Bloglander

Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy"

Before #YesAllWomen started trending on social media in response to men’s (but not all men’s!) response to feminists’ response to the mass shooting in Santa Barbara this week, and before the shooting itself had occurred, I had completed a draft of the following essay about street harassment. I worried while writing about the reactions that I would receive in the comments. Maybe people will perceive my observations as whining about something relatively unimportant, they’ll think I’m too stuck up to give nice guys a chance, that I am projecting violence onto behavior that’s really innocent, that I need to learn to take a compliment. I felt a lot of pressure from past conversations to pre-empt the commenters in proving that street harassment is not flattering, that it is one of many disturbing expressions of male entitlement to sex and women’s bodies, and that it is part of a continuum of disrespect for female autonomy that too often culminates in severe or even deadly violence.

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In an unfortunate twist of fate, the proof of that statement became the most visible news story of the weekend when Elliot Rodger completed his stated desire to bring “reckoning” to women who have denied him the pleasure he felt was his birthright and any men who might ally with them. Reactions from women online prompted a defensive reaction from men (and some women) clamoring to stifle the talk of misogyny in favor of discussing mental illness or gun control. What I hope the #YesAllWomen campaign can continue to show men is how commonplace many of Rodger’s remarks really were, how many of us have experienced firsthand the effects of widespread violence against women, and how quick our culture is to normalize it. By sharing our stories, especially with men who will listen, we can change the culture and begin to take gender inequality and gender-based violence to task.

Here is the essay I was working on, unamended except to add that, yes, all women have days like this one and too many have far worse days, but they’re all part of the same story. Let’s work together to write a new one in which women are respected, men are respected, and everyone has better relationships and a better chance to thrive, love, and grow as a result.

I am walking quickly because I have barely enough time to walk across downtown from Browne’s Addition and make it to the event on time. It’s one of the first days with more than a hint of summer in it and I get to admire the later blossoms on the trees, the slight breeze that is finally refreshing after the chilly winter. Walking has always helped me process my day and connect with nature and with the people around me. I enjoy it so much that I never bought another car after mine met its end seven years ago.

The first honk, accompanied by a simple “Yeah! Nice!” from the passenger seat, jostles me out of my late spring nature reverie, but I recover quickly. A simple honk-and-yell after 10 years of being accosted on the street isn’t enough to enrage me the way it would have as a teenager or as a newly minted (and brimming with righteous indignation) feminist. I make it to the Spokane Club with my confidence and good mood intact, and exchange smiles and nods with my fellow pedestrians. As I cross Monroe, the second honk-and-yell is hurled my way. I cut up to Riverside to avoid waiting for the light and it’s there I get my second “compliment” of the day. Walking past the businesses across from the STA Plaza, a young man is leaning against the bricks listening to music.

“Very nice!” he says, à la Borat, while making direct eye contact with me and smirking. I turn away and keep walking, the best solution I’ve found so far to these kinds of encounters especially when there’s no time for a confrontation and you’re on the verge of being late already. When he’s a few steps behind me, he yells, “Bitch!” and the single syllable is packed with disdain and loathing.

On a feisty day, I would flip him off or yell something back, but today I am determined to let it all roll off and stay in control of my mood. Being insulted on the street is just a reality I’ve learned to handle without a great deal of fanfare by this point in my life. I now have seven minutes to reach my destination and think that I am on target to avoid lateness if I hustle. I cut across a big surface lot, taking the diagonal to save time getting to Sprague. Since I’ve been primed for confrontation on this walk, I am paying more attention to the people around me than I did when I first left the house. Up ahead, between Mootsy’s and the corner at Washington, I see three men talking with each other. They see me and stop their conversation entirely, all turning to wait for me to pass.

“Great,” I think, “a tunnel.”

