City Weekly February 2, 2023

A Safe Space

Remembering Salt Lake City’s Nettie Gregory Center and the African American community that built it.

BY WES LONG

SLC FORECAST

S AP

BOX

@SLCWEEKLY @SLCWEEKLY @CITYWEEKLY

Let the Games Begin

I am the first to admit that I do not understand modern Olympic intricacies. Mine is an idle concern living in the Salt Lake Valley, which appears to be the object within the Olympics’ gravitational pull—similar to that of a cosmic black hole.

By casual observation, there appears to be some malaise surrounding the 2030 Olympics—like the childhood indoor recess game of hot potato. The first three potential bidding parties were revealed during the 135th International Olympic Committee (IOC) Session at the SwissTech

Convention Centre in Lausanne, Switzerland. They were Salt Lake City of the United States, Sapporo of Japan and a joint bid from the Spanish cities of Barcelona and Zaragoza in the Pyrenees region. Later, Vancouver, Canada, made a preliminary bid submission in February 2021.

By January of 2023, Japan was in and now is out. Spain was in and now is out. Vancouver was in and now is out. It is starting to feel like the wonderful Agatha Christie play “And Then There Were None.” Yes, it is a little eerie or, in ScoobyDoo language, “spooky”.

If I were a supervisor and retained only one out of four of my employees—or in this case countries—my job would be in hot water. Fortunately, IOC members are recruited and elected, not hired.

The current condition of the water may suggest why the decision on the 2030 Winter Olympics host city has been delayed, most likely to 2024, to allow the IOC more time to carefully plan the future of the Winter Olympics. Officially, one reason is to consider climate change and sustainability of future host cities.

Most Utahans want the Olympics to come again—and why not? A recent poll showed that 79% of Utahns approve of the Olympics returning to the state. Many retain fond memories of welcoming the world and volunteering during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

I have friends and neighbors who spent countless hours shuttling, interpreting, guiding, issuing IDs and checking tickets. They just like to volunteer and help. According to Wallet Hub, Utah has the highest volunteer rate in the nation. It’s just what we do.

These Olympic volunteers served because they liked it. My sole, vain and shallow reason would have been to get the really cool volunteer ski jacket. Incidentally, I am still waiting to inherit one of these from any kind person on my street.

Please put Utahns down as almost “all in” for any and all Olympics. The year 2030 does appear to be the one that other candidates pulled out from, perhaps because they knew a meteorite will hit and demolish most of the planet in 2030 and, for some reason, Utahns were not privy to

this information. But before the meteorite, please count me in for the cheap seats at the ski jump event in Park City. I will be the one wearing shorts with huge binoculars from the 1980s and the stocking cap with the multicolored pom-pom on top.

MICHAEL SHOEMAKER

Magna

“City State,” Jan. 24 online Mayor Erin Mendenhall should be ashamed of herself and her (mis)handling of the unsheltered crisis. The mayor has failed one of the most vulnerable populations in the state.

JHUFF012

Via Instagram

As much as I like Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, she hasn’t done s—t. Then, with this ballpark issue? Bye.

JCTROUT72

Via Instagram

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THE WATER COOLER

If you could choose the next president, who would it be?

Bill Frost

Selina Meyer, aka Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Veep is like a documentary now, so she has the experience..

Katharine Biele

Is this a trick question? I’m trying to think of someone under 70, but it’s not coming to me.

Scott Renshaw

Anyone who doesn’t want to murder democracy would be nice.

Kelly Boyce

Bernie Sanders. Let the man make some real changes!

Benjamin Wood

Are we limited to politicians? If so ... I don’t know, Mitt Romney? Why not, fun for Utah—Congress passes the laws anyway. If not just politicians, then I choose Jeff Speck, author of Walkable City and Walkable City Rules.

Jerre Wroble

Hillary is *still* the most qualified.

Pete Saltas

America needs to be single for a bit. Like no president and just chill for like two years.

Carolyn Campbell

The next president should be Lieutenant Columbo. No one could lie to him and get away with it.

BY CAT PALMER

Mother Knows Best— Unless You Ask the Utah Legislature Y

ou know that old adage about broken clocks being right twice a day? Well, in April 2018, state Sen. Mike Kennedy tweeted, “It’s time we returned health care to a patient-doctor relationship, and put individuals back in the driver’s seat.”

More recently, the Alpine Republican’s website claims: “People know how to care for themselves and their families. Government should not usurp the power of parents.”

Unfortunately, that’s where the accuracy of Kennedy’s broken clock ends. If you’ve been under a rock for the first awful days of the Utah legislative session, know that Kennedy is the sponsor of SB16, which uses child surgery as a red herring to take all gender-affirming care out of the hands of parents and away from transgender children.

Kennedy’s bill earned final approval on Jan. 27, and Gov. Spencer Cox signed the bill into law the next day (a Saturday). When it came up in committee, the sponsor’s expert witness held a Ph.D. in philosophy and worked for a think tank—not a medical institution—but made sure to present himself as a “doctor” and use medical language in stoking false fears.

Despite the narrative Republicans have created, Utah families and their doctors are not performing gender-affirming surgeries on minors. Nicole Mihalopoulos, M.D., informed the committee of this, but lawmakers only heard

what they wanted to hear. Under the new law, children will be unable to seek any hormone blockers or other non-invasive, gender-affirming medical care until they are at least 18 years old.

This law affects my kid and hits close to home. Despite beautiful public testimony from many during the committee hearing, one fact remains: The Utah State Capitol is where voices of dissent go to die.

On a cold Tuesday, we gathered at the Capitol to rally— hoping to have our voices heard and to let the same kids who the Legislature spent all week disparaging know that they are loved. The truth is that these abhorrent bills are being pushed through by uncaring politicians who are picking and choosing what they want to believe.

The rally was inspiring and heartfelt. But as we expected, the bill passed easily through committee, then the Senate and then the House. The governor quickly signed it. Kennedy has acknowledged there will be lawsuits over his bill. He and his colleagues don’t care. Sen. Tim Jimenez, R-Tooele, backed up this sentiment when he said, “It’s our job to push the court and see what they will do.”

So many individual comments by these folks are disturbing. But one thing they all have in common is when they say, with a straight face, that they really do like all children. Yes, even the children they are trying to take bodily autonomy away from.

Sure, I can believe that lawmakers want to like all children, and they want to be helpful. But at the end of the day, they really only love the children who look like them and the children who do not complicate their narrow view of the world.

They have this false sense of reality that they are helping, but they also know about the suicide rates among trans kids, and they don’t care. They continue to bully these kids through lawmaking without batting an eye.

Do you know how hard it is to sit and listen to this as the parent of a trans daughter? I looked at the youth in the

room where these politicians were using their existence for political gain and wished I could protect them all.

Greg Walker, another parent of a transgender kid, agreed with me. “This process has been frustrating,” he told me. “When you have a transgender child, there are established standards of care. They make this political, but as parents, it isn’t. The authors of the bill keep bringing in studies from other countries, like Sweden, instead of following what every major American Medical Association defines as the best way to move forward in giving our child the best care.”

Walker added: “If you start politicizing people’s health, where does it end?”

During one hearing, I sat next to Theo, a non-binary, recent graduate of the University of Utah, who had never been to a legislative hearing before. “I remember the frustration of being a teenager who felt constantly dismissed by adults, and I felt that again today during the hearing,” Theo told me. “These kids will see this, and they won’t forget how their concerns, their feelings, were ignored by adults who won’t see eye-to-eye with them. I certainly won’t.”

Theo is right, and this is not our first rodeo. They want to take away our rights and our children’s rights and treat us all like second-class citizens. We are not going away. We will not forget. And we will see them in court.

Oh, and to Sen. Kennedy and Rep. Katy Hall, R-Ogden, (SB16’s House sponsor): My kid thinks it’s weird that you are so obsessed with her genitals. So do I.

P.S.—Equality Utah’s Sue Robbins maintains a useful transgender information resource at sueinut.com. Your call to action? Call, email and text your legislators. Tell them why you believe in real parental rights. Call Gov. Spencer Cox’s office, and tell him its wrong to support these harmful bills. This angry mom thanks you. CW

Private Eye is off this week. Send feedback to comments@cityweekly.net

MISS: A Private Matter

The school voucher bill approved by lawmakers last week did more than begin the dismantling of public education—it also stood as confirmation that the governor lacks a spine. Only a year ago, Gov. Spencer Cox vowed to veto voucher legislation until the public education system was fully funded, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. Apparently promising teachers a $6,000 raise was enough for him. But no, public schools are far from fully funded. Far be it for the governor, who has long said he’s “all in on vouchers,” to buck those legislators who seem determined to throw money at parents for homeschooling and—ahem—private education. Without evidence, legislators have said the public suddenly fully approves of vouchers, and so they passed a vetoand referendum-proof bill. Cox could have sent a message with a veto anyway. Parents who don’t want their kids taught in those liberal “guv-schools” can now pocket $8,000 for private ed. Why not give every parent $8,000 and let them use it for public ed, too?

MISS: Don’t Breathe

They knew it, you knew it, everybody knew it, and yet lawmakers and business moguls actively worked to protect t he fossil fuel industry—and other polluting companies—at the expense of public health. A lawsuit maintains that fossil fuel companies knew for decades how their products would change the climate, the podcast “Living On Earth” reports. But those companies kept that information under wraps. Utah has a similar problem as the Great Salt Lake recedes from the effects of climate change. If we didn’t know this before, we do now—US Magnesium is a bad actor. The company’s work along the lake contributes up to one-fourth of Wasatch Front pollution, the Deseret News reports. Environmentalists have been warning for years about not only about US Mag, but also the now-shuttered Stericycle and other polluting industries, all belching into an inversion-heavy valley. Just know this is intentional.

