Spokane: Good Or Bad, It’S All Just Talk

Come March, I will have been in Spokane for 15 months. I may be the least qualified person in town to talk about the city.

I haven’t run in Bloomsday. I’ve only pigged out in the park once. Or twice if you count the three Indian tacos I ate at the Riverfront Park powwow.

Dozens of times people ask me, “What do you think of it here?”

I usually deflect the question by pointing out that I’m from here, or at least the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley. I left the area 13 years ago and now I’m back.

“So you know what it’s like here,” they say. I smile and nod at them like we’re sharing a secret.

In truth, I have no idea what they’re suggesting about life here.

Are they hinting at a troublesome underbelly of Spokane, or are they subtly sharing the joy of living in an undiscovered gem of a town?

When you want to talk bad about Spokane, there’s always material. Child molesters, problems with poverty, and the fact that it’s challenging to find a good job here. People of color feel isolated and not so secure at times. Others like to point out how teams of leaders are trying to change that.

Before I came back, I asked a cousin what she truly thought of Spokane. She was a student at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene.

“Um, scary, trailer park city,” she said.

She doesn’t visit Spokane very often.

Before I came, I found an article in “Outside” magazine that listed a dozen undiscovered treasure cities. The article said Spokane had a complex from living in the shadow of Seattle, yet it offered access to recreation, had relatively low crime and decent traffic. “Get over it Spokane. You’re a babe,” said the article.

So what do I think of Spokane? I say that this can be the friendliest place on the planet.

Part of the secret of settling in is learning the art of chatting. It’s a trait I carried with me from childhood. Maybe it’s a Western thing or a small-town nuance. But it’s alive and well in Spokane.

Almost everytime I’m out on the street, I’ve learned that I can strike up a conversation with just about anyone within earshot.

For example, I’m at the Spokane International Airport, and I’m putting change into a meter. I look over, and there’s someone doing the same.

“Can you believe the price on these meters?” I say.

“Oh, I know. I’m glad I got change,” says a woman.

We chatted a little more and said goodbye like we were friends. No big thing.

When I left here 13 years ago, I carried with me my habit of chattiness, which didn’t work so well in my travels to Chicago, Seattle and Miami. Chatting is just not done in bigger cities.

An old roommate who grew up in New York City could not believe I’d talk with anyone.

Maybe we chat too much here. Sometimes we reveal too much about things we don’t understand.

During my interview for this job, I was taking the elevator to my room at the Ridpath Hotel.

In the morning, I noticed a desk worker in the lobby who wore a top-notch suit. He was African American.

In the elevator, I was lost in my thoughts, wondering if I wanted to work in Spokane.

Two men stood behind me.

I heard a local man who was about 20 strike up a conversation with a stranger in a nice suit.

The young man was white. The man in the suit was black.

“How’s it going?” the younger man asked.

“Can’t complain,” said the businessman in the suit.

“Didn’t I see you in the lobby earlier?”

There was a pause. “No,” said the businessman. “I just arrived from Seattle.”

“Oh, I thought I saw you in the lobby earlier. There’s another brother in a suit down there,” the young man said.

I cringed. After a long pause, the out-of-towner said, “So we all look alike to you?”

The young man was almost on his knees. “Oh, no man, no. No, I’m cool, man.”

And with that the door opened. The young man said, “Well, I gotta go.”

I shouldn’t have said anything. A little voice in my head told me to do something to impress this mistake on the young man’s mind.

“Good, go then,” I said.

The door closed. I looked over at the Seattle businessman, expecting to have a quick chat with him. “See how people can be?” I said.

And I got a big-city response, a polite laugh and a “Yeah.” And we parted ways like strangers.

Had he been from Spokane, odds are we would have chatted about that for a while.