One is on the building side of the sidewalk and the other two are smoking by the parking meters across from him. The apparent leader of the pack looks to his buddies, and then back at me as he steps out into my path in the sidewalk. He puts one hand out in a request for me to slow down and says, “Hey, girl. You know you crazy hot, right?” It’s a strange rhetorical question and it’s the last straw of my mile or so of patience so far, so I just shrug dramatically with my hands out and yell, “Well!?” as I keep walking. They don’t call me a bitch, but I can hear the slap of high fives and a general noise of approval as they watch me leave.

I share this story here to give an example of what many women go through on their daily commute, particularly if they aren’t in a car. These encounters were fairly tame and on their own don’t prove much about gender-based power dynamics, but I should also mention that they occur in the context of ongoing gender and appearance-based harassment and violence. The context is what makes these instances so much more than what they’re usually characterized as when I share them with male friends, compliments. In addition to comments or expressions of approval about my physical traits on the street, I have also been followed on foot and by men in cars. I have planned or changed my route specifically to avoid being bothered. I have been late to work due to diverting my route away from people I perceived as threatening. I have had trash thrown at me from a car after flipping off a catcaller. I have been groped by a stranger in public. I have been photographed against my will in public and among people I believed to be friends. I have been vilified for putting “nice guys” in the “friendzone” rather than sleeping with or dating them as a reward for their kindness. I have been stalked, harassed and threatened by some of these “nice guys” after I rejected them. I feel lucky to have not been raped, beaten, or killed by a partner or stranger because the odds are not in my favor as a woman. The knowledge my biology endangers me has been ingrained in me since childhood. My experiences are not unique and are, in fact, far better than what a large proportion of other women have dealt with in their lives.

Despite all of this, and though I’ve been slandered as one, I am not a “man-hater.” I hate, well, hate. I hate inequality and injustice and unfairness. And I understand that while men benefit disproportionately from patriarchy, it still doesn’t give them justice or fairness. Men are taught that in order to be manly, they must vanquish other men in their chosen field, dominate physically, intellectually and sexually wherever possible, and gain power over the previously uncontrolled circumstances of their lives. These ideas lead to bullying among boys, a great deal of anger either turned inward or outward, and at the macro level, to destroying life on a mass scale through waging war. Obviously, there are men who fail or refuse to conform to these twisted notions of what it means to be a man. They are often punished for their non-conformity by their peers, by women who believe hyper-masculinity is normal or desirable, and by authority figures. This punishment still pales in comparison to the threats of daily life that come with being female.

Men, as the leaders of our institutions and as the far and away most frequent perpetrators of violence, have the power to end gender inequality and systematic violence against women and they don’t do it. If you are a man and you dismiss women’s concerns on these topics without considering how you fit into the picture, you are part of the problem. If you are a man and you harass women, feel entitled to our time or bodies, or commit other acts of violence or coercion, you are definitely part of the problem. If you are a person who makes excuses for this type of behavior, you are part of the problem. If you think that feminism means women dominating the world in the way men do now, or that it means anything other than ending sex/gender based oppression, your lack of research is part of the problem.

Are men so afraid of being treated like women that they won’t stand up against blatant violence? Though it’s less overt than murder or rape, street harassment is violence. Rather than being treated as part of a continuum of disrespect, dehumanization and violence, it’s treated as a harmless recreational pursuit and dismissed as “boys will be boys” behavior. This summer, I call upon the men who want a better world to stop “complimenting” women on the street, and to call out other men’s disrespectful behavior. If you have children, talk to them early and often about sexism, racism, inequality and justice. Kids seem to have a natural aptitude for identifying unfairness — have you ever given just one of your two children a treat in front of the other? — and if they learn about how it’s structured into our society, they will be better equipped to dismantle it. Perhaps your daughters won’t grow up with boys who have harmful ideas about who or what she is, and your sons will be stronger and better for learning the lessons, too. ♦

Taylor Weech, who hosts the weekly public affairs program Praxis on KYRS-FM, is a Spokane writer and activist. She's advocated, among other things, for environmental sustainability and all-ages access to the arts.

Young Kwak photo

Spokane Police officers on a downtown emphasis patrol last summer.

This week we have a story about the work of a city task force charged with tackling downtown's issues — perceived or real.