HIT: Squirreled Away

Living in an urban area may leave you oblivious to the wildlife that surrounds you and how interconnected the ecosystem is. This winter has brought the issue to doorsteps and backyards in a way that had been scattershot in past years. Urban neighborhoods were posting about elk feasting on front yards and cameras were capturing bobcats and coyotes sauntering up driveways. The ubiquitous deer are back even out of hunting season. Now because they seem to be everywhere, the fox squirrel has become both a menace and a source of entertainment. The Natural History Museum of Utah is running a survey to find out what’s up with the species native to the eastern U.S., The Salt Lake Tribune reports. Some residents are out gunning for them—legally, of course. But let’s not get trigger happy. Last year, 1,283 wildlife were illegally killed, according to the Division of Wildlife Resources. Ultimately “Salt Lake Valley residents will just need to learn to live with their new neighbors.”

You’ve Got Mail

One thing I was aware of but didn’t fully appreciate—prior to my running every street in several cities across the Salt Lake Valley—is that the vast majority of roads are residential. If you think of your average daily travel pattern, it probably consists of interstates, off-ramps, major thoroughfares and maybe just a few residential streets before pulling into your driveway. We know there are other residential streets like ours but they tend to be largely theoretical to us. Because our viewpoints of the city are so limited, we tend to perceive certain attributes—either of our own home or that of our neighbors—as unique, when in actuality, we can find similar instances all over the place. A sleek modern house popping up in your neighborhood might be intriguing, but after seeing the same style a thousand times around the city, it becomes a bit more mundane.

That’s what I find so fascinating about personalized mailboxes, as they seem to be one of the few exceptions to this rule. I’ve seen hundreds of them by now and I’ve yet to see the same decked-out design twice. And although SLC is the focal point of the valley’s art scene, it unfortunately does not extend to mailbox creativity, as we pale in comparison to our suburban counterparts.

One of my personal favorites is up in the Mount Olympus neighborhood of Millcreek. That mailbox is squeezed between two giant boulders (above photo), reminding me of the Kjeragbolten, a unique rock formation in the fjords of western Norway.

But of all the cities I’ve run, West Valley City takes pole position when it comes to sheer numbers of quirky mailboxes. I’d say my top two are both the bomb (below left), near 3200 West and Lancer Way, and udderly fantastic (below right) near Chippewa Road and Pavant Street .

If you have your own favorites, I’d love to hear about them—drop me a message in my own virtual “mailbox” on Instagram, @SLsees! CW

A mailbox in the Millcreek’s Mount Olympus neighborhood is caught between a rock and an equally hard rock.

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We Could Have Danced All Night

Sundance closes out its first hybrid film festival with buzzy award winners and on- and offscreen drama

BY CHASE HUTCHINSON comments@cityweekly.net

PARK CITY—After more than two years of going virtual-only due to the ongoing pandemic, the Sundance Film Festival returned for a full run of in-person programming in 2023 that saw filmmakers and moviegoers alike making a wide variety of local cinemas their home once more. Whether it was to see harrowing dramas about bodybuilders, character studies about lonely office workers, or any of the other standout films of the festival, the streets were bustling with attendees new and old from all over.

Live programming brought with it the return of an unpredictable blend of controversy, surprise and discovery the Festival is known for. Necessary conversations about equitable access were raised after festival jurors for the U.S. Dramatic Competition walked out of the premiere of Magazine Dreams. They did so after festival organizers failed to provide a working caption device for deaf juror Marlee Matlin, who starred in last year’s award-winning film CODA, which premiered during the 2021 Sundance festival. The jury did eventually see the film and Matlin was at the closing ceremony on Friday to recognize this year’s entries.

The festival also saw the evacuation of the Rose Wagner Theater in Salt Lake City after audience members experienced health emergencies, while films like Past Lives, Fair Play and Infinity Pool generated buzz around awards potential, mainstream appeal and boundary-pushing experimentation, respectively, from festival attendees.

The close of the festival saw a more intimate awards gathering—compared to the grand gatherings previously held at venues like the Basin Recreation Fieldhouse—than previous years, but still captured an air of celebration with many winning filmmakers breaking out in cheers of excitement. At the same time, the moment was not taken lightly by those who were getting recognition for the first time after years of strenuous work.

“I feel relieved that this story is being received by audiences with such emotion and heart. I think that’s the only thing that I hoped—for the film to connect with people,” said Shayda writer-director Noora Niasari after winning the Audience Award for the World Cinema Competition.

Shayda tells the story of an Iranian woman living in Australia who moves into a women’s shelter with her 6-year-old daughter to get away from her abusive husband and find a way to rebuild their lives. The titular Shayda—as played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi, who was named best actress at last year’s Cannes Film Festival for Holy Spider—is a character whose deeply felt story was drawn from Niasari’s own experiences.

“From our very specific personal story, for it to speak to a global audience, to really show the bravery and strength of Iranian women on this stage, is just an incredible gift,” Niasari said.

This was echoed by Mstyslav Chernov, director of the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol. Focused on the conflict in Ukraine, it won the Audience Award for the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Chernov described the audience award as the most important in the festival. The response of the crowd during its live premiere was “amazing,” he said.

“This is not an achievement, per se. It’s a privilege to tell this story to a wider audience,” Chernov said. “It also gives the film a chance to be seen by many people and potentially help raise awareness because of the crisis that is unfolding right now. What I’m saying to all the audience is that it’s called 20 Days in Mariupol, but 20 days is not the end of it. The war is going on right now.”

Many attendees and industry representatives were swooping in to drop top dollar on buzzed-about films, like those that came from this year’s generally solid midnight programming, with Prime Video striking first on In My Mother’s Skin and A24 recently picking up the sinister supernatural horror Talk To Me

Even works that won festival awards are still looking to get seen by wider audiences. And in a moviegoing landscape continually being reshaped by streaming, this can both a challenge and opportunity. It also remains to be seen how the festival’s pivot to hybrid programming—which saw diminished crowds at screening venues as attendees opted to consume content from the comfort of their homes—will affect the future environment of in-person screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Mountain Resort.

However, even if just for a couple hours at a time, there were many opportunities for audiences to discover new voices and for collaborators to laugh and celebrate the work that it had taken to get to the festival. One such moment came when this reporter asked Niasari if she was behind a knock-knock joke that was delivered in the film by actor Mojean Aria, unaware he was standing nearby during the interview.

“I came up with the knock-knock joke, yeah,” Niasari said with a laugh. “But in my

interactions with Aria, who plays Farhad, I just saw that particular moment really feeling honest in his naivete and charm.”

It was then that Aria jumped in from behind this reporter and proceeded to share his love for his director and this story, holding back tears as he quickly became overcome with emotion about what this particular film meant to him. “All my life as an actor, I thought I’d always have to play other roles and change my nationality of who I am to be able to fit in this industry. She allowed me to play myself. She allowed me to be myself,” Aria said. “I’m just so grateful to her forever for that.”

Niasari also returned this praise for all of her film’s actors who she credited with helping her to tell this story. “I’m so proud of Mojean, I’m so proud of Zar, and Selina, the little girl who plays my inner child. They’re all just gifts,” Niasari said. “They helped me overcome my trauma and get to this stage.”

This, more than anything else, offers a glimpse of the magic of the festival that had been missing for many. Getting to take in works by new storytellers, discovering visions and artists you may never have seen outside of this context, is where it taps into something spectacular. When we all head home, these are the memories that will stick with us. At least, until next year when we all return to make some more. CW

The filmmaking team behind the Sundance entry Shayda take questions after a screening.

Complete listings online at cityweekly.net

Peking Acrobats

Let’s face it: Audiences love spectacle. There are plenty of reasons to go out to the theater, but among the most persuasive is a chance to see things you just don’t ordinarily get a chance to see—like folks who can balance atop a pyramid of chairs, or engage in acts of trick cycling and other similar bits of physical prowess. And that’s exactly what the Peking Acrobats troupe has been delivering for more than 30 years to audiences around the world.

The Peking Acrobats and their unique skills have been featured on television programs since the mid1980s, including That’s Incredible!, ABC’s Wide World of Sports and The Wayne Brady Show, as well as Fox’s  Guinness Book Primetime  television show in 1999, where they balanced six people atop six chairs 21 feet in the air without safety lines. The troupe is often accompanied by live musicians playing play traditional Chinese instruments, mixing with high-tech special effects and awe-inspiring acrobatic feats to create an exuberant entertainment event. Even those who might not think they’ve ever seen a Peking Acrobats performance may have seen the legacy of their work, as troupe alumnus Qin Shaobo became well-known to American audiences as the nimble Yen in the 2001 film Ocean’s Eleven and its two sequels.

The Peking Acrobats featuring the Shanghai Circus visit the Val Browning Center at Weber State University (3950 W. Campus Dr., Ogden) on Thursday, Feb. 2 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $9 - $55, available via onstageogden.org. Visit the website for tickets and additional event information. (Scott

Renshaw)

Wasatch Theatre Company: The Final Act

It’s been a busy 25th anniversary season for Wasatch Theatre Company, including multiple recent productions—including Dreamers and Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency—as well as relocating from a home in The Gateway to the Eccles Black Box after the closing of the former venue. But the material just keeps coming, including a new play by a veteran of the WTC family.

Former Wasatch Theatre Company board member Georg Plautz serves as playwright for The Final Act, a new show set—perhaps unsurprisingly—in the world of theater. It follows two longtime best friends, Greg (Jonathan Ybanez) and Ben (Tom Roche), who have always shared a love for the theater along with their caring for each other. That relationship is put to the test, however, when Ben presents a play that challenges Greg sense of trust in his old friend. And how does Greg’s girlfriend Jen (Sam Torres) fit into this world of which she isn’t entirely a part?

