The Spokane thread

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Decided to start a topic on my favorite city of all times, Spokane.

Say facts about it or what you did there when you were there, what you know about it, if you like the city or not, if you live or lived there or not, if you even heard of a place or even seen any movies with the town in it, etc.


I have seen:
Benny & Joon
Mozart and the Whale
Vision Quest
Smoke Signals (not really a Spokane movie)

I want to go to a store here called Movie Madness and rent some movies that were filmed in Spokane and watch them.

I'd like to see Home of the Brave in theaters or rent it when it comes out.

I love looking at the places in the city that were used in Benny & Joon. I love eating at Fergusons and will never resist it. I will do RIP for it if the place ever burned down. I would snap a photo of the place where the restaurant stood and post it online calling the thread RIP Fergusons, and showing the photo in my message saying it was used in three movies and I ate there everytime I went to Spokane.

I decided to look for other locations in the city that were used in Vision Quest and Mozart and the Whale. In Smoke Signals they only filmed a couple scenes there on the bridge that is in Riverfront Park, the rest of it was filmed in Idaho.

John Stockton, my hero when I was younger, was born there, so, although I've never been there (and probably never will...), I like Spokane !

Is it also home of the Gonzaga Bulldogs (my favourite NCAA team) ?

I have an obsession for maine, usa....

Purely because i have read a lot of stephen king books and a lot of his stories are set in maine, unfortunatly i have yet to go.

When i watch films based on s.k stories i always listen out for the maine accent, he has descrbed how it sounds in several of his stories......i just have this need to hear it.

Is that odd?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maine

I'm also attracted by Maine, although I'm not a S.K. reader.

I'm attracted by Vermont, New Hampshire, Mass and Connecticut too.

I've been to Boston for one month and I really liked it.

I visited Spokane once. It seemed like a nice place, all in all. I'll probably pass through there on vacation this summer.

I am from Maine. You can be rest assured that the "Maine Accent" that you hear actors using in Stephen King movies is not genuine. Maine accents are quite varied with the region of the state that people come from, and some people up there speak with a stronger accent than others. Maine accents are also somewhat dependant upon your origins. My great grandmother used French pronounciation and could never produce the "TH" sound that is used throughout the English language.

There are still many people in the Lewiston/Auburn area, as well as other Franco-American communities up there who either speak a variant of the Joual dialect of French on a day to day basis, or grew up with it to the point where their accent patterns are decidedly French. French is the dominant language in places like Calais, Ft. Kent and Madawaska.

Also, western Maine accents are quite differant from the Downeast (Coastal) accent that many actors attempt to duplicate. In southern Maine, (Where I'm from) people speak with accents that are usually a blend of a Downeast accent, and a generic northern New England accent that slightly differant than what you hear in Boston.

Hey this is a thread about Spokane. If you want to talk about Maine, start the "Maine" thread.


Spokane does the Bloomsday run every May.
They do the gay lesbian fair every June in Riverfront Park.
The benny and Joon house is near the downtown area so you can just walk to their neighborhood from there. You can see their neighborhood from Monroe Street Bridge but ot's hard to see the houses because of all the trees.
They had the World's Fair there in 1974. After it ended, they tore down all the buildings and they had but left the Gondola and the opera house and the huge arch thing in the Park that goes over the ice skating rink and is near the IMAX theater.

Also, for the record, since this thread is about Spokane, I was there in April of 1985 . I took Amtrak there from Williston, North Dakota, and decided to hitchike out of Spokane.

I don't know that much about Downtown, as the train arrived there late at night, however, I was stuck at the Husky Truckstop just east of town for two days before I caught a ride to Seattle from a trucker.

Whilst at the Truckstop this happened:

Some religious freak that I talked to on the radio ( I had a handheld CB radio at the time) tried to convince me to join his commune that was based in the woods outside of Cour' D'Alene Idaho which was a few miles east. I decided against it. --He may well have been associated with Aryan Nations/Church of The Creator.

The small portable stereo that I had was taken by a deaf guy and his wife ( For what reason I haven't the faintest clue) who then woke me up and gave me $5 for it.

I also experienced my first ever bout of caffeine induced vertigo after drinking about 20 cups of endless refill coffee in the truckstop restaurant. --A Greyhound style bus was driving by outside, and it felt as if the bus was standing still, and the restaurant and I were on a giant amusement park style ride, moving at the same speed as the bus.

Spokane also has a remarkably large population of Roman Catholics, for Washington State.

Though I don't imagine that interests anybody besides myself, and I have no idea of their average level of orthodoxy.

I hear likedcalico talk about this city a lot
it sounds like a wonderful place
I saw Benny and Joon once (maybe twice) I forget how it goes

My granfather died so I am hoping I can take time off from work to travel back to Montana for the service my family is going to hold and I will get to go to Spokane again. I can't wait to see the cement factory again and check out the house they used in the movie Eric lived at.

New England used to be very pretty. Not sure if it still is
though. I was born in Connecticut, and we used to vacation
in Bar Harbor.

It's official. I am going back to Spokane again because I got time off from work to see my family because my grandfather had died.

I didn't have sex with the city. I forgot too, in my head and in my car.
I saw the building from Mozart and the Whale Donald held his autism meetings in.
I think I saw the alley where Izabelle went in to get to her private spot in the city. It's between Monroe street and Lincoln, north of I-90 in downtown.

I'm so sorry to hear about your grandfather--are you ok?

Yeah I'm okay. It just feels weird he is gone and it feels different and all a dream but I knew it was going to happen one of these years but I didn't know it would happen on saturday.

Back on topic:


The building from Mozart and the Whale is empty and abandoned. There is a few broken windows and the side doors are boarded up on the side of the building.