The Broadway sign is up. The kitchen isn't — yet.
The Rundowntoday in 40 seconds
- 01Boise's marquee 6A game is Thursday; Friday's slate risks a soaking.
- 02First 50% rain chance in a month lands Friday; Sunday cools to 77.
- 03Tacos Loteria takes the Broadway pho room — no menu, no date yet.
- 04Fair's last concert is Friday; closing Sunday locks the gate at 8pm.
- 05Nampa's 2050 survey is open; the city needs 19,000 homes regardless.
Today's Edition
Today is 96 degrees and the last dry day for a while. Then the pattern turns, and the whole valley's weekend runs backward from what August trained us to expect: cooler as it goes, cleanest on the coldest day. The Forecast has the numbers that will move your Friday plans before you make them.
There's a thread under most of today's issue, and it's a clock. The fair's main stage quits before its two biggest days. The marquee high school game everyone's saving for Friday is actually tonight. A Broadway room changes hands with no opening date at all. Even Nampa's growth survey is a question about a year — 2050 — asked in ten minutes this weekend. Every piece here is really about when.
Read the timing and you keep your Saturday. Miss it and you're standing at a locked gate at 8:15.
The cool day is the clean one, and the biggest game is the one you almost missed.
— The Editor
The morning cover — one frame for the whole edition
FAMILY BUDGET
The biggest football night in Boise is tonight, not Friday
Capital at Boise kicks at 7 tonight — everything else waits for a rainy Friday.
Capital at Boise, 7 p.m. tonight at Dona Larsen Park. Not Friday. That's the one that's going to strand half the families in town, because it is the only 6A game not on the Friday slate, and it is exactly the game a Boise family would most assume kicks off with everybody else. The rest of southern Idaho's schedule sits under Friday's 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, the highest rain chance the valley has seen in a month, while tonight is dry.
Friday isn't all 7 p.m. either, and that catches people out every year. Preston at Emmett is 5. Hagerman at North Star is 4:30 at Riverglen Junior High. Raft River at Idaho City is 6. Leave work at six planning to catch a whole game and you'll miss the first half of three of them. Canyon County carries the deepest slate: Burley at Nampa, Mountain Home at Caldwell, Twin Falls at Vallivue, plus Melba, Marsing, Wilder, Notus, Nampa Christian and Homedale, most at 7. Budget 2 hours from kickoff to the final whistle, plus the drive.
One Emmett senior is worth the drive by himself. Jax Banuelos — receiver and outside linebacker — broke his leg badly at a camp last August and was told doctors weren't sure he'd walk again. He missed his junior season, came back to start three ways in Emmett's 55-0 week-zero win over Moscow, and committed to Idaho State on a Division I scholarship. His coach, Rich Hargitt, told KIVI it felt like closing a circle: “I felt like we closed the circle, so to speak, last Friday night. And it was, it was really neat to see him out there playing with his friends again.” Banuelos told KIVI his own message: “A lot of people say, oh, you can't go play big-time football, you can't do this, it's just like a little farm town, like don't listen to people. Dream big and go chase it because you can really do it.” Emmett hosts Preston at 5 Friday.
The honest weekend math: tonight is dry and it's the biggest game in Boise, so go if you can. Nobody publishes Idaho high school gate prices centrally and they vary by school, so check your school's ticketing page and bring cash. Friday's whole slate risks a soaking, and if your seat washes out, KTVB streams Friday Night Football free around 10:40 p.m. on KTVB.COM, YouTube, and KTVB+. Going tonight or Friday? Reply with the school you're rooting for, and a real person reads every one.
Everybody's saving Friday for football. The biggest game in Boise is tonight.
Source · KTVB, KIVI Idaho News 6
THE FORECAST
96° / 77°
Ninety-six today, then August finally lets go
MOOD OF THE SKY: BREAKING. Today's 96 is the last hot afternoon of the stretch, and I can tell you exactly where it sits: nine above the normal high of 87, nine short of the 105 that stood since 1883. Patchy smoke rides along with it. Yesterday ran 99, and here's the part that wears you down — the nights aren't cooling. The low only backed off to 72. Tonight we get down to 64 with a 20 percent shot at showers and thunder after midnight.
Then the sky changes its mind. Friday tops out at 84, a twelve-degree drop, with a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms mainly after noon. That's the first honest rain the valley's had in a month — Boise has logged a TRACE for all of August against a normal of 0.14 inches. I won't oversell it as a washout, because it's a coin flip, and the coin lands right on Friday night's high school football. Saturday climbs back to 86, mostly sunny. Sunday is 77 and sunny, ten below normal, and it's the pick of the weekend. The cool one is the clean one.
