Spokane

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Due to our passports being delayed in the British Embassy in LA, we were forced to postpone our flight out of the country by two and a half weeks. With nowhere to go, nothing to do and America being an expensive place, our friend Juniper, being the nice girl that she is, invited us to stay with her and her parents in Spokane.

We drove from Seattle across the Cascade Mountains in the worst conditions imaginable. The higher the altitude the harder the snow fell, making it extremely difficult for Juniper to drive. We were at one point over taken by car doing at least 100 K. Protesting from the inner sound chamber of the car that people like him were putting us all in danger, we felt very responsible, thank you very much. After 15 minutes had past we saw his Toyota bogged in a muddy ditch – the sweet taste of vindication was intoxicating! While crossing the pass we saw upwards of another 3 vehicles had experienced the same fate.

In Spokane we were treated to a wealth of generosity by Junipers parents - who allowed us to stay in their very comfortable basement for a week and kept on refusing to allow us to pay for food. We mostly spent our time relaxing: going to the movies on one occasion, visiting the Bowl and Pitcher in the Riverside State Park with its pine forests, white water rapids, suspension bridge and interesting rock formations on another and now and then driving in to town for a walk around river front park, on the banks of Spokane river (checking out the Opera House and Convention Centre built for the 1974 world expo) and the cities centre.

We found a cool café, with a not so cool name, called Rock Coffee. It was an arty little place with purposefully cracked plaster giving way to the brick work beneath, a front bar area with comfortable lounges and a secondary larger area with equally comfortable lounges, tables and chairs and a stage. We discovered that they were having an open mic night the following evening. Being a singer songwriter I made it a date to perform.

Despite being opened badly by 55 year old truck driver, I was very impressed with the amount of talent we saw that night. A guy by the name of Chelsea Seth was particularly impressive. I have since wanted to check out his web site but failed to get around to it.

Afterwards we headed off for a few drinks at a little place called “Baby Bar”, a funky, as the name would suggest, very intimate little place with, as a guy at the bar brought to my attention, a multiplicity of red mammary gland sculptures emerging from the red walls. Juniper introduced us to Michael, an amiable student poet who happened to be there.

After a few drinks we all got quiet chummy. So much so that at 2 o’clock in the morning Michael decided to take us back to his work, a three-storey, Mason like, wood interior jazz lounge, which was closed.

We made our way up an old lift and through the dark wooden halls of the building till we arrived at a classic mahogany bar, at which point he asked us to order whatever our hearts desired, free of charge. A few rounds in to us and we were taken on a multileveled journey though the back rooms and hallways of what was, at least in my drunken state, a very labyrinthine establishment. We witnessed prop rooms with puppets and masks, a massive basement with a train set (its neglected mountainous terrain and plastic figurines looking like an earthquake had hit), creepy long hallways, pool rooms, parlours, a roof top over looking Spokane and ended up in a large dinner theatre (which I’d never heard of before) with polished floorboards and tiered table seating.

Our poet, with a flare for the dramatic, then flicked on the microphone, turned off the house lights ran up the stairs to a back corner landing and flicked on a powerful spot light, which he circled around the room before bringing it to rest on me, standing innocently in front of the microphone. In my drunken state, impressed with the quality of the sound system, I did my best attempt at hosting a Mason meeting, which I dare say wasn’t very funny. Fidgeting uncomfortably we adjourned to the bar for more of what I'm good at, drinking.

We returned the following evening to this salubrious establishment, all polished wood and Victorian colours, to find, while a balding jazz pianist played some nice tunes, that a Charlie Chaplin film was being projected out a second storey window on to a wall on the other side of the street – that’s just so cool!