA regulations.
Overall, Orjala says the possibilities for creativity with drones will continue to grow in film, real estate, and business photography, and he sees continued growth in those areas.
“I feel like there’s infinite room to grow for people in this space,” Orjala says. “Every movie you watch, every documentary, drones are flying all over the place.”
LAW ENFORCEMENT
The Spokane Police Department began using drones in early 2019, and now has a small fleet that includes seven drone pilots with their own assigned drones. Spokane police Lt. Jay Kernkamp says the team can also use interior drones, which are optimized for enclosed spaces inside buildings.
The police department has also acquired a $164,000 Dragonfish drone from Autel, a Chinese competitor to DJI. Kernkamp says the department bought the drone in 2024 with federal grant funds.
The police department primarily uses drones to enhance officer safety and provide de-escalation. Drones provide aerial views to help officers formulate safe response plans.
The second purpose is for search and rescue missions to help gain a wider visual when looking for missing persons, vulnerable adults, or runaway children, Kernkamp says.
“Anything that may be high risk that we could enhance our response to and make the community safer, we’ll try to utilize a drone,” Kernkamp says. “It’s a lifesaving measure, because we can locate somebody so much quicker.”
Kernkamp says the department’s drone pilots who go out with SWAT teams are all FAA Part 107 certified and can be deployed as a more effective means of operating.
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A Spokane Police Department interior drone flies through a room at an instructional event on April 18. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
After a search warrant is obtained for a situation where someone’s barricaded themself inside, he says drones can be used to enter the building and make sure it’s safe before an officer enters.
Groups like the ACLU are concerned that law enforcement could use drones to surveil or track individuals, but Kernkamp says the department’s rules prevent that. However, officers will use drones in cases when counterprotesters are potentially engaging in violence with protesters. Drones can help officers identify problematic groups that might target protesters within a sea of people, he says.
“We’re not going to use drones as a surveillance tool on individuals expressing their freedom and their [First] Amendment rights,” Kernkamp says.
He notes that newer drones specialized for law enforcement are equipped with police markings and a public address system and can provide more direct communication with people on the ground. He says it won’t replace face-to-face contact when it’s needed, but in certain lowerrisk situations, it makes communities safer.
Kernkamp wants the public to know that police realize that trust is paramount regarding drone usage and that the department follows all regulations.
“I think we try to abide by best practices and FAA regulations, and are very critical of ourselves and making sure that we don’t lose the public’s trust,” Kernkamp says. “[We’re] trying to keep the community as safe as possible by utilizing new technology.”
AN EYE ON CROPS
Head west from the University of Idaho, not to Washington State University’s main Pullman campus but to its extension site in Prosser, near the Tri-Cities, and you’ll find researchers there using drones to monitor and manage crops.
Lav Khot is an assistant research professor in biological systems engineering at WSU Prosser, which is also called the Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center. His research focuses on analyzing biotic and abiotic stressors on crops grown in Washington.
Living organisms like fungi, bacteria and insects are forms of biotic stressors. Abiotic stressors include extreme temperature, drought, salinity and nutrient deficiencies.
New drone imagery has allowed for “prescription mapping” of sorts for these crop stressors, allowing Khot to identify areas that need to be treated for water stress, irrigation leaks, canopy issues, or soil temperature differences.
“We can collect a lot more meaningful data now with multispectral and hyperspectral thermal imaging sensors that we can put on the platform,” he says. “Thermal imagery is good for looking at the irrigation leaks and things of that nature.”
Drone technology has also advanced to include spray drones for field crops. When testing drones to spray chemicals on orchards and vineyards, tree canopy coverage made it difficult to achieve effective application. So researchers developed spray booms for pesticide and
“We’re actually putting a drone together ourselves, buying components from the market, and these components are mostly sourced from U.S. companies.
”weed control applicators, and figured out how to get drones to haul larger chemical loads, allowing for a more precise and even spray application.
Even so, using drones for large-scale crop management isn’t feasible yet due to payload limits and battery size.
“I think the bottleneck is the payload, which is how much chemical we can carry in the air, because the downtime to load and unload the tank is killer,” Khot says. “If we have midsized drones with a bigger spray-carrying chemical capacity, then we would see more traction for this technology.”
Khot hopes that more agricultural businesses help develop research in precision agriculture and work with growers to navigate these new drone technologies.
“TAKING TO THE SKY,” CONTINUED...
Jake Kleinknecht, left, and Brad McMillan launch a drone off a Department of Ecology vessel to monitor algae blooms. PHOTO COURTESY WASHINGTON DEPARTMENT OF ECOLOGY
FAA DRONES BY THE NUMBERS
(as of April 1, 2025)
Total drones registered in the U.S.: Commercial drone registrations: Recreational flyer registrations: Registrations for drones heavier than 55 pounds: Certificated remote pilots:
Khot’s WSU colleague, Manoj Karkee, is an associate professor of biological systems engineering who focuses on using drones as deterrents. His research, which began in 2019, has developed autonomous drones equipped with cameras to detect, scare and deter pest birds, like European starlings or crows, from destroying vineyard crops.
Think of it as a flying scarecrow.
Karkee says these drones could help Washington farmers save $80 million in crop damage caused by birds each year. He says crops with birds nesting near them or located in bird flight paths can lose 50% of their harvest some years.
Current deterrents include expensive and laborintensive netting for vineyards and nonlethal lasers that rotate around the field. Netting can cost up to $800 for 1,000 feet, which doesn’t include the labor-intensive work to install it. Affordable automated laser systems can cost from $2,000 to $10,000. Karkee says birds can also quickly adapt to predictable lasers.
“Birds are pretty intelligent, and they find ways to get around it, go under it, and get into the field pretty quickly,” Karkee says. “Some of the affordable technologies are not very effective, while the netting, being the most effective, is pretty cost-prohibitive.”
After using manual drones to deter birds on mornings when the animals were most active, Karkee studied the damage to fruit crops. He says the research demonstrated the drones reduced grape loss sevenfold.
The research then presented a new question. What if we could program software to fly the deterrence drones autonomously?
“We looked into the possibility of doing it autonomously, using cameras to find out where birds are flying into and then having automated drones that would fly into the fields and make specific patterns of flights to scare birds away,” Karkee says.
The initial research into autonomous systems shows promising results. Karkee says the next step is to scale up that research to work with more drones and growers, testing across multiple fields to show the long-term resilience of bird deterrence. He also wants to test other methods, such as emitting predatory sounds and changing flight patterns, to prevent birds from learning the systems. However, with progress comes new obstacles. Karkee is concerned about multiple efforts in Congress to ban the use of federal funding to purchase Chinese-made drones. The Countering CCP Drones Act, which passed the House but not the Senate in 2024, would have specifically added DJI drones to the FCC covered list, denying DJI devices from accessing U.S. communications infrastructure.
Congressional supporters of the bill expressed concerns that DJI equipment may be sharing sensitive data with the Chinese Communist Party.
The law would target the popular line of drones produced by Chinese technology firm DJI, which helped catapult the use of hobby drones with release of its Phantom 1 in 2013. Karkee said the law would’ve impacted
his earlier research, which used DJI drones, but now his team plans to build their own drones to comply with the regulation.
“We’re actually putting a drone together ourselves, buying components from the market, and these components are mostly sourced from U.S. companies,” Karkee says.
HELPING FIGHT FIRES
Washington’s Department of Ecology uses drones across the state to monitor and analyze a variety of environmental concerns, including methane emissions, mining site hazards, subsurface landfill fires, coastal erosion and brownfield site cleanups.
Brad McMillan is the unmanned aircraft system program coordinator at Ecology and oversees a centralized drone program based in the IT and GIS departments. He oversees a team of 15 drone pilots that could grow as more pilots become certified.
McMillan says the department adheres to FAA regulations and internal policies, ensuring safe and transparent operations. Like many agencies, they primarily use DJI drones but are exploring alternatives due to potential bans on the Chinese-made products.
“I think it’s something like over 75% or even higher than that of DJI drones that are being used by state agencies, public entities and first responders,” McMillan says. “They’re all DJI because it’s hard to find anything that’s comparable.”
One of McMillan’s newest acquisitions is a Skydio X10 drone. The drone company, the largest in the U.S., proudly claims to be designed, assembled and supported in the USA. However, Skydio relies on Chinese manufacturers for its lithium-ion batteries and other components used in drone building, according to industry leaders.
This specific model utilizes a myriad of components that provide thermal and photogrammetry imaging. Photogrammetry is a technique that uses aerial photos to create detailed 3D models of a site with geographic details like hills, rivers and plateaus.
Ecology uses drones with thermal imaging for projects like monitoring the Eastern State Hospital landfill in Medical Lake. In August 2023, the Gray Road wildfire ignited an area of old construction and demolition debris above the landfill and ultimately underground.
The fire district was unable to extinguish the underground fire using water, so it needed to be extinguished by digging up the debris. Understanding the full extent of the smoldering material was important to keep workers safe and ensure all hot spots were finally fully extinguished in September 2024.
Instead of taking eight hours and three people to [cover] 25 to 30 acres, we can do a 20 to 30-minute [drone] flight and see the imaging...
“Landfills that have a subsurface fire underneath, we can’t send our staff out there to go and walk across these landfills, because it’s too dangerous,” McMillan says. “So we send our thermal drone out there to go and detect hot spots on the ground to detect if this fire is actually burning.”
While Ecology mostly uses drones for photogrammetry, GIS mapping, and analyzing work sites, the department also uses them for LIDAR technology, which McMillan says helps with looking at coastal erosion along the Pacific and parts of Puget Sound.
The drones’ advanced cameras also provide a bird’seye view of oil or hazardous substance spills, which helps ground crews effectively coordinate spill responses across
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The Astro Freefly drone is one of the aircraft available through University of Idaho’s drone classes. ERICK DOXEY PHOTO
“TAKING TO THE SKY,” CONTINUED...
the state. He says the thermal signature of oil slicks is different from surface water, and drone imagery helps identify features that the naked eye may miss.
Another application for drones could be for air quality monitoring, using multiple air sensors directly connected to a drone to provide data. McMillan says Ecology is still in the early stages of utilizing air quality drones, but he expects to see them used over landfills and methane release sites, and to detect other toxic substances being released into the air.
SAVING WILDLIFE
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife also uses drones for research and habitat monitoring, including work by one of the department’s biologists, William Meyer, in the Yakima Basin.
Meyer’s research centers on monitoring 15 bull trout populations in the basin, five of which are critically low. He uses drones to survey and track species’ habitats, documenting changes in river systems and identifying areas where the fish are struggling.
