Inlander 05/28/2020

NOW SERVING LOCAL RESTAURANTS PREP FOR CUSTOMERS PAGE 28

THE TWITCH ITCH CONNECTING ON THE STREAMING PLATFORM PAGE 23 A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS

HOW RURAL HOSPITALS PREPARED FOR COVID PAGE 8

MAY 28-JUNE 3, 2020 | FIGHT FOR LOCAL JOURNALISM AT INLANDER.COM/INSIDERS

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Local researchers join the global fight against COVID-19 PAGE 14

Community is our greatest asset.

Assets, balance sheets and growth are all important.

But we never forget that the Inland Northwest’s greatest asset is how we support each other as a community. #awesometogether

2 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

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EDITOR’S NOTE

T

his is one of those all-hands-on-deck, we’renot-screwing-around moments when the entire world is called to action. Even here in the Inland Northwest, exciting, groundbreaking research is being done to help combat COVID-19.

This week, we’re telling the stories of our own local, LAB-COAT-WEARING HEROES — researchers and academics who are working on a cure, fighting misinformation, unlocking the secrets of the coronavirus and trying to suppress the worst reactions to it. Their efforts alone will inspire hope, but when you remember that they are not alone — that people across the globe are committed to solving the same problem — you can’t help but feel like better days really are ahead.

In the meantime, with our local economy gradually reopening, let’s remember to stay vigilant and do our part. Wash your hands, wear your mask, mind your social distance, listen to experts and, slowly, things will truly get better.

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INLANDER

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MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 3

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We’re Spokane. We’re going to help businesses get back to business.

As we emerge from the COVID-19 shutdown, we’ll be supporting our local businesses through every phase of reopening.

We’ll continue social distancing and other safety measures, sure.

But we’ll be dining, and shopping, and building, and buying whenever we can. Because we all do our part in Spokane.

SUPPORT

LOCAL RESTAURANTS Check out our To-Go Guide

Inlander.com/ToGoGuide To submit your restaurant’s take-out menu, visit: Inlander.com/TakeOutForm 4 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

If you need help or guidance re-opening your business, or if you want to know what you can do to help businesses re-open, see dowtownspokane.org/support-spokane

June First Friday has gone virtual, visit firstfridayspokane.org to experience art in downtown from your home. downtownspokane.org

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

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We will be offering our LOWEST PRICES OF THE YEAR for all of your favorite services.

J. Jeremy McGregor (x224) GENERAL MANAGER

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

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PRODUCTION & SUPPORT

TELL US ABOUT WHAT LOCAL BUSINESSES YOU ARE MOST EXCITED TO VISIT DURING REOPENING. EDITOR’S NOTE

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

ALANA BARCLAY: At Home, World Market, 3 Craft Chicks and a nail salon for a summer pedicure.

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MIKE RENO: Bruncheonette on Broadway. House of Thai on Hamilton.

DENNY KUESPERT: Spokane Comedy Club.

ALICE MCKEEVER: Tiger Tattoo. My hair stylist.

DEBBIE HAMILTON ANDERSON: If I were actually going to participate, Bistango.

AT KENDALL YARDS

KEVIN LAURA-SELL: Wild Sage.

KELLY KASTELLA: Not one of them.

CHRIS MARK: The ER. SUSAN OGAN: Faltermeyer Gordies.

HILARY MANN: Up North Distillery.

Derrick King (x238), Tom Stover (x265) SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

LLS Staff

LORELEI PLAGMAN: None. Going to wait for the spike and stay safe.

Ali Blackwood (x228) CREATIVE LEAD

WE MISS ALL OF OUR CLIENTS and are looking forward to seeing each and every one of you!

SHANE MABREY: Probably restaurants.

I love going out for sushi or having breakfast on the weekends. I miss being able to go to the Y.

Wayne Hunt (x232) DESIGN & PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Like us on and follow us on for UPDATED SPECIALS and WEEKLY GIVEAWAYS. You don’t want to miss this!

LESLIE JEAN AMLAND: Mode Wax Theory.

LOUISE CHRISTINA: The Reclothery, women’s consignment shop on South Monroe next to Huckleberries, and Di’Amand salon on 57th! Both local independent women-owned businesses!

SUSAN SMITH LINDSEY: None. Staying home and staying safe.

HOLLY OLSEN: Thrift centers. The book store on Hamilton. n

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Tough Cards, Tougher Kids America needs to move beyond the platitudes of congratulations and put in place some real support for our next generation

BY ROBERT HEROLD

I

t’s a tough set of cards to be dealt: a lifethreatening virus, economic depression, a federal government that doesn’t seem to care and, in many cases, too much student loan debt.

On top of that, we’re at a demographic pivot point, as the last of the millennial generation graduates from college and grad school, while the next cohort, Generation Z, is starting to graduate from high school. No matter how the sociologists view it, it’s time to celebrate the successes of our young people graduating from high schools and colleges across the region. But we all must understand that they’ll need all the grit they have built up to navigate this world.

It doesn’t have to be so hard. As sweeping public policy changes seem to be in the offing, America should prioritize the fate of its young people.

Colleges and universities continue to raise tuition and will be under even more pressure to do so in the near future. And student loan debt does

not qualify as a reason to declare bankruptcy; it can be a brutal trap.

I know of at least a couple dozen struggling former students who are still trying to pay off their student loans.

Some have been out of school for a decade or more. It’s a scandal.

Having taught at both Eastern Washington University and Gonzaga University for many years, while raising a millennial son myself, let me set things straight: Millennials are the best, the most dedicated and generally most thoughtful people I’ve ever worked with. Many of the problems we have today come from the aging baby boomers. Trust me on this.

Self-centeredness? Don’t look at the millennials; it’s the baby boomers who think that the

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Self-centeredness? Don’t look at the millennials; it’s the baby boomers who think that the world is their oyster. world is their oyster. Wait a minute, you say, the boomers are the sons and daughters of the greatest generation, who fought the Nazis. How did they wind up so spoiled that they seem to only look out for themselves as their grandkids struggle?

To understand how much we have changed, consider the big public policy idea from the greatest generation — the GI Bill.

Soldiers from World War II, Korea and Vietnam got the GI Bill when they came back. The public spending on the GI Bill was one of the best stimulus programs in American history — to earn it, you didn’t necessarily have to go into combat. My brother served in the Vietnam War, but never left the base in Korea where he served his time breaking up bar fights. He took the money that the GI Bill sent his way to buy his first house; others used it for college or to start a business.

If our leaders want to spend some of the money they are throwing at this current economic problem in a productive, longlasting way, they should dust off the GI Bill and consider how a template like that, applied to all young Americans, might give a little boost to those who need it most. Like a high school graduate from Spokane Valley not wanting to go into debt to attend college. Or a Gonzaga University graduate who might go on to seek a master’s in virology, if only she could afford it. The GI Bill proves that if we invest in everyday Americans, they will repay our society by many multiples.

So, Class of 2020 — high school and college graduates — you face all of the above. And to the friends and families of those taking those first confident steps into the unknown? We all must support these young people however we can and never stand by as the deck is stacked against them in the kind of generational politics we see too often from our leaders.

Having taught your generation, I know what you’re made of.

And even as I look at the cards you have been dealt, my money’s still on you. You will leave the world a better place. n

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Robert Herold is a retired professor of public administration and political science at both Eastern Washington University and Gonzaga University.

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 7

HEALTH

A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS

Dr. Geoff Jones (right) with a University of Washington student.

UW SCHOOL OF MEDICINE PHOTO

Many rural hospitals have avoided a crush of COVID-19 patients, but they say preparation and lessons from Seattle were key

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

W

hen word started coming from Seattle in late February about how bad this new virus COVID-19 could be for hospitals, it was imperative small community health systems like Newport Hospital and Health Services get ready.

Family physician Dr. Geoff Jones knew that even during normal times, the 24-bed critical access hospital in Pend Oreille County had to provide intensive care unittype service to patients whenever the ICUs in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene were full.

“It seemed like every month there’d be somebody here requiring ICU care and there wasn’t an ICU bed available in the region,” Jones says. “I remember one patient, for three days, twice a day, I called Kootenai [Health], Sacred Heart, Deaconess and the Valley and

8 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

they didn’t have an ICU bed, so we were forced to keep that patient here.”

While doctors make do with cases like that one, if that’s how things are during normal times, Jones thought, they could be far, far worse if a viral outbreak overwhelmed the region.

Jones is also the assistant clinical dean for the University of Washington School of Medicine’s students who train in Central and Eastern Washington rural hospitals.

That decadeslong partnership has connected the medical school with rural hospitals in Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho.

Students in their clinical rotations were pulled from the hospitals this spring due to concerns about conserving personal protective equipment like surgical

gowns and masks. However, the close relationship with colleagues in Seattle who were the first in the country to deal with a COVID outbreak meant the small public hospital district in northeast Washington was quick to make adjustments, even outpacing some of the larger hospital systems in Spokane, Jones says.

“We were able to restrict visitors and institute strict controls into our assisted living nursing home, and we were able to start temperature screening in the clinic 10 days before Providence did in Spokane,” Jones says.

“Again, that’s because of that relationship, and because we’re a small hospital system and we don’t have to go through a larger system for approval.”

Luckily, Pend Oreille and other small northeastern Washington counties largely avoided an outbreak, with

some seeing only one or two confirmed cases.

But even as many small and rural counties have so far been lucky to avoid a sudden wave of COVID patients, the shift in attention is now on how to keep those counties prepared as they are among the first to reopen for business. New guidance from the state this week enabled 10 more counties to apply to move into the next phase of reopening restaurants, retail and more, but even as hospital systems feel prepared, some small rural counties are still left ineligible to reopen under the new rules.

PREPARING FOR THE WORST

When it became clear that COVID could overwhelm large health systems and leave critical access hospitals in rural areas more on their own, the small systems quickly implemented emergency planning.

For Pend Oreille County’s public hospital system, that included a quick move to convert hospital beds and create a plan to separate COVID-19 patients from general hospital patients, says Jenny Smith, public information officer for the Newport Hospital and Health System.

Staff quickly converted the 24 beds in the hospital’s acute care area to have negative airflow, which prevents infected droplets in the air from spreading to other parts of the hospital, Smith says.

“When all of this kicked into gear, we had the expectations that Spokane’s facilities and Coeur d’Alene’s facilities were going to be overrun and not have room in their ICU if we needed to transfer patients,” Smith says. “As a critical access hospital, we typically do transfer patients in need of ICU care to Spokane, so we had to figure out a way around this.”

Part of that meant securing ventilators for potential ICU patients. The district secured two ventilators for in-hospital care.

The community also came out in a major way, responding to the district’s request for donated personal protective equipment, giving the foundation more than $18,000 worth of face masks and surgical masks, Smith says.

Another piece that happened to work out for the district was that its long-term care facility was recently upgraded and last year, those long-term patients were moved into a new advanced care facility.

“So we had this big empty long-term care facility. Our amazing team quickly converted that into a hospital area,” Smith says.

“What we had intended to do was use that for non-COVID patients we wanted to keep separate from the COVID patients.”

In the end, with only two confirmed cases in the county so far, the district didn’t have to use the separate facility, and things are starting to reopen and return to normal in a slow manner, she says.

“I would give hats off to the people who did quarantine, the people who did stay home and kind of sheltered in place, the people who are wearing masks,” Smith says. “We’ve been very fortunate.”

INVALUABLE Our journalism makes a difference, and so can you.

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MISSING KIDS SCHOOLS SCRAMBLE TO REACH STUDENTS PAGE 12

WORKER PROTECTIONS UNIONS RUSH TO THEIR MEMBERS’ DEFENSE PAGE 8

OPENING AMID A PANDEMIC THESE NEW FOOD BUSINESSES SOLDIER ON PAGE 23

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WAITING TO REOPEN

The virus has spread slowly in many of northeastern Washington’s counties, indicating distancing measures worked to prevent an outbreak, and allowing them to be among the first to reopen many businesses in recent weeks.

As mentioned, Pend Oreille County has had only two confirmed cases of COVID-19, in a county of about 13,600 people.

Neighboring Stevens County (population: about 45,725) has had 10 confirmed cases, and Ferry County (population: about 7,650) has had one confirmed case, according to Northeast Tri County Health District numbers.

