Talk:Spokane, Washington

Other languages

I have started a simple english wikipedia page for spokane, and it is quite lacking in content (like most simple english pages) if anybody would be kind enough to share their knowledge on spokane, please go signup for a simple account and add to the page. Thanks, SpokaneWilly 01:06, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Nicknames

Google seems like a pretty good way of deciding what are common nicknames and what aren't. Maybe a couple dozen people here and there use "Little Africa" or other odd names, but a few dozen people out of a city of of 200,000 don't make it a socially held nickname. I'd view a nickname like that the same way I would a word some kids made up and spread around their school that still isn't popular enough to be in the Dictionary. This is Wikipedia, our goal is to provide a quality encyclopedia article on Spokane. The fact that some kids some where once used a funny nickname but failed to make it popular doesn't merit entry in an encyclopedia article.

I would also add that I don't consider things like "Spocannabis" to be legit nicknames. My guess is every decent-sized city has an underground youth subculture that names their city after drugs. Something suggestive of meth I could see, since that's often in the news, but I've yet to run into anything common. Like I said, Google hits seem like a good benchmark. ~ Texasmusician 11:51, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Once again, sign the comments, and ive heard people on myspace call spokane "Spokanopoly" and "Spooooooooo" and "Spocan you do this?" But those aren't nicknames, because each of them is only used by one person, stop trying to convince us that Little Africa is a nickname for spokane because thats what you call it, it would fit better under the west central neighborhood section, and will probably be removed because nobody here knows if you are credible or not because you dont sign your comments, all you have to do is 4 of these in a row ~ SpokaneWilly 04:48, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Well if you heard it then that makes it...

Ive never heard anybody at LC call spokane "Little Africa" and i go to LC the only time i have ever heard it was in the Spokane 7 when isamu jordan called the area behind the courthouse little africa, but she was talking about when she was younger. PLEASE SIGN YOUR COMMENTS! SpokaneWilly 20:53, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Isamu Jordan is a man. Just for the record. GURoadrunner

A nickname is a nickname if people us it. People at LC call Spokane Little Africa. It is used, and thus it should be mentioned.

Little Africa is a real nickname. So please stop removing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.95.42.203 (talk • contribs)

I have removed your so-called nickname -- I have lived here for 9 years and NEVER heard of it before -- second get a real username and stop hiding behind a IP -- 3rd FOLLOW the rules when posting on a talk page and sign your comments with 4 ~. Got anything else to say? --Scott Grayban 19:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I have NEVER heard anyone call any part of spokane Little Africa. And im not sure if thats racist or not. please give us proof of how it is a real nickname. and thanks for signing. SpokaneWilly 06:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that some of the Spokane nicknames are correct...I've lived in Spokane for close to 20 years and have yet to hear one, except for Spok-KAYNE. MooVLuvr 19:28 16 Apr 2005 (UTC).

I've lived in Spokane for less than a year, and I've heard every single nickname on that list except for 'The Can.' Rockingharder 11:57 17 Apr 2005 (UTC).

I have to agree with MooVLuvr. I was raised in Spokane, and I failed to hear any of these at all -- except, for Spok-KAYNE and Spokaloo. Unless people come up with these things for festivals and parades, I don't see when people would use these. Wilderzan 04:22:36 26 Jun 2005

What's the deal with these nicknames. I don't know of any city article where the nicknames are so numerous or so frequently edited. My guess is that some are neologisms created by editors. If this keeps going on I'm inclined to remove them all and ask for sources on any that are added. Other thoughts? -Willmcw July 7, 2005 23:50 (UTC)

Spokaloo I have references for. Spokompton I've heard in conversation but don't know any references. I have never heard any of the others. Kaibabsquirrel 8 July 2005 03:35 (UTC)

I haven't checked them all yet, but some do get lots of Google hits while others get few or none. Since these are "common" nicknames, presumably they should all have some mentions on the Internet. WE can put the dubious ones here. Cheers, -Willmcw July 8, 2005 04:18 (UTC)

Here are the results of a Yahoo search: SpoVegas, SpokaVegas, Spokant, Spokaloo, Spokompton, Spocompton, and Spokanistan all return a notable number of hits - from 46 for Spokant up to 3340 for SpoVegas.