During droughts, Meyer and his team conduct rescue operations, moving fish from dry stream sections to safer water environments and collaborating with the Yakama Nation to rear and release fish back into their native streams.
“For some of those populations I study, we have upwards of a mile of the stream that will dry every year during droughts,” Meyer says. “Fish that get stuck in those dry areas, we go out with rescue crews and try to get them out at night, because they’re more peaceful.”
Joshua Rogala is also a biologist with Fish and Wildlife who complements Meyer’s work by using drone
technology to map and analyze river systems. He captures detailed aerial imagery that helps track habitat changes, measure stream volumes and identify potential restoration sites.
Rogala’s drone use allows him to efficiently cover large, remote areas that would be challenging and time-consuming to survey on foot, providing research that’s crucial for understanding and mitigating the environmental challenges facing bull trout.
“An aerial picture can tell you a lot more of what’s going on,” Rogala says. “The measurement tools that come along with the drone image processing are able to take volumetric measurements, linear distance measurements… instead of me having to run a field tape for a couple thousand meters.”
Meanwhile, Fish and Wildlife’s Miranda Crowell and Carissa Turner research the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits. Their primary work involves using drones to monitor and conserve the critically endangered rabbits, which live in sagebrush in Washington.
Pygmy rabbit populations are severely impacted by habitat loss due to agricultural expansion and invasive grasses. During the winter, Crowell and Turner use drones to track rabbit populations and identify tracks, dramatically reducing the time they spend walking to survey the land.
“Instead of taking eight hours and three people to do 25 to 30 acres, we can do a 20- to 30-minute [drone] flight and see the imaging and the tracks in the snow,” Crowell says.
The pygmy rabbit population is fluctuating, with numbers as low as nine in winter 2018-2019. Drones also allow research teams to keep a safe distance to avoid disturbing the animals and can help with reintroduction plans that allow rabbit kits to be placed in areas where they can thrive.
The pygmy rabbit team looks forward to finding more applications for drones in their restoration work.
“We are trying our best to use all the tools we can and do it in a safe way,” Crowell says. “We’re always trying new things to enhance our research, our studies and enhance our monitoring the best we can.” n
A drone image of Teanaway River restoration work, taken by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Biologist William Meyer. PHOTO COURTESY WA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE
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RISING AGAIN
Chef Tony Brown relocates Ruins from downtown Spokane to west Kendall Yards
BY DORA SCOTT
“Ilike to fail very slowly,” admits chef-owner Tony Brown, who’s been teasing the third relocation of his restaurant, Ruins, for months on social media.
Now settled in at the western edge of Kendall Yards, at 411 N. Nettleton St., Ruins reopened on April 15 and takes over the space formerly occupied by Park Lodge (which for a short time became BRGR House). For those paying attention to Brown’s cryptic Instagram updates, the move may have come as no surprise.
Ruins first opened in 2014 on North Monroe Street in the building now home to Chowderhead before moving downtown in 2021 to the Bickett Building at 225 W. Riverside Ave. and replacing a fine dining concept Brown briefly called Eyvind.
“We opened Hunt and Eyvind like two months before COVID, so [they] kind of shut down pretty quick, and then I had to kind of rebrand and just turn it into Ruins,” Brown says.
For five years, Ruins operated out of the downtown space above Hunt, which served a rustic food-inspired menu in the basement. But when Brown’s lease was up and he found out the Kendall Yards location was still available, he jumped at the opportunity, opting to move
Ruins and close Hunt.
“I opened the downtown one because everyone owns a downtown restaurant,” Brown says. “But then downtown fizzled a little bit.”
He’s quick to clarify, however, that the decision to move wasn’t due to the visible homeless population in downtown Spokane.
“[Downtown] should have more of a draw, and I don’t think it’s based on the quality of restaurants or I don’t think it has anything to do with being a dangerous place to go,” he says. “I just feel like there’s less events downtown, there’s less things going on downtown to entice people to come downtown.”
Much like its history of changing locations, Ruins is known for its constantly changing menu. While longtime fans can still expect menu switchups, Brown plans to slow the pace, updating it every three months rather than weekly or daily.
“I’m getting old, like, I’ve grown up I guess?” Brown says. “I don’t have the energy anymore to change it as much as I did, but I get bored really fast.”
Besides these changing whims, Brown is also inspired by local ingredients and makes sure there’s a dish
for everyone.
“I was just writing the last menu, and I would say 75% of it is naturally gluten-free,” he says. “I was vegetarian for a decade so I definitely keep that in mind.”
The lunch lineup nods to Brown’s first restaurant, Stella’s, which focused on sandwiches.
“I think the perfect food is a sandwich. You can put anything in between bread and make it taste good,” he says.
Ruins’ opening lunch menu keeps things tight with sandwiches like egg salad ($16), tuna melt ($17), Cubano ($17) and meatloaf ($18). Brown says it will increase over time to include more items like pasta.
Vegetarian versions of his sandwiches substitute meat with tofu, like the barbecue ($14) and banh mi ($16). The meat version of his long-popular banh mi — a favorite since the original Stella’s days — is packed with braised, shredded pork, radish, cucumber, carrot and jalapeño on a flaky French roll.
Though Brown loves a good sandwich, dinner is his favorite meal due to its versatility.
“There’s some things that stay on the menu that people love, but it’s typically my own little playground,” he says.
Fans will find returning hits like the dirty fries ($15),
Ruins’ eclectic, rotating dinner menu currently features this ora salmon.
YOUNG KWAK PHOTOS
featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, served with lemon aioli, salsa verde and pork shoulder. Gnocchi, another Ruins staple, hasn’t made its way onto the opening menu but can be expected in the future.
Small plates include shredded brussels sprouts ($11), arancini ($14), and Asian-inspired dishes like okonomiyaki ($16). Entrées range from ribeye ($36) with mashed potatoes, roasted shallot, oyster mayo and salsa verde to an Idaho rainbow trout ($28) with brussels sprouts, black Fuji apple, crispy bacon and a butter sauce.
Since Ruins’ first iteration opened, it’s also been known for its craft cocktails. At the new location, however, Brown is steering toward simplicity for the drink menu.
“I think we’re gonna actually go a little bit away from craft only because I think it’ll be busy enough to be like ‘turn and burn.’ We want to do quick cocktails,” he says.
Brown relies on his intuition when cooking rather than recipes, admitting that he often drives his staff a little crazy with his improvisational style.
“My whole philosophy is that pretty much everyone that I hire has had a cooking background or has worked in restaurants forever. I’ll give them a guideline, and my whole thing is like, ‘Make it taste good,’” Brown says.
The same unpredictability that characterizes Brown’s style is what keeps patrons coming back.
“Trust your chef. I’m not going to make anything bad,” Brown says.
Ruins’ new spot is right across the street from Kendall Yards’ Olmsted Brothers Green and overlooks the Centennial Trail and Spokane River.
“I’m just excited for the neighborhood. I’m excited for just the constant traffic,” Brown says.
For diners who remember Park Lodge, which shuttered a little over a year ago, much of the interior remains the same, save for a bold new coat of teal paint on the north wall.
“When I first took over the space, my daughter, who is 21, came to visit [during] Christmas break, and the first thing that she said was, ‘It looks like a bank.’ Because it was very, very beige, so we made it more colorful,” Brown says.
A huge, striking Amazonian face mask hangs on the wall and greets customers as they walk in.
“That’s not going anywhere. It weighs a lot,” Brown says.
Natural wood accents run throughout, found in exposed wooden beams, logs stacked artfully into a wall niche near the entrance, and in the seating and tables.
Besides coming to Brown fully furnished, the space’s kitchen was decked with top-of-theline appliances. Park Lodge’s chef-owner Philip Stanton outfitted a large applewood-burning hearth oven, visible to patrons, with an adjustable metal grate.
Another major upgrade for Ruins is the riverside patio, which seats 50 people. The patio alone is more than double his old location’s total capacity.
“This is the first restaurant in 13 years where I walked in and I was like, ‘Oh, this is like put together. I don’t have to do anything,’” Brown says. n
Chef-owner Tony Brown has resettled Ruins into the Kendall Yards space last home to Park Lodge.
QUEER AMERICANA
On Swift Horses paints a pretty but empty picture of 1950s gay longing
BY JOSH BELL
There’s nothing swift about the handsomely crafted but dramatically inert period piece On Swift Horses Director Daniel Minahan’s adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel is full of yearning and longing, but light on anything below the surface of the characters’ soulful expressions. The stars look gorgeous while pouting and gazing, but the appeal of attractive people in sensual embraces can only carry the movie for so long.
Still, Minahan clearly knows what he’s doing when he has Jacob Elordi’s Julius immediately pop off his shirt as he lounges on the hood of a truck outside the rural Kansas home of his brother Lee (Will Poulter) and Lee’s fiancée, Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones). There’s still snow on the ground, but that doesn’t stop Julius from airing out his pecs, which catches the eye of both Muriel and the audience. Julius has shown up unannounced after receiving an early military discharge, and he arrives to celebrate Christmas before Lee has to return to the Korean War front.
Rated R
spends as much time hustling card sharps as he does observing them. Their mutual interest in gambling isn’t the only thing they have in common, and it’s mostly used as a metaphor for the more personal risks they take as they explore queer life in the 1950s.
On Swift Horses
Directed by Daniel Minahan
Julius is more self-aware about his sexuality, and it’s not hard to figure out the reason he was kicked out of the Army before serving a full tour. In Las Vegas, he meets Henry (Diego Calva), a Mexican immigrant and fellow poker hustler, and their romance takes them from the bedroom to the card table, with increasingly risky schemes to cheat at the same games they’re supposed to be protecting.
Starring Jacob Elordi, Daisy EdgarJones, Will Poulter
The war proves to be surprisingly incidental to the story, though, which is not about dealing with PTSD or readjusting to civilian life. Six months later, Lee and Muriel are married and living in San Diego, where Lee works in a vaguely defined factory job and Muriel is a waitress at a café frequented by bettors from a nearby horse track. Although he promised to join them in California, Julius instead heads to Las Vegas, where he gets a job spotting cheaters at a local casino.
Muriel soon takes advantage of her workplace eavesdropping to make big bets on horse races, and Julius
It takes a little longer for Muriel to acknowledge her burgeoning feelings, but she too experiences a sexual awakening while making a wager, encountering a flirty blonde trophy wife at the track who gives her a matchbook for a local gay bar. She’s even more drawn to Sandra (Sasha Calle), the neighbor who lives just outside the prefab planned community where Muriel and Lee move after saving up some money.