The Final Act runs Feb. 3 – 14 at the Regent Street Black Box (144 Regent St.) of the Eccles Theater. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Feb. 3-4, 10-11 and 13-14, with 2 p.m. Sunday matinees on Feb. 5 and Feb. 12. Tickets are $20 general admission/$15 student, plus a special two-for-one offer for the closing Valentine’s Day performance using the code VALENTINE; visit arttix.org to purchase tickets and for additional event information. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales will benefit WTC’s George Plautz Emerging Playwrights program, supporting the development of new plays by local writers. (SR)

Repertory Dance Theatre: Regalia

To some degree, it always feels like artists are working against the clock. It’s a bit of a different dynamic, though, when they’re working against the literal clock to create a piece within the constraints of a few hours. That’s part of the fun—and craziness—that makes for the unique experience of Repertory Dance Theatre’s annual Regalia fund-raiser and choreography competition.

Every year, RDT invites choreographers to create a brand-new work with specific company dancers and thematic or other restrictions. Beginning at 2 p.m. on the day of the performance, those choreographers begin a marathon creative process lasting just six hours to stage the works and have them ready for the audiences. This year, the program features four choreographers, all with strong Utah ties: Angela Smith, Ruger Memmott, Rebekah JoAnn Guerra and Constance Anderson. And at the end of the show, it’s the audience members whose votes will decide which of the four pieces will receive a commission from RDT to produce the piece at a later performance.

RDT’s Regalia takes place on Saturday, Feb. 4 at the Rose Wagner Center (138 W. 300 South), with performance at 8 p.m. However, admission includes a full evening of activities, beginning at 6:30 p.m. with a cocktail hour that also features bidding on silent auction items and a chance to view the choreographers at work on their pieces. Following the performance, guests are invited to join an on-stage dance party with music by the Joe Muscolino Band. Tickets are $75; visit arttix.org to purchase tickets and for additional event information. (SR)

JIM MARTIN

IZZY ARRIETTA

School Dazed

A revolving superintendent’s door, board member squabbling and a blistering audit mark three tumultuous years for the Salt Lake City School District.

BY CONNOR SANDERS comments@cityweekly

With four superintendents in three years, school board infighting that spilled into public view, accusations of racial discrimination and a blistering state audit alleging waste and mismanagement, finding a word to sum up the current state of the Salt Lake City School District is quite the endeavor.

“Tumultuous” comes close, while still barely doing justice to the string of new headaches for administrators, educators, parents and students that have seemed to crop up each day like dandelions in an abandoned field.

Hiccups outside of anyone’s control—including a global pandemic that halted inperson instruction and the stark, political dividing lines the district’s response drew— compounded the stress of internal personnel issues until they all boiled over into a ruthless review of the district’s shortcomings released by the Legislature in December.

Here’s some of what the district has waded through, publicly, since 2020. It can be a lot to take in:

Superintendent Lexi Cunningham resigned in January 2020. The district formally says that Cunningham left of her own accord, but one former board member claimed in fairly uncertain terms that Cunningham was likely to be forced out anyway. Larry Madden was named interim superintendent in Cunningham’s absence.

A parent in the district filed a records request for electronic messages between members of the district school board, revealing a trove of unprofessional conversations. In one instance, a board member grew so frustrated by a meeting running long that she texted, “F--K YOU” and “I F--KING HATE YOU” to the board president. Another board member was caught playing solitaire on his computer during a virtual meeting.

Joel-Lehi Organista stepped down from his board seat in January 2021 after he was arrested on suspicion of possessing and producing child pornography, in addition to other, troubling crimes. Organista was later sentenced to 15-years-to-life in prison.

Timothy Gadson III was named district superintendent in July 2021, becoming the state’s first Black school district leader. But one year later, he was placed on administrative leave under a cloud of suspicions, accusations and finger-pointing. After months of deliberation, the district agreed to pay the remainder of Gadson’s contract—

about $200,000 in all—in exchange for his resignation in October of 2022.

And this past December, the Utah Legislature published a lengthy audit of the school district, accusing administrators of neglecting to close schools in the face of shrinking enrollment, leaving taxpayers to cover the costs of unnecessary campuses. The audit also claims that student achievement has fallen.

Despite these speed bumps, district officials say they’ve turned a corner and are ready to leave the last 36 months behind.

“Our district has been through a lot in the last couple of years,” spokesperson Yándary Chatwin said. “It’s been nice to have a period of steadiness with [interim superintendent] Dr. Martin Bates.”

The Salt Lake City School District (SLCSD) has some big plans for how they’ll move forward, starting with finding a permanent replacement for Gadson once Bates’ time as interim superintendent ends in June. But a lot went into Gadson’s ouster, and most of it was hidden from the public’s view.

The Hot Seat

Gadson’s tenure seemed to get off to a solid start, with him promising to visit every school in the district and hear feedback from teachers, students and staff.

But the board’s confidence in Gadson quickly began to wane in the months after he took over in July 2021. A pair of anonymous employees wrote emails to the board in October and November of that year, claiming that morale was at an all-time low and airing out concerns over Gadson’s perceived intimidating nature.

The employees bristled at Gadson for, in their view, shifting responsibility toward a handful of Black administrators who he’d hired instead of relying on the allegedly more qualified employees who had already paid their dues in the district. The letters insinuated that the Black administrators had been given their job interview questions ahead of time to land the positions.

The frustrated employees also claimed they’d overheard Gadson tell another employee that he “would only hire Black administrators because that is equity,” according to emails obtained through a public records request.

“Dr. Gadson will never see a white or Hispanic administrator as working hard enough,” one of the anonymous emails states, “and he will continue to berate and tear down white and Hispanic administrators until they leave and can be replaced with applicants of his choosing.”

They pleaded with the school board to not renew the contracts of Gadson and his associate superintendent, Gwendolyn JohnsonWhite, who eventually resigned in August.

In response to those complaints, Gadson expressed his own concerns of experiencing racial discrimination to the board’s lawyer, Joan Andrews, on April 2, according to an email obtained through a public records request. Then-board President Melissa Ford re-

Since 2020, Salt Lake City School District has been led by four different superintendents, including two interim appointees. The district will soon select a fifth.

sponded, saying the board was “distressed” to hear of Gadson’s concerns and inviting him to discuss them further during closeddoor meetings in an email on April 28.

Gadson replied, “Thank you,” less than a half hour later, but it’s unclear if that meeting ever took place

In May of 2022 then-executive director of school leadership and performance Leeson Taylor—who was hired under Gadson’s watch—emailed Rebecca Pittam, the district’s network director. Taylor told Pittam that he had heard Gadson and himself were under investigation by the board. Taylor was told that board member Kristi Swett had authorized the investigation, the email states.

Then in June, Jeanetta Williams, president of the Utah chapter of the NAACP, asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the district for racially motivated mistreatment of Gadson and other Black school district employees. The next day, a number of district officials sent an anonymous letter to the school board, saying Gadson had lost the

confidence of those who worked under him.

“The past year has seen talented, innovative, highly skilled and successful leaders ignored and often stifled,” the letter reads. “Institutional knowledge has been completely devalued or ignored. Disorganization and lack of communication have become the norm.”

Several other employees sent emails imploring the district to investigate whether Gadson and his hires—including Taylor and former executive director of organizational and strategic leadership Kimberly Mackey— had accepted an expenses-paid trip to Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona.

Get Outta Town

Much was made out of Gadson’s visit to Grand Canyon University (GCU), where he had taught from 2010 to 2015. To catch readers up while staying out of the weeds, and according to emails obtained through a public records request:

Lexi Cunningham, SLC School District superintendent 2016-2020

COURTESY PHOTO COURTESY PHOTO

COURTESY PHOTO

Larry Madden, SLCSD interim superintendent 2020-2021

Martin W. Bates, SLCSD interim superintendent since October 2022 COURTESY PHOTO

Timothy Gadson, SLCSD superintendent 2021-2022

Gadson traveled to Grand Canyon University in January 2022 to meet with administrators about educator training courses and concurrent enrollment offerings that GCU was developing.

The Salt Lake City Board of Education claimed that Gadson had violated its ethics policy by allowing GCU to pay for the trip, but Gadson claimed—and provided a credit card statement to the board supporting— that he paid for the trip himself.

GCU invited Gadson to return in March for a conference they were holding on the university’s offerings. Gadson couldn’t make it, but sent Taylor and Mackey to attend.

SLCSD hired the prestigious local law firm Kirton & McConkie to investigate Gadson and the trips to GCU, but the findings were never made publicly available. Still, the board pushed for Gadson’s resignation in closed-door meetings, though the district denies that any vote to oust Gadson took place behind closed doors, which would violate state transparency laws.

Board member Mohamed Baayd wrote an email to his board colleagues on May 25, stating that he was “perplexed” with how the majority of the board rushed to ask Gadson to resign. In short order, Mackey was dismissed for embellishing her resume, having falsely claimed to hold a Ph.D. Taylor was demoted from his administrative position on July 26.

For months, Gadson remained on leave without any sign of mediation. After the school year began in August, the two sides came to an agreement; Gadson would serve as a consultant to the school board until the end of his contract in July 2023 and the district would pay the rest of his owed salary and vacation time in exchange for his resignation.

Note: The emails from the anonymous employees complaining about Gadson before he visited GCU haven’t been made public before this story. While much remains unknown, the timeline of events and publicly available information raise many questions about the true intention of the complaints against Gadson and the subsequent vitriol he experienced from board members over what would be, at most, a questionably financed golfing trip.

After all of the above, Salt Lake City School District hired Martin Bates—an 11year superintendent of the Granite School District—as its interim choice to replace Gadson on Oct. 4, 2022. Bates is expected to serve in the position until the end of the current academic year, with a bevy of important district decisions to oversee until then.

