Buzz Bin

by Inlander Staff


Our Horns Are Self-Tooting -- We hope you enjoyed our Happy Camper approach to Summer Guide. But last year's Summer Guide? Merely the best in the nation. And that's not just according to us -- that's according to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, which just awarded The Inlander's 2004 Summer Guide first place among Special Sections for papers with 50,000 circulation or less (ours is 45,000).


For the second year in a row, we also won a national ranking in the Format Buster category -- this time, Honorable Mention -- for our "Divided We Stand" cover story (Aug. 19, 2004) on the blue state/red state divide in America. For more details, visit www.aan.org. Both sections were team efforts, so ... yay, team!





Regal Occasion -- With both of Coeur d'Alene's movie theaters (the Showboat and the Coeur d'Alene Cinemas) showing their age, Regal Cinemas is offering a new, state-of-the-art theater for North Idaho. Located in the emerging Riverstone complex between Northwest Boulevard and the Spokane River, the Riverstone Stadium 14 opens to the public on Friday. With digital surround sound and stadium seating, all close to downtown Coeur d'Alene, this is definitely the way to see movies like Batman Begins and Revenge of the Sith.





Uptown Theater Girls -- Downtown boosters, take heed. When ARt managing director Grant Smith sent out a press release saying that the theater was engaged in a long-term search for a venue downtown (instead of their current home at SFCC's Spartan Theatre), he received "several calls from subscribers" asking him not to do so until the theater finds a downtown location that offers free parking. So much for theater as a risky and assumption-upsetting venture.





Spokane Is ... Blue -- For those of you who picked up last year's Spokane Is Reading book -- Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game -- and felt freaked out by its overtly sci-fi cover, you may be happy to know that this year's pick is the much more book group-friendly Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. Like Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring, Girl in Hyacinth Blue is inspired by a Vermeer painting -- but this time, the emphasis is on the painting itself and the people who owned it or were associated with it through time. A joint project of the Spokane Public Library, the Spokane County Library and Auntie's Bookstore, Spokane Is Reading is a celebration of readings, book talks and other literary events in October. Visit spokaneisreading.com.