On the fire map, read the geography before you fret. The Red Flag Warning runs noon to 9 over the Owyhee Mountains and three southeast Oregon zones — not the Treasure Valley, not the foothills. Our own thunder chance today is zero. That smoke you caught yesterday drifted off the Cave Fire south of Kuna, now about 1,500 acres. The Boise River at Glenwood read 757 cfs this morning, a clean float, and the air index sits at 57, Moderate, ozone. If you ride the foothills, give Ridge to Rivers time to dry after Friday's rain rather than trusting Saturday morning — wet soils rut. The good day is Sunday, cool and clear. Save your best plans for Sunday.
TODAY
96° / 77°
BREAKING
TONIGHT
64°F
Patchy Smoke
TOMORROW
84°F
Slight Chance
Source · NWS Boise, USGS, AirNow
THE TABLE
THE TABLE
The pho room on Broadway just got a new tenant
A family taco business is taking the address we told you Dong Khanh was leaving.
That sign talks more than the interview did: stews, seafood, weekend buffet.
The building at 2137 S. Broadway Ave. has a fresh sign on it, and it isn't pho. Back on July 2 we told you the pho institution at that address was on its way out, headed for a bigger space in Meridian. Now we know who's moving into the room. Permits filed with the City of Boise, reported by BoiseDev on August 24, show Loteria Restaurant taking the space — the second location for Tacos Loteria, owned by Tacos Loteria LLC and Maria Angelica Callejas.
The first Tacos Loteria rolled as a food truck in 2023 and opened its first brick-and-mortar in Meridian in June 2025. That original, at 950 E. Fairview Ave., Suite 100, is the one you can eat at right now — tacos, burritos and tortas alongside mole Oaxaqueño, chile rellenos, menudo, posole, camarones a la diabla, alambre, and tortillas made by hand. Holly Chetwood of TOK Commercial, which handled the deal, confirmed to BoiseDev this will be the group's second location.
Now the part that asks for patience: no menu, no opening date. Callejas told BoiseDev the Broadway concept runs slightly different from Tacos Loteria, and as of Monday, August 24 she had neither a menu nor a date to share. The only statement of intent is painted on the wall — "Loteria Restaurant, since 2023, stews and seafood, weekend buffet coming soon," as photographed and reported by BoiseDev. That sign talks more than the interview did.
So don't point the car at Broadway this weekend hoping to eat. The permits are in, the sign is up, and that's the whole of it.
📍 950 E. Fairview Ave., Suite 100, Meridian (the location open now) 🕒 The Broadway location has no opening date 💰 Taqueria range ★ Best value now: the handmade-tortilla plates at the Meridian original
— Nina's Table: A room Boise knows by heart, waiting on its next kitchen — watch this one.
Source · BoiseDev
ARTS & CULTURE
The fair runs ten days.
The main stage runs five.
Lee Brice closes the Grandstand Friday — and there's no headliner Saturday or Sunday.
The Grandstand goes dark for the fair's two biggest days, and almost nobody in the valley is telling you that. Every guide calls the concert stage the engine of the whole thing, so you've probably penciled in a weekend show without checking. Open the fair's own page, though, and the count is plain: five concerts in a ten-day run, and they quit before Saturday even arrives.
What we got half-right Back on August 20 we told you the good reasons to go all land later in the run. Half right — the concerts do land late, but they stop on Friday. Tonight, Thursday, is The Art of Rap featuring Ice-T and Sir Mix-A-Lot, and those are the only two names the fair itself prints. Friday is Lee Brice, the last main-stage act of 2026. Saturday's Grandstand is empty, Sunday too. General admission stays free with fair admission; reserved seats, box seats and VIP Pit are sold apart.
The gate that ruins somebody's night The entry cutoffs are not the closing times, and that detail sits a click deep on idahofair.com. Through August 29, no entry after 10 p.m. But on closing Sunday, August 30, the gate locks at 8 p.m., a full two hours before the 10 p.m. close. Roll up at 8:15 that night and you're standing in the parking lot. Today only, Thursday, is BOGO admission from noon to 4. Friday runs half-price with a student ID, same window.
Why go anyway Because the fair, going back to 1897, is a lot more than the stage. New this year is the Off Axis Acrobatic Show — BMX stunts and springboard divers off a 70-foot high-dive platform. Sword swallower Dan Meyer holds 40 world records and logged about 14,000 unsuccessful attempts before his first swallow. Rebecca “Fireplug,” the stilts artist, told KIVI why she keeps at it: “I love being at the fair, engaging with guests, being a part of their fair experience, and bringing about wonder, joy, and inspiration.” Carnival wristbands run $42 weekdays and $47 weekends and don't include admission; single ride tickets are $1, the Sky Ride is $6.
