Have you read it yet, Spokane?

Of course, you have.

It’s seemingly all Spokane is talking about on social media. A fictional story written by Lewis and Clark graduate Cody Delistraty about the perils we as Spokanites face on a daily basis.

Mr. Delistraty would have the rest of the world believe that in between hobbling to our daily trips to the bread line and avoiding all of the murderers walking our streets, that our only salvation comes in the form of watching Gonzaga play basketball.

It is no secret that our town generally, overall but not everyone, loves Gonzaga, but I would say no more than any town loves their sports teams. Our very livelihoods don’t depend on their success, as Mr. Delistraty stated in his “How Gonzaga became the central hope for the struggling city of Spokane” piece (it hurts to hyperlink that atrocity, but ya know… I had to).

Mr. Delistraty’s narrative is full of inaccuracies about our beloved (his former) town that are either soaked in obvious bias or just plain made up.

“Spokane sits on a tiny lump of a hill.” That’s just the most obvious one. We can’t even label it as an “Alternative fact.” It’s simply not true. After living here for an extended period of time, Delistraty should at least know that geographical fact. Hell, anyone who spends more than 3 minutes in town knows that!

Delistraty’s work is drowning in so many lies and inaccuracies that it can’t be construed as anything but fiction. I could list them here, but honestly, it requires much more effort than I’m willing to give the guy who has such an obvious bad taste in his mouth about our town.

And besides, Shawn Vestal from The Spokesman Review and Daniel Walters from The Inlander already did the leg work of pointing out all of the lies and they did it well. Good job, gentlemen.

I’ve lived in this town my whole life. That’s not to say I’ve never been anywhere else. I’ve been to a lot of different towns, and I have yet to find one better than Spokane. Comparable? Yes. Better? No.

I went to school with plenty of people who couldn’t wait to get out. They had bigger dreams in bigger cities. That’s fine. Some of them even spoke poorly about our fair city. That’s fine, too. But none of them just blatantly made up facts to support their argument like Mr. Delistraty did when he put Spokane on blast in front of the entire world.

A little while ago, some morning show anchors in Los Angeles made some critical comments about Spokane. They were obviously not speaking from experience, but rather stereotypes. That’s ok. It rubbed a lot of us the wrong way at the time, but we saw it as a chance to educate the folks from southern California. Not sure if it worked, but hey, better to take the high, right?

Mr. Delistraty’s views of our town appear to be so passionately jaded that I don’t think a care package will change his mind. I’m not sure anything will. Perhaps a session with Sean Maguire repeatedly telling him whatever happened to him in Spokane was “not his fault” followed by a good cry would be an appropriate start. But I doubt it. He’s found greener pastures doing whatever it is he’s doing now and we’re perfectly happy living our miserable lives in this post-apocalyptic Mad Max: Fury Road town without him.

“Spokane Doesn’t Suck.” It’s not just a catchy saying. It’s the truth.

Oh yeah, Go Zags!