All three counties were in the first group allowed to move to phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan, returning to limited in-restaurant dining options, opening hair salons with strict guidance, and allowing retail to return.

New guidance issued by Gov. Jay Inslee on Tuesday, May 19, enabled counties that had less than 10 new confirmed cases per 100,000 people over 14 days of complete data to apply to move into phase 2 of the state’s reopening plan.

For many, that was welcome news. Leaders in Spokane ...continued on next page

Inlander.com/Insider MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 9

NEWS | HEALTH

ON INLANDER.COM

“A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS,” CONTINUED...

County, which is home to nearly 523,000 people, cheered the fact they’d be able to apply to move to the next phase, since the county had just 34 new cases over the time period from May 5-18.

But Ferry County’s neighbor, Okanogan County, still does not qualify to move to reopen under that guidance. Initially, the county was told it would have to go 21 days without a single case. Under the new guidance, Okanogan needs to go 14 days without more than four new cases.

As of May 21, the county had seen a total of 44 cases among its 42,730 residents since tracking began two months ago, but there were too many cases over the two-week period of data observed by the state to allow the county to apply for phase 2 approval, according to the state Department of Health.

“We all want to open again, but safely. Those are two laudable and appropriate goals, but we don’t necessarily agree on the best way to get there,” says Dr. John McCarthy, who is serving as a public health liaison for Okanogan County during the pandemic. “We didn’t qualify for the variance that some other counties did, and that’s very frustrating for the economic drivers.”

Initially, public health officials in Okanogan were largely focused on preparing the different hospitals throughout the valley for an outbreak, and it was decided the North Valley Hospital wouldn’t take COVID patients because it shares space with an assisted living facility, McCarthy says.

Once plans were in place for obtaining personal protective equipment, test kits, and screening staff for fevers and symptoms, the next focus became public education and contact tracing. With 11 of the 44 cases so far occurring on the Colville Reservation, Okanogan County Public Health has worked closely with the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation to trace contacts with confirmed cases, says Lauri Jones,

Courage

community health director for the Okanogan health district.

While the preparation side of public health has gone fairly well, Jones says at this point there’s palpable frustration among business owners in the community. The health district met with owners last week to talk about what the next phase would look like, and many voiced their concerns that they’re still not allowed to open their small businesses.

“They’re frustrated when it’s a one-person salon and yet all these people are going into Walmart,” Lauri Jones says.

“They’re losing their business, they’re angry, frustrated, that’s their livelihood, we totally get that. And yet, we have to comply.”

The district has faced threatening and angry comments on social media during efforts to share public health information throughout the pandemic. For the most part, Jones says she thinks people have been positive and understanding, but sometimes the negative voices are the loudest. Some are critical of guidance to wear masks in public, while others question whether the virus is really a big deal.

In combating misinformation, one of the main messages she continues to share is that the virus really doesn’t discriminate. It can, in fact, affect healthy, young people: One of their hospitalized patients was someone with no underlying health conditions in their 30s, who wound up in the hospital for nine days, she says. At the same time, Jones says she’s reminding people that the numbers have thankfully stayed fairly low due to the social distancing and shutdown measures in place.

“Because we have been taking these precautions, we believe that we’re ahead because of that and because they were implemented early,” she says. “As it becomes more tangible here, I truly believe people are wanting to do the right thing for the majority. It’s the handful that doesn’t.” n samanthaw@inlander.com

THE NEXT PHASE Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, Spokane County was approved on Friday to move to Phase 2 of Gov. Jay Inslee’s plan to reopen Washington state. During this phase, many restaurants and bars can reopen at half capacity, with no more than five people at a table and bar tops must remain closed. Retail stores can also reopen while restricting the number of customers inside and emphasizing six feet of social distancing. Need a haircut? Personal services, including hair and nail salons and tattoo shops, may also reopen with restrictions. County leaders emphasize that following the public health restrictions that continue to exist will be key to enabling a return to normal and avoiding another spike that could force tighter rules to return. (SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL)

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NEWS | GOVERNMENT

High Praise Despite protests, Washington and Idaho give their governors’ coronavirus response the same strong approval rating

BY DANIEL WALTERS

W

ashington and Idaho are very different states, if you haven’t heard. Their response to the coronavirus has been different, too, with Idaho Gov. Brad Little locking down his state far later than Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and loosening restrictions much more quickly.

But according to a new poll, they share something in common: In both states, 67 percent of their residents gave their respective governor a thumbs-up grade for their response to the coronavirus. The SurveyMonkey online poll surveyed more than 120,000 adults across the country and weighted the sample to reflect age, population density, race and education levels in each state.

Since the polling was conducted between April 30 and May 13, it gives us a taste of how residents in both states have responded to Little’s decision to start opening up, and Inslee’s comparative reluctance.

In both states, the fight to slow the spread of the virus has shown remarkable progress. The first examples of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. being identified came from Washington state, as horror stories of deaths in a Kirkland nursing home riveted the nation. But today, the numbers are low enough to put the LETTERS state’s per-capita numSend comments to ber of total infections editor@inlander.com. in the bottom half of the states.

And Idaho? Despite being on the border of Washington, it has the ninth least per-capita number of cases in the nation. While differences in testing supply can radically skew the numbers, the evidence remains: Washington and Idaho have escaped the nightmare scenario plaguing states like New York and New Jersey.

A vocal band of protesters in both states have been furious about the dramatic measures their governors have taken to combat the virus, alleging the damage to the economy and liberty has been too steep.

But those supporting the stay-home measures are more likely to, well, stay at home, giving an inaccurate sense of how the public feels about the measures.

I

n recent weeks in Spokane, however, local leaders have been increasingly critical of Inslee. Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, a Republican, condemned the governor’s ongoing stay-home order as “draconian” and charged that the governor is “either blind or doesn’t care about the economic epidemic that’s coming.”

Even Spokane’s state Rep. Marcus Riccelli, the House Democrats majority whip, joined the band of leaders — including the local health officer — who urged that Spokane should open up sooner.

“There’s some sort of middle ground that we’re not striking in Spokane County, that we can get to that is safe,” Riccelli said earlier this month. “I haven’t been super public about it, because I’ve been trying to work behind the scenes with the governor’s staff.”

12 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s approval ratings have had a big boost since his response to the coronavirus.

Last week, though, Inslee did lay out a new standard, announcing that Spokane had a slow enough infection rate to allow it to apply to move to Phase 2 early. And on Friday, the state officially approved the county’s request to reopen under the Phase 2 guidance.

It’s possible, of course, that Inslee’s approval rating has lost ground recently. His approval rating on his coronavirus response isn’t quite as high as the 75 percent of respondents to an Elway poll conducted a few weeks earlier.

But as for Inslee challenger Tim Eyman’s claim to the Inlander that “the people, regular voters, are just spittin’ mad right now”? There’s not much proof of that right now.

In fact, a recent SurveyUSA poll, conducted on behalf of Seattle’s KING 5 TV station, found that in the span of 10 weeks Inslee’s net job approval rating in Washington lept by 28 points.

YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

review.

“I’ve found his staff to be very accessible. We’ve had very candid conversations all throughout this. And that’s been a refreshing change from his predecessor,” Hoffman said. “Where I have a criticism is that he’s being led by the health experts. And I think he needs to do more to weigh the economics and his constitutional obligations as he considers health matters.”

“Since you can’t play to the middle well in Idaho, the Legislature tends to be more extreme than the electorate is.”

T

he people in deep-red Idaho, of course, are of a different sort.

In Idaho, you have legislators like Heather Scott calling Little, “Little Hitler.” You have Little’s own Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin proudly appearing at the openings of an Idaho bar defying the governor’s order, and writing op-eds saying that, “I lose sleep at night because the heavy hand of our government is hurting so many Idahoans.” (She and Little haven’t spoken in weeks.)

And you have groups like the influential Idaho Freedom Foundation leading “Disobey Idaho” rallies, urging residents that they “have to disobey” the governor’s orders.

Interviewed by the Inlander last month, before Little began reopening parts of Idaho, Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Wayne Hoffman gave the governor a mixed

Hoffman has been arguing that Little should have approached the virus with the lighter touch that places like South Dakota have employed.

“South Dakota seems to be doing just fine,” Hoffman told us last month. “Iowa is doing fine. Arkansas is doing fine. Sweden is doing just fine.”

But today, the percent of infections in South Dakota and Iowa is more than three times than in Idaho — though South Dakota’s death rate remains low. In Arkansas, where residents did try to shelter in place, the numbers have been relatively low, but have rebounded recently. And Sweden? It’s done better overall than hotspots like the U.K. and Italy, but far, far worse than its Scandanavian neighbors like Norway. Over the past week, it’s had the highest number of deaths per capita in Europe.

Still, Hoffman argues that Sweden’s “herd immunity” strategy will pay off in the long run. And conservatives have been happy to point to the example of Florida, where the predictions of doom and disaster after Gov.

Ron DeSantis began opening up the state have so far failed to manifest. Yet for all the influence that the Freedom Foundation’s arguments have had on the Idaho Legislature over the years, the influence they have on the Idaho public is a little shakier. After all, the Freedom Foundation and the Legislature fought tooth-andnail against Idaho’s Medicaid expansion initiative — but over 60 percent of the voters approved it.

“Since you can’t play to the middle well in Idaho, the Legislature tends to be more extreme than the electorate is,” says Moscow-based Sen. David Nelson, one of Idaho’s rare Democrats.

The positive polling around Little’s coronavirus response appears to bear that out.

And lately, even some fairly conservative legislators, like Idaho state Sen. Greg Chaney, have been pushing back against the Freedom Foundation and McGeachin, referring to them as manipulative “snake oil salesmen.”

Chaney, like the majority of residents who were recently polled, argued that Little managed to get it right.

“Everybody could always say, we should have moved earlier, we should have moved slower,” Chaney told the Inlander last month.

“I think that Gov. Little did his best to find the precise point. He’s been careful to follow the advice of experts that he’s assembled to advise him on the science and the economics.”

As much as people praise their governors, they sure aren’t impressed with the president, according to the SurveyMonkey poll.

Only 43 percent of respondents gave President Donald Trump a solid rating for how he’s handled the coronavirus — lower than every governor in the country but Georgia’s.

Not only that, but according to the KING 5 poll, only 29 percent of Washington residents say Trump is doing a better job at handling the virus than Inslee. Even 21 percent of Republicans say Inslee is doing a better job. n danielw@inlander.com

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KNOWLEDGE IS POWER IN THE WEEKS AFTER THE CORONAVIRUS first landed in Washington, nobody knew that the virus was spreading unseen throughout the Puget Sound area. But one group of researchers in Seattle had an inkling.

As part of a flu study, the researchers were sitting on a collection of nasal swabs that they knew they could test for the coronavirus. The problem, as the New York Times reported, is that for a month they couldn’t get approval from any state or federal officials to perform the tests.

So they defied the government. They performed the tests anyway, finding that the virus had been spreading throughout the Seattle area the entire time. It was the country’s first known outbreak, and it was only discovered because the Seattle Flu Study researchers — from the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and other institutions — went rogue.

It’s a shining example of how scientific researchers have emerged as leaders in the fight against the coronavirus. Every day, labcoat-wearing heroes across the globe race to develop a vaccine. They guide the decisions of government entities. They learn something new about how the virus behaves.

And the general public, it seems, look to these researchers for answers more than ever.

Each new discovery feels more tangible, like a small victory in the effort to return to some sense of normalcy.

Far from sitting on the sidelines, researchers right here in the Inland Northwest have rallied to join this global effort. And they’ve already made important contributions to the cause. Here, you’ll read about local researchers who are developing a potential COVID-19 cure, who are fighting disinformation, who are discovering just how the virus spreads. They work tirelessly, often dropping their other projects to focus solely on the coronavirus.

Because they all know one thing: To beat this enemy, they must first understand it.

— WILSON CRISCIONE, Section Editor

14 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

ILLUSTRATIONS BY JONATHAN HILL

PRESENT AND FUTURE Researchers at the University of Idaho are racing to develop a drug that would shield cells from the coronavirus, sort of like a tiny mask

T

BY JOSH KELETY

he global scramble to develop an effective vaccine against COVID-19 gets the limelight, and understandably so. But there’s also potentially game-changing coronavirus research in the cooker that doesn’t involve a vaccine.