So here's your call, and Expo Idaho is at 5610 Glenwood St. Want the music? Tonight or tomorrow — and know that Friday's Lee Brice show sits under a 50 percent rain chance, the wettest forecast the valley's seen in a month. Want the fair itself with no stage pressure, the acrobats and the swords and the midway? The whole weekend is wide open. Just don't drive up to closing Sunday after 8.
Five concerts, ten days, and the music stops before the weekend even starts.
Source · Western Idaho Fair, KIVI Idaho News 6
boise.term — zsh — 120×40
$ boise --today --topic=local hustle
> Nampa needs 19,000 more homes. It's asking us what kind of city we want.
Nampa needs 19,000 more homes by 2050 just to cover its current shortfall and its growth. That's the central number in the city's Nampa 2050 comprehensive plan — the document that turns what a city of about 123,000 people says it values into the zoning and land-use rules the rest of us live under. A second-phase public survey is open now, and it's the rare civic thing any of us can actually finish in ten minutes.
Where the growth actually goes Some of those 19,000 homes will be infill inside current city limits. Most is expected outside them, in Canyon County land Nampa plans to annex. A few numbers from the city's own trends document reframe what most of us assume. Homeownership didn't fall under the affordability crunch — it climbed, from 62 percent in 2015 to 71 percent in 2024, while renting dropped from 38 to 29. The average Nampa home runs $415,542, about $126,000 less than Meridian. And 66 percent of Nampa's housing was built after 1990.
The parks gap that'll get forwarded 41 percent of Nampa residents live within a ten-minute walk of a park. That's better than Caldwell or Meridian, under the national average of 57 percent, and well below Boise's 75. The survey now asks us to rank strategies across housing, transportation, parks, infrastructure and opportunity — including, as BoiseDev published, to “Protect agricultural lands and open spaces through stewardship, preservation incentives, and urban agriculture programs” and to “Support attainable housing and broader affordability, including childcare and transportation, to retain residents.”
Worth noticing plainly: on August 17, nine days before this survey launched, the Nampa City Council funded Valley Regional Transit at $283,193 — roughly a third of the ask — after Mayor Darl Bruner broke two 3-3 ties. Transportation is one of the categories the survey now asks us to rank. Do the reading first: the trends document and phase-one summary are posted alongside the survey, and answering without them is ranking strategies without the numbers that produced them. The survey's open now; the next thing to watch is when the city publishes what we told it.
/* Nampa needs 19,000 more houses either way — the survey only asks what they look like. */
Source · BoiseDev
📋 The Ledgerwhat we're watching — and when it moves, you'll read it here
- ●BSU Pac-12 transition — September 5 at Oregon, then the September 12 home opener against Memphis — the North End Zone's first real… (watching since 6/23) · Δ 8/25: 2026-08-25: athletics budget deficit noted as an unverified adjacent thread
- ●Boise State 2026 QB1 & fall camp — The September 5 opener at Oregon, then the September 12 home opener against Memphis — the North End Zone's… (watching since 7/28) · Δ 8/25: 2026-08-25: the QB2 question this thread has carried since 07-28 is answered. Sourced to Gemini's research off Idaho Statesman / East Idaho News beat reporting; NOT independently verified by us and NOT published — the sports beat swapped off BSU this issue. Filed so the record stays current. Verify the official depth chart release before printing any of it.
- ●Idaho Potato Drop relocation — contract request to Expo Idaho — The Western Idaho Fair vacates Expo Idaho after Sunday, August 30. That is the gate on any Ada County Commi… (watching since 8/14) · Δ 8/25: 2026-08-25: repair scope and timing added via BoiseDev's August 21 'You Asked' on the Borah Building
- ●Hefty ReNew 'Orange Bag' sunset — five valley jurisdictions lose their hard-to-recycle plastic option — Whether Boise announces any successor diversion program before June 30, 2027; where the roughly 2,000-ton a… (watching since 8/25) · Δ 8/25: opened by the 08-25 issue (Civic & Policy)
- ●27th & Fairview — 713 apartments and a 16-story tower on the west edge of downtown — City staff review was scheduled the week of August 17. No design review hearing date had been set as of Aug… (watching since 8/25) · Δ 8/25: watch date passed (2026-08-17) — resolve or renew
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