So it goes, slowly back and forth, as Julius and Muriel write letters to each other, obliquely referencing their individual dalliances but keeping their true feelings — including for each other — hidden. Meanwhile, Lee is almost laughably oblivious, expecting to build a harmonious family home with his devoted wife and supportive brother. Poulter delivers one heartfelt, understated speech late in the film that shows the depth of Lee’s compassion, but the character is such an absurd doormat for much
of the time that there’s no tension in Muriel’s efforts at secrecy and repression.
It’s refreshing to see queer characters in this era allowed to experience joy and love, but neither pair of lovers has much romantic chemistry. Minahan doesn’t shy away from explicit sexuality, and he gives viewers ample opportunity to ogle his actors’ sculpted physiques. At the same time, much of the movie’s visual style comes across as a hermetically sealed curio, whether that’s the flimsylooking recreations of Vegas and Tijuana or the fashion shoot-ready sex scenes. It’s not surprising that Minahan has spent almost his entire career as a prolific TV director, as On Swift Horses has the polished, anonymous feel of a Netflix TV pilot.
The respective journeys of Julius and Muriel toward self-actualization are clumsy and obvious, despite the actors’ best efforts to give them emotional resonance. On Swift Horses’ most affecting moment has essentially nothing to do with the main characters, as the camera pans across a crowded bulletin board at a San Diego hotel that serves as hub for the gay community. The posted photos and notes encompass romantic declarations, tender memorials, and entreaties to lost lovers. That brief montage says more about the queer struggle of the time period than anything else in the movie.
“You’ve got your secrets and I’ve got mine,” Julius yells at Muriel during a pivotal confrontation, and the dialogue from screenwriter Bryce Kass rarely rises beyond that level of cliché. Minahan aims for the simmering passion of queer period pieces like Brokeback Mountain or Carol, but he ends up only with tepid titillation. n
The yearning in On Swift Horses outweighs its depth.
Death & Kink
David Cronenberg brings his potent mix of horror and humanity to The Shrouds
BY JOSH BELL
It makes sense that the protagonist of a David Cronenberg movie would take a first date to his wife’s grave. That’s exactly what tech entrepreneur Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel) does at the beginning of Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, and it makes equal sense that he never sees that date again. Not that Karsh is in any shape for dating, since he’s still fixated on his late wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), who’s been dead for four years.
Karsh isn’t just devoted to memories of Becca. In typical Cronenbergian fashion, he’s invented a grotesque yet somehow popular device for observing the decay of Becca’s body in real time. Karsh is the founder of GraveTech, which produces the titular shrouds, technologically advanced wrappings that transmit high-resolution images of corpses to little screens embedded in their headstones. Like the fleshy videogame consoles in eXistenZ or the writhing chair in Crimes of the Future, these are accessories that no sane human being would ever want to utilize, but in Cronenberg’s twisted, surreal world, they’re taken for granted.
The Shrouds
Rated R
Directed by David Cronenberg Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce
ous attackers who knock over several of the graves and disable the connection that allows clients to view their loved ones’ decomposing remains. As Karsh investigates this crime, he seemingly uncovers a global conspiracy to weaponize his technology to create a worldwide surveillance system, possibly by clandestine Russian or Chinese operatives. Or maybe not. The conspiracy might be entirely made up, since Karsh’s primary investigator is his unhinged hacker brotherin-law Maury (Guy Pearce), who was previously married to Becca’s sister Terry (also Kruger) and harbors intense grudges against both her and Karsh. For her part, Terry is sexually aroused by conspiracy theories, which is a creative new kink from the filmmaker who brought car-accident fetishists to the screen in Crash
ALSO OPENING
THE ACCOUNTANT 2
Ben Affleck returns as the titular autistic accountant who launders money for some of the most dangerous people on the planet. The action heats up when he must help solve the murder of a Treasury official with help from his brother (Jon Bernthal). Rated R
CHEECH AND CHONG’S LAST MOVIE
The iconic stoner comedy duo reflect back on their careers during a road trip in this humorous documentary. Rated R
HAPPY GILMORE
Before the arrival of Happy Gilmore 2 on Netflix in July, Adam Sandler’s original classic golf comedy plays another round in cineplexes. Rated PG-13
THE LEGEND OF OCHI
This A24 family fantasy film finds a girl on an island inhabited by feared monsters known as the ochi (brought to life via puppetry not CGI). While training to hunt the beasts, she finds a baby ochi, bonds with the critter and sets out on an adventure to find its family. Rated PG
STAR WARS: EPISODE IIIREVENGE OF THE SITH
For its 20th anniversary, the Star Wars prequel that’s actually just straight up good returns to the big screen. Rated PG-13
UNTIL DAWN
Based on the popular video game series, this film finds a group of young adults caught in a horror time loop where every day they get slaughtered by a new nightmarish killer. Rated R
an unconventional approach to grief, grounding it in physical sensation and tactile longing, and paying close attention to the way that human bodies break down both before and after death. Karsh’s visions/dreams of Becca’s long illness focus on her body being cut away, piece by piece, as doctors remove more and more flesh in an effort to stop the disease from spreading. It’s horrifying but also tender, as Karsh reaches out for sexual gratification even while Becca’s body becomes more and more fragile.
Although The Shrouds is ostensibly set in present-day Toronto, it really occupies a sort of liminal space of waking nightmares, and like many Cronenberg movies, it operates primarily on dream logic, even when the plot initially seems straightforward. Karsh’s cemetery is vandalized one night by mysteri-
There are numerous echoes of Cronenberg’s past work in The Shrouds, and like 2022’s Crimes of the Future, it represents a bracing return to the filmmaker’s early themes of techno-human grotesquerie. At 82, Cronenberg seems rejuvenated as an artist. The Shrouds arose from his own grief after losing his wife in 2017. Cassel is deliberately styled to resemble Cronenberg himself, and at one point Terry admonishes him, “You’ve made a career out of bodies,” which could easily sum up Cronenberg’s own oeuvre.
Both The Shrouds and Karsh himself take
The haunting imagery, elliptical storytelling, and erotically repulsive sex/death themes are more satisfying than the increasingly laborious conspiracy storyline, although its incomprehensibility is part of the point. It gives Karsh something to blame for his all-consuming obsession, but it can also drag the movie down. Kruger’s third role, as the voice of Karsh’s AI assistant Hunny, is similarly shaky, although the janky CGI of her avatar adds to the movie’s off-kilter feel.
That feel is what Cronenberg captures best, and The Shrouds sustains its unsettling mood from its cryptic beginning to its even more cryptic end. This probably shouldn’t be anyone’s first Cronenberg movie, but for viewers who have followed him across sicko classics like Shivers, The Brood and The Fly, it’s a powerful jolt of the uncanny, horrific beauty that only he can create. n
Another dark Cronenbergian vision arrives.
ESSAY
True Trans Soul Rebel
A personal reflection on Laura Jane Grace and music as a tool for understanding
BY SETH SOMMERFELD
Music is humanity. Experiencing music provides a window to the beauty in the world and helps us sort through all our messy emotions — love, hate, bliss, sorrow, rage, sadness, humor, discomfort — in a cathartic way. Even when done in solitude, music creation offers a way for a person to unpack and work through the din of thoughts cluttering their own brains. Performers often take the stage as a way to feel connected to humanity via an empathetic bond — to prove they’re not the only ones feeling these soaring high and crushing lows.
Musicians can truly help people develop a worldview beyond the insular prism of self.
Laura Jane Grace did that for me.
Iwasn’t a teenage anarchist, but as my years as a minor were drawing to a close I discovered Against Me!, the Floridian punk band that Grace fronted. As a pop punk kid, Against Me! felt like a wallop in the gut in the best way possible. Grace’s throat-shredding singing and ripping guitar work still carried a melodic underpinning under its wall of harsh noise, and the band’s beaten down, but not broken, underdog spirit shone through on the type of angrily empathetic and politically pissed off lyricism. The songs on Against Me!’s 2002 debut LP — the punk classic Reinventing Axl Rose — and the great albums that followed like The Eternal Cowboy, Searching for
a Former Clarity and New Wave felt like anthemic calls to actually give a f—.
It wasn’t long before Against Me! ranked among my favorite bands. I converted my college roommate into a fan, and we’d bang out acoustic AM! covers in our dorm rooms. I stuck out like a sore thumb wearing my New Wave hoodie with its screaming panther logo walking around the nice boys and girls at my Jesuit university (I still wear the now-tattered garment to this day). As my travels took me elsewhere I took every chance to see Grace and Co. tear it up with their undeniably infectious frenetic energy: from sweltering garages in Montana and sun-baked parking lots in Denver to proper venues in Seattle, Toronto, Buffalo, Wyoming and more. To paraphrase Reinventing Axl Rose’s title track, I wanted a band that played loud and hard every night, one that struck chords that cut like a knife, one whose shows felt like you could dance like no one was watching with one fist in the air. Against Me! was that band for me.
But all of that chaotic musical bliss wasn’t the main way Laura Jane Grace impacted my life.
In May 2012, Laura Jane Grace came out as a transgender woman via an article in Rolling Stone. Grace shared her story, her fears and her truth in a time well before issues of trans rights became a national talking point.
And it kinda broke my brain.
I vividly recall sitting down to read the story in my Seattle abode and soon after discussing it with my roommate (the one I’d converted to an Against Me! fan all those years back). As a straight cis white dude who grew up in the relatively sheltered Montanian culture, I’d never actually thought about trans folks before. The mainstream pop culture only rarely ever mentioned trans folks, and when it did it was usually shrouded in camp (Rocky Horror Picture Show) or someone misusing the slur “tranny” as an interchangeable term for any cross-dressing man.
My first instinctual reaction to reading about Grace coming out wasn’t some puritanical revulsion, more just a general ignorant shock. Boiled down my thoughts closer to something like, “Huh… huh… that’s really weird” (not great!) and (very selfishly) “I hope this doesn’t mess up Against Me!’s music somehow.”
But it also wasn’t a news story that left my mind quickly. It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s something I thought about every day over the next month, spinning around feelings of discomfort and understanding like mental Baoding balls. There was almost a forensic element, as many of the Against Me! songs that I loved but always felt slightly off like “Pretty Girls (The Mover)” and “The Ocean” suddenly made perfect sense in context of someone hiding their trans feelings under the crushing
weight of gender dysmorphia (one of many new-to-me concepts I’d read up on).