The ones we can probably safely delete are:

Spokadizzle, only 1 hit and it's Wikipedia

Spokizzle - 6 hits

"Spokay with me", only 1 hit and it's Wikipedia

Spokorn - 28 hits, most of them Wikipedia or mirror sites

Spotucky - 13 hits, most of them Wikipedia or mirrors

Shitkan - 15 hits, only one of them Spokane related and it's Wikipedia

Spoklahoma - 23 hits, mostly Wikipedia or mirrors

Methlehem - almost all hits are Pennsylvania related

Sposhizzle and Methopatamia - no hits

Kaibabsquirrel 8 July 2005 04:49 (UTC)

Here are the results of a Google search:

Spovegas - 11,900

Spokavegas - 350

Spoke-Vegas - 49

Spokevegas - 40

Spocompton - 10,200

Spokompton - 3,560

Spokanistan - 1,600

Spokangeles - 1,390

"the 'Kan" - 346

Spoklahoma - 243

Spokannabis - 20

Spokansas - 15

(search parameters were: "nickname" +Spokane -wikipedia)

For comparison, the nickname "Spokaloo" had 20,200 hits with this search.

Some of the popularity of "Spokangeles" came from the Hoopfest team, 'Spokangeles Lakers'. However, even when -"Spokangeles Lakers" was added to that search, it still returned 1300 hits. Spokangeles should be re-added to the page.

Spoklahoma was nearly as popular as "the 'Kan". Perhaps either "the 'Kan" should be removed, or Spoklahoma should be re-added.

The nickname Spokannabis was mentioned in Rolling Stone magazine, but only returned 20 hits.

For future reference, how many hits should show up for a nickname to remain on the page? 350? 1000? What's the guideline?

Q00u 01:22, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Google should not be the basis for what is considered a nickname. Many myspace users, incuding many of my friends use "Spocompton" for where they live. Also, i was down at boo radleys a few days ago and they have a whole shelf of t-shirts with many spokane nicknames on them such as spocompton, spoangeles, spoklahoma and spovegas. so what we should do is make 2 lists, one for ones used by locals, and another for ones that have been used by the media, bigshots and not locals. SpokaneWilly 05:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Google is the best source we have to determine the popularity of a nickname. I say we pick the top three nicknames and put those up. An excess of nicknames just clutters, as does having two seperate lists. --Alexandermiller 06:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Neighborhoods

I lived in little Africa and it is defintly a nickmane of a area

I've considered adding a list of Spokane's neighborhoods (Browne's addition, south hill, downtown, etc.), but I'm not 100% sure they're well-defined enough, and significant enough in describing the city, to be included in this article. Any thoughts? Mr2001 13:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Might be a good idea; bigger cities (e.g. Chicago) even have separate Wikipedia articles for each of their neighborhoods. I wouldn't recommend that for lil' ol' Spokaloo :) but a list in the article itself would be fine. I know Browne's Addition and Hillyard are very well defined, South Hill somewhat so. Not sure about the others. Kaibabsquirrel 03:04, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

They're all actually very well defined. The Spokane Police Department keeps maps of neighborhoods with specific boundaries, e.g. Balboa, Hillyard, etc. Spokanegis.com allows you to search by tax parcel information and neighborhoods. They are all listed, all 35+ of the defined neighborhoods, thanks to the Spokane Police databases. I do agree, though, that some of the neighborhoods aren't very significant and will probably only have stubs.

On the mention of the location where the movie, Benny & Joon, was filmed, the IMDB (www.imdb.com) lists the Peaceful Valley neighborhood as the location of the house featured in the movie. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106387/locations)

I personally think that having a list of all the neighborhoods in spokane (offical or not) is messy, the current list takes up alot of the page. I think it should be re-done with only the major neighborhoods (browne's addition, hillyard, downtown, peaceful valley, manito and garland) if we would work on getting more info on a few neighborhoods i think it would look better than having a sentence or two on every one. SpokaneWilly 05:20, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Those aren't all the neighborhoods. I've put a lot of time into the neighborhoods list as it is, and I think it should stay. Our job is to tell people who are looking for information on Spokane about Spokane. What is a city if not its neighborhoods? --JfrenchGU 16:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

How about moving them off the main article and creating a 'Spokane neighborhoods' like the one for Seattle?--Bobblehead 16:42, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