Spring Breaking

There’s three major priorities the district is juggling right now, spokesperson Chatwin said: first, finding a new, permanent superintendent; second, deciding whether and how to rebuild West High and Highland High; and third, considering a schoolboundary study, which could inform future closures, mergers and reorganization.

First, the superintendent search. Through

an online survey set to close on Feb. 7, the district is amassing resident and parent feedback on what they want in the next leader. From those responses, the district will work with the Utah School Superintendents Association and Utah School Boards Association to hire a local candidate, rather than conducting a nationwide search as it did with Cunningham and Gadson.

“The feedback from the survey will be used to create the application for the position,” Chatwin said. “For example, if stakeholders tell us they want someone with a doctorate, we’ll prioritize that. If they tell us they don’t care about [an administrator having] classroom experience, the board will take that into account.”

Chatwin indicated the board could begin considering candidates before the end of the spring, with the possibility of a new hire starting on July 1—though no set timeline is in place as of yet. Even sooner, the board will discuss the high school rebuilds and potential for a boundary study at meetings on Feb. 7 and 21, Chatwin said.

The architects responsible for conducting high school feasibility studies (VCBO Architecture for West, and Naylor Wentworth Lund Architects for Highland) have held several meetings and listening sessions with community stakeholders and will present options to the board next month.

West High is the oldest high school in the state, having been rebuilt in 1918 and crossing its century mark five years ago. Many West alumni have expressed concern about maintaining the school’s look and historic atmosphere.

Four construction options were presented at the most recent meeting at West High, Chatwin said. Each plan approaches the project with a different degree of preservation: first, fully tearing down and rebuilding an entirely new West High facility; second, maintaining the school’s iconic facade but tearing down the interior and

auxiliary structures; third, rehabilitating the original building to continue accommodating students with the addition of a new classroom space behind it; and fourth, keeping the original entryway and its iconic Panther statue, while rebuilding the rest of the school.

The district hasn’t officially committed to rebuilding West or Highland yet, and the district would need the community to approve a bond to pay for the construction before it could start. Chatwin said the board can commit to one of the options at any point, and it could be on the city ballot as early as this November.

“The different [rebuild] scenarios walk through construction timelines—how long students will be displaced and might be in portables,” Chatwin said. “And [the architects] gave us cost estimates.”

The findings of the legislative audit appear to have given board members a push to begin weighing the possibility of closing some elementary schools. Gadson elected to forgo a boundary study in February 2022 and the board kept Bennion Elementary open in 2019 despite its shrinking student population.

The audit claims that by closing schools, SLCSD could have saved itself—and by extension, taxpayers—$3.6 million annually in administrative, utility and food services costs.

“Two increases in property taxes possibly would have been unnecessary had the district adjusted its number of elementary schools in a timely manner,” the report states.

District enrollment has fallen by nearly 4,000 students since 2013. Despite that trend, the board has opted to keep each of its elementaries open, with proponents of that decision often citing the impact to neighborhood community identity when schools are shuttered.

If you’re wondering why the district

Students arrive at West High School on Monday, Jan. 30. Salt Lake City School District is

would seek bond funding to rebuild its high schools while the Legislature asks them to trim costs and operate more efficiently, here’s why: Enrollment modeling predicts that while the city’s elementaries will continue to shrink, all four of its public high schools will maintain their populations.

The reasons behind this enrollment dynamic are complex and include the demographic effect of high housing costs and apartment-style construction trends, which impede young families from moving into the city and city school district. The potential for those trends to shift, as well as the imprecise nature of population modeling, contribute to the reluctance of some school board and community members to close down campuses.

The school board has also elected to rebuild three of its elementaries—seeking two property tax hikes to pay for them as overall enrollment fell. The state audit suggested that “SLCSD board skepticism of declining enrollment may have contributed to these decisions.”

The district should also create a formal process that annually considers the need for boundary changes or school closures independent of the leadership of the superintendent, according to the audit.

“Consolidating schools can be a painful process for elected board members and for communities,” the audit states. “However, the costs associated with keeping low-enrollment schools open are significant.”

Auditors recommend the district close six elementary schools to reach a 75% utilization rate (currently at 57%). Officials have also begun identifying areas to study for boundary realignment or closure and will present those clusters for the board’s consideration in February, Chatwin said.

If the board does decide to conduct a boundary study, the soonest any closures would take place would be ahead of the 2024-25 school year, Chatwin noted. CW

considering a rebuild of the century-old school.

BENJAMIN WOOD

A Safe Space

Remembering Salt Lake City’s Nettie Gregory Center and the African American community that built it.

BY WES LONG comments@cityweekly.net

@Wes_theLargo

Nestled beneath the din of southbound Interstate 15 at the edge of Poplar Grove—facing the Folsom Trail and old Union Pacific railroad lines— stands a monumental site of local African American history. Located at 742 W. South Temple, a simple and unassuming twostory structure of white brick and empty windows quietly waits in anticipation for its doors to open once more to Salt Lakers of every creed and color.

This was—and still is—the Nettie Gregory Center. Bookended by an apartment complex to one side and a car-towing lot to the other, the center and its grounds have seen better days. But its story remains evergreen within the landscape of not only the city’s west side but of the entire state.

Completed in the days of racial segregation, the Nettie Gregory Center was the site of confluence for Salt Lake’s African American community in their joys and celebrations as well as their sorrow and pain. While much has been lost to time and circumstance, historical research and interviews with those who once gathered within its walls keep alive the story of the center and the community it served.

“There is no other place like the Nettie Gregory Center,” said Jeanetta Williams, current president of Salt Lake’s NAACP chapter.

To understand the truth of what Williams contends, we will need to go back to the time during which the center got its start.

Dividing Lines

Since the days of fur traders like James P. Beckwourth, pioneer-owned slaves like Hark Wales, and freepersons like Jane Manning James, the African American community has been a constant—if numerically small—presence throughout Utah’s history. With the exception of a temporary increase during World War II, Black residents accounted for only half of a percent of the state’s population up through the 1960s.

Utah attracted little black migration—its residents of color lived and labored here as railroad workers, farmers, miners, waiters, cooks and domestic servants. When slavery was finally outlawed during Reconstruction, the Beehive State followed national attitudes and developed its own variation of Jim Crow conditions. And coupled with the Latter-day Saint population’s sacralizing of racial attitudes held by some of its church leaders from before the Civil War, the times

were rife with paradox.

“The color-line in Salt Lake City is not static,” observed James B. Christensen in an unpublished 1948 thesis. “In some phases of the social life it bends, breaks and becomes nonexistent. In others, it remains rigid and unyielding.”

African Americans could attend a ballgame, go on picnics and shop at a store, but they were also limited to the balconies of theaters and prevented from eating in restaurants. Municipal government facilities were open to them, but due to restrictive real estate clauses, their housing options were kept to substandard and dilapidated properties scattered around certain areas of the city. There was no formal segregation of public schools, but a single anti-miscegenation law from 1898 was stubbornly enforced right up until its repeal in 1963.

In such an environment, a person of color rarely knew where they stood with their neighbors or what public accommodations might be open to them until they encountered discrimination first-hand. Albert Fritz (1905-1989), Salt Lake’s NAACP president from 1957 to 1965, remarked in a 1983 interview that civil rights progress has been difficult to measure in this state because Utahns generally “don’t come across howling with their teeth bared.”

Alberta Henry (1920-2005), NAACP president from 1980 to 1992, opined in a separate interview that racial prejudice was no less a factor here than in the Deep South, albeit in sugar-coated form. “Everything that’s done here is under the table,” she said.

Coming Together

Even with the vagaries and vexations that swirled around race in Salt Lake throughout its history, the city’s African American community often found a way to congregate and to create their amusement through house parties, social clubs like the Ches-

terfield and the Four Fives, fraternal lodges like the Elks, Odd Fellows or Masons and, perhaps most importantly, churches such as Trinity AME and Calvary Baptist.

Each of these venues provided fun, nourishment and safety to Black Salt Lakers. But none could provide the capacity to welcome everybody in, especially young people. Something more was needed, something that would require the combined support of all these groups.

William Gregory had come to Salt Lake City in the mid-1910s as a Pullman porter for the Union Pacific railroad. Originally from Tennessee, he traveled all over the country for his job, but a frightening experience back home spurred him on to relocate to Utah with his sweetheart Nettie Grimes (1890-1964), with whom he had been courting by mail.

“[William’s] father was run out of Tennessee by the Ku Klux Klan and his [railroad] route took him back home,” related Tony Lovett, a grandson. “Once he found out [what happened to his father], he married my grandmother and then ... settled in Salt Lake City and never went back.”

Grimes—an accomplished musician with a commitment to education and equal rights—quickly got involved in her new community, particularly in a women’s sewing group called the Nimble Thimble Club. Working with her friends and neighbors, they established programs through the auspices of Trinity AME and Calvary Baptist and championed the idea of a larger recreational facility for their youth.

“My grandma was really small but she was a powerful woman,” Lovett said, “When she spoke, you listened.”

“She was a very, very fair person,” added Craig Gregory of his grandmother, “Stern, but fair.”

In a 1976 interview with the Deseret News, William Gregory related how Grimes immediately began working with and for the

young people of the community after they arrived in the state. “There just wasn’t much wholesome recreation for the young folks down here on the west side back then,” he said.

William Gregory—tall, quiet, and a “notorious gentleman,” as his grandson Rodney Gregory described him—matched Nettie Grimes in civic-mindedness.

It was he who purchased the land upon which the Nettie Gregory Center stands, serving on its board until 1977. Together, they were leading forces in the funding and construction of this center, the first of its kind in the city and built by its African American residents.