After copious hours spent thinking about Grace’s transition, it became abundantly clear how I felt about it. On a personal level, I was just glad that a musician I adored could feel more comfortable in their own skin.
But on a more important level, it didn’t f—ing matter how I felt about it. It’s not my life, it’s hers. She wasn’t throwing herself into a category of folks seen as societal outcasts for attention or to hurt anyone. She was just a person trying to feel less internal mental anguish for merely existing.
That personal freedom led Grace to craft Against Me!’s monumental 2014 album Transgender Dysmorphia Blues. The album is a punk masterpiece, distilling the feelings of anxiety, longing, fear, and rage that trans folks are forced to live with on a daily basis, and turning it into an anthemic burst of rock grace. It’s not only one of the best and most critically acclaimed albums of the 2010s, but it’s also one that placed trans issues at least on the periphery of mainstream musical culture in an in-your-face and personal way that had really never really happened prior.
While Against Me! has been on hiatus ever since 2020, Grace has remained active as a solo artist putting out great records like Hole in My Head and Stay Alive, as well as albums with various bands sporting her name: from Laura Jane Grace & The Mississippi Medicals’ Give an Inch to Laura Jane Grace in the Trauma Tropes’ upcoming LP, Adventure Club
But there’s still more to how Laura Jane Grace helped me.
In 2016, my sibling came to visit me in Seattle. Near the end of their visit, they wanted to have a conversation. After some nervous buildup on their end, they decided to come out to me as nonbinary.
To be honest, I kind of no sold their announcement. I almost didn’t even react. I just shrugged and told them that’s perfectly fine. As our conversation continued, I just let them know that I fully supported them and that how they identified didn’t change my love for them.
Exposure breeds understanding. It’s the reason bigots fear diverse hubs like major cities and college campuses and paint them as places of societal decay — they know that if you spend time with the folks they want you to fear, it will humanize them because you’ll realize that the faux boogeymen they claim are so dangerous are just people trying to live out their lives.
Getting that initial dose of trans culture via Laura Jane Grace dispelled any notion that trans folks were anything more than people just trying to be themselves. I made trans friends in the years that followed whom I cherish deeply. Not only do trans folks not negatively impact my life, they enrich it every day.
As my sibling slowly came out to other people, I was able to be there to comfort them at times when they ran into people who didn’t immediately accept their gender identity. I was able to hold them close through the moments of fear and tears.
As right-wing politicians around the globe have fabricated reasons for trans hate and made them tenets of their platforms over recent years (ignoring history to act like trans folks are new and discounting scientific research on the gender spectrum), it’s become a scarier world for all of my gender nonconforming friends and family. The only way to even begin to fight against the hate and ignorance is through radical empathy.
That empathy is easier when you’re willing to listen to trans folks’ stories. That empathy is easier when you realize people are just trying to be themselves and nothing about that detracts from your own life. And that empathy is easier when you can experience a modicum of other people’s plights via their art and music.
Laura Jane Grace and other artists like her offer us all a chance to see a fuller world.
Choose empathy. n
Read a full interview with Laura Jane Grace at Inlander.com.
Laura Jane Grace & The Mississippi Medicals, Rodeo Boys • Fri, April 25 at 8 pm • $30 • 21+ • The District Bar • 916 W. First Ave • sp.knittingfactory.com
If you’ve ever wanted to understand mental health better and how to navigate the resources available- for yourself, your coworkers or your family and friends, this event is for you!
Space is limited so please register now to reserve your spot!
Thursday, May 1st 11:00AM-1:00PM
CenterPlace Regional Event Center
2426 N. Discovery Pl, Spokane Valley, WA
FREE EVENT
Lunch and refreshments provided
Register online at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fbh-invites-you-tickets-1274745250359?aff=oddtdtcreator
BLACK METAL DEAFHEAVEN
No one makes brutality sound as beautiful as Deafheaven does. The group’s onslaught of technical black metal musicianship with a sneaky melodic touch blends seamlessly with the screams and growls of vocalist George Clarke, which seem more like another instrument to create dissonant sound. Deafheaven’s power can really be felt live, as there’s something almost alluringly militaristic about the precision of their sonic attack and demeanor. The band’s 2013 album Sunbather remains one of the best heavy albums ever created, and after a less-than-ideal response to 2021’s decidedly less hard and more experimental LP Infinite Granite, the group returns to its vocal-shredding intensity on its new album, Lonely People with Power. See Deafheaven’s return to form when the band heads to the Knitting Factor for what’s very likely going to be one of the best heavy Spokane concerts of 2025.
— SETH SOMMERFELD
Deafheaven, Trauma Ray • Sat, April 26 at 8 pm • $28-$50 • All ages • Knitting Factory • 919 W. Sprague Ave. • sp.knittingfactory.com
LOCAL HARDCORE PUNK VIOLENT ABUSE
Thursday, 4/24
BOLO’S BAR & GRILL, Bay 7
J BOTTLE BAY BREWING CO., Lucas Brookbank Brown
J THE CHAMELEON, Yacht Rock Tribute
GARLAND DRINKERY, Speak Easy: Open Mic Night
J KNITTING FACTORY, Pop Evil, Devour the Day, Return to Dust, Oni
J BING CROSBY THEATER, ‘80s Party: Nite Wave, New Life
BOLO’S BAR & GRILL, Rusty Nail & The Hammers
THE CHAMELEON, DJ Exodus: Y2K is Back
CHINOOK STEAK, SEAFOOD & PASTA, Wiebe Jammin’
J THE DISTRICT BAR, Laura Jane Grace & The Mississippi Medicals, Rodeo Boys
DRY FLY DISTILLING, Son of Brad
J THE GRAIN SHED, Haywire GREEN CITY SALOON, DJ KJ
HELIX WINES, Schauer With Friends
IRON HORSE (CDA), JamShack
MIKEY’S GYROS, Giant Palouse Earthworm
J J MIKEY’S GYROS, Violent Abuse, Big Knife, It’s a Setup, POTUS MOOSE LOUNGE, Bruiser NIGHT OWL, Four On The Floor Fridays
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Tucker James RED ROOM LOUNGE, Batman Rave
THE GOODY BAR AND GRILL, Midnight Open Mic TRVST, KosMos The Afronaut ZOLA, Mister Sister, Deb the Wolf
Saturday, 4/26
ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS, Jason Evans
J THE BACKYARD PUBLIC HOUSE, Vika
J J THE BIG DIPPER, Violent Abuse: Defenseless EP Release Show with It’s a Setup, Hofsess
J BING CROSBY THEATER, Nevermind:
Seattle’s Tribute to Nirvana BOLO’S BAR & GRILL, Rusty Nail & The Hammers
J BOTTLE BAY BREWING CO., Don & Thomas Thompson
J CENTRAL LIBRARY, Get Loud in the Library: Rock and Blues Concert
THE CHAMELEON, Noctiil, IT Brian, No Signal, Psiyan
CHINOOK STEAK, SEAFOOD & PASTA, Wiebe Jammin’
The new album Defenseless by local hardcore punk duo Violent Abuse is 11 songs long. The band gets through all those tracks in 8 minutes and 24 seconds. That, my friends, is ruthless efficiency. Violent Abuse has been rising in the local scene with a noisy power violence sound produced by Kyle Schmitt (guitar, bass, vocals) and Jason Wolpert (drums, vocals) being an ideal soundtrack for unloading one’s rage in a thrash pit. Defenseless condenses the frenetic chaos to slam dance listeners’ eardrums, and the band is celebrating the album’s arrival with shows in both Spokane and Moscow.
— SETH SOMMERFELD
Violent Abuse, Big Knife, It’s a Setup, POTUS • Fri, April 25 at 8 pm • $10 • All Ages • Mikey’s Gyros • 521 S. Main St., Moscow • mikeysgyros.com
Violent Abuse, It’s a Setup, Hofsess • Sat, April 26 at 8 pm • $10 • All Ages • The Big Dipper • 171 S. Washington St. • thebigdipperspokane.com
J THE GRAIN SHED TAP HOUSE, The Front Porch Rockers
J HAMILTON STUDIO, Jahari Stampley Trio IRON HORSE (CDA), JamShack
J J J BONES MUSICLAND, Sam Weber, Landon Spencer
J J KNITTING FACTORY, Deafheaven, Trauma Ray MOOSE LOUNGE, Bruiser
NIGHT OWL, Priestess
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Mike Wagoner & Sadie Sicilia RED ROOM LOUNGE, The Rub
THE GOODY BAR AND GRILL, Midnight Open Mic
TRVST, Gnarnia: Mythical Melodies
ZOLA, Blake Braley, The Ronaldos
Sunday, 4/27
IRON HORSE (CDA), PJ Destiny
J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Magenta Wave, Shady Angels, Fall of the Conscience
Monday, 4/28
J BING CROSBY THEATER, Bruce Cockburn
RED ROOM LOUNGE, Red Room Open Mic
ZOLA, Nate Stratte
Tuesday, 4/29
J HAMILTON STUDIO, Wonder Women of Country
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, John Firshi
SWING LOUNGE, Swing Lounge Live Music Tuesdays
J = THE INLANDER RECOMMENDS THIS SHOW
J = ALL AGES SHOW
ZOLA, The Zola All Star Jam, Daniel Kosel
Wednesday, 4/30
THE DRAFT ZONE, The Draft Zone Open Mic
RED ROOM LOUNGE, Red Room Jam
J TIMBERS ROADHOUSE, Cary Beare Presents TRVST, The TRVST Open Decks ZOLA, Akifumi Kato, TJ Hoopes
Just Announced...
J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, XTR Human, May 9. THE CHAMELEON, Klypi, May 10.
J JAGUAR ROOM AT CHAMELEON, Nightlife, May 21.
J THE BIG DIPPER, Switch Off Safety, May 31.
J SPOKANE TRIBE CASINO, Mike Tramp’s White Lion, May 31.
J SPOKANE TRIBE CASINO, Blind Melon, June 8.
J J GORGE AMPHITHEATRE, Heart, Aug. 8.
J KNITTING FACTORY, The Struts, Sept. 16.
J J BING CROSBY THEATER, Choir! Choir! Choir: An Epic Queen Sing-Along, Aug. 8.
Coming Up...
J THE BIG DIPPER, Eyas/Luna, Fauvism, Willing Hands, Dissonance, May 1, 7:30 pm.
J PANIDA THEATER, Jim Messina, May 1, 7:30 pm.
J KNITTING FACTORY, Dirtwire, KR3TURE, May 1, 8 pm.
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Nobody Famous, May 2, 5-8 pm.
