Spokane, The Teen Years

Dear Friends,

          I have been a Spokane Washington native my entire life.  Though I have lived in the outskirts, such as Spangle, nowhere is as comfortable as Spokane.  Growing up as a teen, everyone was always cursing Spokane as "a place with nothing to do".  We thought that being a town of over 500,000 people, their would be some kind of "Big City" activity.  But what young people, and a lot of older people do not understand is that Spokane is going through it's "Teen Years".  It is in those years that people and cities gain their identity.  They discover who they are, and who they want to be.  New Orleans is the "Birth of Jazz".  Portland is the "Art and culinary epicenter of the northwest".  Cities, once they get to a certain size usually have an attatched identity by their geographic location, history, or major exports. Spokane is just now begining to claim its identity.

          Seattleites have always thought of Spokane as the "Little City That Could'nt".  We try and try to achieve big city status, but always fall short because the bar keeps getting raised.  But I don't think we are trying to be Seattle at all.  What Spokane has to offer is not neccessarily what defines it as a city, more so it is a sensibility that we have that big cities lack.  Seattle, in my opinion , has lost it's sense of community.  The fact that every two miles you go, you are in another area code, or sub-division of Seattle makes it hard for people to identify with a community; not with a Seattle community anyways.  What is Seattle anyways?  It is another Los Angeles.  When you ask someone from the West coast of Washington where they live, they hardly say Seattle right?  "Well, I live in Federal Way." or "I live in Bothell" even "I live in Sea-Tac".  Yes,  They are Seattle, but are they really.  Spokanites can always say, "I live in Spokane"!  We can all rally around that.

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