Hoopfest

The world’s largest 3-​on-​3 basketball tournament is located in Spokane, Washington. It’s always a huge highlight of my summer and a not-​to-​be-​missed weekend. Make sure to have a snarky team name, cash for the food trucks, a good tan, a party to attend, pain meds, and some good buddies to share the street ball glories and epic defeats. Sign up early and book your hotel— every one else will.

This is a great event. It is organized and executed exceptionally well. It’s amazing how over 250,000 people descend upon downtown Spokane and it’s not cluttered/​clustered. It may get busy in the food vendor area, but that’s to be expected. There is enough seating around each street court, plenty of bathrooms (porta potties), and a decent amount of trash/​recycle containers. Hoopfest is such an awesome social sporting event with excellent people watching. I don’t play basketball, but love watching my friends and and everyone else compete. If you’ve never been, you really ought to check it out!

Ok, after returning home from my fourth Hoopfest in a row, I think that I can finally give an extremely accurate review of the largest 3 – 3 basketball tournament on earth. Let’s get started…
This past weekend was Hoopfest’s 25 anniversary. The whole set up is incredible and VERY hard to explain, but imagine this: The entire city of Spokane and surrounding area completely shut down, and every road, parking lot, and bridge hosts basketball court, after basketball court, after basketball court. It’s truly amazing how they can provide basketball courts, brackets, and fun to over a quarter million people that somehow all fit into downtown Spokane. The basketball part of it is just fun (though it can get pretty physical and rough, and the «court monitors» don’t exactly make terrific calls, they’re volunteers and you just gotta love with it) and in between your own games you can go and watch your friends and family, and then they come and watch your games, giving you a whole fan club, lol… it’s just fun! And I applaud their organization of it all!
Besides your own basketball games, there are PLENTY of other things to do! In Riverfront park, there a tons of vendors, food trucks, bouncy houses for the kids, etc. In «Center Court», sponsored by Nike and Beats by Dre, are the elite games where the best of the best duke it out for the title of Hoopfest champion while being televised and in front of hundreds of people. It’s really fun to say the least! Every year I come to Hoopfest, I always find some new area of the city I hadn’t noticed the year before, and this weekend I found and recommend going to the main, multi-​story shopping complex on the West Side of the city. Not only is it shopping galore, but there are CLEAN (No HoneyBuckets that are sprawled out all over the city) restrooms, more genuine food in their food court, and just a nice, secluded, out of the way place (especially on the upper floors) to just take a moment and relax from all the organized chaos outside. Another thing I discovered was this new park funded by Avista behind the Washington State Power Building and the Spokane Dam! Ok, it was BEAUTIFUL and I got the coolest river shots and it was also, as above, out of the way and secluded from the commotion. Another cool addition is the Nike Hoopfest Store which is a makeshift Nike Outlet with lots of shoes and everything else on sale at a discounted price… LOVE IT!
DOS: 1) Bring tons of water! Not so much Hoopfest 25, but other years and for sure some in the future, it can get 80*+! 2) Book your hotel AT LEAST six months in advance because there won’t be a room available in a 10 mile radius of Spokane. 3) Download the Hoopfest app! This new addition was so helpful to us in looking at brackets, scores, friends courts and everything in between. If you want to be semi-​organized I would highly recommend getting the free app.
DONT’S: 1) Don’t expect to come to Hoopfest and have a «relaxing» time! You’re constantly roaming through the city and by the end of the day all you want to do is go back to your hotel and SLLEEP! 2) Don’t use the HoneyBuckets! They’re nasty as heck, and 90% there is a massive line just to use one. Just go to one of the local business, use theirs, or find the city-​run public restrooms as they’re cleaner and, I personally have never had a line.
I have nothing but respect for the people of Hoopfest. They somehow manage to give hundreds of thousands of people an enjoyable, sweaty, fun weekend and be organized and efficient about it! I’ve made memories that will live with me forever at Hoopfest, and I don’t think I’m going to miss another one as long as I live!

Awesome!
I’ve been to Hoopfest21, 22, and now i am here for 23! Basketball, festival food, hott girls! The place is a straight up zoo. They close down the entire downtown and make the streets half courts. Then, night is one giant party! If you havent been to a hoopfest you need to. If your from out of town make sure you book your room reservations months in advance because the downtown fills up quick.