J THE BIG DIPPER, Box Elder, May 2, 7:30 pm.
THE CHAMELEON, EYEHATEGOD, Absent Cardinal, POTUS, May 2, 7:30 pm.
J NEATO BURRITO, The Colourflies, Jjanggoo, Bailey Allen Baker, May 2, 7:30 pm.
J J THE CHAMELEON, Nate Synonymous: The Curiosity Constant Release Show, May 2, 8 pm.
J KNITTING FACTORY, Yelawolf, May 2, 8 pm.
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Tom Catmull, May 3, 5-8 pm.
J THE BIG DIPPER, Loomer, Drook, Jaoquin, May 3, 7:30 pm.
J SPOKANE TRIBE CASINO, KT Tunstall, May 3, 8 pm.
THE CHAMELEON, Work It, May 3, 9 pm.
THE DISTRICT BAR, Never Come Down, May 3, 9 pm.
J HAMILTON STUDIO, Hot Club of Spokane, May 4, 6 pm.
J J KNITTING FACTORY, Silversun Pickups, May 4, 8 pm.
J PEND D’OREILLE WINERY, Jack Purdie, May 6, 5-7 pm.
MUSIC | VENUES
219 LOUNGE • 219 N. First Ave., Sandpoint • 208-263-5673
ARBOR CREST WINE CELLARS • 4705 N. Fruit Hill Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-927-9463
BABY BAR • 827 W. First Ave. • 509-847-1234
BARRISTER WINERY • 1213 W. Railroad Ave. • 509-465-3591
BEE’S KNEES WHISKY BAR • 1324 W. Lancaster Rd.., Hayden • 208-758-0558
BERSERK • 125 S. Stevens St. • 509-315-5101
THE BIG DIPPER • 171 S. Washington St. • 509-863-8098
BIGFOOT PUB • 9115 N. Division St. • 509-467-9638
BING CROSBY THEATER • 901 W. Sprague Ave. • 509-227-7638
BLACK DIAMOND • 9614 E. Sprague Ave. • 509891-8357
BOLO’S BAR & GRILL • 116 S. Best Rd., Spokane Valley • 509-891-8995
BOOMERS CLASSIC ROCK BAR • 18219 E. Appleway Ave., Spokane Valley • 509-368-9847
BUCER’S COFFEEHOUSE PUB • 201 S. Main St., Moscow • 208-596-0887
THE BULL HEAD • 10211 S. Electric St., Four Lakes • 509-838-9717
CHAN’S RED DRAGON • 1406 W. Third Ave. • 509-838-6688
THE CHAMELEON • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd.
CHECKERBOARD • 1716 E. Sprague Ave. • 509-443-4767
*APR = Annual Percentage Rate. 6-month introductory rate of 2.99% APR (includes relationship discounts of 0.25% discount with automatic pay from Numerica checking and 0.25% discount with Numerica Visa credit card or another Numerica loan). The current APR is as low as 7.75%, effective March 1, 2025. Offer good on applications submitted between March 1 and May 31, 2025. To be eligible for the introductory rate, member must have or open a Numerica personal checking account. Combined loan-to-value ratio up to 90% on primary residence on qualifying credit. Not available on second homes, vacation properties, investment properties, bridge loans, combo loans, refinance of existing Numerica HELOCs, or on residences outside Washington or Idaho. All fees/costs, except full appraisal if required, are typically paid by Numerica if the loan amount is less than $250,000. Fees/ costs to open HELOC generally range between $500 to $1,500. HELOCs are subject to recovery charges if closed within two years of origination. Recovery charges are the lesser of total third-party costs paid by Numerica or $500. Full appraisal is required for loan amounts exceeding $250,000, manufactured homes, or underwriter discretion. Rate will increase after 6-month introductory period depending on credit score and prime rate and may change quarterly thereafter. APR is variable and based on the Wall Street Journal Prime Rate. It can adjust quarterly but will never exceed 18.00% APR or go below 2.99% APR. As of March 1, 2025, the prime rate is 7.50% and is subject to change. The APR is a combination of the prime rate plus a margin, which is determined at application and based on several factors, including creditworthiness. All loans subject to approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Rates, terms, and conditions are subject to change. Apply for introductory rate by May 31, 2025.
OUTDOORS TREE O’CLOCK
As of 2025, Spokane has been a Tree City USA for 22 years. That’s over two decades of dedication to urban forestry and our environment. Celebrate all things trees at this Arbor Day event at the most tree-filled spot in Spokane: John A. Finch Arboretum! There, you’ll sit under the shade of the arboretum’s many trees, listen to live music, learn about composting, participate in arts and crafts projects and even take home your very own tree seedling to nurture and care for throughout the spring and summer. At noon, a special Tree City USA ceremony is set to take place along with a ceremonial tree planting and demonstration. Have a tree-mendous time!
— MADISON PEARSON
Arbor Day Celebration • Sat, April 26 from 11 am-2 pm • Free • John A. Finch Arboretum • 3404 W. Woodland Blvd. • my.spokanecity.org/parksrec
COMMUNITY ONLY ONE PLANET
Join neighbors in West Central Spokane at the first annual Earth Day Block Party. River City Youth Ops and several other nonprofits are teaming up to host the event all about sustainability, creativity and fun. Elm Street is closed to traffic for a bike rodeo, during which people of all ages can practice their riding skills without worrying about other vehicles on the road. There’s also live music, upcycling activities for kids, food trucks, a clothing swap and booths from various community organizations that can share more about the environmental conservation work happening here in Spokane. Grab your friends and family to celebrate and learn about sustainable lifestyle habits that benefit our planet Earth.
— CARRIE SHRIVER
Earth Day Block Party • Sat, April 26 from 2-5 pm • Free • All ages • West Central Abbey • 1832 W. Dean Ave. • youthops.org
BENEFIT DRAW IT UP
Art is full of emotion, and it’s often a solitary practice, with artists retreating into themselves to produce stunning works for the rest of the world to gaze upon. For one day a year, Spokane Art School challenges that notion with its annual Drawing Rally. The event features two one-hour drawing rounds showcasing over 40 local artists battling to turn blank pages into masterpieces within the time limit. This year’s participating artists include mixed-media connoisseur Tracy Poindexter-Canton, 33 Artists Market founder Gwyn Pevonka, gallery owners Sonny and Lisa Moeckel, and longtime Spokane Art School instructor Tom Quinn. After the artists complete their task, each work will be sold for $75, with proceeds supporting Spokane Art School programs.
— MADISON PEARSON
Spokane Art School Drawing Rally • Sat, April 26 from 5-8 pm • Free admission • Spokane Art School • 503 E. Second Ave. • spokaneartschool.net
YOUNG KWAK PHOTO
GET LISTED!
Submit events online at Inlander.com/getlisted or email relevant details to getlisted@inlander.com. We need the details one week prior to our publication date.
WORDS TREAT YO SHELF
For all those who consider themselves bookworms, book enthusiasts or book lovers, Independent Bookstore Day is back! Spokane is a thriving hub for independent bookstores, including the area’s oldest bookstore in downtown Spokane, Auntie’s, which is ready to celebrate this annual occasion. Special in-store events include book signings with local authors Courtney Davis and Bethany Bennett, giveaways of free advanced reader book copies for every $10 spent, free merch, and a raffle for several themed gift packages. Auntie’s celebration runs all day on Saturday, but some deals are scheduled so check their website for details. Consider stopping by other locally owned shops, too, like Jupiter’s Eye, Wishing Tree and the Well-Read Moose for even more Independent Bookstore Day events.
— HANNAH HIGENS
Independent Bookstore Day • Sat, April 26 from 11 am-3 pm • All ages • Free • Auntie’s Bookstore • 402 W. Main Ave. • auntiesbooks.com
FILM IF YOU KNOW, YOU KINO
Short films are the oft-overlooked breeding ground for the future marquee filmmakers. Breakthrough films like Whiplash, Boogie Nights, The Evil Dead and Bottle Rocket all started as shorts by then-unknown directors by the names of Damien Chazelle, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sam Raimi and Wes Anderson. Beyond that, a finely tuned short can often surpass the emotional impact of feature-length films in a fraction of the time. The KINO Film Festival, which celebrates its 25th year showcasing choice PNW shorts, completely understands this. For the first time this year, KINO stretches over two days with workshops, parties and screenings (which are free for University of Idaho students). The 2025 slate includes the premiere of The Snail Hunters (a doc about a UI professor seeking snails on Galápagos Islands) and a celebration of the work by standout Seattle director Megan Griffiths. — SETH SOMMERFELD
KINO Short Film Festival • Fri, April 25 & Sat, April 26, times vary • $20 festival pass; free-$8/screenings • Kenworthy Theatre • 508 S. Main St., Moscow • kinofilmfest.org
CHEERS
TRANSITION Everyone knows change is here, but what does the future look like? The end of the United States because we haven’t been united in a long time. Since everything is interconnected, when you pull on one thread, things start to unravel. What you end up with is the Americas, all three of them, joining forces to create a free trade zone between the Americans and the rest of the world, but the transition to get there will be painful.
TESLA COUNTER-PROTESTERS Wasn’t sure to write jeers or cheers about TeslaTuesday counter-protesters but decided if we weren’t making an impact they wouldn’t be out there, so thanks! Why they’re supportting authorianism, racism and a man who by all accounts is a real weirdo is for them to face. We know we’re on the right side of history.
FEWER PEOPLE NOT MORE HOUSES
Cheers to everyone trying to preserve the largest area of undeveloped land left in the Spokane city limits (south of Thorpe Road). We don’t need more houses... we need fewer people. There needs to be wild lands for wild animals to live.
JUST A NOD A nod to the Holey Pothole. After 500 years we have perfected the pothole. In the 14th and 15th century potters would recognize clay in the ruts in the road and they would dig out the clay to make pots leaving a large “Pothole.” Today we make potholes everywhere. There are Epic potholes around Spokane. Maybe in
your neighborhood. I’ve seen potholes that border on sinkholes. In two states there are potholes that provide incomes to used hubcap dealers. They provide hundreds of jobs and all sorts of ancillary benefits in the form of mechanical engineering (suspensions) and car repairs. Why here in Spokane they are an industry. It’s time to embrace our potholes. Give them their due, recognize their import in the environment and the economy. Can we even learn to... love them? So to the Holey Pothole...a nod. But the next time I hit one “I’ll...!!”
IT’S A NICE START! Nicely done! Good job Spokane. I knew you could do it. Keep it up. I love you people.