At the University of Idaho, researchers are trying to find a cure for COVID-19 that would stop people from catching the virus to begin with.

“This virus is not going anywhere,” says Jagdish Patel, a molecular modeling specialist at the U of I and part of the team working on the cure. “We will need many alternatives and options.”

JAGDISH PATEL Here’s how it would work: While vaccines trigger immune system responses to viruses, the team at the university is trying to discover a drug that could, in theory, prevent COVID-19 from ever gaining a foothold in the human body.

Currently, COVID-19 infects people by using its spike proteins — you might recall the rendering of COVID-19 as a ball covered in spikes — to enter through “cell surface receptors,” where it begins to replicate and spread to other cells. But the Idaho researchers want to find a drug that can effectively block COVID-19 from interacting with human cell receptors.

Think of it like giving human cells their own mask, Patel says.

“In this entire process, the most crucial step is the attachment of the spike protein to the human cell receptor. Our goal is to prevent this interaction,” he says. “Our idea is to provide a shield or a mask for this human cell surface receptor.

“You can imagine proteins interacting with each other and something in the middle so that interaction won’t happen,” Patel adds. “We are developing a shield.” ...continued on page 17

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 15

SCIENCE

THE ENEMY WITHIN This WSU epidemiologist may inform policy on preventing COVID-19 from spreading within hospitals

BY WILSON CRISCIONE

A

s soon as COVID-19 arrived in Washington back in January, infectious disease epidemiologist Eric Lofgren devoted the entire focus of his lab to studying the virus.

Lofgren, an assistant professor at Washington State University, typically studies how infections spread within health care settings. His lab is one of a handful funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do so, and it’s now working specifically on learning how COVID-19 spreads within such facilities.

“We’re trying to understand, really, just how hospitals are working during COVID-19 and how we can prevent transmission and protect workers in the hospital,” Lofgren says.

His research could inform clinicians and policymakers and contribute to CDC guidelines on how to prevent spread in certain settings.

Lofgren gets data from hospitals around the country that tells him how patients and clinicians moved around before COVID-19, and how they have adapted since the pandemic. Hospitals locally, for instance, stopped elective surgeries and changed the way they operated during stayhome orders.

Using what is currently known about how the virus is transmitted from person to person, he builds models on how hospitals may function. What happens if COVID-19 patients are isolated in their own unit? What happens if

16 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

intensive care units are structured differently? How will the disease spread when patients begin to come back for elective procedures?

Admittedly, these models can be complicated by the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) in hospitals, he says.

“It’s easier to figure out how to protect patients and health care workers if you can assume everyone can change PPE all the time,” he says.

But his work can also apply to other settings, like jails. In April, he published a preprint — a scientific paper that has not been peer-reviewed — that found that a significant and ERIC LOFGREN rapid loss of life would occur if jails continued to operate normally during the pandemic. In a medium-sized city, reducing arrests and releasing people from jail could save over 1,500 lives.

“The work on jails felt very urgent because the predictions were essentially, you are having an outbreak in the jail now and you need to do something about it,” Lofgren says.

Similar logic can be applied to nursing homes and

long-term care facilities. It’s difficult to simply isolate those vulnerable individuals and let everyone try to build up some kind of herd immunity to the virus.

“It’s very hard to say, ‘I will just quarantine the elderly people.’ Where do they get their food from?

Who takes care of them?” Lofgren says.

Already in Spokane, there’s been an outbreak at the Spokane Veterans Home that’s caused residents to be transferred to a more secure hospital setting at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Hospital. Lofgren’s research is trying to provide more clarity on the best practices for similar situations in the future.

“What do you do when you have a whole nursing home that’s sick? Those patients in the nursing home already are in need of medical care — what does that look like, and who does that?” Lofgren says. “They’re all really important questions.”

Lofgren anticipates being able to share some more findings soon. As someone who researches epidemics, he says he’s gotten used to working at an “outbreak pace.”

“The phrase we keep saying is that ‘it’s a marathon not a sprint.’ For some of us, it’s a really long sprint,” he says. “That’s where myself and a lot of my colleagues are at. It’s fairly relentless.” n

“PRESENT AND FUTURE,” CONTINUED...

But don’t expect the researchers to discover this cure overnight. While Patel and his colleagues, virologist Paul Rowley and evolutionary biologist JT Van Leuven, have experience working on other viruses, like the infamous Ebola disease, the process of finding a drug that could stifle COVID-19 infections is tedious.

Essentially, Patel uses a computer to identify proteins that may protect human cell receptors, and then his colleague tests the protein in a lab using a “pseudovirus,” a harmless virus that has a similar structure to COVID-19.

“The receptor is a lock and the [protein] fragment is the key.

And now you have millions of keys and you have to find the right key to unlock the lock. So you cannot do it manually. We use computers to find the right key,” Patel says. “Once we find some promising keys that we think can potentially open the lock, I provide a short list of the keys to my collaborators, who would go in the lab and basically mix these keys, or these drugs, with the human cell surface receptors.”

“Our goal is to come up with promising chemical lab testing by the end of the year. Ours is a long-term strategy.”

While the team has been at it for over a month, their current goal is to find a promising lead by the end of the year. After that, they’ll conduct a series of tests and studies to make sure that the drug is actually safe. Patel says that, unlike efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, his team is “starting from scratch.”

“Our goal is to basically come up with promising chemical lab testing by the end of the year,” he says. “Ours is a long-term strategy.”

However, Patel is hopeful that their cure will not only be effective against COVID-19 but help stop other viruses from the coronavirus family.

“Let’s say in the future that there is another coronavirus or some other virus that wants to enter into human cells or infect human cells using the same receptor, then we would already have a trial,” he says. “If you recall the SARS epidemic in 2003, that virus also used the same receptor that we are targeting or building a mask against.

“There are already three viruses from the same family that are using this same receptor. The drug that we would develop would be broad,” Patel adds. “Our strategy is basically to tackle the present scenario and also the future.” n

FOR IDAHO ONLY

There are all kinds of models out there projecting case counts, deaths and other measures related to the coronavirus. They’re important tools for governments deciding what kind of social distancing measures to take.

Ben Ridenhour, an assistant professor at the University of Idaho, started developing his own model in January. As it turned out, it came in handy for Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s plans.

“Really our goal was to make something that was Idaho-specific,” Ridenhour says.

BEN RIDENHOUR It was tailored to Idaho’s rural, older population. But that’s not the only reason to make an Idaho model. It’s also the best way to understand how disease might spread in Idaho.

“If you do your own modeling, you get to control it,” Ridenhour says.

“You get to run interventions, scenarios, and play with ideas.”

— WILSON CRISCIONE

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SCIENCE

TAILING THE VIRUS WSU is testing animals for COVID-19 to learn more about how the virus moves between species

BY CHEY SCOTT

G

ood news for pet owners: The chance of contracting the coronavirus from four-legged household members is unlikely, research so far shows.

And while the odds of humans passing the virus to dogs, cats and other pets isn’t zero, pets aren’t at high risk for severe symptoms of the respiratory disease if they do become infected.

Still, much about the disease and how it’s transmitted between humans, and to or from other species, is unknown, which is why Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine began testing animals for COVID-19 back in late March.

Since scientists believe the coronavirus originated in bats and initially made the jump to humans through another species, it’s critical to learn how the emerging disease can spread among or between different species.

“Two primary questions we want to know is: One, what the SARS-CoV-2 virus does to animals — does it get animals sick, spread in natural settings, cause fatalities and those kinds of things?” explains Dr. Tim Baszler, professor at WSU’s Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health and executive director of the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (WADDL) at WSU Pullman.

“The second is: What is the role of that animal in human diseases?” Baszler continues.

To date, the lab at WSU Pullman has tested 39 animals at the request of public health agencies or research institutions.

All of the animals tested so far produced negative results for COVID-19. The test breakdown by species, updated in real time on the lab’s website (waddl.vetmed.wsu.edu/covid-19), is 22 cats, 12 dogs, two ferrets, one camel and two tamanduas (a type of anteater; this pair at an undisclosed zoo).

Testing of animals for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19 disease in humans, is currently limited to animals known to have been in close contact with a person diagnosed with COVID-19. While the current testing does not take away human testing resources, WSU says, the lab is awaiting regulatory approval to also run tests for human populations.

“We have limited testing to those with the highest value of learning what is the role of animals with COVID-19,” Baszler says.

WSU developed the test to screen animals for COVID-19 back in February after King County health officials requested a way to test some cats living at a nursing home where residents became infected with the

18 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

coronavirus. (The cats tested negative.)

Besides screening animals for any genetic traces of the virus, Baszler says the second piece of the puzzle is to learn how closely the animal interacted with humans while a person in its household or living environment was infectious.

“My cat loves to sit on me and loves to be close. Some cats are outdoors and you hardly ever see them; the food goes away and the litter box needs cleaning, but you don’t see them much,” he says. “Those are things you need to learn about with the association of transmission, how close does the animal and person live.”

A team of researchers in TIM BASZLER Tokyo recently found that the coronavirus can be transmitted from cat to cat, Baszler says, but he underscores that the study was done with high doses to inoculate the cats in a research setting that isn’t necessarily indicative of what might happen naturally. He also points out that cats infected by other cats showed no symptoms of disease, despite testing positive.

“Why that is is probably because of their own immune response to the virus, but we don’t know. There is a lot to learn yet about the role of COVID-19 in pet animals and any animals, really,” he adds.

In the U.S., about 200 animals have been tested for COVID-19 to date, Baszler says, and only a handful of those have produced a positive result. One of the most widely shared examples is multiple tigers and lions at the Bronx Zoo in New York that tested positive, showed minor respiratory symptoms and recovered. The big cats are believed to have been infected by a caretaker. Worldwide, several mink fur farms in the Netherlands have also experienced coronavirus outbreaks, again transmitted by a human host.

“For all animals worldwide, it’s all been people giving the virus to the animals, not the other way,” Baszler says.

Cats and ferrets seem to be more susceptible to the virus, which is expected since both species were also impacted by the SARS virus in 2003, he says. The reason some species are more likely to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 has to do with a specific receptor that the virus can attach to in its hosts, and which humans, cats and mustelids (ferrets, mink) have.

Even though the risk seems to be very low that a person infected with COVID-19 could transfer the virus to their pets, the American Veterinary Medicine Association (AVMA) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both advise sick people to avoid interacting with their pets. A robust list of guidelines and answers to commonly asked questions about COVID-19 and animals can be found on the websites of both organizations.

“Global health matters for people and animals, and we really need to keep an eye on it,” Baszler summarizes.

“We have to be better prepared, and the way we are testing now and doing animal studies, that all helps us prepare better for the next disease that comes.” n

PREDICTING HOSPITAL CAPACITY

In some cities across the world, COVID-19 has overrun hospitals that simply can’t handle the sheer number of sick patients who stormed their emergency rooms. That means it’s crucial for hospital systems to know exactly what their capacity is for a COVID-19 surge.

That’s where WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine comes in. Researchers Ofer Amram and Sterling McPherson developed an online tool that allows hospitals to predict how equipped hospitals are to handle a potential surge.

It’s already been used locally by Multicare. A STERLING team in Sao Paulo, Brazil, even used the tool to McPHERSON predict its own capacity, McPherson says.

“If someone were to do this by hand every day and try to provide a written report to a response, it would be extremely time-consuming,” McPherson says.

The online tool allows any hospital to input things like the number of hospitalized cases, hospital beds available and the number of ventilators available. The tool quickly comes back with a short-term picture showing what kind of personal protective equipment, ventilators and nurse hours will be needed.

“It was really designed to be a ground-up — as opposed to a top-down — type of tool,” McPherson says.

— WILSON CRISCIONE

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MOTHER’S MILK

If a mother tests positive for COVID-19, should they continue breastfeeding their child?

That’s the question that University of Idaho researchers Mark and Michelle “Shelley” McGuire hope to answer, along with colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York. Their project to test human milk samples has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

As of yet, no studies have definitive evidence that the coronavirus lives in breast milk, and the CDC still recommends that mothers continue breastfeeding even after a positive test. But the Idaho team wants to make sure that’s safe. They’ll obtain samples from women across the country who test positive for MARK & SHELLEY McGUIRE COVID-19.

