Dana: Namely, offering key insight on the important stuff — the fun spots to go for the NCAA Tournament. Our first-weekend options are: Albany, Greensboro, Spokane, St. Louis, Tampa, Omaha, Sacramento and Cleveland. What is your first choice of places to go — based solely on location, and not basketball.
Brian: It’s not even a contest. Spokane is the runaway, clear-cut No. 1 destination among this year’s lot of first-weekend sites.
I know this, because I was just there a little while back for stories on Gonzaga. The downtown is eminently walkable and there’s a riverside park for those who want a stroll with a little more nature involved. Durkin’s Liquor Bar sounds like an inexorable dive, but it is not. It is, in fact, home to an absolutely fantastic pork chop among many other delectable items that go with a wide selection of fine local beverages. There are great little eating and drinking spots almost on every corner — and some that you can’t even see. Cease & Desist Book Club is a speakeasy. You enter through a fake bookcase. A bookcase, Dana. Who doesn’t want to walk into places through a fake bookcase?
Not to mention that dang near every hotel option — I am freshly in love with The Davenport Grand — is situated ideally for meandering around town and exceedingly reasonably priced. Also you can get Kokanee there, which many of our Canadian friends will probably scoff at, but whatever, I like Kokanee.
Agree? Disagree? What’s our second-best destination?
Dana: So I have a second child. He apparently needs to go to Gonzaga. For me, if not for him. Oddly I have never been to Spokane, and while Mark Few long has extolled its virtues, I wasn’t sure if he was just doing a tourism snookering or what. Clearly, he was not and I need to go there. Or make my son attend college there for four years. I thought the wine bar in Asheville that was set in a bookstore was cool, but through a bookcase? There is no beating that.
OT: A review of Spokane as an NCAA Tourney Site ( The Athletic )
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Originally Posted by bdmiller7