YOUTH IS INSPIRING To the Youth! We see you with the mess passed to you and we are devastated and Sorry. We find hope in the Youth and seek to protect people and planet so you can ALL flourish. Thanks for the PJALS protest. We will stand by you. Peace!
JEERS
TO MY “BESTIE” To my “Bestie,” I want to thank you for exposing what I hadn’t known about you for 35 years and that is: you are a hypocrite. You decided to dump me as a friend when you saw a picture of me in a Trump T-shirt. Your response was to call me and tell me “we can’t go on vacation together.” And following that announcement, the conversation turned into basically dumping me as a friend. We’ve known each other for 35 years, so your response to my personal election vote came as a surprise. Here’s the hypocrisy: You think you’re fighting something which is divisive and vicious, but your response to that is to be divisive and vicious. I don’t wish to be friends with someone who’s hypocritical, divisive and vicious. So thank you for exposing yourself.
SPOKANE TRANSIT Is getting worse. The Mirabeau Point Park-and-Ride took like eight months to rebuild, and there’s still no pedestrian bridge to the apartments behind it. So why did rebuilding it take so long? The buses are still late across the cities and don’t approach the platforms where they’re supposed to. They aren’t doing a great job of mobility training since it still takes people THIRTY SECONDS TO GET THEIR PASSES READY AFTER THEY GET IN THE BUS. Maybe all the money spent on that freeway could have been better spent on our transit system.
EXPIRED TABS Dear Spokane Law Enforcement: Please start to pull over cars with expired license tabs and issue them tickets. We’re aware that the fine is $145 if expired for up to two months and $237 if expired for more than two months. Some cars driving on the road have tabs that expired several years ago. Please start ticketing these total losers. Perhaps enough
have implemented DEI? Of course, but so were there issues with the “merit-based” employment systems you seem to feel were so effective in hiring just the right people. I think one of the best examples of a merit-based system that is actually based on anything but merit are the Cabinet members and advisers of the current resident of the White House.
SOUND OFF 1. Visit
zeros will get the message and actually begin to follow the law. Thank you.
TO MYSELF Every Tuesday morning I travel from the south and my MIL travels from the north and we meet in the Grocery Outlet parking lot so she can pick up our 2-yearold who she watches on those days. This most recent Tuesday, I bought some plants after dropping her off. When I returned to my car, you approached me and asked if you could ask me a question. My immediate response was “no,” and I got in my car. I spent the remainder of my day wondering what you were going to ask me and feeling bad that I didn’t give you the opportunity to do so. I have no idea what you were going to ask, but I made a judgment before I gave you the chance. You appeared unhoused and if someone else who had a different appearance asked me the same thing I likely would have had a different response. I don’t know if you will read this, but I want you to know I am sorry. I am better than that response. Perhaps in these tenuous times, we can stop being so jaded and think about our responses to one another (no matter our perceived notions) because we all need a lot more love right now.
MERIT BASED EMPLOYMENT This is for the person critical of DEI in the April 17-23 issue of the Inlander. So, would you want the person showing up when your house is on fire to have been hired solely because they met the “merit-based” criteria of being white, male and straight? This was the problem that DEI was created to help solve, mostly because the “merit-based” employment systems you mentioned were often anything but. Are there problems in the way some businesses and organizations
CAR TABS Enough already! I didn’t buy my car tabs because I can’t afford to. I’m in my 60s and on a fixed income with no assets, my manufactured home on leased land. My lot rent went up. My car insurance tripled on a 27-year-old car with 190,000 miles on it. I drive less than 5 miles a day. My home owners insurance went up 200%. I had to dump both because if I were to pay those 2 bills, along with Avista and lot rent? I would be left with $100. As it is, I can barely afford food. I should be grateful for the $69 in food stamps. Oh did I mention my personal property taxes? They tripled as well. So to you people giving me and others shit for not buying car tabs? Unless you’d like to give me and others who are struggling money? I suggest you sit down and stfu. And thank GOD you aren’t struggling.
SPOKANE’S IRONY So, let’s block off a lane on Main Street in front of River Park Square to host a press conference on the new traffic initiatives aimed at safety. How ironic! You couldn’t hold such announcement on the large sidewalk in front of the building instead of “blocking” traffic. Literally standing in the road, especially downtown, is a safety hazard in itself even with a few traffic cones. How about we enforce jaywalking!! I can’t tell you how many times “DAILY” I have to slam on my brakes because a pedestrian decided to just jump right out in front of me between parked cars. How about the pedestrians who decide to cross at the crosswalk as soon as a green light appears for the oncoming vehicles. Do pedestrians not have to follow the crossing signals as vehicles must obey traffic lights? Lastly, how about policing up all the “Fentanyl Dancers” who feel as though the middle of
the street is the best dance floor to conduct their business. Do better! Let’s not keep regulating law abiding people in the name of safety for people who put themselves in harm’s way. We are free to make our own choices. If they chose to put themselves in danger, then so be it.
NOTE: I
CANNABIS COVERAGE I LOVE the INLANDER! But when enjoying the Inland Northwest, having a cannabis section that takes up a quarter of your paper SUCKS!!! Tell me about how GREAT Spokane is and what’s going on! Not about getting HIGH!!
RE: DOG POOP IN TRASH YOUR TRASH CAN With all the problems in the world your inane complaint is people leaving dog poop in your trash can? Next time I’ll just leave it on your lawn. You know what else stinks besides dog poop? Garbage.
SPOKANE TESLA DRIVERS No, you’re not imagining things — that middle finger is for you. Your taste in vehicles? Tragic. Your endorsement of Elon Musk? Heil-arious. That Cybertruck you’re driving? Straightup SDE. You are an all-around moron. You’re not edgy, you’re just enabling one of the biggest con jobs of our time. They’re robbing us blind, and you’re rolling out the red carpet. n
EVENTS | CALENDAR
BENEFIT
HOLY NAMES MUSIC CENTER’S MUSIC & MORE A fundraiser for Holy Names Music Center featuring live music, trivia, food, raffles and more. April 25, 7-10 pm. $50-$400. Southside Community Center, 3151 E. 27th Ave. hnmc.org
CDAIDE CARE AFFAIR This annual event benefits CDAide and features food prepared by local chefs as well as silent and live auctions, a paddle raise and live music. April 25, 5-8:30 pm. $75. The Coeur d’Alene Resort, 115 S. Second. cdaide.org
FRIENDS OF THE MORAN PRAIRIE LIBRARY BOOK SALE A book sale featuring hundreds of fiction and nonfiction books to benefit the Moran Prairie Library. April 26, 10 am-3 pm. Moran Prairie Library, 6004 S. Regal St. scld.org
SPOKANE ART SCHOOL DRAWING
RALLY A night of two, one-hour drawing rounds each showcasing over 40 local artists turning blank canvases into works of art. Each finished piece will be available to purchase for $75. April 26, 5-8 pm. Free admission. Spokane Art School, 503 E. Second Ave., Ste. B. spokaneartschool.net (509-325-1500)
UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL SENIOR ALL NIGHTER COMMUNITY PUB CRAWL
A pub crawl at five different locations featuring specials benefitting University High School’s senior all-nighter. April 26, noon-midnight. $10. Bottles, 3223 N. Argonne Rd. uhs.cvsd.org (509-443-4027)
COMEDY
RANDY FELTFACE Randy Feltface is an
Australian puppet comedian portrayed by Heath McIvor. April 24-26; Thu-Sat at 7 pm, Fri-Sat also at 9:45 pm. $27-$37. Spokane Comedy Club, 315 W. Sprague. spokanecomedyclub.com
JEFF DUNHAM: ARTIFICIAL INTEL-
LIGENCE Dunham is a ventriloquist performing comedy with a number of eccentric puppets. April 26, 5-7 pm. $64. Spokane Arena, 720 W. Mallon Ave. spokanearena.com (509-279-7000)
JEREMY PIVEN Jeremy Piven is best known for his role as Ari Gold in the comedy series Entourage. April 27, 7:30-9:30 pm. $56-$81. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. bingcrosbytheater.com
FUNNY FUNNY FUNNY JOKE JOKE
JOKE A unique comedy experience that takes full advantage of the Garland Theater’s projector system, combining stand-up comedy, live sketches and other mixed-media comedic bits. This month features headliner Lindsay Glazer, Josh Teaford and host Josiah Carlson. May 1, 7:30-9 pm. $15. Garland Theater, 924 W. Garland Ave. garlandtheater.org
COMMUNITY
A COMMUNITY PRACTICE: BEAUTY & PAIN This community gathering invites nonviolent, intersectional and interfaith meditation and reflection practice. April 24, 6-7 pm. Free. South Hill Library, 3324 S. Perry St. spokanelibrary.org
FIRE: REBIRTH AND RESILIENCE An exhibition exploring the catastrophic 1889 fire that destroyed more of Spokane’s downtown core. The exhibit features information on historic and contemporary
fires, illustrating how destruction is a catalyst for rebirth and resilience. Tue-Sun from 11 am-5 pm through Sep. 28. $9$15. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org
LNK INDUSTRY SOCIAL A meetup and networking experience that links fashion, art, music and business owners together. RSVP at link. April 24, 7 pm. Free. The Chameleon, 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. chameleonspokane.com
SHUTTLEBIRDS TATTING GUILD 27TH ANNUAL WORKSHOP AND RETREAT A workshop event for those who want to learn, are interested in, or want to learn more about the art of tatting lace. Shuttlebirds is a non-profit dedicated to teaching and preserving the art of tatting. April 24-26; times vary. $75-$1450. Quality Inn Oakwood, 7919 N. Division St. shuttlebirds.com (509-863-2859)
ARBOR DAY CELEBRATION WITH FINCH ARBORETUM Finch Arboretum will share information about programs at the arboretum, the Willow Project and ways you can make a difference by planting native trees. Free tree saplings while supplies last. April 25, 11 am-2 pm. Free. My Fresh Basket, 1030 W. Summit Pkwy. myfreshspokane.com (509-558-2100)