Last summer, this issue exploded after businesses complained about groups of teenagers loitering outside their doors and KXLY captured video of a group of young people assaulting a man outside the Satellite Diner. Earlier this year, a teenager assaulted a man outside the Steam Plant. We met some of the young people downtown and wrote about these issues last year here.

As this discussion resurfaces this year, it's important to note, as it was last summer, that crime statistics show that violent crime is not increasing in downtown. As you can see in the Spokane Police Department's data here (scroll to page 33 for downtown), violent crime downtown is down 15 percent since this time last year. In mid-August of last year, violent crime downtown was down 8 percent from the previous year.

That means the real issue here is the perception of downtown as an unsafe or undesirable place. And that's what the Mayor's Task Force on Urban Environment is really working on. They've outlined a plan (read it at the bottom of this post) for the short and long term that includes increased police presence and increased services to homeless people in downtown. They're calling it a "push-pull" approach. "Push" by enforcing laws against so-called "quality-of-life crimes" like panhandling, sitting and lying on sidewalks and smoking near building entrances. "Pull" by offering services to people on the street. The city is offering a temporary grant for street outreach directed at young people, but much of the "pull" work still remains unfunded, including housing for young adults and permanent housing for the chronically homeless that is "low barrier," meaning it doesn't require strict rules like abstinence from alcohol and other substances to live there. (Learn more about this approach and its use in Seattle here.) The task force will now begin asking for funding for such projects, including from businesses in downtown.

The task force includes people representing downtown businesses, police and service providers, and they all say the goal isn't to push anyone out of downtown to make it better for anyone else. Instead, they say they're trying to make it a "place for everyone." Whether that works remains to be seen. But, in the meantime, the group's work has given us the city's first statistical look at what people downtown — both those in the business community and those sleeping in shelters or on the street — want and need.

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Which issues downtown businesses identified as most important, based on a survey done earlier this year.

You can see the full survey results for yourself at the bottom of this post, but the issues business owners identified as "common and important" were mostly those nonviolent nuisance issues like loitering and "obnoxious behavior." Assaults and vandalism were also considered important, but not common. The homeless adults and youths/young adults were asked about their reasons for homelessness and their needs. Overwhelmingly, employment and housing were major needs.

Bridget Cannon, who oversees youth programs for Crosswalk, the shelter for teens downtown, says the results weren't necessarily things service providers didn't already know about downtown. But funders want numbers.

"When people want to put money into something they don't want anecdotes, they want the data," she says. "This was a really good way of legitimatizing what we knew through our anecdotal experience and talking to the kids."

And that means more hope for funding for things like housing, job and internship programs and mental health care — the things that service providers say will make the real, long-term difference for downtown.

MAYOR'S TASK FORCE ON URBAN ENVIRONMENT DRAFT PLAN (While the plan mentions two new officers for downtown, the precinct will actually get five, according to SPD Spokesperson Monique Cotton.)

Initiative Summary With KPIs 5-22-14

DOWNTOWN BUSINESS SURVEY RESULTS

Business Survey Results 4-3-14

HOMELESS ADULTS SURVEY RESULTS

Adult Survey Results 4-3-14

HOMELESS YOUTHS AND YOUNG ADULTS SURVEY RESULTS

Youth and YA Survey Results 4-3-14

Are you looking at the Volume schedule and feeling your eyes start to cross? Yeah, us too. For a little help, we asked some of Spokane’s favorite musicians to send us their dream schedules — some of which are only possible if you have two bodies. Or if you sprint between venues. We suggest sprinting over dismemberment. — Leah Sottile

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Kristen Black

As a Band to Watch in 2011.