“I really hope the virus isn’t in milk,” says Shelley McGuire in a news release. “But hope doesn’t make for good science.”

Women who want to volunteer can find more information at uidaho. edu/breastmilk.

— WILSON CRISCIONE

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SCIENCE

BLOCKING THE STORM A discovery by this WSU researcher could prevent COVID-19 patients from dying

BY WILSON CRISCIONE

I

n some of the most serious COVID-19 cases, it’s not the virus that kills. It’s the patient’s own body.

When the novel coronavirus invades your lungs, your body kicks into hyperdrive, triggering an inflammatory response. It’s a natural function of your immune system, but for some people, it gets out of control. It causes tissue damage, pneumonia and, in many COVID-19 patients, death.

But what if there was a way to dampen that inflammatory response? What if there was a treatment to prevent mild COVID-19 cases from becoming severe?

Santanu Bose, a viral infecSANTANU BOSE tion researcher at Washington State University, may have found a solution. He’s been studying what causes this inflammatory response for years, and his technology patented in 2018 has recently been licensed to a Canadian biotech company hoping to develop it into a treatment for COVID-19 patients.

In 2014, Bose discovered that a protein called A9 is produced as soon as a virus attacks host cells. Bose was researching lung disease severity from the influenza A virus, but researchers would later find that the A9 protein is produced with other respiratory viruses as well, including the novel coronavirus.

This A9 protein, he found, plays a key role in setting off what’s called a “cytokine storm,” which doctors have found is a common occurrence in severe COVID-19 cases during the pandemic. The body releases cytokines, proteins used to ward off infections, and these cytokines attack the body’s own cells and tissues in a misguided attempt to fight off the virus. That causes severe pneumonia that can be deadly.

Bose equates it to bringing a nuclear bomb to a gunfight.

“You could have just used a handgun to kill it, but instead of using a handgun, your body says, ‘I am going to use a nuclear bomb to kill it.’ It’s not only killing the virus, it’s also killing yourself,” Bose says. “What we’re

20 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

trying to do is stop that.”

And he may have found a solution: A9 antibodies. The antibodies capture the A9 proteins before they can interact with uninfected cells and turn on the molecule signaling that launches a cytokine storm.

Bose tested the idea on mice infected with influenza. Without the antibody, most of the mice would die within eight days. But with it, he says, 90 percent were still living after 20 days.

It’s important to note that this antibody doesn’t destroy the immune system response, but only suppresses it. And it wouldn’t only be a treatment for COVID-19, but any infection that may cause the body to overreact in the same way, Bose says.

Randy Cron, an expert on cytokine storms at the University of Alabama, says it “makes sense” to block the A9 protein to prevent a cytokine storm, but notes that it has not been tested in humans yet.

“There are many therapies that have been well studied and shown effective in treating other cytokine storm syndromes, and most of these are in clinical trials treating COVID-19 patients,” Cron tells the Inlander.

He adds that there are studies being published reporting decreased mortality with agents that block pro-inflammatory cytokines.

“We await the randomized trials, but these will very likely be shown effective more definitively very soon,” Cron says.

Bose, however, notes that his technology could be used as a treatment for other complications caused by COVID-19 infections, like the formation of blood clots.

The A9 antibody, unlike some other treatments in the works, can reduce those blood clots. And since the A9 technology could theoretically treat any respiratory virus, it could be useful in winter months when both the flu and COVID-19 are spreading.

Still, there are significant hurdles to get past: It’s possible that the study with mice won’t translate to humans,

and there are still questions as to how this coronavirus will behave.

A treatment with Bose’s technology is likely at least a year away. It wasn’t until last week that Bose’s research was licensed to a company, InflammatoRx, for further preclinical development, before human trials with COVID-19 patients can be conducted. In a statement, InflammatoRx CEO Caroline Fortier says the plan is to “initiate toxicology studies before the end of the year on the humanized anti-A9 antibody.”

Yet, six years ago, Bose was thinking of a possible pandemic when he published the research, writing, “There is a constant threat from naturally evolving [influenza] strains in avian and animal reservoirs that can lead to an epidemic or pandemic.”

So why didn’t more people pay attention then?

“People never believe that there will be a pandemic,” Bose says. “At least now, we can be more prepared for pandemics in the future.” n

SIFTING THROUGH THE JUNK Debunking bogus claims about coronavirus on social media can take just 30 seconds, according to this WSU method

T

BY QUINN WELSCH

he Facebook video title was in all caps: “DON’T WATCH THIS VIDEO UNLESS YOU ARE READY FOR THE TRUTH MY FRIENDS!!!”

In it, a reverend in a suit and tie laid out what he believed was the coming of a new world order. COVID-19. Marxism. Mandatory vaccines. George Soros. China.

The “climate change hoax.” All of it was coming to a head during the current pandemic, with the end goal of a global government seizing power.

As of this writing, the post has been viewed 2.5 million times with 151,000 shares. It’s just one of the many videos circulating throughout the growing social media bubbles of conspiracy theorists, government skeptics and anti-vaxxers during the coronavirus pandemic.

This is familiar territory for Michael Caulfield, a digital literacy expert at WSU Vancouver. The misinformation surrounding the pandemic (and its increasingly partisan divide) is a type of pandemic on its own and is “sadly predictable,” Caulfield says.

While fake news has been an ongoing issue on social media, Caulfield says coronavirus misinformation is larger in scale, reach and impact.

The good news is that it’s addressable.

In February, Caulfield released a model for fact-checking misinformation about the coronavirus on social media, dubbed “SIFT,” which stands for: u Stop u Investigate the source u Find better coverage and u Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context While social media outlets attempt to remove misleading information about COVID-19 from their platforms, the SIFT model puts the responsibility in the hands of the internet audience themselves in a process that only takes about 30 seconds.

“Coronavirus misinformation is not a problem you’re going to solve through teaching people to be mini virologists or epidemiologists,” Caulfield says in a WSU press release. “People need an education that is really focused on the things that have the biggest impact. And in this case, that’s education around

these quick verification skills.”

Even just hovering a cursor over a Twitter profile can help determine the credibility of a source, according to SIFT. “Once people have the facts, they don’t do so bad at the critical thinking part,” Caulfield tells the Inlander. “If they start to react before they have the facts, they start to entrench. That reaction becomes baked in.”

Caulfield began his efforts to teach digital and media literacy to college students back in 2010 at Keene State College in New Hampshire. There, he found that students had a difficult time finding trustworthy resources on the internet. Fast forward to 2016, after a highly contentious presidential election and multipronged disinformation campaigns, everybody suddenly became very interested in digital and media literacy, he says.

Sorting worthwhile information from useless MICHAEL information isn’t easy. Bad CAULFIELD information can be packaged to convince its audiences that it’s good, and online content is constantly changing shape. The internet represents a strange dichotomy as both the “most prolific publisher of nonsense in the world” and the best way to fact check that very same nonsense, Caulfield says.

“A lot of the discussion around this has assumed people’s biggest problem is that [they] just read things that confirm their own biases, and that’s true, but it’s not just that — even when it’s in their interest, they just make stupid mistakes in what to trust or who to listen to,” he says.

To be clear, the SIFT model isn’t trying to dissuade anyone from sharing information from a particular viewpoint. Caulfield just wants people to be more aware of who or what the source of the information is.

“Ultimately, one of our fundamental ideas is that some sources are more reliable and trustworthy than others based on their transparency and professional expertise,” he says. “If you’re a doubter of professional expertise, it’s hard to find dry land anywhere.”

Even just a little training in digital and media literacy can make a difference of night and day, Caulfield says.

“I do hope that people think about investing a little time in these skills, because the payoff is really good.” n Find more information on the SIFT model at infodemic.blog.

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ONLINE LIVING

Justine Griffin’s new online work space is much more inviting than a cubicle.

Virtual Fanbase Beyond video games: How local artists are finding inspiration and community on the live-streaming platform Twitch

BY NATHAN WEINBENDER

F

our times a week, Justine Griffin grabs her violin and shuts herself away in her home office, where she prepares to perform for hundreds of people.

She puts her setlist together, making sure she hasn’t left off any song requests from her audience. She goes through the soundcheck routine, setting volume levels and making sure everything is mixed and tuned properly.

And then she turns on her lighting setup, switches on her camera and logs onto Twitch, the popular live-streaming platform. She usually streams for three to four hours at a time, performing songs and chatting with her viewers, though every once in a while — and depending on how many viewers she has — she’ll log a six-hour session.

Griffin, 25, has been playing violin since she was a kid, and has performed alongside local singer-songwriters like Lucas Brown and Jesse Quandt. But she started streaming (twitch.tv/justineviolin) about a year ago out of curiosity and without any expectations, and now she has more than 440 monthly subscribers and generates about 230 viewers per stream.

A few months ago, she left her 9-to-5 position at a Spokane advertising agency, settling into another parttime gig while establishing her Twitch presence on the

side. But in the last couple months, Twitch streaming has become her full-time job, and she’s bringing in money through tips, monthly subscriptions and contributors to her Patreon account.

“It takes a lot of time to build up a community that’s willing to support you,” Griffin tells the Inlander, “and you have to attack it from a bunch of different angles to make enough money at it. … I’m kind of taking a risk right now, but it’s turned into something that is an actual income for me.”

I

t used to be that if you wanted to see and hear the latest video game without actually buying it, you’d have to go over to a friend’s house and watch over their shoulder while they played. When it was launched in 2011 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, twitch.tv both streamlined and commodified that experience: Not only were gamers able to film themselves playing Call of Duty, but they could broadcast it to an audience, talk back to their viewers in real time and even charge for the experience.

It was (pardon the pun) a game-changing technology, one that combined all the best features of social media

and online video content. Within just a couple years, Twitch had cultivated a large enough user base that streamers like Ninja, Tfue and Shroud were turning their streams into serious money-making ventures and landing sponsorships with esports, international video game competitions that regularly draw hundreds of millions of viewers.

Amazon acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion in 2014, and recent reports show that 1.5 million people are watching Twitch at a given time, with an average of 35 million users every month and 4 million active broadcasters.

Of course, the Twitch community has expanded beyond the realm of video games. At any moment, you can tune in to scheduled live streams from an unending variety of streamers — gamers, sure, but also chefs, musicians, dancers and visual artists — and you can talk with other viewers through the platform’s chat function. Streamers can make money through subscriptions, which usually offer perks in exchange for monthly payments, or through tips during their live sessions (users have the option of tipping through Venmo or PayPal, or via a Twitch-specific digital currency known as bits). ...continued on next page

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 23

CULTURE | ONLINE LIVING

ONE MAN’S SEARCH FOR COMMUNITY IN THE WORLD OF ONLINE GAMING

A

few years ago I bought a horror/survival video game that picked up the story of the Alien franchise through the perspective of the daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. Alien: Isolation came out in 2014 and remains one of the most terrifying games I’ve ever played.

I couldn’t beat it. Not because it was too hard, but because it was giving me heart palpitations while playing. So I opted for the next best thing: I watched someone else play it on Twitch.

Sweet relief.

Since then, I’ve been a fan of the live-streaming video game platform (online at twitch.tv), and I’ve discovered some streamers who I’ve genuinely enjoyed spending my time with — people I might even consider friends. And what could be better during the COVID-19 shutdown/pandemic/quarantine/societalcollapse than finding a group of like-minded people to regularly meet up with digitally?

It’s now more important than ever to find that sense of community and belonging in our socially distanced world to keep us from going all Jack Torrance on our neighbors and loved ones.

But unless you are a Twitch streamer with an established following, finding that sense of community can be a little tough. Many streamers spend weeks, months or years playing for absolutely no one before finding even small followings.

The goal is to hustle. Establish a niche. Build an audience. Earn money. Maybe it turns into a full-time gig. Maybe it even pays the bills.

However, that sense of community one might be searching for tends to get lost in the hustle for an audience. There’s something to be desired for small streamers and “lurkers,” like myself, who are just searching for social interaction. The experience can be isolating, not uniting. There’s really nothing enticing for viewers just looking for social engagement unless you count the customized “emotes” that viewers can get by purchasing subscriptions.

Are you an Inland Northwesterner who broadcasts on Twitch or any other streaming services? Tell us about it! Send an email to quinnw@inlander.com or editor@inlander.com.

