As COVID-19 fears grew, public officials and sports execs contemplated health risks — and debated a PR message — but let 33,000 fans into a Seattle Sounders soccer match, emails show. By Ken Armstrong, ProPublica, and David Gutman and Lewis Kamb, The Seattle Times On March 6, at 2:43 p.m., the health officer for Public Health — Seattle & King County, the hardest-hit region in the first state to be slammed by COVID-19, sent an email to a half-dozen colleagues, saying, “I want to cancel large group gatherings now.”…

[IMAGE-1] Part of being a music lover is also being a snob, and even though my mind has opened considerably as I've aged, I still remember all the genres I just couldn't give any time to when I was growing up. Southern rock was definitely verboten for much of my life.…

March is obviously going to be the busiest month for any purveyor of traditional Irish music, and with St. Patrick's Day right around the corner, Spokane's Floating Crowbar has multiple gigs crowding the week's calendar.…

As the threat of the Coronavirus spreads throughout the country, public events everywhere are being canceled and postponed for public safety concerns. The Fox Theater is the latest venue to follow suit, closing its doors and canceling all events through April 10.…

Jenny Don't and the Spurs were right in the middle of recording their third full-length album when a vocal polyp put a halt to the process.…

You'll be forgiven if, during the daily deluge of COVID-19-related updates, you didn't notice that some seriously great musicians recently booked shows in and around Spokane for later in the year.…

Welcome to the quarantine.…

Calling all fearless freaks! Mark your calendars: The Flaming Lips have rescheduled their now-canceled April gig at the Fox Theater for March 19, 2021.…

Pardon the interruption for a little fanboy boosterism, but one of my favorite all-time bands surprise-dropped a brand new album on Bandcamp today, and damned if I'm not going to tell you to go listen to it. The band is X, pioneering Los Angeles legends who helped establish the West Coast punk scene in the late '70s and early '80s with a sound that was rooted in American rock's roots.…

You don't have to wander around the internet long before bumping into a rave review of Fiona Apple's new record Fetch the Bolt Cutters: It has inspired breathless acclaim, has already been labeled a masterwork and is notably the first new album in nearly a decade that Pitchfork has assigned a perfect 10/10 rating.…

This is normally the time of year when we're up to our eyeballs in concert announcements, but in these topsy-turvy times, we're instead having to write about all the concerts being canceled due to COVID-19. It's a real bummer.…

And summer takes another hit. Strolling Spokane's Coeur d'Alene Park in Browne's Addition for the Northwest Museum of Art & Culture's annual ArtFest is one of the pleasures of early summer, typically.…

The Buzz Bin HERE'S THE BEEF…

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Sewing is my new coping mechanism.…

You might not know it from the fancy attire they wear on stage at the Fox Theater, but for the musicians in the Spokane Symphony, it's a part-time gig. It's a prestigious gig, to be sure, but like most artists, for the musicians, it's just one piece of a puzzle full of hustle they have to solve to make a living.…

The Spokane Comedy Club might be quiet right now, but there are still laughs to be had on Zoom, and not just from watching your co-workers try to navigate the online meeting platform. Saturday night, and again next Saturday, the comedy club is hosting Comedians Doing Comedy: A Virtual Comedy Show.…

Perhaps you've heard people banging on pans to support health care workers, or howling into the abyss just to let other humans know they were alive. We've gone to some extreme measures to keep ourselves entertained since much of the country went on lockdown to combat COVID-19, and here's another one that can get you out of the house while remaining safely social-distanced and supporting local artists at the same time.…

Gonzaga Athletic Director Mike Roth took to the Zoom online meeting app Wednesday for a lengthy chat with members of the school community, fans and media to answer questions about college sports in the era of COVID-19. Like so many things regarding the coronavirus, there are a lot of hopes for a rapid return to normalcy — all of them couched in the reality that none of us really know how the pandemic is going to affect our lives three months from now, or six months down the line.…

THE SHOW WILL GO ON…

Virtually every musician starts out trying to copy their heroes.…

Another First Friday is here, and you can correctly assume that it will be all online once again. The May 1 Virtual First Friday is from 10 am to midnight.…