DAN OCEAN

2011 Band to Watch, BLVCK CEILING; Cloak&Dagger and Brothers Ov Midnite DJ

FRIDAY

6:30, Mootsy’s: Clusterf—-?!?
8:10 pm, Club 412, all-ages stage: Bloody Gloves
8:35 pm, Mootsy’s: Shades

SATURDAY

7:30 pm, Club 412 all-ages stage: Losing Skin
7:30 pm, Red Room Lounge: Bandit Train
9 pm, Big Dipper: Hooves
9:30 pm, Red Room Lounge: Boy Eats Drum Machine
10:15 pm, Neato Burrito: Twin Towers
10:40 pm, Red Room Lounge: Psychic Rites

See the full Volume schedule here. See all the band profiles here. See other lineup picks here.

AROUND HERE

Spokane schools won't see armed officers paroling the halls, at least for now. Union representatives and school district officials ended bargaining without coming to an agreement on how much school employees should be paid to carry guns. (SR)

Someone stole a 40,000 pound Caterpillar frontloader from a construction site in Spokane Valley and then left it two miles from the site, where authorities found it. (KXLY)

The teenager who beat up a man outside the Steam Plant earlier this year received five days in jail and six months probation. The victim says that's a "miscarriage of justice." (SR)

In Kootenai County, six Republicans or Independents have been elected as Democratic precinct captains and now the local Democrats are politely asking them to step down. (CdA Press)

More than 100 Seattle police officers have filed a civil rights lawsuit over DOJ-led use of force reforms, saying they've made officers afraid to do their jobs and created “bold, new disregard for police authority in the streets of Seattle." (Seattle Times)

ELSEWHERE

Outrage over manipulation of wait lists at the VA is growing and crossing party lines. (NYT)

The U.S. economy may not be rebounding as much as we thought. (TIME)

A former army chief is Egypt's new president. (Reuters)

Some NSA employees are sharing the names of secret projects on their LinkedIn profiles. (AlJazeera)

A new study says the average heroin user is now a 23-year-old white suburbanite. (NPR)

VOLUME!

It's the last day to get wristbands for our two-day, 80-band music festival before prices go up, so hurry over here to get yours. (In the meantime, check out this guy who still hasn't taken off his wristband from last year's festival. Yes, seriously.)

Welcome back to Weed Wednesday, your weekly dose of pot news. Wondering what this is about? Click. Looking for our previous marijuana coverage? Click. Got a question or tip? Email me at [email protected].

Sorry, Portlanders planning your road trips into Washington for weed. You'll have to drive a little farther. Growing, processing and selling marijuana is now banned in unincorporated parts of Clark County.

As Washington continues plodding toward the beginning of its recreational marijuana market — the first stores are expected to be licensed and open in early July — the Washington State Liquor Board is anticipating questions about marketing and advertising. So, they're asking hopeful licensees to send their questions to [email protected] by July 1. (A few examples from WSLCB: Can I sell T-shirts with my company’s tradename and logo on them? Can I sponsor a community event using my tradename and logo? Can I set up a separate business to promote my marijuana retail store?) The Liquor Board is right to anticipate this will be a big issue. In Colorado, newspaper advertising has already spurred a lawsuit. We wrote about the issue back in February here.

Also in the "we need to figure this out" category: banking. Yes, it's still an issue. This week, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper sent the feds another letter seeking further and faster guidance on this issue. While the feds earlier this year advised banks that those serving above-board marijuana operations would not be a high priority for federal enforcement, banks are hesitant since the law still allows them to be prosecuted for supporting what remains a federally illegal industry.

The much anticipated first installment of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra's "Classically Cannabis" series happened Friday. Sounds like there was plenty of pot and even a Beatles cover. But a critic from Denver's alt, Westword, asks why we're even making such a big deal about this.

Also in Denver: It turns out people are totally willing to turn over their pot when asked to by airport officials. According to The Cannabist, the Denver airport has stopped just 10 people for trying to take marijuana through security and they all cooperated when asked to dispose of the weed.

Here's a term you should remember: "the Mendocino model." That's because what's happening in Mendocino County, California, and how it shakes out could set an example for how marijuana prosecutions may be treated in California and elsewhere in the future. There, the district attorney has begun offering restitution ($50 per plant, $500 per pound of processed marijuana) to people charged with marijuana felonies. The process allows them to plead to a misdemeanor and get probation if they pay the restitution. Supporters say it saves time and raises cash for law enforcement. Others argue it creates a dangerous precedent that favors rich defendants over the poor and encourages officers to go after targets with the biggest potential yield. Read more from the LA Times.