What about listing all the addidtion sections of downtown? There is Browns Addidtion already but there are more like Riverside, RailRoad & Second Railroad Addition and so on. I think there are 6 or 7 that are labled on old city maps. Each one was built at a different time I believe. --Scott Grayban 08:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

This [1] looks like a good reference for historic neighborhoods also.--Scott Grayban 08:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

What about Indian Trail and that whole area west (and northwest) of Five Mile? Is that not part of Spokane?--Happymeal 07:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I am going to make major changes to the neighborhoods section later tonight unless i hear a valid reason to leave the messy section the way it is. I am starting an article on Spokane Neighborhoods that will for now contain an exact copy of the neighborhoods section. I plan to make the current section look somewhat like Minneapolis' Neighborhood section. I am doing this mostly because the page is far too large, and the section is also messy and hard to read. SpokaneWilly 01:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

SpokaneWilly - I agree with making a separate page, but I'd like to see the neighborhoods content stay as it is. I believe that if someone has an interest in learning about the neighborhoods then what we've created is representative and informative. A separate page would clean up the Spokane page and sounds good, but I don't think there's any need to do any major revision beyond that. Let's discuss this. Thanks! {subst:unsigned|214.13.130.100|05:50, July 27, 2006 (UTC)}

I'm going to have to agree with SpokaneWilly. The neighborhoods article is written in much the same style as the rest of the Spokane article.. In most cases, it's just a real estate ad. It's been a long time since I've lived in Spokane and I lived on the outskirts when I did, so I don't know much about the neighborhoods, but there's gotta be something more than just what kind of houses and businesses are there. How about some more culture? What makes the neighborhood unique from the other neighborhoods.--Bobblehead 14:55, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I saw a section on here about Spokane's downtown renovation for a few days, but now it has been taken off. Why was that? I thought that was a great article talking about the positive things the city is doing. Why would someone delete an article talking about the positive things in the city???

Not sure what you're talking about - I don't see anything like that in the history. Content here has to be NPOV as well. A bunch of stuff, say, from the city gov't's website talking about renovation downtown would not only be a copyright violation, it would push a point of view. --Wooty Woot? contribs 07:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Nicknames - Spokan't

It seems like that nickname came from the early 90s when Spokane tried to re-invent their downtown business district and that nickname was used by the naysayers. Anyone know the origin of that one? I'd like a little more detail on the nicknames. I'm the one that added circa 1970s to the Spokaloo entry. That's when I remember it first used. I like the nickname section. It's amusing.

Spokane Indians (Baseball)

The Spokane Indians page needs work and I don't know anything about them. Why does it have a Texas Rangers symbol there? cda 12:59, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

the indians are affiliated with the rangers.

Spokane Indians are the short season class-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. Season runs from June to September.

Chief Spokane Garry

I created a Chief Garry page for this leading advocate of peace, who in his time tried to quench the tension between the Washington Indian tribes and United States. I think it would be appropriate to include him in the list of famous Spokanites. Wilderzan 023:07:35 04 Oct 2005

Vandalism(??)

What happpened to 2/3rds of this article? I can understand editing revisions, but it seems that a lot of information has just been excised with no explanation.

SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 23:59, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

• the Spokane article needs to be reverted all the way back before Brandon Mack. for example, the image was "pulled off google". you can't do that. Brandon - are you new here, do you know about sandboxes? It looks like you may be trying to learn how to do wikipedia on the Spokane page. but sorry, the changes can't stay. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.--cda 02:01, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Population?

This page says: "recent projections place the metropolitan population at around 625,000." The Spokane County page says: "As of 2000, the (county) population is 417,939." Both these statements cannot be correct (assuming the "projections" are in the near future). Which one is right? Someone, please fix!! Looks embarassing. Thank you. unsigned and undated

I got word from another source (emporis.com) that the Metro area for Spokane is 568,374. alf42069pj 9/23/06

The metropolitan area and the county are not the same thing. Since the metropolitan area includes much of North Idaho and other WA counties like Okanagon, it is larger than Spokane County. ~ Texasmusician 11:59, 15 July 2006 (UTC)(this is clueless, ignore)

The metro area actually does not include any of north idaho, and i was unawhere that it included other counties. However the "recent projections may be including the cda metro area. SpokaneWilly 23:21, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

According to the US Census as of the July 1, 2004 estimate the Spokane Metropolitan area has 435,634Excel and consists only of Spokane and Spokane CountyPDF. --Bobblehead 02:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