I like Twitch. I wish everyone had their own streaming channel that I could drop in on to say “hello.” The company hit the scene primarily as a video game streaming service, but in recent years has become a catch-all for a variety of additional interests: art, music, TV, film and, one my favorites, ASMR. During the quarantine and its aftermath, my hope is that more people are able to connect virtually through Twitch, or similar live-streaming platforms.

We need human connections right now. We face big challenges during the ongoing shutdowns, and I don’t think our mental/social well-being should be shuffled to the side, as it often is.

My Twitch “follow” list is filled with some smart and thoughtful people who I wish I was able to connect with better. But in terms of genuine interactions, digital platforms can often leave something to be desired.

— QUINN WELSCH

24 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

“VIRTUAL FANBASE,” CONTINUED...

Tipping is sort of the norm on Twitch, Griffin explains, a practice that’s no different from throwing a couple dollars into a performer’s open guitar case.

“It’s already common knowledge that you tip on Twitch,” she says.

And there’s another form of sharing the virtual wealth that’s built right into Twitch’s software: a process known as “raiding,” wherein a streamer ends their session and instantly transfers all of their active viewers over to another channel of their choosing. Streamers can also “host” other streamers, so that when they’re offline and a prospective viewer visits their profile, that viewer will instead be redirected to another channel with similar content.

This is partly how Griffin amassed her own following, and another unspoken rule of the platform that she says makes it more community-focused than most.

“You always raid someone at the end of your stream,” Griffin says. “That’s just the way it works. You don’t just end. It’s a good way for the viewers to discover new people, and for you to support new people at the same time.”

for this sort of show, Bransen says, because it allows users to switch between live content and pre-taped material. The tipping feature comes in handy, too.

“Although it’s less about the money and more about us being able to showcase our drag and do whatever we want from week to week, however we feel,” Bransen says.

Streamer Chris Dorsey (twitch.tv/dorseus), meanwhile, says he started out playing games on Twitch but soon realized that his art hobby could fit the platform. For about 12 hours each week, he streams himself working on drawings, typically illustrations of comic book and video game characters, and now has about 1,300 followers and 40 monthly subscribers.

“Seeing the amount of support people show is incredible,” he says. “It starts off with, ‘You’re all willing to dedicate an hour or two of your time to just hang out with me?’”

T

witch has been likened to an online, multimedia form of terrestrial radio, with viewers tuning in and flipping through stations until they stumble on a sound they like. Click one active channel and you’re watching a guy in Tokyo assembling a Lego Millennium Falcon. Another click, and you’re listening in on the conversation of two guys road tripping to Utah.

That click-around function is part of what makes Twitch a tantalizing prospect for musicians seeking an audience. Spokane DJ Terry Fisher, who performs as Stitch Jones (twitch.tv/djstitchjones), says he was never able to find a local following for his sets of old-school hip-hop and drum-and-bass music. So he turned to Twitch two years ago, and he now has 400 followers and around 30 monthly subscribers. Fisher typically performs two DJ sets a week — one on Friday mornings, and another on a Saturday or Sunday evening — which means he’s hitting at different times in various parts of the world.

“If I play a certain time of day, I get people from certain countries or certain regions,” Fisher says. “A lot of people who watch me are from the U.K., Holland, the Netherlands. There’s a guy from Australia who watches on a regular basis. … You’re on an international clock, and people, no matter where they are in the world, want music at some point during their day.”

For many artists who rely on live gigs and audience participation, Twitch has also filled the void left by venue closures during the coronavirus pandemic. Nik Bransen, a Spokane drag performer better known as Nikita Romanoff, typically hosts weekly drag shows at the downtown venue the Pin, but he and his cohorts have moved to a Saturday night Twitch stream they call Things That Go Twitch in the Night (twitch.tv/hausofromanoff).

“We’re all going stir crazy, we all miss doing drag and we all miss putting our ideas out there,” Bransen says. “So I tried my best to find what I could in order to have a platform for us to put it back out there.”

The participating drag queens record their performances in advance and send them to Bransen, who edits the videos together and plays them back through Twitch while hosting in real time as Nikita. Twitch is an ideal platform

Chris Dorsey during a stream to raise money for St. Jude’s Children Hospital.

Dorsey has even hosted charity streams, where he’ll challenge his followers to donate a certain amount of money within a designated time frame in exchange for quirky rewards: In one instance, he had cream pies smashed in his face, and in another, he had to get a tattoo. It’s a gambit that worked, because Dorsey says his followers have raised more than $3,000 for Sacred Heart Medical Center and St. Jude’s Children Hospital.

“It’s really heartwarming to see that this is the community I helped raise,” he says, “and it’s cool to see that they’re willing to be these kind, outgoing people.”

T

hat word — “community” — comes up time and again when chatting with regular Twitch streamers, who feel that their platform of choice provides them with more than just an echo chamber. If you’re doing it right and if you’re active enough, a Twitch stream can be a two-way street: Commenters aren’t merely yelling into the void, and streamers can really sense their audience in the virtual room with them.

“It’s more than just a gaming platform,” Dorsey says.

“It’s a device that lets you be creative in whatever way you can think of. As long as you’re able to share it, the platform is there.”

And for a gigging musician like Griffin, who typically thrives off the pulsating energy of a crowd, Twitch streams have not only comfortably taken the place of regular live shows (at least for the time being) but have even provided a cozier and more personable venue than even the tiniest coffee shop.

“It doesn’t feel like it’s the same,” Griffin says, “but it’s more one-on-one because you can talk with them. It’s almost more intimate than any live show would be.” n

CULTURE | DIGEST

Dumb Comedies For Dumb Times

N A BEER FOR THE PEOPLE In April, New York-based Other Half Brewing Co. launched a worldwide collaboration beer to support local hospitality industries. The project, All Together, provides breweries a hazy IPA recipe paired with the name and artwork for free. Spokane breweries Whistle Punk Brewing, Humble Abode Brewing and Lumberbeard Brewing have all brewed the beer — the latter joined by Hello Brew Co., Project Craft Brewing, River City Brewing, For the Love of God Brewing and YaYa Brewing Company. All Together is now available in cans from all of the above breweries with proceeds benefiting various groups. (DEREK HARRISON)

BY BILL FROST

ow is the time for comedy, so put down the Clorox mojito and embrace the idea of relaxing with some stupid sitcoms. Here are six recent comedies to stream right now, ranging from the truly stupid to the deceptively-dumb-but-subliminally-genius: ALONE TOGETHER (seasons 1-2 on Hulu) Before the #AloneTogether hashtag became a pandemic thing, there was this 2018 comedy about platonic besties trying to make it in Hollywood. Esther (Esther Povitsky) and Benji (Benji Aflalo) aren’t gorgeous or ambitious, but their L.A. self-absorption is hilariously on-point, and the millennial jabs are knowing, not scathing.

BROKE (season 1 on CBS and CBS All Access) New CBS comedy Broke debuted just in time for Lockdown 2020 in April — captive audience, literally. The story of obnoxious, destitute relatives moving in is nothing new, but stars Pauley Perrette and Natasha Leggero put a slyly fresh spin on salty-to-sweet sister relationships.

The real scene-stealers here are Jaime Camil and Izzy Diaz, often in Spanish (sorry, gringos).

THE BUZZ BIN DAVE (season 1 on FXX and Hulu) YouTube rapper Lil Dicky (Dave Burd) stars as Dave, a 30-something white Jewish rapper who believes he’s the new Kanye West — the old one’s wearing thin, so why not? Dave could have been annoying AF, but the series’ clever writing and Burd’s chill delivery make for an absurdist look at coming up in indie hip-hop. Hell, Justin Bieber and Macklemore make appearances.

THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST Some noteworthy new music hits online and in stores May 29. To wit: LADY GAGA, Chromatica. I, for one, am curious to hear her first album since movie stardom struck with A Star Is Born.

KIP MOORE, Wild World. The country cat and regular Spokane visitor delivers a strippeddown (and aptly titled) fourth album.

JIMMY BUFFETT, Life On The Flip Side.

Buffett’s not my thing, but a little escapism is welcome right about now. (DAN NAILEN) Release dates based on latest information available at press time.

BREWS BROTHERS (season 1 on Netflix) Brews Brothers is produced by one of the minds from bro-comedy The League, and it shows — it’s like a pilsner-and-pork-tacos pairing of The League and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s not as sharp as either of those, but Brews Brothers, about antagonistic siblings running a brewpub, still delivers laughs. See: a hefeweizen unwittingly named “Weiss Power.”

THE OTHER TWO (season 1 on Comedy Central) After years of showbiz struggle and failure, siblings Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Helene Yorke) are suddenly eclipsed by their 13-year-old brother Chase’s (Case Walker) overnight viral video stardom. The twist: Chase is a sweet kid, and The Other Two zigs when expected to zag at every turn. It’s a hysterical takedown of instacelebrity culture that also stans the fun side.

TACOMA FD (seasons 1–2 on TruTV) Super Troopers, but firefighters — that’s Tacoma FD, created by troopers Kevin Heffernan and Steve Lemme. The raunch is dialed back, but the idiotic antics and glorious moustaches are in full effect. Tacoma FD is proudly D-UM-B, but earns its laughs through sheer commitment — and yes, of course there’s a weed dispensary fire. n

A LITTLE SELF-LOVE We’re not above letting readers know when our staff’s work has been recognized for kicking ass.

In last week’s Society of Professional Journalists Region 10 awards announcement (which covers papers in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho and Alaska), our in-house Inlanders were honored among the small newsrooms (15 newsroom employees or less) for outstanding health and science reporting; arts, entertainment and lifestyle reporting; feature photography; and print page design. It’s nice to get a “nice job!” now and again. (DAN NAILEN)

NEW STATION, OLD-SCHOOL SOUNDS It’s a real treat when a “new” radio station pops up and fills an obvious void. If you wander to 101.5 FM these days, you’ll find an I Heart Radio station outlet billing itself as “Hooptown 101.5” (yes, it’s affiliated with the crew behind Hoopfest). More important than the name is what it’s playing: lots of TLC, Jay-Z, OutKast, Snoop Dogg and the like. You know, stuff you rarely hear on Spokane radio. Tune it while it lasts. (DAN NAILEN)

WATER WORLD Post-apocalyptic dystopian reads might not be everyone’s cup of tea amid a global disaster, but the genre offers some comfort in a “we got this” kind of way.

That’s the feeling I had reading Kassandra Montag’s 2019 debut After the Flood, set 100 years in the future on an Earth transformed into a global ocean where only the highest mountains are still dry. Myra and her young daughter Pearl traverse this world on a small boat, fishing and trading to survive. They’re also looking for Myra’s older daughter, Row, taken by Row’s father as the waters rose. The mother-daughter pair eventually join a ship of ragtag refugees searching for new life while battling disease, raiders and each others’ betrayal. It’s a riveting read that puts little struggles into perspective through characters who’ve overcome serious hardship, yet remain hopeful. (CHEY SCOTT)

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 25

CULTURE | BOOKS

Book Tips From the Pros Giant Nerd Books’ Nathan Huston recommends everything from cocktail and science guides to graphic novels and fine fiction to get through the pandemic

BY DAN NAILEN

D

iversions to stoke our passions and intellects are certainly welcome right now, and rarely delivered in finer form than a good book. I hit up several area bookstores for recommendations and they were more than happy to share some with us.

Giant Nerd Books owner Nathan Huston offers a little something for everyone, and it’s a list that certainly reflects the gloriously diverse array of reads available at the shop at 709 N. Monroe St. Here are Huston’s recommendations, along with his thoughts on the works:

MIDNIGHT RIOT

by Ben Aaronovitch HUSTON: First volume in the Rivers of London series, which successfully answers the question “What if Harry Potter grew up to join CSI?” Quick and sharp with surprisingly likable, relatable characters.

The whole series is a keeper.

WINDUP GIRL

by Paolo Bacigalupi Winner of both Hugo and Nebula awards upon its release in 2009 (as well as being selected as one of TIME Magazine’s best books for that year), an intense and riveting bit of dystopian ecological collapse to keep you awake these long quarantine nights.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN TAROT CARD DECKS

by Bryan Westra All the cool kids are picking up new hobbies these days, right?