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That's what 500 pounds of marijuana looks like.

In North Carolina, Police say someone accidentally sent 500 pounds of marijuana to an auto shop. Oops.

A small group of U.S. representatives is pushing a bill to overturn the federal government's ban on marijuana and a separate amendment to stop federal interference with state medical marijuana law. Major federal marijuana policy change is unlikely to happen this year, but the lawmakers say they believe the tide is turning. Read more from USA Today and the Drug Policy Alliance.

"Everything has to be geared toward undercutting the black market." Those were the words of a contractor who's developing the tax structure for Uruguay's new marijuana market, reports Reuters. The country will allow customers to buy cannabis from licensed sellers tax-free with hopes of competing with black market pot from nearby countries.

Finally, check out this New York Times profile of a massive cannabis operation (inside an old Hershey factory) in Canada, where the government is creating a national medical marijuana market.

Are you looking at the Volume schedule and feeling your eyes start to cross? Yeah, us too. For a little help, we asked some of Spokane’s favorite musicians to send us their dream schedules — some of which are only possible if you have two bodies. Or if you sprint between venues. We suggest sprinting over dismemberment. — Leah Sottile

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Karli, left, when the Bartlett was named Best New Nightspot in the 2014 Best Of poll.

KARLI INGERSOLL

Co-owner, The Bartlett; guitar and vocals in Cathedral Pearls

FRIDAY

6 pm, Big Dipper: Teen Blonde
7 pm, The Bartlett: Cloud Person
8 pm, nYne: Water Monster
9 pm, Irv’s: Marshall McLean Band
9:10 pm, The Bartlett: The Rustics
9:15 pm, Neato Burrito: Mallows
10 pm, nYne: The Digital Wild
10:15 pm, Club 412 mainstage: Secretary
10:55 pm, Red Room Lounge: Dead Serious Lovers [See related update here.]
11:50 pm, nYne: Terrible Buttons

SATURDAY

11 am, Boots: Soul Brunch: A Tribute to Isamu Jordan
3:30 pm, Neato Burrito: Pub Science: Theories on the Future of Music
5:30 pm, Neato Burrito: Sea Giant
6 pm, nYne: Scott Ryan
7:30 pm, Red Room Lounge: Bandit Train
8 pm, Irv's: Lures
9:20 pm, The Bartlett: Mama Doll
9:50 pm, Club 412 mainstage: Blackwater Prophet
10:10 pm, The Bartlett: Kithkin
10:50 pm, Club 412 mainstage: Rose Windows
11:50 pm, Red Room Lounge: The Flavr Blue [In a last-minute schedule switch, this performance is now happening at 11:45 on Friday.]

See the full Volume schedule here. See all the band profiles here. See other lineup picks here.

You've still got a few days to submit a logo to the Spokane Arts Fund for their first annual Create Spokane Arts Month, a celebration in October dedicated to creativity and art in the Spokane community. The inaugural event is set to include more than 50 different events and expects to draw as many as 30,000 attendees. The logo will be used for advertising the event, on both their website and any print media produced.

Executive Director Shannon Halberstadt says the logo they are looking for needs to reflect the creativity in the Northwest, and illuminate the culture and individuality of the Spokane area. The contest will favor new and emerging artists as competitors, as entry is free and anyone has the opportunity to submit their design. A committee will review the entries, and the winner will be awarded with $200 and a profile on the Create Spokane website with an optional link to the designer's own website.

Contest rules include:

1. The logo should have the phrases "Create Spokane" and "Arts Month" somewhere. The URL www.createspokane.com is optional but encouraged.
2. Entries should be submitted to [email protected] with the subject line "Arts Month Logo Contest." Full name, phone number and email address is also required.
3. Entries need to be high quality JPEG or EPS files.
4. Digital files should have the entrant's last name attached.
5. The artwork submitted needs to be original.
6. There is a maximum of three entries per competitor.
7. Contest submissions must be received no later than May 31 at 5 pm.

