Fest query leads to a dip into mailbag
The woman caller wanted to know if Running Savage Fest was still on because “I want to attend.”
There is only one response when confronted with gullibility of such magnitude.
It’s Reeeaaader’s Windbaaag time!
Most of you know what rigid standards go into each and every Windbaaag. For those in town for the lentil harvest, I’ll explain. This is the newspaper’s ONLY forum that allows readers to make donkeys out of themselves (and others) without fear of being identified, verified or forced to watch Olympic basketball reruns of Team USA getting punked by Puerto Rico.
The idea is to 1) Create a free flow of entertaining, useless information and 2) Avoid getting my Acropolis sued off.
• Next week: Elvis plays Arena.
The woman wanting to go to Running Savage Fest says she learned about it from my June 6 column.
Oh, yes. That was where I poked fun at the area’s glut of summer festivals by making up a few doozies like: A tour of favorite public urination sites (Urine Downtown Spokane); a march of low-paid hospitality workers (CdA Poverty Parade), and a celebration of unsightly Spokane Valley growth (Sprawl Daze).
The Running Savage Fest was to supposedly help Eastern Washington University remove the last vestiges of its former (and quite real) unsavory Savage logo while commemorating the school’s new mascot – the Commuter.
To any other literal minds out there, this was all bogus. A fabrication. A joke…
Except for the Commuter, that is. On Sept. 31, Eastern’s new mascot will be unveiled on campus. The Commuter is based on an actual 28-year-old bus-riding psych major who still lives with his parents.
• That’s a River Park Scare.
“If this place is going down, I’m not gonna be in it.”
Margo says that was her reaction when an alarm to evacuate the building went off while trying to validate her parking pass at Spokane’s River Park Square.
The way Margo tells it, she ran into the garage, got in her car and joined a caravan of others concerned for their safety.
This was no peaceful, easy fleeing because some “Opie in the toll booth” wanted payment, she says. “I couldn’t even get my ticket validated,” Margo says she told him. “I’m not paying for this.”
According to Margo, Opie finally got her to fork over two bucks.
Sure, it turned out to be a false alarm, says Margo.
But if this were a real crisis or a terrorist attack, people could have been trapped in a concrete tomb paying parking fees.
Shame on you, Margo. The RPS garage has been losing more often than the Mariners. If the trying times since 9-11 have taught us anything, it’s that we may all have to make sacrifices in order to raise garage revenues.
• Parking bloodsuckers, part two.
“Either give us the discount or don’t give it to us. Don’t make us beg.”
Laura called to relay her sour experience paying a $10 parking ticket at Spokane’s City Hall. It’s common knowledge that paying in person gets you a discount. So Laura says she went down, stood in line and plunked over a twenty.
The city worker handed back a ten. What happened to the discount?
“You have to ask,” she says she was told.
“I’m asking now.” Laura says she was then told she was “too late.” The transaction had been filed.
“I was really mad,” she says.
Laura obviously doesn’t understand the city’s interpretation of federal “don’t ask; don’t tell” guidelines.
In her case, the policy is “don’t ask; get screwed.”
• At least one time out of three.
Before we say adios for today, let us pause for a moment and consider the wisdom of reader Mickey, who writes: “I consider you and two others (Paul Turner and Jim Kershner) the only intelligent, literate and cogent people writing for The Spokesman-Review.”
Savage Fest reader notwithstanding, Mickey proves some readers can be right on the money.