EARTH DAY BLOCK PARTY An Earth Day celebration featuring a bike rodeo, food, upcycling activities, a clothing swap, live music and more. April 25, 2-5 pm. Free. West Central Abbey, 1832 W. Dean Ave. youthops.org
INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE WEEKEND
The Well-Read Moose and Bookishly Happy are partnering for this Independent Bookstore Day celebration featur-
ing punch cards, deals, prizes and more. April 25, 10 am-5 pm and April 26, 10 am-4 pm. Free. Bookishly Happy, 2415 N. Government Way. bookishlyhappy.com
RICK STEVES Rick Steves presents a speech about travel as a political act and shares how travel can broaden perspectives and foster empathy. April 25, 7-9 pm. $16. Northern Quest Resort & Casino, 100 N. Hayford Rd. ksps.org
CUSTER’S SPRING ANTIQUE & VINTAGE SHOW A show featuring over 100 antique and vintage vendors selling rare, retro and unique items. April 26, 10 am-6 pm and April 27, 10 am-4 pm. $8-$10. Spokane County Fair & Expo Center, 404 N. Havana St. custershows.com
FAMILY EARTH DAY CELEBRATION Celebrate Earth Day with crafts and games featuring local environmental organizations. April 26, 1-3 pm. Free. Central Library, 906 W. Main. spokanelibrary.org
INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE DAY This annual event features local author signings, free galleys, giveaways and more. April 26, 9 am-9 pm. Free. Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main. auntiesbooks.com
RIVER PARK SQUARE SPRING SHOW-
CASE A day full of festivities, local flavor, live music and exclusive in-store experiences at River Park Square. Includes a Lush pop-up sampling, free hair consultations by Aveda, a photobooth by Electric Photoland and more. April 26. Free. River Park Square, 808 W. Main Ave. riverparksquare.com (509-624-3945)
SPRING ON THE AVE A collaboration featuring over 25 local businesses, including local retail shops and eateries with live music, a kids’ corner, face painting, pop-
up shops, a spring-themed photo booth, giveaways, flash sales, and more springthemed activities throughout the district. April 26, 10 am-4 pm. Free. Sprague Union District, 2400-1600 E. Sprague Ave. spragueuniondistrict.com
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE TOWN HALL
An event hosted by Whole Washington focused on bringing universal healthcare to Washingtonians. April 26, 4-5 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. wholewashington.org (509-444-5300)
UNITING THE INLAND NORTHWEST A community gathering focused on bridging divides featuring Itohan Idumwonyi of Humanities Washington Speakers Bureau and a Gonzaga University professor delivering a keynote address. April 27, 3:30-7 pm. Free. Montvale Event Center, 1019 W. First. Ave. favs.news
CIRCUS OF HORROR A horror-themed circus with terrifying and thrilling acts. April 30, 7-9 pm. $32-45. Bing Crosby Theater, 901 W. Sprague Ave. bingcrosbytheater.com (509-227-7638)
FILM
THE INVINCIBLE CZARS: PHANTOM OF THE OPERA The Czars drew inspiration from the film’s gothic visuals and haunting narrative to craft a score to Phantom of the Opera. April 24, 7-9 pm. $20. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main. kenworthy.org KINO SHORT FILM FESTIVAL A two-day festival featuring short films from independent filmmakers across the region. April 25, 3-9 pm and April 26, 4-10 pm. $8-$20. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kinofilmfest.org (208-882-4127)
EVENTS | CALENDAR
GOD’S AWAY ON BUSINESS: THE MUSIC OF TOM WAITS PERFORMED BY MADELINE MCNEILL A documentary of a Tom Waits tribute concert. Through music and interviews with the Abbey Vicar and the performers, it explores pertinent modern topics. April 26, 7-9 pm. Free. Black Label Brewing Co., 19 W. Main Ave. blacklabelbrewing.com (509-822-7436)
MET LIVE IN HD: LE NOZZE DI FIGARO Mozart’s comedy The Marriage of Figaro, returns to cinemas worldwide with a live transmission from the Metropolitan Opera. Conductor Joana Mallwitz. April 26, 10 am-2 pm. $20. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
PALOUSE CULT FILM REVIVAL: THE WEDDING SINGER Robbie, a singer, and
Julia, a waitress, are both engaged, but to the wrong people. Fortune intervenes to help them discover each other. April 28, 7-9 pm. Free. The Kenworthy, 508 S. Main St. kenworthy.org (208-882-4127)
FOOD & DRINK
JOSEPH DROUHIN WINE DINNER A curated five-course meal, each dish thoughtfully paired with wines from the renowned Joseph Drouhin collection. April 25, 6-9 pm. $125. Beverly’s, 115 S. Second St. beverlyscda.com
CELEBRATE SPRING MARKET A market featuring vendors, brunch, live music,
kids activities, games and more as part of Spring on the Ave. April 26, 10 am-4 pm. Free. Patera Temperance Lounge, 1507 E. Sprague Ave. theclutchspokane.com
GERMAN AMERICAN SOCIETY SPRING DINNER & CONCERT A dinner of Zigeuner schnitzel prepared by Alpine Delli featuring a concert by the Concordia Choir and the Celtic Aires. Call 509-954-6964 to make reservations. April 26, 6 pm. $25. German American Hall, 25 W. Third Ave. germanamericansociety-spokane.org
LUNARIUM EASTER DRAG BRUNCH A three-course brunch paired with a drag show featuring Sherri Pop, Duck E. Loveless, Dusty Paira Docs and T.S. Loveless. April 27, 1-3 pm. $60. Lunarium, 1925 N. Monroe St. lunariumspokane.com
WES ANDERSON DAY A Wes Andersonthemed event featuring trivia, costumes, an a la carte menu and unexpected surprises. May 1, 5-10 pm. $20. Cellar & Scholar, 15412 E. Sprague Ave. cellarandscholar.com (509-218-6226)
MUSIC & CONCERTS
MIDNIGHT MADNESS LISTENING EVENTS: GHOST A listening event for GHOST’s new record. First listening party at 11 pm, second at 11:59 pm. GHOST prizes available while supplies last. Preorders of the indie exclusive Violet vinyl/ standard vinyl/CD/Bone Cassette guar-
antees a spot at the events. April 24, 11 & 11:59 pm. Free. Recorded Memories, 1902 N. Hamilton St. i.ghost-official.com/MM
BELLACRISTO HANDBELL CONCERT A community handbell choir concert with additional music by the Lilac Community Handbells. April 26, 4 pm. Free. Millwood Community Presbyterian Church, 3223 N. Marguerite Rd. millwoodpc.org
SPOKANE SYMPHONY MASTERSWORKS 8: LET THERE BE LIGHT! Haydn depicts biblical genesis through celestial choruses, vivid orchestration, and musical drama April 26, 7:30 pm and April 27, 3 pm. $24-$83. The Fox Theater, 1001 W. Sprague. foxtheaterspokane.org
...continued on page 44
OPEN HOUSE WEEKEND
April 26th & 27th
SPRING COMPOST FAIR & ARBOR DAY CELEBRATION
Learn about reducing waste through composting and recycling at the Arbor Day Celebration on Saturday, April 26th 11am to 2pm at Finch Arboretum.
GONZAGA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FEATURING YOON-WHA ROH This performance features piano soloist, Yoon-Wha Roh and the program includes Rossini’s Semiramide Overture, Wagner’s Prelude to Die Meistersinger and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. April 28, 7:30-9 pm. $5-$24. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu
SPORTS & OUTDOORS
SPOKANE INDIANS VS. EUGENE EMERALDS Regular season games. Promotional schedule includes First Responder Appreciation Night (April 24), Fireworks Night (April 25-26) and Dollars in Your Dogs Night (April 27). April 24, 6:35 pm, April 25, 6:35 pm, April 26, 6:35 pm and April 27, 1:05 pm. $12-$32. Avista Stadium, 602 N. Havana St. spokaneindians.com (509-535-2922)
MASTER GARDENER PLANT SALE & GARDEN FAIR A sale featuring hundreds of plants, veggies, annuals and more. See website for list of plants available. April 25, 12-6 pm and April 26, 8 am-3 pm. Free admission. WSU Spokane County Extension, 222 N. Havana St. spokane.mastergardenerfoundation.org (509-477-2181)
AN AMERICAN IN PARIS Set in the French capital in the wake of World War II, An American in Paris tells the story of a young American soldier, a French girl, and an indomitable European city – each yearning for a new beginning in the aftermath of international conflict. April 24-May 4; Thu-Sat at 7:30 pm, Sat-Sun at 1:30 pm. $30-$35. Regional Theatre of the Palouse, 122 N. Grand Ave. rtoptheatre.org (509-334-0750)
GONZAGA SPRING DANCE CONCERT Works choreographed by Gonzaga Dance faculty and current students in the program. Works include ballet, modern, jazz, tap and more April 25, 7:30 pm and April 26, 7:30 pm. Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center, 211 E. Desmet Ave. gonzaga.edu/dance
VISUAL ARTS
PIECED TOGETHER: 2025 SENIOR ART & DESIGN EXHIBIT An eclectic and engaging selection of works from Whitworth University’s art and graphic design majors. Mon-Fri from 10 am4:30 pm through May 17. Free. Bryan Oliver Gallery, Whitworth, 300 W. Hawthorne Ave. whitworth.edu
behind their artwork. April 27, 11 amnoon. Free. The Art Spirit Gallery, 415 Sherman Ave. theartspiritgallery.com
OPEN STUDIO Stop by The Hive to see what current Artists in Residence are up to, and tour the building. Every Wednesday from 4-7 pm. Free. The Hive, 2904 E. Sprague Ave. spokanelibrary.org (509-444-5300)
SAINT GEORGE’S IB VISUAL ARTS JUNIORS A showcase of work by Saint George’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Visual Arts Programme Junior class. May 2-31, Thu-Sat from 11 am-4 pm. Free. Avenue West Gallery, 907 W. Boone Ave. avenuewestgallery.com
GROW LIKE A TREE EXHIBITION & BOOK LAUNCH Artists Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton and Lisa E. Silvestri present their children’s book Grow Like a Tree about the life cycles of trees. Each illustration is made of foraged materials. May 2-31, Fri-Sat from noon8 pm. Free. Saranac Art Projects, 25 W. Main Ave. sapgallery.com
WORDS
MASTER OF FINE ARTS THESIS EXHIBITION A collection of work from current WSU Master of Fine Arts candidates Cameron Kester, Anna Le, Abigail Nnaji and Sara St. Clair. Tue-Sat from 10 am-4 pm through June 28. Free. Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art WSU, 1535 NE Wilson Rd. museum.wsu.edu
SPOKANE WATERCOLOR SOCIETY
The Ultimate Local Shopping Guide
CELEBRATE TRAILS DAY RANGERLED HIKE A three mile round-trip hike along the Columbia Plateau State Park Trail. This portion of the flat rail-trail goes through the heart of the Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, providing ample opportunity for wildlife spotting. April 26, 10 am-noon. Free. Columbia Plateau Trail, Cheney Trailhead, 1908719099 West Cheney-Spangle Road. parks.wa.gov (509-465-4065)