Create Spokane will feature activities and events put on by partners backing the project, an open studio series with local artists, writers and musicians, and a fun, fabulous costume ball at the end of the month where various creators in the community will be celebrated with awards. All events are open to the public, and we'll have more about it in the coming months.

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A few weeks ago, I went to talk to Kohl Crecelius — co-founder of the lifestyle brand and poverty-fighting nonprofit Krochet Kids — hoping to figure out why he doesn’t live in Spokane anymore.

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Kohl and his other co-founders — Stewart Ramsey and Travis Hartanov — all grew up here, in the vicinity of Colbert and Chattaroy. Stewart used to play soccer with my brother, for what that’s worth.

They began crocheting in high school, mostly to have the best hats on the local slopes. Later, in college, volunteering around the world — and especially in East Africa — brought them into intimate contact with desperate poverty. The trio hatched a plan to teach impoverished women in troubled countries to crochet amazing-looking hats and clothing they could sell to other brand-aware, socially conscious people, and they’d pay the women a living wage and get them out of poverty. The rest has been well-documented by many media outlets, including this one, so I won’t rehash it needlessly.

Except to say they had a powerful idea that became a transformational nonprofit. Starting around the same time as companies like Tom’s Shoes, Krochet Kids was on the leading edge of our current wave of social ventures — companies that try to take the best of the for-profit sector and the nonprofit sector in order to generate revenue while making the world a better place. KK is a nonprofit, but only 15 percent of their revenue comes from traditional fundraising — a staggeringly low number. The rest comes from selling awesome clothing to cool kids.

That’s some innovative shit.

So, with all that as background, I went to talk to Kohl hoping to find out why, although Krochet Kids has its origins on the mountains of Eastern Washington, its office is in Costa Mesa, California. Did they find a mentor? Investors attuned to social ventures? A culture of innovation that inspired them?

The answer is pretty mundane: sun, surf and snow-type stuff. They have great things to say about Spokane, they host some of their biggest fundraisers here, and Kohl still calls it “home.” The more interesting story, it turns out, is what’s happening in Uganda. Specifically, what happened after they started paying that living wage.

It quickly became clear that money wasn’t enough. The women needed an education, so Krochet Kids created an education program to teach economics, budgeting, business plan creation, health and wellness, disease identification, “and, you know,” Kohl says, “just helping them understand their rights and privileges as human beings.”

It’s designed as a three-to-five-year course. They’ll graduate their first 50 women — who Kohl says have now become teachers, community leaders and business people — this year. For every success, though, he says they identified another need.

Before a person can formulate a business plan, they have to identify their community’s needs, figure out which of those needs they are well-suited to impact, and develop the solution. That’s a complicated calculus. So they began employing local women as mentors, “people who are college-educated — teachers, counselors — but who still understand the local struggles.” Kohl says they look for people who “will care for the whole person. People who can just love on the women, but then help them contextualize the things they’re learning. It takes visionary leaders.”

The needs kept coming. With education and mentorship, interesting, important business ideas began to form, and Kohl says they realized something else was missing: investment capital.

So they started a credit union, self-capitalized by the women in the program, and able to lend money to start-ups at lower rates than commercial banks. SACCO (the Savings and Credit Cooperative) is now the largest credit union in Northern Uganda, financing the startups that will create more good jobs and, the hope goes, create a beneficial cycle that radiates outward from KK and touches entire communities.

Taken together, Kohl says what they’re doing transcends employment, education, entrepreneurship and capitalization alone: “It’s giving people permission to have dreams.”In the last decade or so — roughly the time Krochet Kids has been operating in Africa (they’re also now in Peru) — Spokane has given itself permission to dream, too.