Building and Loss

Eva Sexton (1921-2016), who along with her husband Henry (1925-2004) were involved in the project from the start, described the bake sales and bazaars the community held to raise funds during a 1983 interview.

“[The Nimble Thimble Club] gave … chicken dinners, chicken fryers, [and] fish frys … and they made a little money,” Eva Sexton related.

Walking door to door, people like the Sextons got the community involved. Brick upon brick was laid by community members devoting their energies in the off-hours. It took years for the building to take shape.

Twenty years after the effort began, the Salt Lake Community Club—soon renamed the Nettie Gregory Center—was finally a reality. Unfortunately, Nettie never lived to see her dream come to full fruition.

With the construction of a freeway exit forcing the loss of their longtime home on Mead Avenue—a devastating cycle poised to repeat itself in the present with a new interstate expansion running through Rose Park and Guadalupe—the Gregorys relocated to a house on Jeremy Street. It was a dispiriting experience, soon made even

Alberta Henry, center, poses with friends.

The Nettie Gregory Center as it stands today

Nettie Gregory, seated second from left, and husband William, standing behind, in a group photo at Trinity AME.

Members of the Soul Sisters Drill Team

WES LONG

MARSHA BOYD

MARSHA BOYD

TONY LOVETT

worse by Nettie’s sudden death on July 6, 1964, a mere five months before the center’s planned opening.

On Sunday, Nov. 29, 1964, dedication services were held for the Nettie Gregory Center with the governor and members of the Utah Supreme Court in attendance. Velma Oliver (1907-1991), who’d been involved with the project from the beginning, emceed the occasion. Prayers were given by Palmer Ross, then-pastor of Trinity AME, and Rev. John M. Wade, the director of Student Christian Fellowship House.

From that day forward, the center was used often by the young and old alike, welcoming anyone who wished to enter.

“My wife and I always felt that there should be complete equality there,” William Gregory told the Deseret News in 1976. “We wanted the center to serve everyone.”

Initially operating with the work of citizen volunteers, over the years, the center was incorporated into the Salt Lake County recreational program, and then later leased to various nonprofit organizations when larger recreational facilities began opening up in the 1970s and 1980s.

“There used to be activities here every week,” Bernice Benns told The Salt Lake Tribune in 1990. Benns (1932-1991) spent many hours in the building through her work on the center’s board and through such educational and civic organizations as Blacks Unlimited and Project New Pride.

New Pride

The center was the site of Juneteenth, Halloween and Christmas parties; of voter drives and after-school job programs; of weddings and dances; of plays and basketball tournaments; and even an invitational jazz festival. Most prominently, it was also the longtime base of operations for the Salt Lake NAACP until the 1990s.

Funding for the center was always a struggle, but to those who went there, it still invites happy memories. Gary Elebert Oliver, a retired investment adviser, has fond recollections of “our rec center.”

He remembers playing on the center’s sports teams as a child under the center’s first director, Dailey Oliver Jr., and with tutelage from NAACP youth leader Eugene Thompson (1928-1977).

“If we did sports,” Oliver said, “it was because of Mr. Thompson.”

Lindsay Taylor recalls learning to play pingpong at the Nettie Gregory Center and sharing the snacks that they got there with his peers, particularly a type of cookie that came in packs of five or six.

“It had a vending machine, and if we were lucky, we had money—we didn’t often have money to spare,” Taylor said. “The younger ones would want [cookies], too, and so they would just hang around us to get one [from the pack].”

For Taylor, the center “was a special place to go in the neighborhood where you could play and stuff with individuals and feel safe.

Marsha Boyd, a former volunteer/staff member at the Center, recalls the times she

went there with her friends to make their own fries in the kitchen, and her work with Alberta Henry on both the Soul Sisters Drill Team and the Nettie Gregory Summer Program of 1973.

Regarding this latter program, Boyd laughingly remembers driving around Salt Lake in her Volkswagen—stuffed with children—to take them to various facilities for swimming and field trips.

“Everybody loved it,” Boyd said, “The kids loved being there, the workers loved doing it, and the parents loved that we were watching their kids.”

The Center Today

As time passed, public use of the building became more haphazard. One primary reason for this was that Salt Lake—and Utah generally—was changing, in some regards thanks to the ongoing impact of the nationwide civil rights movement.

Following passage of 1964’s Civil Rights Act, Utah could no longer turn a blind eye to disparities in public accommodations and employment practices. Suddenly, African Americans had a much wider array of options regarding where they could live, eat, work and play.

While the Nettie Gregory Center continued to house employment and intervention programs up to the early 2000s, the terrain in Salt Lake had changed and many of the longtime forces in the center’s leadership were passing away.

For the past several years, the building has stood unused. But proprietor Duane Bourdeaux has plans to bring it back. While many of the details are still being formulated, Bourdeaux is optimistic about the prospects of what the center can offer the local community today. “There’s a lot of history in the African American community that used the center,” Bourdeaux says, “We want to be able to do the same thing.”

Whether it is serving children or hosting community events and cultural activities, Bourdeaux sees a future that still features the center as a gathering place. If all goes successfully, a unique landmark of this city may yet live on.

A portrait of Nettie remains over the entryway of the center that bears her name, welcoming all with a benevolent smile and with eyes that saw much in their time. She and so many others of her day worked for a world where all races and religions might learn to labor and live and play together.

The center they built was bestowed to the generations that have followed for this purpose—for the “one great bundle of humanity,” as described in the words of poet Frances E. W. Harper.

Now, the Nettie Gregory Center stands in need of repairs for renewed use and, perhaps, historical designation and formal recognition. It invites Salt Lakers to consider— not just during February’s Black History Month—the truth that Bernice Benns once expressed in a 1980s oral history.

“God,” Benns said, “didn’t make all the flowers one color.” CW

Proud To Be a Loco-vore

BY ALEX SPRINGER comments@cityweekly.net @captainspringer

As important as hamburgers are to our dining ecosystem, they don’t always lend themselves to innovation. Part of this limitation is due to the fact that everything that can possibly be done to a hamburger has, in fact, been done to a hamburger. High-end chefs include highend burgers on their high-end menus just like the neighborhood gastropub will put crab salad on a patty in a (probably) drunken fever of inspiration.

In light of this universal truth, we need to talk about Loco Burger (1702 S. Main Street, 801-505-8187, locoburgerut.com). This food truck turned brick-and-mortar has boldly merged the titans of Mexican sandwich-craft known as tortas with the cheeseburgers that we all know and love—and it’s magical.

Like many of our local dining luminaries, Loco Burger started off as a food truck and gained enough popularity to open a storefront. Its chosen digs are a good fit for its casual-yet-craveable vibe; it’s right at home on that excellent intersection between 1700 South and Main Street, where local foodie options are plentiful. The space has been open for just over a month, but they’ve seen no shortage of customers. Its cozy diner vibe coupled with some of the biggest, tastiest burgers in town has attracted its fair share of business.

I visited Loco Burger during the busy lunch rush—you may need to get cozy with your fellow man if you stop by dur-

ing peak hours. Their menu begins with the Simply Loco ($6.95), a traditional cheeseburger that has sliced avocado and grilled mozzarella in addition to the familiar slice of American cheese. Scaling up a bit, you’ve got the signature Loco Burger ($8.95), which adds slices of turkey ham to the mix.

It doesn’t stop there, of course, but I did want to pause and reflect on the addition of avocado and gooey mozzarella. Back when I fell in love with tortas, I realized my affection was based on the balance of flavors and textures. The avocado and stretchy Oaxaca cheese that come standard on each torta play a big part in that balance. They rein in the intense flavors and add moisture to a monstrous sandwich that could dry itself out in no time. So, adding these two lynchpin ingredients to a burger is a great way to bring balance to their more intense burgers, while giving their standbys something special to bring to the menu.

Now, about those more intense burgers… Outside of the Loco Burger, you can check out burgers that have one additional torta-esque meat on top, such as the Salchi Burger ($8.95) that comes with sliced turkey salchichas. This one is perfect for those who could never decide on whether they wanted hamburgers or hot dogs at the family barbecue. Then you’ve got the Porky Burger ($8.95), which has all the bacon, or the Chapo Burger ($9.95) which gets a slice of smoked pork loin. I’d say the Porky Burger slightly edges out the Chapo, because it’s easy to lose the pork loin in the savory mélange of flavors stacked between its buns.

If you cannot decide which of these upper-tier burgers to get, you can always get the Super Loco ($14.95), which has all of them. Yep, that’s bacon, pork loin, salchichas and ham piled high with their other signature trimmings. If you’re famished and you’ve had past experience with shotgunning tortas, you could probably handle this one by yourself. Other-

wise, it’s one to share with your favorite burger-devouring compatriot.

As far as sides go, each burger can be ordered in a combo meal that includes a generous serving of fries and some mild or spicy Loco Sauce—fry sauce with a nice peppery kick to it. There’s nothing inherently wrong or bad about these fries, but they are definitely footnotes to the signature burgers within. It’s not a huge gripe, but I’d love some crinkle-cut or steak fries to go with these monstrous hamburgers just to complement the melty, drippy excess that will inevitably make Loco Burger a star.

If you’re after a side dish that is morethan-worthy to stand next to a Loco Burger, then you’ll want to get the Chiles Locos ($4.95). These are whole jalapeño peppers wrapped in bacon and grilled to crispy perfection. Anyone who is a sucker for the way peppers get all blackened and blistered on the grill will fall for these bad boys.

Loco Burger even has folks who prefer sweet to spicy covered with some gemtoned cheesecakes ($6.95) and cake rolls ($6.95) courtesy of Fillings and Emulsions. It’s always good to see the work of Chef Adalberto Diaz around town, and it’s proof that the Loco Burger team has good taste. You may not be hungry enough to snag dessert during your visit, but these desserts will travel well for a snack later.

