“You got your gun?” she giggled. My friend was mostly joking, but twenty years ago, it wouldn’t have been a laughing matter to wander through the West End of Spokane at night.

We were heading to Andy’s, one of Spokane’s most Cheers-esque watering holes. (They may not know yours but they surely know my name) Going to Andy’s means navigating dark (very dark) streets and an endless maze of construction projects, through a part of town that the Spokesman-Review once deemed a “headquarters to vagrants and pigeons.”