MY FAVORITE THING IS MONSTERS

by Emil Ferris Not only the best original graphic novel I’ve read in a decade or more but one of the best novels as well. A highly fictionalized autobiography, Ferris depicts herself in late 1960s Chicago as a pre-teen girl werewolf; when an upstairs neighbor dies under circumstances she finds mysterious, she becomes a pre-teen girl werewolf detective.

PHANTOMS: THE RISE OF DEATHROCK FROM THE LA PUNK SCENE

by Mikey Bean Massive, exhaustively researched volume of countercultural history, so engrossing you’ll even smell the clove cigarettes and Aqua Net super-hold right there in the room with you.

GROWING GOURMET AND MEDICINAL MUSHROOMS

by Paul Stamets Fungi have been on the planet longer than either plants or animals and, if we ask nice, they might just help out enough to make sure we stick around a while longer. Mushroom growing is an emergent cot-

26 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

tage (basement? cellar?) industry, and this could be its Bible. Could also be filed under “New Quarantine Hobbies.”

SURELY YOU’RE JOKING, MR FEYNMAN!

by Richard Feynman First autobiographical volume from one of my personal role models. “Richard Feynman for President, because one dead genius is worth 10,000 politicians” — paraphrasing a slogan a friend came up with in the early ’90s (his was about Buckminster Fuller, but the principle is the same). Before I opened a shop and had to start making rent money, I’d buy every copy of this book that I could and give them to friends about to graduate from college, especially in education. Read it and see why.

DEMIAN

by Herman Hesse Siddhartha may be his best-known work but Demian is the one I’d recommend to seekers seeking paths that are a little out of the ordinary.

ANIMAL SKULLS: A GUIDE TO NORTH AMERICAN SPECIES

by Mark Elbroch Excellent natural history and “vulture culture” reference volume. Possibly indispensable for identifying our finds as we’re all traipsing about the countryside on our social-distancing adventures.

THE CANON COCKTAIL BOOK

by Jamie Boudreau Just because we’re drinking at home these days is no excuse for letting our standards slip. Seattle’s Canon bar remains a leading light in beverage innovation, and these pages capture a lot of their liquid magic.

SPOOKY SPOKANE

by Chet Caskey & Candess Campbell 325 pages examining the otherworldly underbelly of the Lilac City. Make a list of places to check out once the world opens up again!

THE SECRET OF VENTRILOQUISM

by Jon Padgett Formerly the webmaster for Thomas Ligotti’s official site, this is Padgett’s first short story collection.

All interwoven around a book that couldn’t possibly be real — or could it? — and worth every bit of horror hype I can throw at it. n During the coronavirus lockdown, you can order books by sending an email through the “contact” link at giantnerdbooks.com, via the shop Instagram account (@giantnerdbooks) or just call the shop (868-0420) and you might get lucky and Huston will pick up the phone.

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THE ROAD BACK

RETURN TO SERVICE

Idaho’s mid-May reopening of restaurants gave cross-state businesses a preview of what to expect in Washington; plus, Spokane plans for expanded outdoor seating

Moon Time owners Brad Fosseen (left) and John Grollmus at their restaurant in Coeur d’Alene. YOUNG KWAK PHOTO

BY CHEY SCOTT

T

o celebrate the reopening of its dining room and patio two weeks ago, Cosmic Cowboy Grill in Coeur d’Alene threw a party.

A socially distanced, parking lot party, that is. For an hour that evening, customers gathered to eat barbecue sandwiches and enjoy a performance by local musician Just Plain Darin, mindful of staying at least 6 feet apart from each other.

“We were very busy on Saturday, and universally everyone I talked to says that it felt like the height of summer in Coeur d’Alene,” says Cosmic Cowboy owner Steve Eller, who opened a second location in Spokane at River

28 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

Park Square just weeks before the coronavirus shutdown. to Phase 2 of Washington state’s reopening plan. Spokane “We’re happy to be open even at 50 percent,” Eller County received that approval ahead of the Memorial adds. “We’re still selling a higher percentDay weekend last Friday. age of food for to-go and delivery, and For some local restaurants that operTHE ROAD BACK we’re fine with that and happy to be sellate locations in both states, the staggered The Inlander is checking in ing it at all.” rollout allowed owners and staff to get on local businesses and how Idaho’s earlier move than Washington a preview of how the stricter sanitation they’re evolving in a world with to start reopening the economy, including guidelines and limited seating would look coronavirus. Follow along at hard-hit restaurants, began May 16. Across once Washington caught up with Idaho.

Inlander.com/recovery. the state line in Spokane County, however, Other restaurants in North Idaho local business owners were still anxiously celebrated being able to again serve diners awaiting expedited approval from Gov. Jay Inslee to move tableside the week before Washington, including Moon

Time in Coeur d’Alene and the Porch Public House in Hayden. The two pubs are under the same local ownership as the Elk Public House, Geno’s, Two Seven Public House and El Que bar in Spokane.

“It does feel a little like a trial run for opening in Washington, even though things are different in Idaho,” says restaurant group coowner John Grollmus. “We were really busy, you know, as busy as we can be with 50 percent of tables. And what we’re seeing is there is still a lot of to-go food since not everyone is going out, so it felt like the lack of tables was compensated by to-go to some degree.”

Half-capacity for dine-in service at the Porch and Moon Time brings each restaurants’ maximum occupancy down to between 50 and 60 customers from around 110 seats, Grollmus adds.

While Eller and Grollmus agree there are setbacks and challenges that come with the phased reopening plans in Washington and Idaho, they’re also both grateful to be reopening at all after two months of takeoutonly service.

“There are things we have to do now, in terms of staffing, like having more people to make sure that things are staying clean, and having people to maintain orders and keep people from congregating in the entry, and all those measures make it hard to make money,” Grollmus explains.

“But on the flip side, I’ve been seeing a lot of negatives coming from other restaurant owners [about this] that I don’t understand,” he continues. “Even half-capacity is an improvement. It gets people back working and employees getting paychecks and people going out to eat.”

At Cosmic Cowboy, Eller opted to temporarily change the fast-casual eatery’s format from counter to tableside ordering. It wasn’t required

by Idaho’s guidelines, he says, but made more sense considering the restaurant usually has self-service drinks and a condiment bar, which aren’t allowed in this stage. ...continued on page 30

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FOOD | THE ROAD BACK “RETURN TO SERVICE,” CONTINUED...

And, of course, Eller says all of his staff are wearing face masks and gloves, and taking extra measures to disinfect tables and other surfaces throughout the restaurant. The extra attention toward cleanliness is easy for Cosmic Cowboy, he says, since “we’ve always been really, really clean.”

It’s the same at Grollmus’s five restaurants.

“Being a restaurant, that is always at the very top of our list, keeping things clean,” says general manager Marshall Powell. “I don’t think the [reopening rules] are overbearing. They are very doable, especially to get open again.”

M

any restaurant owners in the region have openly expressed concerns that operating at 50 percent capacity will tighten their already paper-thin margins, which are depressed after two months of just takeout. A newly passed emergency resolution by Spokane City Council aims to help ease that burden during Washington’s phased reopening process.

Last Thursday, the council voted to modify requirements for restaurants to apply for sidewalk cafes, parklets and “streateries,” all of which can add to a business’s outdoor-seating footprint and increase capacity overall.

Sidewalk cafes, as the name implies, allow restaurants to utilize a portion of the public sidewalk, while parklets and streateries are temporary sidewalk extensions that convert a parking space or loading zone on the street into a space for public use. The difference between a parklet and streatery is that the latter is designated for use during operating hours by an adjacent restaurant or cafe, whereas a parklet is always open to public use.

While these features haven’t been widely used since the city approved its parklet program in 2017, a couple pilots of the program took place on west Main and west First Avenue in summer 2016.

Search it at Inlander.com/ “We suspended the fees through ToGoGuide. And if you Sept. 31, and the other thing we did own a restaurant, update was take away the piece where it details about your current would have an administrative hearoperation at Inlander.com/ ing, because no one attended those,” TakeOutForm. You can also says Councilwoman Lori Kinnear, send updates and questions who led the effort. to food@inlander.com.

The amended process still includes a 10-day comment period for the public or nearby property owners to raise any concerns.

The Elk in Browne’s Addition will be the city’s first test case, Kinnear says, and has already applied to close off a section of Cannon Street as an expanded streatery that’s envisioned to be shared by the Elk, El Que and its neighbors Italia Trattoria, Pacific Pizza and Caffe Capri.

Last Friday, the Elk and El Que quickly added expanded patios on its property’s west side, as has been done in the past for the Elkfest music festival, says Powell.

“As far as the amount of tables, I think we could replace the tables we lost inside,” Powell says.

“That expanded area would let us get to capacity,” Grollmus adds. “That is great, but there’s also the factor of the weather, which makes it trickier.”

As part of the resolution, the city sent a letter to the Washington State Liquor Control Board to encourage a swift rules modification allowing restaurants to serve drinks in these temporary outdoor additions. Kinnear adds that parklets and sidewalk cafes would also be allowed for retailers that seek to display merchandise onto the sidewalk in order to meet social distancing guidelines.

“The idea is to make it as easy as possible for restaurants and retail to open up at a capacity that makes it profitable for them to operate with their employees,” Kinnear says. “We have to get this going immediately.” n cheys@inlander.com

PPlaicntuare-Perfect

FOOD | THE ROAD BACK

SUMMER

Many bars will be able to open with restrictions in the second phase of Washington’s reopening plan.

Bottoms Up? When can my favorite Washington bar reopen?

It depends how they operate

BY SAMANTHA WOHLFEIL

W

hen Washington Gov. Jay Inslee first announced the four phases of reopening the state from shutdowns meant to slow the spread of COVID-19, it didn’t look like bars would be able to reopen until the third phase.

The thing is, Washington doesn’t issue just bar licenses, says Brian Smith, spokesman for the Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB). It licenses, among other things, restaurants that sell liquor and food, taverns that only sell beer and wine, wineries, distilleries, breweries, private clubs and nightclubs which can sell beer, wine and liquor without needing to serve food like a restaurant.

All the different versions of alcohol-serving establishments come with their own guidelines.

Soon after that first announcement, the LCB worked with the governor’s office to establish an outline of which food and beverage establishments could start reopening at a limited capacity in phase 2, and which would have to wait until later.

During phase 2, which Spokane was approved for Friday, here are the types of food and beverage places that could open at 50 percent capacity, with distanced seating, tables of no more than five people, no seating at the bar top and other rules that the state laid out: u Restaurants u Taverns u Private clubs u Caterers for home delivery u Golf courses u Snack bars and spas u Tasting rooms

top summer fun picks from our award-winning editorial team

HECTOR AIZON PHOTO

Breweries, wineries, and distilleries Other dine-in venues Phase 3 includes all those who opened during phase 2, plus they can open bar tops at 25 percent of usual seating for those who are 21+, plus: u Restaurants (can move to <75% capacity, table size no larger than 10) u Caterers for small events (limited to 50 people) u Movie theaters (<50% capacity) u Nonprofit arts (limited to 50 people) u Special occasions (limited to 50 people) u Banquet permits (limited to 50 people) Then phase 4 starts a 30-day window to withdraw the special allowances the LCB has made during the shutdowns, plus allows openings for: u Nightclubs u Sports/entertainment facilities u Special occasions (over 50 people) During the shutdown, the LCB worked to expand the sales of to-go spirits, wine and beer, and even pre-made cocktails, which had never been done before.

Restaurants with separate dining areas for minors and those who are 21+ will be allowed to open the 21+ space to minors to comply with the distancing requirements of the second and third phases. Minors still may not be seated at the bar top area.

Once the final phase starts, those more lenient rules will start to sunset.

Taverns, which only sell beer and wine, may open (per usual setup) only to those 21+ during phase 2, and should follow the distancing guidelines.

Nightclubs, on the other hand, which also serve hard alcohol, won’t be able to open until the final phase.

LCB enforcement officers explained the differences like this: Nightclubs are similar to taverns, but taverns sell only beer and wine while nightclubs can sell spirits. u Restaurants with spirits must sell complete meals u Full meal requirements are not present for nightclubs u Nightclubs are typically larger venues that incorporate entertainment and larger crowds. n u u

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MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 31

Q&A

PURE GENIUS Mike Hadreas of Seattle’s Perfume Genius chats about his acclaimed new album, a tribute to physical movement and stylistic reinvention

BY NATHAN WEINBENDER

P

erfume Genius’ new record Set My Heart on Fire Immediately opens with Mike Hadreas catching his breath as he intones “Half of my whole life is gone,” backed only by a funeral organ. Soon a piano twinkles to life, and then a reverb-y Roy Orbison-inspired guitar flowers on the mix. It’s a bracing opening to an album that shapeshifts multiple times in the span of 13 songs.

