Spokane’s summer lull is just an illusion

Summertime, and the living is easy – and slow. In the days after Hoopfest, Spokane seems to fall into this lull where the downtown becomes vacated. The commonly held story is that everyone who can, does migrate to the lakes. The keeper of Spokane’s history, Nancy Campau, said when Spokane burned down on Aug. 4, 1889, many people found out while they lounged at the lakes. But as I poked around town this week, I learned a few things and expanded my narrow views on Spokane life. I’ve discovered that Spokane’s still a busy place in the heat. On average, there are 68 arts events to attend every day. Frankly, when Karen Mobley, the city of Spokane’s art director, told me this, I thought she was kidding. It’s true. If you look, you will find. Mobley suggests a Web site, www.spokanearts.org, to stay on top of galleries, poetry readings, music events, plays and more. And there’s something else that she’s seeing among Spokane’s community of artists – a restless energy. “I talk to a lot of younger artists who seem to be interested in stirring stuff up,” Mobley said. When you get enough energetic ideas crashing together, things start to happen. That’s what happens in the biggest cities in the world. That’s when scenes emerge. “I think there is some kind of underground, interesting stuff you can trip over if you don’t pay attention,” Mobley said. Even if I’m not hip enough to key into some arty underground scene, just knowing such a crowd may exist here brings me joy. Art makes our lives better. Sometimes I forget that. Who doesn’t have a poem, song, painting, or sculpture that somehow reminds us to buy that extra gift for someone we love and hug our kids a little harder? It’s easy during the slow summers to think we’re living in some kind of stagnant pond. As it turns out, there’s a lot more happening in the ‘Can. Take, for instance, a popular retail store like Target. Mid-July is the busy season for moving back-to-school supplies. “Our business does not slow down,” said Terri Reimann, manager of the Spokane Valley Target store. Another busy segment of society is the shipping industry. Pilot Air Freight’s Spokane office sends goods around the world for local industries, from catalogues to gambling machines. “July, August and September are our biggest months,” said manager Chad Hawley. “A lot of companies ramp up this time of year.” So much for my perception of a slow Spokane summer. Case in point: I spoke with Dave Beine, a Spokane-based director of Oregon’s Summer Institute of Linguistics in Eugene, Ore. Beine owns a South Hill house that he must vacate in the summer to head for Oregon. This year, Beine decided to rent out his place as a summer home. He used a Web site called www.VRBO.com, which stands for Vacation Rental by Owner. Places like Hawaii, Vancouver, Belize, Kyoto, Japan and now Spokane list homes for rent. Beine discovered that Spokane was not anywhere in the thousands of listings. He decided to give it a try and found his place quickly booked up for the summer “I didn’t have any idea if it would fly or not,” Beine said Two families with six kids took up the first available June dates for the Far West Regional Youth Soccer Championships. In fact, Beine received about 25 requests from soccer families. The second family of renters is in town for another junior sports event, and the last family is from Florida and spending a month in Spokane. Hey, convention and visitor bureau, there’s a target market; Floridians. Instead of our motto of Near Nature, Near Perfect, we can be the “Near cool breezes and far from Hades” berg. “Typically, you don’t think of Spokane as being a vacation destination,” Beine said. Maybe we, the locals, don’t have to think of Spokane as some world-class retreat. We can believe we live in backwater, egg-eating purgatory, but as long as out-of-towners think we’re heaven on earth, we can all rent out our urban pads while we chill at the lakes. At least that way some of us can get away from the hustle of big-city living. Remember the days when little ol’ Spokane fell quiet in the summer?