As of now, Loco Burger is on the precipice of greatness—and exponential growth. This is the kind of food truck Cinderella story that will expand across the Wasatch Front, so if you’re the kind of person who likes to check out a place before it blows up, now’s the time to pop in and get loco. CW

If these burgers are loco, I don’t want to be sane.

ALEX SPRINGER

2 Row Brewing

6856 S. 300 West, Midvale 2RowBrewing.com

Avenues Proper 376 8th Ave, SLC

avenuesproper.com

On Tap: Brunch BeerGrapefruit Wheat Ale

Bewilder Brewing

445 S. 400 West, SLC

BewilderBrewing.com

On Tap: Gluten Reduced Kolsch

Bohemian Brewery

94 E. Fort Union Blvd, Midvale BohemianBrewery.com

Bonneville Brewery

1641 N. Main, Tooele BonnevilleBrewery.com

On Tap: Peaches and Cream Ale

Craft by Proper

1053 E. 2100 So., SLC craftbyproper.com

On Tap: Whispers of the Primordial Sea - Smoked Pineapple Lager

Desert Edge Brewery

273 Trolley Square, SLC

DesertEdgeBrewery.com

On Tap: Out of Office Pale Ale

Epic Brewing Co.

825 S. State, SLC EpicBrewing.com

On Tap: Cross Fever Amber Ale

Fisher Brewing Co. 320 W. 800 South, SLC FisherBeer.com

On Tap: A rotation of up to 17 Fresh Beers!

Grid City Beer Works 333 W. 2100 South, SLC GridCityBeerWorks.com

On Tap: Extra Pale Ale

Hopkins Brewing Co. 1048 E. 2100 South, SLC HopkinsBrewingCompany.com

On Tap: Chili Mangose

Kiitos Brewing 608 W. 700 South, SLC KiitosBrewing.com

Level Crossing Brewing Co. 2496 S. West Temple, South Salt Lake LevelCrossingBrewing.com

On Tap: Kolsch (it’s back!)

Bingo: Wednesdays at 7pm

Moab Brewing 686 S. Main, Moab TheMoabBrewery.com

On Tap: Squeaky Bike Nut

Brown

Mountain West Cider 425 N. 400 West, SLC MountainWestCider.com

On Tap: Wet Hopped Cider

Offset Bier Co 1755 Bonanza Dr Unit C, Park City offsetbier.com/ On Tap: DOPO IPA

Ogden River Brewing 358 Park Blvd, Ogden OgdenRiverBrewing.com

On Tap: Injector Hazy IPA

Policy Kings Brewery 223 N. 100 West, Cedar City PolicyKingsBrewery.com

Prodigy Brewing 25 W Center St. Logan prodigy-brewing.com/

Proper Brewing 857 S. Main, SLC ProperBrewingCo.com

On Tap:

ThunderCougarFalconBirdAustralian Sparkling Ale

Red Rock Brewing 254 So. 200 West RedRockBrewing.com

On Tap: Gypsy Scratch

Red Rock Fashion Place 6227 So. State Redrockbrewing.com

On Tap: Munich Dunkel

Red Rock Kimball Junction Redrockbrewing.com 1640 Redstone Center

On Tap: Bamberg Rauch Bier

RoHa Brewing Project 30 Kensington Ave, SLC RoHaBrewing.com

On Tap: Pillow Talk Hazy IPA

Roosters Brewing

Multiple Locations

RoostersBrewingCo.com

On Tap: Black Eye P.A

SaltFire Brewing 2199 S. West Temple, S. Salt Lake SaltFireBrewing.com

On Tap: Punk as Fuck Triple IPA

Salt Flats Brewing 2020 Industrial Circle, SLC SaltFlatsBeer.com

On Tap: “RYE-T” Hand Turn - RYE IPA

Scion Cider Bar 916 Jefferson St W, SLC Scionciderbar.com

On Tap: Reverend Nat’s Abbey Spice 6.9% ABV

Shades Brewing 154 W. Utopia Ave, S. Salt Lake ShadesBrewing.beer

On Tap: Tap & Tarot

Live Music: Thursdays

Shades On State 366 S. State Street SLC Shadesonstate.com

Karaoke: Wednesdays

Silver Reef 4391 S. Enterprise Drive, St. George / StGeorgeBev.com

Squatters

147 W. Broadway, SLC Squatters.com

Strap Tank Brewery

Multiple Locations StrapTankBrewery.com

Springville On Tap: PB Rider, Peanut Butter Stout

Lehi On Tap: 2-Stroke, Vanilla Mocha Porter

Stratford Proper 1588 Stratford Ave., SLC stratfordproper.com

On Tap: Yacht Rock Juice Box - Juicy IPA

TF Brewing 936 S. 300 West, SLC TFBrewing.com

On Tap: Edel Pils

Talisman Brewing Co. 1258 Gibson Ave, Ogden TalismanBrewingCo.com

On Tap: Mon Cheri- A white stout aged on fresh cherries, releasing 2/1 for valentines day

Uinta Brewing 1722 S. Fremont Drive, SLC UintaBrewing.com

On Tap: Was Angeles Craft Beer UTOG 2331 Grant Ave, Ogden UTOGBrewing.com

On Tap: Lovely Lady Nitro Stout

Vernal Brewing 55 S. 500 East, Vernal VernalBrewing.com

Wasatch 2110 S. Highland Drive, SLC WasatchBeers.com

Zion Brewery 95 Zion Park Blvd, Springdale ZionBrewery.com

Zolupez 205 W. 29th Street #2, Ogden Zolupez.com

OPENING SOON!

Helper Beer 159 N Main Street Helper, UT 84526

Apex Brewing 2285 S Main Street Salt Lake City, UT 84115 Proper Brewing Moab 1393 US-191 Moab, Utah 84532 Grand Opening February 10th!

A list of what local craft breweries and cider houses have on tap this week

Sly-PAs

These IPAs are sneaky with their fruity hop flavors.

BY MIKE RIEDEL comments@cityweekly.net @utahbeer

Saltfire - Series of Singularities (Azacca): This single-hop IPA pours an unfiltered brassy color with two-tothree fingers of foamy head—visibly effervescent in the body, with decent lacing. The aroma displays a solid malt presence, with equal measures of tropical and piney/weedy hop. There’s very little citrus, and just a hint of alcohol detected.

The caramel malt sweetness carries over to the palate and is the first flavor on the tip of the tongue, but as the brew crosses over to the mid-palate, the hops arrive in fruity fashion. However, those fruits are a little muddled; citrus, tropical, and white stone fruit flavors are all there, but are difficult to really pick out. Grapefruit, pineapple, and apricot might be separated and discerned, but not to any strong degree. As the brew finishes, the danker flavors arrive, more weedy than resiny/piney. The 7.3 percent booze detected on the nose isn’t really present on the palate, but the balance of malt and bitterness is very well done. The brew is essentially down the middle medium in body, relatively light on carbonation compared with its appearance and fairly drinkable.

Verdict: The IPA market is crowded, and this one doesn’t do much to distinguish itself, other than providing as “balanced” a delivery as any IPA I’ve had. It does have plenty of enjoyable malt presence, offset by a bitter, but not hop-burned, IBU presence. If the fruit flavors were more discernible as individual fruits rather than “categories” of fruitiness, this would be a brighter star for me. Still, a good brew.

Red Rock - Monkey Mind: It fits the bill as described on the label: juicy and hazy, a nice beer for a lazy January afternoon. Beginning with the look, it has a somewhat medium tint of orange color, much like orange juice, with a pillowy foam that thins out to a lingering head. Like all Red Rock beers, this one retains a beautiful lacing on the glass. This beer is not the most aromatic, offering only very faint smells like citrus and slight hint of pine. It is, however, very big on the tropical pineapple and dankness, with maybe a little bit of floral blossom.

Moving on to taste, the first impression of this beer is “juice box,” so they pretty much accomplished what this beer is all about. At the front, you get a pleasant and balanced pineapple and citrus quality, with the hops dankness and bitterness following along. The middle and finish are consistent all the way throughout the sip, as the flavors mend into a semi-bitter aftertaste. It doesn’t clean up on the palate; there’s lingering sweetness and very little alcohol—rich and decadent, but at the same time light. The bitterness is there, but it’s nowhere close to a standard American IPA.

The mouthfeel is the most redeeming quality about this beer. It’s thick, creamy and inviting. I love the medium body, which is almost shake-like with low to medium carbonation—in other words, exactly what they put on the label.

Verdict: I’ve got to hand it to Red Rock, Monkey Mind doesn’t disappoint. For a session-style of IPA, this is a pretty good tasting and enjoyable brew, one that I think would be a great way to turn someone on to IPAs if they’ve never had one.

Red Rock has an exclusivity arrangement going with Harmons Grocery Stores, so this will be your only option to get this 16-ouncer to your home; Red Rock’s restaurants will have it as well. Some of your better craft beer pubs may pick up the Azacca, but these 16-ounce cans are definitely available at Saltfire to enjoy there, or to go. As always, cheers!

MIKE RIEDEL

MIKE RIEDEL

James Beard Foundation Recognizes Utah Restaurants

The semifinalists for the James Beard Foundation’s restaurant awards were recently announced, and our friends in the Utah restaurant industry are pretty well-represented. Post Office Place, Normal Ice Cream, Manolis, Mazza, The Angry Korean, SLC Eatery, Handle Park City, Oquirrh and Hell’s Backbone are all semifinalists for this year’s set of James Beard awards, and we couldn’t be more excited that they’re getting some national recognition. The official nominees will be announced on March 29, which will precede the awards ceremony on June 5. Congratulations to all our local eateries, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed come March 29.

