Perhaps Petula Missed This Particular Venue

Sometimes the sights and sounds of downtown Spokane are so weird they should be set to a soundtrack.

And what more fitting song to celebrate our urban hub than “Downtown,” Petula Clark’s hit song from the ‘60s?

Here are the words in italics, fresh off the Internet to make this a truly interactive column. Feel free to sing along to a few slices of life I’ve collected while wandering our big burg:

“When you’re alone and life is making you lonely you can always go, Downtown.”

“That’s what I’m telling you, sir. That’s why I keep this restraining order with me,” says the distraught, red-faced woman to a police officer.

The two stand in front of a pawn shop on Riverside. She takes the rumpled court paper out of her pocket. The woman waves it up in front of the tall cop’s face.

“But what good does it do me?” she says, beginning to sob. “He’s been convicted of murder. I mean, you think he’s gonna care about this?”

“When you’ve got worries, all the noise and the hurry seems to help, I know, Downtown.”

“I beat on him and put him in a coma six or nine months,” says the scrawny man in white pants to his silent friend.

The two sit in the back of a bus pulling out of the Spokane Transit Authority center. Jabberbox talks loud enough to annoy everyone although everyone pretends not to notice.

In just minutes we all learn he has a taste for methamphetamines and just got out of the state penitentiary in Walla Walla where he “got jumped in the showers a couple of times.”

His friend, all but engulfed in an oversized football parka, nods.

“No, really, man,” continues the talker who’s obviously high on something besides life. “I did what I had to do. I don’t feel no shame.”

Jailbird finally pulls the wire to get off. Passengers mentally shout hallelujah as he staggers for the door, filling the air with a few final thoughts.

“Maybe I should shut up,” he says, stepping into the night. “You know, I haven’t talked to nobody in a long time.”

“Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city.”

“I kid you not,” a co-worker tells me. “I’m driving up Monroe about 6 the other evening and there’s this fat guy relieving himself into a dirt lot next to a building.”

My buddy pauses.

“The cars are just whizzing by and so was he.”

Linger on the sidewalks where the neon lights are pretty.”

“Look, I won’t lie to you,” says a scruffy panhandler in a frayed Army jacket. He blocks my path as I walk north along Post Street headed for Nordstrom.

“I could tell ya I’m homeless. I could tell ya I haven’t eaten in 16 days. Truth is, guy, I just want another drink.”

“How can you lose? The lights are much brighter there, you can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares.”

“I never even skidded my bike when I crashed,” says a thin man near Sprague and Washington. “A brick wall and three plate glass windows sort of stops you abruptly.”

The biker has blond hair that hangs in unwashed disarray from under a stained Desert Storm ballcap. He talks to a younger, scrawnier friend who chuckles appreciatively.

The biker continues: “You take it up to 70 in low gear and then really put the pedal to the metal and hold on while it goes sideways, heh, heh, heh…” Desert Storm man rolls his eyes dreamily as if to recall a memory as distant and sweet as a first kiss.

“Man, I don’t think I’ve ever done a burnout sober.”

“So go Downtown, things’ll be great when you’re Downtown. No finer place, for sure, Downtown. Everything’s waiting for you.”

, DataTimes