On the Boise page there is a dispute on what city is larger, spokane or boise. The census dept says that Spokane is larger by over 6000 people, but the boise page claims that boise is larger than any city in the pacific NW except portland and seattle. does anyone know the truth???SpokaneWilly 20:49, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by 'Boise'. The Boise metropolitan area is larger than spokane by about 90,000, but as a city, Boise is about 3k smaller than Spokane.Excel --Bobblehead 02:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Lists, Lists, Lists!

there are to lists that are too long on the spokane page. The notable spokanite list, and the neighborhood list are so long that it makes the page look sloppy. Half of the notable spokanites are people that many people have never heard of, i bet many actual spokanites havent even heard of some of them. if anyone has a solution to this problem please say so. SpokaneWilly 20:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Yes, there are a few things we can do. We can format some lists into two or three columns (I'll do one so you can see how the formatting works). We can spin them off into separate articles. We can edit them down. -Will Beback 05:34, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

That would be great, thanks.SpokaneWilly 20:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Whoever deleted most of the neighborhoods, thanks for shrinking the list down, but why did you remove the columns in the FM radio section??? 71.213.247.224 02:20, 11 April 2006 (UTC)Spokane Willy

I think that was vandalism rather than thoughtful editing. The neighborhood listing is appropriate, though it may be moved to another article if we want. -Will Beback 06:50, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, this is a different listing than we used to have. Much shorter but still a bit glib. Anyway, I'll put the FM colums back. -Will Beback 06:54, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I've split the nicknames out to List of Spokane nicknames. In addition to wanting to reduce the list clutter, I hope that the lower profile may reduce the number of dubious additions. I've never seen another city article with such a long list of nicknames. Usually they just have a couple in a sentence. -Will Beback 08:10, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't "notable Spokanites" refer to people who were born in or grew up in Spokane? For example, Dan Dickau was born and grew up in the Portland/Vancouver area, but is listed as a Spokanite because he went to Gonzaga...and he started college at the University of Washington before transferring to Gonzaga. I spent four years in Pullman going to Washington State, but I wouldn't consider myself a Pullmanite...but maybe that is just me. -cougs2000 11:29, 17 May 2006

WE could split the notable spokaneites into a section just for people who attended college in spokane. SpokaneWilly 04:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

i dont think Cyan Worlds, Inc. is a notable spokanite.maybe t should have its own section but... ;)

Pronunciation

From Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation):

Pronunciation transcriptions based on traditional English spelling are discouraged. Forms such as pro-NUN-see-AY-shun are of no help to people whose first language isn't English. However it may be helpful to add comments such as "rhymes with..." or "stress on the first syllable".

the iBook of the Revolution 16:35, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Page too big

The first section is very large and hard to read, it would look much better if it could be split up, or some paragraphs could be moved or removed. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to this should be done? Also the page itself is too big, it is 44 kilobites.

People need to stop adding to the page! There is a lot of information that has been added since i was last on here that is not needed and i am going to delete it, if you want it back please say why it is important in this section. Also if anyone is good with templates those would be very helpful in shortening the bulky and hard to read sections. If you want to add things about spokane, why not do it where its needed over in the spokane wikitravel http://wikitravel.org/en/Spokane SpokaneWilly 06:22, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

• I agree. If there is a category spokane films and category notable spokanites they shouldn't be repeated on the spokane page. Also - maybe neighborhoods could have their own pages like Category:Minneapolis neighborhoods.--cda 10:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

PLEASE, STOP ADDING INFORMATION TO THIS PAGE!!! WORK ON DELETING USELESS INFORMATION!!! each time i come back here(about once a week) there is over a paragraph of more useless info. SpokaneWilly 01:04, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I am going to make major changes to the neighborhoods section later tonight unless i hear a valid reason to leave the messy section the way it is. I am starting an article on Spokane Neighborhoods that will for now contain an exact copy of the neighborhoods section. I plan to make the current section look somewhat like Minneapolis' Neighborhood section. I am doing this mostly because the page is far too large, and the section is also messy and hard to read. SpokaneWilly 01:27, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah nuts.. Sorry SpokaneWilly. I totally missed that you were moving Spokane neighborhoods to it's own article too.. I noticed that you haven't created the article yet. So, guess I started you down that route. Here's the article I created: Spokane, Washington neighborhoods --Bobblehead 01:38, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone added hempfest to the events list, I never knew spokane had a hempfest, and being a teenager i would have most likely heard of it. I am not disputing its existance, but I am saying that it is not that major (if other people think it is a major event then fine) but i think it should be removed because it is a small event and the page is too big. SpokaneWilly 23:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Gotta agree on Hempfest in Spokane.. Now the Hempfest in Seattle? That's huge.. Spokane.. Never heard of it. --Bobblehead 02:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely not a major event. It should be deleted.--Alexandermiller 06:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Samuel Havermale