From ballsy municipal projects like the Riverfront Park plan to our town’s young chefs taking our city seriously as a place to create a real culture around food, we have set increasingly lofty, increasingly ambitious goals for ourselves to change this region and, increasingly, a young generation of smart, educated, idea-and-conviction-driven people are wanting to accept those challenges.

But when I talk to smart, young people about the obstacles they’re facing, it sounds a lot like the problems Krochet Kids encountered in Uganda. And if the problems are the same, it stands to reason the solutions would be similar too.

Maybe what we need in the Inland Northwest is more of what Kohl and his team have begun to build in Uganda: mentors to help bright young leaders plan for the long game, and courageous institutions willing to stake the funds to get them there.

I believe deeply that the sooner that happens, the faster Spokane grows. The longer we wait, the further behind we fall. ♦

Luke Baumgarten, a creative strategist at Seven2 and former culture editor of the Inlander, is a co-founder of Terrain and the founder of Fellow Coworking. He tweets @lukebaumgarten.

AROUND HERE

Attorneys for Gail Gerlach are asking the court to pay $300,000 in legal fees for Gerlach's defense. (KXLY)

A Coeur d'Alene woman is suing the sprouts producer linked to a recent E. coli outbreak. (SR)

Spokane City Councilman Steve Salvatori will resign in July to move to Texas. (Inlander)

The Indiegogo campaign for Sandpoint-based Solar Roadways went viral and it's paying off. (Cda Press)

Security guards at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle will soon carry Tasers. (Seattle Times)

ELSEWHERE

Author Maya Angelou has died. (CNN)

In an interview that airs in full tonight, leaker Edward Snowden told NBC News he was "trained as a spy."(NBC)

U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan by 2016, the president said Tuesday. (NYT)

The Federal Trade Commission says data brokers have profiles of nearly every American consumer, categorizing them into groups like “Bible Lifestyle,” “Affluent Baby Boomer” and “Biker/Hell’s Angels." (WaPo)

Self-driving cars are here. (BBC)

VOLUME!

Have we mentioned our massive eight-venue, 80-band music festival is this weekend? The lineup is here. Tickets are here. It's been called "arguably the least sucky thing that happens each year in Spokane." So, yeah.

Enjoy this track from Psychic Rites (they play Saturday at 10:40 pm) while you count down the days.

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Lisa Waananen

Bazaar will be held outdoors at the old Wonder Bread factory, where signs on the exterior have almost faded away. New location, see update below.

A while ago we told you about applications for Terrain’s new event, Bazaar, which is coming up on June 21. And we now know a lot more about what to expect: Like Terrain, it’s got beer, music and a focus on local artists. Like Terrain, it’s appearing an at otherwise-empty location for just a single day before evaporating into the mist.

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But the fun is in the details, and — as its organizers have found — Bazaar is an entirely new beast. The format is more of a carnival/marketplace, with artists selling a variety of items — visual art, prints, photography, jewelry, soaps, paper goods, etc. — from more than 50 decorated booths. The idea is getting more young (read: not rich) people involved with buying local art, so most of the items are less than $100.

The setting is outdoors at the old Wonder Bread Factory, located just north of Riverfront Park on Post Street between at Broadway and Mallon. Organizers were looking for an urban spot close to downtown that would fit with their longtime goal of turning unused spaces into something alive. It could get warm out on the pavement, so they’re working on tents and shade.

UPDATE 5/31: The location has been moved, organizers announced, after a final contract with the property owner couldn't be settled in time. Bazaar will now be held downtown at 200 N. Wall Street, near Riverfront Park. (The poster has also been updated.)

The live music lineup includes: Manatee Commune, Emby Alexander, Mama Doll, Water Monster, Mallows, Teen Blonde, Pine League and Cloak & Dagger. Get more details and updates here.

We don’t know all the vendors, but they’ll include the Inlander’s own art director, Chris Bovey, with his series of Spokane-area landmark prints.

The booths are all spoken for at this point, so artists who want to participate will have to patiently wait for next year. Applications are live for Terrain, though, through Aug. 1.