The Slice What Secrets Are Hidden Beneath Conservative Suits?

Sometimes we love downtown.

We were walking near Sprague and Post when this conservatively dressed young woman stopped us with a question. “Isn’t there a tattoo place right around here?” she asked.

Not just a game: Joyce Fromhold’s 8-year-old nephew, Jack Lally, refers to baseball’s fall classic as the “World Serious.”

Slice answer: Hayden’s John Beck knows he has enough firewood when he goes out to the wood pile and he is not singing the Monty Python song, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK….”

Contest results: The question was “At airports around the country, what’s the most common question asked of people headed for Spokane?”

Dee Harvey, Sandy Van Campen, Matthew Kunz, Jim McGuirk, M. Schenach, Mike Kilgore and Amy McIntee all offered some version of “Doesn’t it rain a lot there?”

Mark Burris, Shannon Woolf, Barbara Mayfield, Paul Sunderland and others suggested “Are you going to visit the Space Needle?”

Debbie Lewis nominated “Isn’t that close to Seattle?”

Nanci Cram offered “Is Spokane a suburb of Seattle?”

Jeannie Maki said it’s “Spokane?”

John Nord submitted “Why did they put GEG on your bags?”

Mike Kelly offered “Where is Spokane?”

Lee Funkhouser said it’s “Are you going to a Mariners (Seahawks) (Supersonics) game?”

Other nominated questions included: “How long have you lived in California?”

“Is the polar bear still there?”

“Is it Bloomsday already?”

There were more. And a lot were pretty good. But we’re declaring Julie Wright the runner-up for “So where are you really headed - Montana? Coeur d’Alene? Canada?”

And Peggy Hoppes is our winner. She said the most commonly asked question is “My aunt lives there. Do you know her?”

Happy 30th: Birthday girl Alicia Marion, who works at Sacred Heart, isn’t getting any younger.

Personals of any ilk can be embarrassing: But serious-minded readers of Stonewall News Northwest, which does a decent job of reporting for the local gay and lesbian community, must wince when they see ads in that paper such as one that starts “HOMO ALONE….”

Today’s Slice question (complete this): Someone can be described as being “SO Spokane” if he or she….

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing

MEMO: The Slice appears Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098. Few joys compare to having a personal paper-shredder.