ON INLANDER.COM WORLD: Roughly two weeks after Canada's deadliest mass shooting, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced an immediate ban on what he called “military-style assault weapons.”…

Northern Quest Resort & Casino is set to reopen Tuesday, albeit with strict social-distancing and other safety protocols in place, becoming the second regional casino to reopen after closures caused by the coronavirus. Resort officials expect a crowd due to pent-up interest in the community for getting out of the house (not to mention Cinco de Mayo).…

ON INLANDER.COM NATION: Even as U.S. President Donald Trump urges states to reopen their economies, his own administration projects that the death toll from COVID-19 will spike to 3,000 people per day.…

By David Yaffe-Bellany and Michael Corkery The New York Times Company Hundreds of Wendy’s restaurants have run out of hamburgers.…

ON INLANDER.COM NATION: As meatpacking plants nationwide shutdown due to COVID-19 outbreaks, certain meat products are becoming harder to find at grocery stores and fast-food drive-thrus.…

The latest issue of the Inlander is hitting newsstands today. Find it at your local grocery store and hundreds of other locations; use this map to find a pickup point near you.…

Two more residents who were staying at the Spokane Veterans Home have died of complications related to COVID-19, according to the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs. There have now been five residents of the home who have died following their diagnosis of COVID-19.…

This is what it feels like to live during an historic event.…

Drink Local Life under the COVID-19 pandemic is rough for everyone, individuals and businesses alike.…

[IMAGE-1] The legal cannabis industry has only been around for a handful of years, but one local farm's green thumb goes back generations. Since the 1950s the Lima family has been in the business of growing — their namesake Lima Greenhouses dominate Vinegar Flats, where they still grow bedding plants and vegetables.…

Cops are hackers now, too.…

In times of trouble, escaping into the art that calms you is key to keeping your sanity.…

Drink Local For the majority of regional craft breweries, most revenue comes from two avenues: direct-to-consumer sales out of a tasting room and selling beer to local bars and restaurants.…

The chafing.…

ON INLANDER.COM COVER: While Washington state forges alliances, Idaho battles coronavirus its own way.…

At this point in our locked-down lives, it’s entirely possible many of us have exhausted our Netflix queue, completed every puzzle in our houses and perfected our sourdough loaves. OK, probably not.…

While events around the country have been put on hold, Coeur d’Alene’s Summer Theatre is still slated for a show at the end of the month. But it won’t be in the usual format.…

The puppet's felt hair bounces as she stage-whispers to the other puppets, almost conspiratorially, about their plans.…

Every spring, audiences in Moscow are typically congregating for the Kino Short Film Festival, an evening of shorts made by the University of Idaho's senior film students. Things being as they are, the Kenworthy Theater won't be open for this year's event, but the U of I will be streaming a virtual version this Friday, May 8, at 6 pm.…

ON INLANDER.COM NATION: For workers, there's no sign of what "normal is going to look like" in the pandemic economy.…

If you go to check how many people are hospitalized with COVID-19 in Spokane, the Spokane County Regional Health District website will give you an answer. Right now, it lists eight people as currently hospitalized with COVID-19, and that number has been trending downward.…

Never before has an issue of Health & Home been produced and delivered in such a strange and scary time.…

Loved, or loathed, depending on who you ask, mushrooms come in many forms, including those readily available in the grocery store, and others — like morels — that require more determined sourcing.…

In one sense, SpoKast operates as your typical hang-out show, a shaggy space where a couple of affable friends riff on the news together and share their thoughts.…

Warm summer nights are on the way.…

If you've ever taken a stroll around downtown Spokane's west side, you may have come across Barrister Winery, tucked into a historic brick and timber building alongside the railroad tracks at 1213 Railroad Ave.…

For parents of budding artists and creative types, it can often seem like the arts get short shrift in the K-12 curricula, especially at a time when STEM — short for science, technology, engineering and math — is the buzzword in education and the most visible casualties of school budget cuts are librarians and music teachers.…

Growing up, Luke Parker played sports.…