32 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

Perfume Genius’ Mike Hadreas is known for evocative, poetic lyrics exploring queer identity and physical pain.

CAMILLE VIVIER PHOTO

RELATIONSHIPS

Hadreas, who has been performing as Perfume Genius since 2008, is known for evocative, poetic lyrics exploring queer identity and physical pain, inspired by his own struggle with Chron’s disease. This latest collection is arguably his strongest yet, and certainly his most stylistically diverse. “Jason,” drenched in harpsichord and strings, is an unflinching snapshot of a onenight stand with a straight man. “Moonbend” seems to refract back upon itself in a waltzing reverie, and the pulsating “Nothing At All” explodes in Sufjan Stevens-esque keyboards. “On the Floor” is an island of glittery dance-pop in the middle of the album, though its strutting guitars belie the darkness of its lyrics.

Just a few days after Set My Heart... debuted to critical raves, Hadreas chatted with the Inlander from his bed, where he’s been doing all of his recent promotional interviews. We talked about how the album was inspired by interpretive dance, the pros and cons of not being able to tour right now, and embracing bad reality TV in quarantine. (Responses have been edited for clarity and length.)

INLANDER: Is there any art that’s helping you cope with isolation?

HADREAS: I feel like I’ve been listening to music constantly. There’s this Mexican artist, Lhasa de Sela, and I’ve been listening to one of her songs [“Rising”] over and over the last two days.

I had never heard of her before. The whole record is really beautiful. And what have we been watching?

I tried to watch that Love Is Blind show on Netflix, that dating show. Did you watch it?

body now, but I happen to have a long relationship with this music.

How has it felt to release an album without being able to immediately go out on tour with it?

It’s different. Touring is stressful and nervewracking, and sometimes it’s not set up for you to succeed. You want to be able to share what you made, but maybe there’s some barriers to that because you can’t hear yourself, or the lights are weird. But then there’s times where everything lines up, and you can feel the audience, and everything fits together and it’s really powerful and cathartic. I don’t have either of those things now. But the music is out to everybody, and I don’t have to leave my house to share it. I can feel that energetically right now. It feels really good for everybody to have the music.

I was really struck by the variety of sounds on the album. Is that mix something you’re attempting when you go into the studio, or is it created there?

I think it’s all of that. More than anything, it’s just how I listen to music. I’m all over the place.

I’m kind of chaotic, I guess. Throughout the day, I’ll be listening to something minimal and slow, and then I’ll [put on] something over-the-top and campy. I’m generous, I think, with how I listen to music, and my tastes are all over the place, and then ends up being the weird soup that the music comes from.

Although I don’t think the album sounds chaotic. Everything feels of a piece, but sometimes you get to a song that’s going off in a slightly different direction, and that’s I didn’t, but I’ve exciting. read about it.

I felt much more like It’s so baffling! I mean, we were making an album I don’t know if they put me album when we were makin one of those pods if I’d ing the record. It didn’t feel Set My Heart On Fire Immediately is out now. be just as intense, if I would like a collection of songs. be proposing to someone It felt like one thing. And and getting married to them. I probably would I don’t know if that was a byproduct of how we have done it, to be honest. made it, but I also wrote a lot of the songs pretty quickly, one right after another. About a half Do you really think so? of them I wrote within a week, and I think that Mmm… yeah, I know I would have. [laughs] helps to make it feel like it was all the same thing.

For better or worse. I think I would have gotten swept up in it. On these dating shows, they’re Critics have written about this album being always talking about the walls they’ve built up inspired by your recent foray into the world around themselves. “I need to take down my of interpretive dance. Would you say that’s walls.” They’re always talking about walls. accurate?

Yeah. I wanted to write about people and And now they have literal walls. things and in moments of time and not just ideas [laughs] Yeah, I know. The men on it are so of them, make a situation for the feeling to live intense with their proposals, and how corny they in. Between the lines or from the story, you get are. I don’t think that would have worked on me. the bigger picture emotionally. Dancing felt like that to me. It felt like I was doing feelings instead Speaking of isolation, do you find this of thinking about them or conceptualizing them. time to be a particularly creative one?

I was having them in a very real, physical way. It Not yet. I’ve been singing a lot, but mostly changed the way I wanted to write on this record. covers. Singing just to sing, to feel good. I’m also I wanted the feeling to be funneled through that. just now putting something out, so everything is I wanted to feel more like a captured moment or so focused on what I’ve already done. I shouldn’t like a picture that you can live in. n move toward something else just yet. I always feel like that with a record, because the record The new Perfume Genius album Set My Heart has been done for months. It’s shared with everyOn Fire Immediately is available now.

Advice Goddess SMELLS LIKE QUARANTINE SPIRIT

AMY ALKON

I started seeing a guy right before quarantine. In fact, we’ve broken quarantine a lot to be together at his place. I really like him, but I’m worried because our entire relationship has taken place indoors (watching movies, playing video games, sex). We have no experience together in real life, and maybe I don’t know the real him. What if we go to dinner and he’s rude to the wait staff? How can I figure out what kind of person he is when we can’t go to places where we engage with other people? —Worried

You see who people are when they’re tested. That’s why fiction is filled with knights going off on a decades-long perilous quest for the Holy Grail as opposed to briefly looking behind the couch for the Apple TV remote.

However, you don’t have to wait till restaurants reopen to get a sense of whether this dude’s a good guy or some Mr. Complainypants McMantoddler. And frankly, restaurant encounters are a pretty low bar for revealing character. Most people trying to make a good impression (and especially sociopathic douchesicles) know to contain themselves, genteelly waving their server over rather than yelling across the restaurant, “Yo, waitslave!”

Because we live in Modernville, our lives are physically easier than at any other time in human history. We go to the gym to get the physical workout we previously would’ve gotten milking the cows and plowing the fields. Hard times that come from both physically and emotionally difficult situations are the gym where character is made and shows itself, where you see whether a person is fragile or “antifragile.” “Antifragile” is a term by risk researcher and former derivatives trader Nassim Taleb to describe how stress and conflict are sources of improvement for living things, strengthening them and making them more able to cope with difficult and unpredictable situations.

In other words, the quarantine can be a good thing for character investigation. In lieu of dinner dates, you can schedule challenging one-on-one activities that show you what he’s made of. Camping and hiking are two sure character exposers. Or, if you prefer your challenges less wilderness-oriented, you could work together to assemble IKEA furniture.

Consider yourself on the path to happily ever after if you don’t end up with three mysterious pieces of hardware left and/or murder-suicide each other with an Allen wrench.

TRIAL BY FIREWORKS

I seem to need more excitement than most people. After eight months together, my boyfriend and I have fallen into a routine. Simply scheduling regular date nights seems unlikely to improve things. I’m 35, not 5, and I realize an ongoing relationship won’t be as exciting as when it was new, but I’m worried my boredom is a sign I don’t really love him. (And I’m pretty sure I do.) —Worried Woman Unfortunately, love is not a cure for boredom, so there’s a point in a relationship when it’s tempting to trade a lifetime with Prince Charming for three hours with Prince Random Stranger.

With love and stability comes predictability, the slow, bleak death of excitement.

This is a bummer for anyone in a relationship, but especially hard if you “need more excitement than most people.” That suggests you are a high scorer in a personality trait psychologist Marvin Zuckerman termed “sensation seeking.” It plays out in a jonesing for novel, varied, and intense experiences “and the willingness to take risks for the sake of such experience” (such as risking a relationship for some strange).

Recognizing that you have this craving could help you meet it in less romantically destructive ways. You might feed the beast on your own by taking up adrenalineamping activities like hang gliding or zip lining, or if those are a little out of geographic or budgetary range, jogging through dark alleys in bad parts of town.

To bring more novelty and surprise to your relationship, trade weekly date nights for weekly mystery date nights. Take turns planning them, and keep what you’re planning a secret from the other (save for any necessary information about wardrobe, etc.). Because novelty and surprise are the baby mamas of excitement, even an unexpected date eating hot dogs together on a bench while watching the sun set over a pretty body of water is likely to check the boxes.

But don’t stop at suggesting mystery date nights. Tell your boyfriend why: because you have quite the appetite for excitement. He can’t provide what he hasn’t been told you need, and this breeds resentment. You grow resentful over your unmet needs, and then he grows resentful over your resentment. And because it’s called “making love,” not “confirming hate,” any excitement you two had about sex (with each other) follows general excitement out the door, and “that thing” you do in bed becomes listening through the walls to the neighbors actually having sex. n

©2020, Amy Alkon, all rights reserved. • Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, #280, Santa Monica, CA 90405 or email AdviceAmy@aol.com (www.advicegoddess.com)

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 33

POLITICS

The Middle Road Joe Biden talks pot

BY WILL MAUPIN

O

nce upon a time, when seemingly every Democrat in the country was running for president, there was a lot of optimism within the party when it came to progressive cannabis policy. Now that Joe Biden is the last man standing, that optimism has faded significantly.

In a May 22 interview with Charlamagne tha God on the nationally syndicated radio show, The Breakfast Club, Biden outlined some of his views on marijuana. Which, apparently, are at least in part shaped by Biden knowing “a lot of weed smokers.”

“No one should be going to jail for drug crime. Period,” Biden said. “Particularly marijuana, which makes

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

34 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

Joe Biden knows “a lot of weed smokers.” GAGE SKIDMORE PHOTO no sense for people to go to jail.”

That alone sounds right in line with what the rest of the former Democratic field of candidates was saying, albeit less flashy and extreme than Pete Buttigieg’s promise to fly Air Force One directly to the home district of any congressperson who opposed legalization efforts.

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.

But then Biden continued to explain his views, which place him not in the legalization camp, but firmly in the decriminalization camp.

“You shouldn’t go to prison,” Biden said. “You should go to a mandatory rehabilitation.”

Biden wants to expunge convictions and keep cannabis users out of jail, which is a step forward. But in supporting mandatory rehabilitation, Biden clearly doesn’t view cannabis use as something acceptable. And that’s out of step with his own party.

According to Politico, which compiled the views on marijuana policy for 27 Democratic presidential candidates, 21 of Biden’s former opponents were in favor of federal legalization. Of the six who weren’t, the only notable candidate along with Biden in favor of decriminalization was Mike Bloomberg.

He’s in the minority in his party, but also nationally as well. The latest Gallup poll, from October 2019, showed that two-thirds of Americans are in favor of legalizing marijuana — though it should be noted that the poll did not offer a distinction between legalization and decriminalization.

So, why is Biden holding firm in his beliefs? Science.

“Because they’re trying to find out whether or not there is any impact on the use of marijuana,” Biden said.

“Not in leading you to other drugs, but does it affect long-term development of the brain? And we should wait until the studies are done. I think science matters.”

It might not be as much as what Democrats had hoped for, but at least he believes in science. n

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MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 35

I SAW YOU PUNDEMIC PALS You approached me at the N. Foothills Yokes parking lot on Thursday the 14th. You really liked my pun bumper sticker. I really liked your mask/ Discover Pass/science-and-the-environment-are-important-to-me vibe. I punder if this is the beginning of a great friendship? NataliePortmanteau2020@ gmail.com WHY A MISTAKE? Is it that we’re separated by age/gender? I’m not sure why there is this unspoken undercurrent which seems to have made us both anxious/ uncomfortable. You are someone I’m fond of--someone I admire in the amiable sense of the word. Nothing ulterior on my end. I think we might have a great deal in common, including a general intensity of feeling. I also seek a connection, but never intended to cause any stress or worry.

Things seem to have gotten confusing, and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps we misread one another? Sincerely, me.

