In downtown Spokane, the eclipse brought wonder and an eerie sky but no big moment

The light dimmed, the air cooled and the solar eclipse showed its growing crescent in shadows cast by leaves.

For a moment, as people turned their eyes sunward, or stared at their pinhole projections on the ground, or wondered what everyone was looking at, the world slowed down. Traffic calmed. Jackhammers stilled. People gathered on sidewalks.

Downtown Spokane workers stood in awe, all facing the same direction on a sunny patch of sidewalk, passing visors back and forth like some sort of contraband. NASA-approved contraband. A lot of “wows” were heard.

Clearly, it wasn’t a typical Monday morning. At 10:27 a.m., more than 90 percent of the sun was blocked by the moon in Spokane. Judging by the calm that descended on downtown, about 90 percent of activity was blocked by the partial solar eclipse.

Sofie Ogren, 24, was on a 10-minute break from Nordstrom, standing outside Spokane City Hall. Her family was camping on a soccer field in Oregon, but she had to stay behind to do inventory. She said the eclipse gave Spokane an “eeriness.”

“It feels weird. It does feel ominous,” Ogren said. “It’s kind of like looking through an Instagram filter.”

Her break was ending, and she had to go itemize luxury goods. “I can see why people used to think this was witchcraft,” she said.

On Wall Street, five kitchen staffers from Red Robin were gawking at the dozens of crescent shadows thrown on the pavement by a tree’s leaves.

Mario Labrador, 30, complained how he couldn’t see anything without visors, until someone let him borrow a pair.

“That was magical,” he said, lowering the deeply tinted frames.

His co-worker, Josh McClain, 29, agreed.

“I didn’t think it would be this cool, but it is this cool,” he said.

In front of the Lincoln Building, about 50 people who worked at Alliant Insurance Services shared a moment. One of their co-workers brought 30 visors to work, and their boss let them take an hour off to watch the moon pass between the sun and Earth.

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” said Tyler Jackson, 26. How long? “About two weeks.”

He had his camera out, and rifled through his shots excitedly.

“I got some good ones,” he said. “It’s really trippy.”

There was no big moment for Spokane’s solar eclipse. No totality, no cheering. Nearly 300 people gathered near Mobius Children’s Museum and Science Center. There weren’t enough visors, and the Galaxy Slime went quick. Still, everyone was excited.

At around 11 a.m., the world was brightening again. The moon was moving on. Sidewalks were again for walkers.