PacificNWNews

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Saturday/Sunday: Things will remain a bit unsettled through Saturday with some gusty winds to 25mph and a few lingering storms in the North Idaho mountains. Otherwise plenty of sunshine and nice temps in the low to mid 80's. Sat. 84°/60°, Sun. 83°/60°

        

PHILADELPHIA  -- Spokane native and baseball Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg was named the new manager of the Philadelphia Phillies Friday, replacing the fired Charlie Manuel.

Sandberg, the Phillies' third base coach, gained fame as the Chicago Cubs second baseman in the 1980s and 90s. He was drafted by the Phillies in 1978 out of North Central High School in Spokane.

Sandberg managed the Phillies' Triple-A team at Lehigh Valley the previous two seasons.

The team says Sandberg will take over beginning with Friday night's game against the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Phillies have lost 19 of 24 since last month's All-Star break and are 20 1/2 games out of first in the NL East.

        

FOR THOSE VISITING

A city with a metropolitan population of 530,000, Spokane is an oasis in the Eastern Washington scablands, centred around a waterfall in its downtown core. It combines Northwestern hipness with a certain ruggedness — as novelist and resident Jess Walter (Beautiful Ruins; The Financial Lives of the Poets) put it to us, “My favourite thing about Spokane is it’s unaware of how cool it is.”
PROXIMITY 61/2 hours from Vancouver; 41/2 from Penticton, B.C.; around eight hours from Calgary

Stay A Gilded Age gem built when Spokane was booming a century ago, the Davenport Hotel (thedavenporthotel.com) was saved from demolition and reopened in 2002 after being dark for 15 years. It often has rooms for less than US$200 a night. The Hotel Lusso (davenporthotelcollection.com) is under the same ownership and located across the street, and promises similar service in a somewhat quieter, more intimate environment.

Sights The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture (northwestmuseum.org) holds an excellent collection of indigenous art, as well as regional history exhibits that may be of less interest to visitors from afar.
The public Riverfront Park lingers as a legacy of Spokane’s hosting of the 1974 World’s Fair. The highlight (spokaneriverfrontpark.com) has to be the SkyLine cable car, which lifts visitors up to a breathtaking aerial view of the city’s famous urban waterfall.

spokaneriverfrontpark.com Spokane’s restaurant scene has exploded in recent years. Trendy, locavorous destinations are finding a place next to endearingly crusty diners and other casual spots. The bustling Central Food’s (eatcentralfood.com) ethos embraces regional producers while its menu spans the globe, with ribs and burgers competing with pasta and Mediterranean-style dishes. Downtown fixture Santé (santespokane.com) also builds its menu around locally sourced ingredients, with the Mediterranean at the centre of the menu. For pizza, locals swear by Bennidito’s (benniditos.com; two locations).

Nearby It’s no longer just a town with a funny name: Tidy little Walla Walla, around three hours south of Spokane, serves as the jumping-off point for visiting Washington state’s wineries. Plan your visit with the help of wallawallawine.com

        

A proposed law limiting the use of surveillance technology in the city of Spokane has been diminished to the point of being ineffective, according to local and state civil rights groups.

It’s also stoked some opposition from the Downtown Spokane Partnership, which is planning a downtown camera network to provide the Spokane Police Department with real-time surveillance and to assist in investigative work.

But the law’s sponsor, City Council President Ben Stuckart, said he will put forward the original ordinance, calling it the beginning of “a longer conversation.” He said it was never intended to cover all surveillance technology, just new technology not yet used by the city or police department, such as drones.