ARBOR DAY CELEBRATION An arbor day event featuring workshops, demonstrations, a Tree City USA ceremony, arts and crafts, live music and more. April 26, 11 am-2 pm. Free. John A. Finch Arboretum, 3404 W. Woodland Blvd. my.spokanecity.org/parksrec
EARTH FEST A stewardship-focused event where attendees will help with potting bare-root trees for future restoration projects, planting holdover trees from the past season and more. April 26, 9 am-noon. Free. Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, 26010 S. Smith Rd. landscouncil.org (509-559-3034)
SPOKANE ZEPHYR VS. TAMPA BAY SUN A regular season game between Spokane Zephyr and the Tampa Bay Sun FC. April 26, 2 pm. $13-$44. ONE Spokane Stadium, 501 W. Gardner Ave. uslspokane.com
SPOKANE VELOCITY VS. OAKLAND ROOTS A cup match between the Spokane Velocity and Oakland Roots SC. April 27, 4 pm. $16-$81. ONE Spokane Stadium, 501 W. Gardner Ave. uslspokane.com
THEATER & DANCE
JURIED SHOW A national show of traditional and contemporary original artworks sponsored by the Spokane Watercolor Society. Tue-Sun from 10 am-5 pm through May 4. Free. Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, 2316 W. First Ave. northwestmuseum.org
STRUT YOUR STUFF A 20th anniversary art show featuring work from 15 local artists focused on themes of natural heritage, the industrial legacy of sawmills and community spirit. TueSun, times vary through May 23. Free. The Jacklin Arts & Cultural Center, 405 N. William St. thejacklincenter.org
SCRAMBLE: SENIOR ART EXHIBIT:This exhibition features artworks by Gonzaga’s current BFA and BA candidates. Fri from 4-7 pm, Sat from 10 am-3 pm through May 3. Free. Gonzaga University Urban Arts Center, 125 S. Stevens St. gonzaga.edu (509-313-7201)
INK & ECHO A showcase of art by local artists, vendors and performances by local bands. April 25, 6:30-10:15 pm. $15. The Big Dipper, 171 S. Washington. thebigdipperspokane.com
THE LILAC MENACE ZINE SWAP A monthly get-together for zine-makers, readers and collectors. Fourth Friday of each month from 6:30-9:30 pm. Free. Lunarium, 1925 N. Monroe St. lunariumspokane.com
NEWPORT EARTH DAY ARTWALK
WRITE TOGETHER: A COMMUNITY WRITING SESSION Bring your current writing project, your favorite writing tools and prepare to hunker down and write. Local novelist and Writing Education Specialist Sharma Shields will write alongside of you and provide prompts and advice if needed. April 25, 10 amnoon. Free. South Hill Library, 3324 S. Perry St. spokanelibrary.org
DAUGHTER OF DACHAU: SHARING THE VOICE OF HER FATHER Clarice Wilsey reads letters from her father’s time as a doctor in a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. April 26, 1011 am. Free. North Spokane Library, 44 E. Hawthorne Rd. scld.org (893-8350) FORAY FOR THE ARTS: OPEN MIC HIKE AND TRAIL CLEAN-UP Join the Foray for The Arts community in helping keep the city clean while sharing creative works in an open mic format. This event will center conservation alongside spoken word, music and more. April 26, 2:30-5:30 pm. Free. People’s Park, 2500-2834 W. Clarke Ave. instagram.com/foray4thearts
WRITE OWLS An informal and casual writing workshop focusing on fiction and poetry. What’s covered in each session is entirely up to the people who attend, but you can expect to start an excerpt of fiction or poetry and a writing prompt to help get your creative juices flowing. Every second Wednesday from 3-5:30 pm and every last Saturday from 9 pm-midnight. Free. Lunarium, 1925 N. Monroe St. lunariumspokane.com NORTHWEST PASSAGES: MIDNIGHT IN SOAP LAKE BY MATTHEW SULLIVAN Author Matthew Sullivan is joined by local writer Sharma Shields to discuss his new book, Midnight in Soap Lake, the second of the Midnight Cycle series. April 29, 7 pm. $10-$45. Spokesman-Review, 999 W. Riverside Ave. auntiesbooks.com
Advertise your business — reserve your space by May 6: advertising@inlander.com • 509.325.0634 ext 233
THE MUSICAL COMEDY MURDERS OF 1940 The creative team responsible for a recent Broadway flop assemble for auditions of their new show. As they prepare their performance, mayhem starts to ensue. April 24-May 2, Thu-Sat at 7 pm. , $10 -$12. Ferris High School, 3020 E. 37th Ave. ferristheatrearts.com
Newport’s annual art festival with an Earth Day theme featuring art made from natural materials, recycled items or inspired by nature. April 26, 11 am-3 pm. Free. TJ Kelly Park, 103 N. Washington Ave. newportcreativedistrict.com
ARTIST TALK: HANNA KUHNS & ANDREW PARKER An artist talk featuring Hanna Kuhns and Andrew Parker, two of the featured artists in the upcoming “Introspective” exhibition. Each artist explores their creative processes, inspirations and the unique perspectives
BROKEN MIC A weekly open mic reading series. Wednesdays at 6:30 pm; sign-ups at 6 pm. Free. Neato Burrito, 827 W. First Ave. bit.ly/2ZAbugD CREATIVE WRITING CLUB Stretch your writing skills with fun prompts, character creation, world building and more. Every Wednesday from 3:30-4:30 pm. Free. Moscow Public Library, 110 S. Jefferson St. latahlibrary.org n
BUSINESS
What a Waste
Looking at the issue of packaging and product waste in Washington’s cannabis industry
BY SETH SOMMERFELD
As cannabis consumers move past the 4/20 buzz, they might be noticing a byproduct of indulging in weed’s high holiday…
Trash. A bunch of trash from cannabis products and packaging.
Plastic joint tubes. Plastic edible packaging. Disposable vape products. Empty jars. At a certain point, it begins to pile up in a way that’s actually calculable.
“Every cannabis sale in Washington state is public knowledge, right?” says Mitchell Dunn, the assistant manager at Lucky Leaf Co. in Spokane, who is passionate about reducing cannabis waste. “So I could easily, for the last five years, go back and see what the sales for these cannabis companies were. Tell you what product they were using, if they were using a plastic bag or a jar or a plastic tube or what. It’d be very easy to calculate how much waste is really going out there.”
While states with legalized cannabis must follow
regulations to comply with the federal Poison Prevention Packaging Act to keep products out of the hands of children, Washington is strict in a way that leads to more trash.
Washington’s Liquor and Cannabis Board requires packaging be made of plastic at least 2 mil (two thousandths of an inch) thick. As an example, Wyld gummies in Washington come in a strip, each individually wrapped in plastic, while the same product in California just comes in a little plastic tub with the gummies loose inside it.
This level of garbage is easy to deal with as an individual, but with millions of sales of cannabis products, it begins to societally add up.
There are many different ways cannabis waste can be tricky. Dunn cites single-use disposable vape pens as the most problematic.
“There is no plan for them,” he says. “You’re not even supposed to throw them away. And statistically speak-
ing, 25% of our customers are looking for a disposable.” Single-use vapes are not supposed to be thrown away as normal trash because they contain batteries that could become toxic and/or catch on fire. But since nobody wants a pile of used vapes around and most don’t know the method to take them to dumps’ hazardous waste disposal areas, they usually get tossed out.
While the issue probably needs to be addressed on a legislative level, Dunn is hoping that the cannabis industry can at least take baby steps to fix some of the problems, even if it’s as simple as starting with weed jar recycling programs. Knowing that cannabis consumers tend to be more eco-friendly folks makes it seem like an obvious problem area to address.
“I look at our future and my boys and our legacy,” Dunn says. “And it’s like, I know, there’s lots of business opportunities you could take, but what can you really do that impacts your community?” n
Cannabis retailers say vapes create unnecessary waste, partly due to Washington’s packaging rules.
SETH SOMMERFELD PHOTOS
GREEN ZONE
BE AWARE: Marijuana is legal for adults 21 and older under Washington State law (e.g., RCW 69.50, RCW 69.51A, HB0001 Initiative 502 and Senate Bill 5052). State law does not preempt federal law; possessing, using, distributing and selling marijuana remains illegal under federal law. In Washington state, consuming marijuana in public, driving while under the influence of marijuana and transporting marijuana across state lines are all illegal. Marijuana has intoxicating effects; there may be health risks associated with its consumption, and it may be habitforming. 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.
NOTE TO READERS
Be aware of the differences in the law between Idaho and Washington. It is illegal to possess, sell or transport cannabis in the State of Idaho. Possessing up to an ounce is a misdemeanor and can get you a year in jail and up to a $1,000 fine; more than three ounces is a felony that can carry a five-year sentence and fine of up to $10,000. Transporting marijuana across state lines, like from Washington into Idaho, is a felony under federal law.
DAILY SPECIALS
MEMBERSHIP ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR
Engagement Coordinator will coordinate and create programs to welcome and assimilate visitors, members, and friends into the life of the church and to provide opportunities for ongoing engagement through activities, groups, and events that allow a place for every person in this community.
Angela 509.798.1655 OR angela@community-building.org community-building.org
Portrayals 48. Knights’ suits 49. Not-quite-Olympic sport with lines like “That’s an oval” and “It’s a hexagon”? 53. Secret group in “The Da Vinci Code”
“Packed house” initials
55. Wildebeest
58. Social division
59. Not-quite-Olympic sport where you can sample a bunch of events?
62. Uber alternative?
63. Oil bloc acronym
Root vegetable 65. Manuscript enclosures, for short 66. Evening, in ads 67. Scandinavian capital
Disaster 2. “Know your rights” org.
Crams (in) 4. “In what way?” 5. Like some cakes
Don’t go together 7. Tank contents 8. Got involved with,
(CD & Cassette): Pre-Order & Reserve your spot Prizes while supplies last Listening Parties: May 2nd @ 4:30 & 5:30pm (approx) May 3rd @ 3pm & 4pm (approx) HEAD &
Pre-Order & Reserve your spot RECORDED MEMORIES (509) 483-4753 | 1902 N. HAMILTON /recorded.memories.5
performer Minaj
Tur n you r to-do s into ta-das.
Make dream kitchen a reality
Consolidate debt
Help with college expenses
Start checking o your list with the help of a home equity line of credit from STCU.
To apply, go to stcu.org/heloc, call (509) 326-1954, or visit your nearest branch.