LANDING SOON! I was looking for my seat on the plane. Window seat. F7. I found it and as I looked down and there you were a guy my age. I couldn’t get past you so I pointed to the window seat and mumbled “that’s Me.” You got up and said something I giggled slightly and scooted to the window seat. As you sat back down I got a little flustered. Man aren’t seats on the plane a little too close

for comfort? Especially for a stranger to sit near you? In this case... I didn’t mind. I kept glancing sideways, hoping not to get caught, just to get a better look at you. I couldn’t see much of your face. You had a “face covering” per airline request. Our flight was 3 1/2 hours long. Sometimes our thighs would brush and sometimes we’d allow them to hold there for a little.

Sometimes our arms brushed. Maybe I’m just imagining? Haha! You would make little remarks here and there. I was so shy I would just turned pink and giggle slightly at whatever you said. I finally took out my book and started reading. I noticed you took out yours. We read in silence for a little. Finally I put my book down took out my phone to play a game of WordSearch. You took out your iPad to play a game of chess. At one point you left to the bathroom and when you came back your “face covering” was off. You had lips!

Haha and they looked soft. What seemed to be forever, I put everything down and finally just closed my eyes as I lay my head back on the uncomfortable seat. I heard you put your iPad away. Finally you said something. I replied. A conversation started. We laughed. Talked about everything from work to where we are from. It was so nice! And easy! It almost seemed like I knew you and you knew Me. The last half hour of our flight. That’s all we had.

But I liked it. I enjoyed it. You went your way I went mine. But at least we are both from Washington! “Wink” GROCERY STORE CHECKOUT GIRL You work in Liberty Lake as a sales clerk in an establishment I frequent at least once a week. And though awhile back I overheard you say to your co-worker “I really hate this guy” in reference to me.

But to my recollection our only interactions have been brief, I try to be friendly and polite,although I’m rather shy. You must’ve seen the slanderous propaganda that’s been ruining my life... sidetracked, sorry... YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL it almost hurts to look at you... and though I wrote this years ago; it may’ve well as been written for you, as you looked tonight: She struck me as familiar, all curve and strut and style; clad in obsidian like the dark waters of sleep, and we dream this dream to live again. I dared to briefly make eye contact with you as our paths crossed tonight... your friend told you to

SOUND OFF

eat more bagels.

MOVIE STAR I was mistaken for Sean Connery after you altered my appearance!

Last we met in that place on 32nd Ave., I was tongue-tied and some drivel came out instead of asking, “how are you?” and “May I call you?” Now that the social dis-

“

36 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

CHINA’S LEADERS The virus started in your backyard. You hid it from the world.

Arrested doctors who tried to sound an alarm. Hoarded medical supplies.

Exported faulty PPE. And now engage

is bad and businesses are struggling, but more than doubling your prices? No thanks.

CRIMINAL BARS Jeers to the Spokane Valley bars that opened illegally. What other laws do they think don’t apply to them? What else is going on in there?

I saw me in the mirror in my house. Damn I look good but sigh, I’m so lonely.

tancing is nearing an end, honor me and respond to this cheezy ad... ;-) UPS PRINCESS ALLIE OF ARGONNE You work at the UPS Store on Argonne and you delayed your lunch break to help me with my ridiculous box I needed shipped.

You were kind and professional and lovely.

You’re probably hella married, but if not, I really owe you dinner for your kindness.

I SAW ME I SAW ME I saw me in the mirror in my house. Damn I look good but sigh, I’m so lonely. #quarantineblues

CHEERS SILVER LINING My corona doldrums are ameliorated by: no lime scooters!

JEERS NADINES MOTHER’S DAY KISSES WITH MISPELLING CORRECTED Freud said, of the oral like me... we usually have something to say... especially if ... there is nothing tasty nearby... I declare, I have been... seriously provoked to make a statement ever since Nadine blew kisses in the air...

I don’t know how long the droplets will take ... to get to my estate ... but I leave writ... denying I ever wanted COVID from the mayor... to wit, I will, one day ... lose

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

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

+

my breath ... but never would I choose... death... by idiot.

in aggressive hacking to steal vaccine secrets. Is there no end to your good deeds? We need toilet paper with the Chinese flag imprinted on each square.

Sadly, probably cheaply made in China by your oppressed people. You commies suck. Hopefully your people figure out you are a bigger threat to them than Covid-19 and flush you down history’s toilet... with China flag tp.

RE: SNITCHES Really? Like Nazi Germany?

No, that’s super disrespectful. I get that getting businesses shutting down is hard and people have families to support but comparing people snitching on others as the same who ratted on Jewish people in hiding/in general is super disrespectful. Jewish (and others targeted by the Nazis) were rounded up and sent to death camps. People snitching on businesses is nothing like that, nobody is being shoveled into vans at gunpoint and taken to their deaths. There is a way of complaining about the snitching without dragging up a subject not related to it. People the Nazis targeted were snitched on and murdered, people who get snitched on for keeping a business open are in a bad situation I understand but it’s not the same as Nazi Germany. Spoken from a member of family of Holocaust survivors.

PAINTING CLASSES The past two months I have enjoyed being creative at home, making beautiful art and enjoying the company of others remotely. I noticed that your prices went from $15 to $36 for the virtual classes. I know the economy

”

For you clowns whimpering that there isn’t a law, here it is. RCW 43.06.220.

Then there’s always some right wingers despicably politicizing it while people are losing livelihoods and lives. Blaming Inslee and Democrats. What about the Republican governors with similar orders?

What about many other countries, some taking tougher measures? Are they all in it with the Democrats? I urge people to not reward these establishments with your hard earned dollars when there are law abiding businesses being good citizens, some helping the community, some providing meals to the police and first responders, supporting law enforcement.

Trying to be part of the solution instead of the problem. But if you don’t believe the laws apply to all then feel free to join in, visit one of these criminal establishments and ignore that inconvenient law requiring you to pay your tab and to not carve obscenities into their tables (note: not actual legal advice). We’ll call it freedom from tyranny! n

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B S K T S E T U N L L I G A T A M E

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

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8. “Gangnam Style” rapper 9. Sounds of understanding 10. Fist bump 11. French bathroom fixture 12. “Rumour Has It” singer 13. Spelling of “Beverly Hills, 90210” 18. “However ...”

19. Tarbell and Wells 22. Triglyceride, e.g.

23. Cara of “Fame” 24. Boris Johnson, for one 25. Smart ____ 26. Idle 27. Steakhouse order 28. Mr. of detective fiction 31. He lost to Ike twice 32. “Bye!” 33. Barnes & Noble’s NYSE symbol, aptly 34. Clint’s costar in “The Bridges of Madison County” 35. 1974 bestseller “Zen and the

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43. Danny of “White Christmas” 44. “Butt out,” briefly 45. Small-minded leisure activity?

51. Vegas numbers game 52. Of no value 53. Small-minded nursery rhyme character?

61. Org. for Nadal and Federer 62. Annual mystery writer’s award 63. Squealer 64. Suffix with novel or Nobel 65. To wit 66. Shipping route

8

15

17

ACROSS 1. Pour forth 5. Piece of protective wear for 57-Down players 11. Vampire ____ 14. NBA coach Steve 15. Performer with a fan 16. Declaration just before a kiss 17. Small-minded children’s song character?

20. “Exodus” author 21. Kosher ____ 22. Small-minded Jodie Foster film?

28. Joan of art 29. Arcing tennis hits 30. “Otello” and “Pagliacci” 33. Texan politico O’Rourke 34. Goat cry 37. Small-minded NPR music event?

40. Tribute of a sort 41. “Sounds like a plan!”

42. In the vicinity of

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THIS W ANSWE EEK’S I SAW RS ON YOUS

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29

30

31

32

37

33 38

36

58

59

60

42

43 45

35

39

41

40

34

44

46

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51

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49

50

52

53

54

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61

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___ Motorcycle Maintenance” 36. Simple step 38. Editor’s “Never mind that change”

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39. Hunter’s garb, for short 43. Not just think 45. Swim events

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SMALL-MINDED

60. Squeeze (out)

46. Butterfingered 47. Band together 48. “The Fisher King” Oscar winner Mercedes 49. Five-time Super Bowl starter John 50. Les : French :: ____ : Italian 51. 1957 war movie title river 54. “At Seventeen” singer Janis 55. Big Apple airport code 56. On the ____ (fleeing) 57. It pays the Bills 58. Sportage maker 59. Place for a stay

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 37

COEUR D ’ ALENE

cda4.fun for more events, things to do & places to stay.

Bikers make way for a moose on the Trail of Coeur d’Alenes just outside of Cataldo, Idaho, near mile marker 39

Photo credit: Mt_Top

Experience Idaho

From majestic mountains to idyllic lakeside landscapes, Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes has it all

T

he Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes offers 73.2 miles of paved trail through nearly every kind of landscape Idaho has to offer pedestrians, onleash dog walkers, bicycle riders, and even inline skaters. Depending on your point of origin, you can experience Idaho’s beauty in a single day, or as part of a larger itinerary.

Beginning at the southwest trailhead near PLUMMER, for example, experience windswept prairie, big sky and tall grasses. Head east on mostly flat trail before descending quickly into the forest where dense evergreens and abundant wildflowers feel like another land, but you’re still in Idaho!

Next is HEYBURN STATE PARK, then you’re up and over CHATCOLET LAKE via a former railroad bridge, a legacy of the region’s industrial past. Look down along the shoreline to spy turtles sunning themselves on logs, egrets wading in the reeds, or maybe a moose feeding on succulent greens.

Spend a little time in HARRISON, originally a settlement for the SCHITSU’UMSH, OR COEUR D’ALENE TRIBE, that evolved into a Western frontier

38 INLANDER MAY 28, 2020

town. Stretch your legs with a self-guided historic walking tour (harrisonidaho.org) and fuel up at any number of cozy eateries — Idaho restaurants are open!

If you ride the whole 73.2 miles, you’ll spend nearly half that distance in the CHAIN LAKE AREA outside of Harrison for more wetlands and wildlifewatching: otter, osprey, eagles, deer, heron, countless songbirds and more.

Ride along COEUR D’ALENE RIVER, and past the historic CATALDO MISSION, the oldest building in Idaho and home of the engaging Sacred Encounters exhibit (see parksandrecreation.idaho. gov for more info, including park entrance fee).

Continuing east into the SILVER VALLEY, rich in mining history, the landscape shifts. Your ascent into the mountains is gradual at first, as you pass through PINEHURST, SMELTERVILLE, KELLOGG, OSBURN AND WALLACE, where you might want to stop and look around or grab a bite to eat.

It’s a bit of a climb into MULLAN, the last stop on the trail, where you might decide to hang around

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a bit, overnight it, or double back to your starting point.

Parks and Recreation Park Manager Kathleen Durfee personally likes the PINE CREEK TO MEDIMONT area and the chain lakes, yet the whole trail has something to enjoy, she says. “A lot of people have their favorite trailhead,” says Durfee, noting there are 20 different options along the route, including restrooms and picnic facilities.

Although Idaho’s restrictions for out-of-state visitors have loosened, Durfee wants to remind everyone to continue to practice social distancing and good trail etiquette.

The trail is 10 feet wide, yet if your party is spread out, that makes it difficult to get around you. Be aware of your surroundings and others, Durfee says.

“Pass on the left,” she says, and it’s OK to call out as you do, reminding others that you’re behind them and passing them.

“We want everybody out there to enjoy the trail,” she says.

C O E U R

D ’A L E N E

Openings

The Route of the Hiawatha

This crown-jewel of rail to trail adventures opened May 22 for the season. It features 10 train tunnels and seven sky-high trestles. Trail passes, shuttle tickets and mountain bike rentals are now all available.

Silver Mountain

Silver Mountain’s epic bike park, offering nearly 40 single track trails, opened for the season on May 23. Bring your own bike, or rent one at the mountain.

Scenic gondola rides are also open, and hikers can access an interpretive nature trail and the Kellogg Peak Fire Lookout at the top. Idaho’s largest indoor waterpark, Silver Rapids, has also reopened for all lodging guests to use.

Silverwood Theme Park

The Northwest’s largest theme park is set to open for the season May 30-31, with revised policies and procedures to ensure the health and safety of all Silverwood guests and employees. Then starting June 6, Silverwood and Boulder Beach will be open daily.

To read more about the proactive steps Silverwood is taking to reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus, visit silverwoodthemepark.com/coronavirus-update/

COEUR D’ALENE

Yes We’re

OPEN D OW N TOW N

COEUR D’ALENE

MAY 28, 2020 INLANDER 39