Full Moon Dinner Buffet at Snowbird

As cold and unforgiving as winter nights are, they are not without a sense of romance and mystery. Those who also sense an elusive beauty in the frosty, indigo evenings that come to us in the colder months will want to check out the Full Moon Dinner Buffet at Snowbird this weekend. Hosted at The Summit (9385 S. Snowbird Center Drive), this evening dinner event will take place on Feb. 5 from 7 p.m - 10 p.m.; admission includes the tram ride to the summit of Hidden Peak. Diners will then take advantage of the venue’s enormous windows to observe the full moon—or perhaps the moon will be observing the diners instead?

Pizza Volta Opens in Sugar House

the BACK BURNER THANK YOU! FOR TELLING US WE HAVE THE GREATEST BURGERS FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS! HERE’S TO ANOTHER 15!

I can always get behind a new pizza joint, but one that incorporates pop-culture-inspired pizza titles along with an extensive beer and cocktail menu—like Pizza Volta—tends to catch my undivided attention. This new pizza restaurant touts pies like the Love Ye Elote that adds the Mexican street food classic of roasted corn and queso fresco to a barbecue chicken pizza, or dares to add goat cheese, beets and pickled citrus fruit to a signature pie called Beets By Dill-a. In addition to these creative pies, Pizza Volta features a classic cheesy calzone along with a few desserts including their own spin on tiramisu. I’m going to keep this one on my radar for sure.

Quote of the Week: “Sex is like pizza: If you’re going to use BBQ sauce, you better know what the fuck you’re doing.” –Oliver

Markus Malloy

SUNDANCE

Best of Fest

A look at the three most memorable features from Sundance 2023

BY SCOTT RENSHAW scottr@cityweekly.net @scottrenshaw

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt BBBB [U.S. Dramatic]

If Sundance is about nothing else, it’s about the opportunity to discover singular artistic voices, and that’s what writer/director Raven Jackson proves to be in this journey of family and memory. Though it opens in what appears to be late 1960s/early 1970s Mississippi—following a young girl named Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson)—the narrative bounces around in its chronology, occasionally revisiting the childhood of Mack and her younger sister Josie (Jayah Henry) as well as the lives of the adult Mack (Charleen McClure) and Josie (Moses Ingram). It’s inaccurate to say that “nothing happens” in All Roads Taste of Salt—there are a couple of crucial events, including a tragic death—but Jackson is far less concerned with following a plot than with evoking a feeling, a sense of a particular place and how the connections of the natural world can be as potent as the connections of family. She and cinematographer Jomo Fray capture that notion through a powerful sense of tactility, observing as Mack absorbs the memory of things—the scales on a fish, the smooth hardness of her mother’s painted toenails, a muddy river bottom—

through her fingers. And they show a remarkable sense for where to point the camera, like a reunion between Mack and her first love, Wood (Reginald Helms, Jr.) where their embrace is shot initially not with the emphasis on their faces, but on the wedding band on Wood’s finger. It’s a risky choice to present a scene like that before we’ve seen the relationship it follows, but it’s evidence of Raven Jackson’s gifts that so much emotion is conveyed not as an accumulation of what we’ve seen, but through what we’re seeing, hearing and feeling at any given moment.

Passages BBBB [Premieres]

In hindsight, there’s something pitch-perfect about the fact that the movie Tomas (Franz Rogowski), the filmmaker anti-hero of co-writer/director Ira Sachs’ feature, is making at the outset is titled Passages, produced (like this movie) by SBS Productions; if nothing else, it’s a portrait of a kind of solipsism whereby you just assume everything must be all about your needs. The premise finds Thomas beginning an affair with a woman named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos)—one that he has no problem immediately telling his husband of 15 years, Martin (Ben Whishaw), took place. While this is a sort of romantic triangle that eventually becomes a romantic square, it’s one where Sachs and his regular co-writing partner Mauricio Zacharias make it clear that one side is always out of balance with the others. Their script and Rogowski’s performance magnificently evoke a certain kind of narcissistic artist so convinced that they feel things more deeply than the rest of the world that the feelings of the other people in their lives almost don’t exist. And Sachs’ complements this singular character study with unconventional filmmaking choices, like cutting from an awkward bedtime silence between Tomas and Martin

not to pretending everything is normal the next day, but to the middle of the fight that clearly immediately ensued. Passages is stunning in its simplicity, letting Tomas wreck his own life through the fundamental inability to see those he claims to love as anything but supporting characters in a movie where he’s the hero.

Victim/Suspect BBB½ [U.S. Documentary]

Sometimes you can’t separate how angry a movie makes you feel from whether it’s a great piece of filmmaking— and maybe, in some cases, that’s okay. The fury that emerges is profound as director Nancy Schwartzman follows the work of Rae de Leon, a reporter for California-based Center for Investigative Reporting, as she digs into nationwide examples of women who have reported sexual assault to police being accused of—and arrested for—making false statements. Schwartzman and de Leon are meticulous in chronicling the police behavior responsible for these “flipped” cases, as they make use of video interviews that show investigators lying to these women about evidence proving that they’re liars, while further exposing how this is kind of just standard practice in order to make a case go away. They also wisely focus on a few individual cases, and the victims whose lives were devastated not once but twice, letting them tell their stories and confront the reality of how they were manipulated. It’s a debatable choice to make de Leon the hero of the story, giving as much focus to the process of exposing these actions as to the actions themselves. Then again, maybe it’s important to emphasize that the investigative legwork done by journalists on this subject should have been done by law enforcement, to emphasize that it’s not that they couldn’t have made this same effort, but they were simply too lazy and callous to do it. CW

CREDIT CREDIT CREDIT

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Passages

Victim/Suspect

A Wandering Mind

Singer/songwriter Richard Tyler Epperson unveils most ambitious work yet

BY EMILEE ATKINSON eatkinson@cityweekly.net @emileelovesvinyl

Sometimes life gets in the way of what we love doing. The everyday minutiae set in, and before we know it, it’s been months or years since we picked up a favorite hobby or activity that was once essential to who we are, and makes life great. After a seven year hiatus, singer/ songwriter Richard Tyler Epperson has returned to the music scene, leading up to his 2023 release A Wandering Mind, his most ambitious and powerful album to date.

Hearing an artist describe their work as their most ambitious, vivid and vibrant is exciting, and this is how Epperson details his 2023 release. Listening through, it’s obvious he put his heart and soul into the album. “I think just the songs are more vivid, they’re more colorful,” he said. “There’s a lot of energy, and layers, and color in these songs that bring out more emotions.”

The album is indeed full of the brightness and colorfulness Epperson describes, but it also dives into some difficult topics. Opening track “Sunrise” addresses dealing with depression through a hopeful lens. “The inspiration behind ‘Sunrise’ comes from that feeling you get when you’re caught in between the sadness/numbness faze of depression,” Epperson said. “When you’re stuck in that dark place, you hope the new day will bring light, but if or when it doesn’t, it can feel unbearable.”

Following the same theme of hope

fulness paired with despair, “2AM” addresses heartbreak that comes with a relationship ending, and being left in the aftermath. His bluesy track “We All Need Some Love” shines as a beacon for those feeling as if they need support. “I wanted it to be a positive song for people that are afraid to ask for help,” Epperson said. “It’s okay to have help, we’re all humans, no matter how strong you think you are, you still need that emotional support to get through those tough times. There is no reason to face it alone.”

Listening through the album brings together a concise feeling of the idea that it’s okay to not be okay, and to have hope looking forward. During the creation of the album, however, Epperson felt like his mind wasn’t focused, hence the title. “It started as mindfulness, is what I was going for, and it went into A Wandering Mind because I kept kind of wandering,” he said. “I wanted to do something with the brain because that’s kind of living within my thoughts.”

Talking about struggles with mental illness can be difficult, but they do need to be talked about. Bringing awareness to these issues can help others, but sitting down to talk is just plain hard. When these ideas are addressed in music, however, they can become more palatable.

“To talk about any type of mental health is terrible, and sucks, and not fun,” Epperson said. “To write about it in music’s super simple, because it’s writing about it, you’re doing it.”

Putting this vulnerability into his music is easy for Epperson because many can relate to similar problems. “‘A Beautiful Day’

ing that his dad loved music but never really got around to creating it was a huge catalyst for Epperson to get back to recording. On a happier note, Epperson also became a father, but as most parents will tell you, there’s not much time for hobbies once kids are in the picture. While family life was fulfilling, something else was still missing.

Riding on the highs and lows of creating this album, Epperson felt nothing but excitement the entire time. Tucked away in his office/recording studio, Epperson did everything DIY in between the chaos of everyday life. He’d sneak away at night when the house was quiet to record the album bit by bit, adding to the intimacy A Wandering Mind exudes. There were plenty

he might not have thought of otherwise. “It was a good mixture, I think, to change me and help me grow as a songwriter because [if] you do stuff yourself, you get stuck in the same pattern,” he said. “You kind of get copy-and-paste as you get going, you send it out to someone else and they put something on it and you’re like, ‘I would’ve never thought.’”

