Bloomsday’S All Shook Up Over Toy Globe

Once word of this foolishness gets out, Steve Jones won’t have to fret about protecting the sacred name of Bloomsday.

We’ll just think of it as “Buffoonsday” in his honor.

The president of the Spokane Lilac Bloomsday Association is flexing his legal muscle against Nordstrom over, of all things, snow globes.

Jones, a lawyer, recently fired off a letter demanding that the Spokane store stop selling the popular curios because they display the name of the annual road race without permission. In response, said globes have been pulled from the department store’s third-floor shelves.

Bloomsday “is a registered trademark just like their name, Nordstrom,” Jones says.

It’s a helluva situation.

You can score meth on practically any Spokane schoolyard these days. But the Nordstrom snow globe market is frozen until the corporate attorneys come up with a plan.

Not since “Citizen Kane” has a snow globe received so much attention.

“It’s just very sad,” a Nordy’s clerk says. She estimates that several thousand of the $38 globes have been sold. Some 600 are now in limbo in a storeroom.

“We’ve sent these out all over the world. They bring joy to so many people,” she says. “A lady came in this morning and wanted to buy five. We couldn’t sell her any.”

How stupid can you get?

Created to commemorate Spokane’s new Nordstrom, which opened last August, the globes contain a three-dimensional scene of familiar downtown icons:

Riverfront Park is well-represented with its clock tower, giant red wagon, Looff Carrousel and gondola ride. There are landmark buildings such as the old Washington Water Power plant and, naturally, Nordstrom.

What has Jones in a twist is a caricature of the Monroe Street Bridge. The word “Bloomsday” is written in teensy red letters on one side.

Sane people would view this kind of recognition as fabulous free advertising.

But we have to look at this from a litigator’s point of view.

Perhaps Jones is worried about some kind of domino effect. If snow globes aren’t stopped, bootleg Bloomsday potholders and salt and pepper shakers will start popping up faster than dandelions.

“It wasn’t our intent to profit off the Bloomsday name,” explains Lisa Peters, who manages the Spokane Nordstrom. “It’s an integral part of Spokane.”

Bingo. That is exactly the point.

If you want to pay homage to ol’ Spokaloo, how can you not give the world’s biggest timed road race its due?

Bloomsday should be flattered.

The globes are cute. Shake one and a sparkling blizzard of multi-colored confetti swirls in the liquid. Wind a key at the bottom and a music box plays a sprightly version of “Roll Out the Barrel.”

The theme from the old “Beverly Hillbillies” TV show might have been a better tune to represent our fine town, but that’s another story.

If Nordstrom needs any legal help, Jeff Bunch says he will handle the case for free. The Spokane attorney heard about this tempest in a snow dome while buying a mocha at Nordstrom the other night.

A civic-minded man, Bunch did the responsible thing and called me.

“It’s not often you have a lawyer offering to do pro bono work for a mega corporation like Nordstrom,” he says, adding that this is the kind of situation that makes lawyers look lower than swamp scum.

Even lawyer Jones admits the domes are “cool.” But he also maintains that a registered trademark is a “valuable right to preserve.”

Perhaps. But haven’t you been married? Some wars aren’t worth waging.

Just ask Rick Steltenpohl. “We’d be thrilled by something like this,” says the executive director of Hoopfest. “My only question is, why aren’t we in it?”