Gift guide 2024: Local goods for the win
By Ben Olson Reader Staff It’s gift-giving season in North Idaho, and there are few better ways to support your neighbors than buying local. For this week’s gift guide, we’re offering some ideas for...
Category: Ben Olson
Freedumb
By Ben Olson Reader Staff If you toss a water balloon into a crowd of Idahoans, chances are you’ll hit someone wearing a shirt that has something about “freedom” written on it. Perhaps it’s...
Reader to celebrate anniversary milestones with community party at Matchwood
By Ben Olson Reader Staff It’s amazing how fast 10 years goes by. At this time in December 2014, I was frantically putting together the relaunch of the Sandpoint Reader after it went out...
‘Ono grinds at Sunshine on Cedar
By Ben Olson Reader Staff After eating at Sunshine on Cedar, the new bar and restaurant inside the Cedar Street Bridge, the Hawaiian slang ‘ono grinds (meaning “delicious food”) might become a new part...
Restless ideologues tilting at windmills
By Ben Olson Reader Staff I read a story once about a woman who constantly rearranged the furniture inside her home. Every few days or so, she’d try the couch on the other side...
Museum offers ‘Hands-On History’ activities for kids
By Ben Olson Reader Staff For many young kids, history is just another subject in school, requiring them to memorize the names of long-dead people and the dates in which they did something notable....
Ice skating rink to open in Ponderay
By Ben Olson Reader Staff Anybody growing up in North Idaho can attest that ice skating is a sport that usually happens only when conditions are just right. It can’t be too warm or...
Why are there no Thanksgiving bangers?
By Ben Olson Reader Staff There are a lot of hills I’d die on: hot dogs aren’t a sandwich, litterbugs should spend the weekend in jail, those who don’t use turn signals are the...
‘Giving Thanks’ in the form of song
By Ben Olson Reader Staff Thanksgiving in Sandpoint has become a Shook-ie affair. The hometown stars Laurie and Katelyn Shook will bring Shook Twins back to the Panida for the annual “Giving Thanks” concert...
Gatekeepers of paradise
By Ben Olson Reader Staff Being born and raised in Sandpoint, I’ve done a bit of gatekeeping over the years. The term “gatekeeping” began trending a few years ago to describe “When someone takes...