Please come here [Delete Samuel Havermale] and vote to keep this article. Samuel was part of your history, help me preserve him! Thanks :) Wjhonson 18:01, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Links to external sites in article

There are far too many links to external sites inside this article, especially the neighborhood section. I moved the links into the brackets to get rid of the [10], but unless you're actually linking to the external site as an inline cite you shouldn't include the links in the main article. That's why there is an external links section in an article. If I don't hear any complaints I'll go ahead and make the moves this evening. --Bobblehead 17:38, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Images

OK, I agree that the main image in the info box was a bad picture of Spokane (looked all smoggy). But someone replaced it with an image they grabbed off the internet. That's not going to work. FYI if you are new here you have to have permission from the photographer to include an image in an article. --cda 18:18, 17 July 2006 (UTC) (I haven't looked at the rest - are they released? The Ice Rink picture is OK.)

Except for the pictures of the Mayor and the picture of the ice rink it looks like they were all swiped off the internet without permission of the photographer. --Bobblehead 18:25, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The Expo '74 Pavillion picture is fine (at least from a legal perspective.) I don't know who put it up, but I was the one who took it. --RemiO 17:16, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

That was me. I checked your usage guidelines first. Thanks, great picture. --cda 21:04, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Big gap in history

From reading this article, I can see all the cool stuff I can do in Spokane *today*, but I'm not really getting a picture of why the heck the city grew so large. What is it's raison d'être? I'm assuming cheap and accessible hydropower and the railroad are what caused the city's rapid growth, but the history section jumps from the 1889 fire to the 1974 expo, leaving out nearly 100 years. Industry? Agriculture? Why do people live there? Katr67 07:42, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm no history buff, but I've started filling in the gaps. We do need someone who really knows this history well to help out!--Alexandermiller 01:02, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Movement of the Neighborhoods Section

I'm not sure who took out the Neighborhoods section, but I thought it was an area that really was useful.

Could we find the edit that took it out, take that content, and build a new article?

--Guroadrunner 04:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I was the person that took out the neighborhoods section. I also used the content in that section to create Spokane, Washington neighborhoods and left a link behind in the "See also" section linking to the neighborhoods article.[2] The reason for it's removal was that this article is already too large and the neighborhoods section was inordinately large and was perfect for moving into its own article. --Bobblehead 05:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. I didn't notice the "See also" link when I first made my comment. Sorry for any confusion. --Guroadrunner 10:08, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

History

The first paragraph of the history section need serious work. Can someone rewrite? I'm working on the main article for History of Spokane, so you can refer to that, although I recommend you do your own research because right now the article isn't the greatest. Alexandermiller 06:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

elevation or altitude?

Since Spokane is at the edge of a plateau, it would be interesting to know its elevation or altitude, unless it is a reeeealy looooooow plateau. 8-) thanx, --71.35.115.3 17:12, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Population of metro area

i got word from www.emporis.com that the metro population (most recent) is 568,374. 15:27, 23 September 2006 (UTC)~~

Writing for Spokane Residents

I've noticed a lot of writing for residents in this article. For example, the section about the US-395 extension lists street names that only a local would know. Can someone clean this stuff up to be more meaningful to a wider audience? Goeverywhere 02:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

We need more pictures

Hi guys, I think that we need some more pictures of Spokane within the Spokane article. If you look at other cities' articles such as Denver, Colorado, or Seattle, Washington, they have pictures for literally every section. I think pictures would make the Spokane article more interesting because there would be a visual "icon" to go along with each section. Jdubman 07:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I might be able to take some pictures. There's a few in here already though, I think the Neighborhoods article needs more pictures than this one. --Wooty Woot? contribs 23:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)