As we continue through 2023, Epperson’s goal is to make more music that he’s proud of. “Usually I listen back to albums, I don’t want to listen to them again,” he said. “This one I still can play through and be proud of it. It doesn’t sound homemade sitting there trying to be quiet at night, and I hope to take that and build upon it and just keep getting that songwriter/songwriting

THURSDAYS

FRIDAYS DJ FRESH(NESS)

SATURDAYS

POKER @ 2PM DJ DELMAGGIO

SHARK SUNDAYS POOL TOURNEY HOSTED BY JARED AND TANNER

MONDAYS REGGAE MONDAY WITH DJ NAPO

TUESDAYS

WEDNESDAYS KARAOKE

By Emilee Atkinson

mmeadows, Will Sheff @ Urban Lounge 2/3

Today, up-and-coming New York duo mmeadows release their anticipated debut album Light Moves Around You. One of the standout tracks on the album, “By Design,” presents an observant and elemental tone that spans the entire record. “The world we live in is built for convenience and comfort, flashy, slick and hypnotic. Whether purposeful or as an unfortunate byproduct, person-to-person connection is in perpetual obfuscation,” said half of the duo, Kristin Slipp, via press release. “I feel like I’m constantly fumbling around in search of a human touch, and when I find it, all I want to do is grab hold and hang on tight. ‘By Design’ is an exploration of relationships in an ever-automating world, and writing it helped me sniff out my most basic desire—to care and be cared for.” mmeadows are dropping by in support of singer/songwriter Will Sheff, well-known for his work in the band Okkervil River. Sheff released his first solo album in Oct 2022, receiving critical acclaim for his handling of candid feelings woven into effortless melodies. Sheff puts it all out there, singing about devastations in youth, moving across the country and the anxieties that come with that. Check out mmeadows and Will Sheff on Friday, Feb 3 at 7 p.m. Tickets for the 21+ show are $25 in advance, and $30 at the door. Find tickets at urbanloungeslc.com. (Emilee Atkinson)

The Lone Bellow, Tow’rs @ Commonwealth Room 2/5

The Lone Bellow’s newest album Love Songs for Losers marks an exciting departure for the band. For the last decade, the trio has recorded and had help producing their music, but this time they’ve stepped out of the familiar studio setting, journeying on their own. “That was exciting, especially after working with heavy-hitter producers like Aaron Dessner and Dave Cobb,” guitar/ vocalist Zack Williams told The Boot in January. “It was taking a chance on ourselves. We’re 10 years into being a band. It’s something that we [have] always wanted to do. I think that we needed to step out on our own and take a chance on ourselves. It was scary at first, for sure. When you’re used to just having a professional producer come in and put his mark on your work, it’s a comforting thing.” They recorded their most expansive and eclectic work to date at Roy Orbison’s former home in Nashville, putting the album together over the course of eight weeks. Joining The Lone Bellow are Arizona folkies Tow’rs. The group has released new singles in late 2022/early 2023 that are soft, introspective and vulnerable. Folk music is a good vessel for these feelings; the combo of soft string instruments along with gentle vocals help evoke sadness and hope at the same time. Come enjoy this folky bluegrass jam on Sunday, Feb 5 at 7 p.m. Tickets for the 21+ show are $28 and can be found at thestateroompresents.com. (EA)

Mmeadows ALEX MUNRO

333, The Tearducts, Gentle Tuesdays @ Kilby Court 2/6

Nothing quite keeps the heartbeat of SLC going like the number of fantastic indie bands in the area. This lineup at Kilby Court presents just a handful of some of the coolest up-and-comers around, including a debut performance. Leading the charge is local shoegaze/goth rockers 333. The trio dropped their self-titled debut in 2021, showcasing their brand of alt-rock that leans on obscured vocals, wacky guitar effects and general loudness. Joining 333, and playing their first show is The Tearducts, a project of local musician McCade Miller. Dropping in late 2022, The Tearducts’ self-titled debut EP introduced a similar shoegaze sound to that of 333, but more ethereal; driving guitars are still loud and in the forefront, but vocals are dialed back, sounding far away. This effect almost sounds like beings from far off in space are trying to connect, but can’t quite get through. Rounding out the lineup of up-and-coming locals is Gentle Tuesdays. Not a ton can be found online at the moment about Gentle Tuesdays, but in Dec 2022 they began posting videos of trippy digital effects on their page, which eventually also featured guitar tracks. It’ll be cool to hear more from this project with 333 and The Tearducts on Monday, Feb 6 at 7 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages show are $10 and can be found at kilbycourt.com.

(EA)

JID @ The Complex 2/8

JID has insane respect for his craft. The Atlanta musician’s third studio album, The Forever Story, arrived in 2022, nearly four years after his previous LP, DiCaprio 2. Meticulous in the approach, JID tinkered with the project until the release. The Forever Story is an amazing achievement that transcends the genre, fusing modern hip-hop into the long history of great black music while it still manages to sound unlike anything that has come before. “It’s all about trying to push everything forward. That’s where I live at. I’m always trying to make sure what I’m doing feels fresh to me,” JID told Vulture in September. Nuanced and sprawling, The Forever Story, doesn’t offer any easy answers. It’s compelling and unafraid to be really, really weird, too, with tempo changes and

MUSIC PICK S

By Emilee Atkinson

beats that are so oddly syncopated that most rappers probably wouldn’t be able to flow over them. Hidden just beneath the frenetic beats and temporal shifts, JID is weaving a story in his lyrics which will leave your jaw on the floor when they hit home. Then, just when you’ve recovered, he’ll knock you down again with the next track. Fine tuning that Dreamville records sound, JID is one of the best of the new generation and future of the game, a selfsufficient superstar in the making. We’ll just have to wait. Doors to the all-ages show open at 6:30 p.m., show begins at 7 p.m. Co-headliner Smino opens. While at press time the show is sold out, find resell tickets at vividseats.com. (Mark

Dago)

Sarah Jarosz @ Egyptian Theater 2/8

Sarah Jarosz was something of a wunderkind. She first picked up mandolin at age 10, and from there, learned to play guitar and banjo. She was still in high school when she signed her first recording contract with Sugar Hill Records, but continued her education at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she graduated with honors and a degree in Contemporary Improvisation. Her career took flight almost immediately when, at age 18, she scored her first Grammy nomination for a song from her debut album Song Up in Her Head. The accolades then kept coming. The title track of her sophomore album, “Follow Me Down,” was nominated for Song of the Year by the Americana Music Association, and its successor, Build Me Up From Bones, garnered Grammy nominations for Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Song. At that point, Jarosz might have simply settled for being a runner-up had it not been for the fact that her fourth album, 2016’s Undercurrent, took home two trophies—Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Performance. Two years ago, her album World on the Ground bagged two Grammy nominations, winning one for Best Americana Album. She’s also part of a supergroup of sorts, I’m With Her, with Sara Watkins and Aiofe O’Donovan. Happily, you can be with Sarah herself when she comes to Egyptian Theatre on Wed, Feb 8 at 8 p.m. Tickets for this all-ages show cost $35. Go to tickets.egyptiantheatrecompany.org

(Lee Zimmerman)

Busted for Growing Personal Meds

Utah Medical Cannabis Patient Supplying He and His Wife

Cole Fullmer – Salt Baked City

Imagine it’s a sunny winter morning in West Valley City and your day is just about to begin. The air is chilly as the sun climbs the Wasatch Front, so you buddle everyone before heading out the door to drop the kids off at school and then head to work.

As you approach the car in your slow suburban neighborhood, you realize you haven’t warmed up the engine and the iced windows still need to be scrapped before you leave. With cold fingers, you fumble for your keys while your youngest is in your arms – your other daughter calls you from behind. Her voice is scared when she asks, “Daddy, why are all of the police here?”

Before you can even turn around, nearly a dozen West Valley City Police officers and a DEA Agent, accompanied by loud dogs, violently stop your day. You’re being raided by a SWAT Team instead of beginning your morning commute – but why?

It’s fair to say most who are raided by law enforcement have a pretty good idea why the cops show up that miserable day. Kristopher Kennedy, 42 year-old husband and father of three daughters had no idea why his worst nightmares were coming true that faithful morning – at least until he had a second to think.

Then, the bulb in his head lit up.

It had been over a year since the veteran cannabis home-grower was using a spare room in his basement to harvest precious medicine for he and his wife, Heather Kennedy. That room was lying dormant at the time of the raid leaving Kennedy extra surprised when visited by WVCPD.

At 7:15 a.m. on November 12, 2020, WVCPD led Kennedy into his house in handcuffs to retrieve

his sleeping wife out of their bedroom, while his daughters watched from the front yard. He had just been served warrants to search his house for suspicion of manufacturing and distribution of a controlled substance. Serious felonies that can carry up to a 15-year prison sentence. Formal probation is possible, but highly unlikely in most cases within Utah.

“We were in a pretty bad place (mentally), and it couldn’t have been a worse time to have unexpected visitors, especially the cops,” Kennedy said during an interview with Salt Baked City.

According to Kennedy, his wife had recently had a portion of her stomach removed and was dealing with a lot of pain – which led to the abuse of prescribed opioids. Cannabis was helping his wife kick the opioid addiction she acquired after surgery, Kennedy said, but he was carrying most of the weight for the family at that time of the raid.

Just a few months before Kennedy’s life was turned upside-down, he remembers seeing a local news story about a Utah Highway Patrol trooper who pulled over an eastbound car traveling with 313 pounds of cannabis near Tooele. An expired registration turned into a second degree felony carrying a 15 year sentence and a $10,000 fine.

For more information about Utah’s Medical Cannabis program visit MEDICALCANNABIS.UTAH.GOV

free will ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

Theoretically, you could offer to help a person who doesn’t like you. You could bring a gourmet vegan meal to a meateater or pay a compliment to a bigot. I suppose you could even sing beautiful love songs to annoyed passersby or recite passages from great literature to an eight-year-old immersed in his video game. But there are better ways to express your talents and dispense your gifts—especially now, when it’s crucial for your long-term mental health that you offer your blessings to recipients who will use them best and appreciate them most.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

In esoteric astrology, Taurus rules the third eye. Poetically speaking, this is a subtle organ of perception, a sixth sense that sees through appearances and discerns the hidden nature of things. Some people are surprised to learn about this theory. Doesn’t traditional astrology say that you Bulls are sober and well-grounded? Here’s the bigger view: The penetrating vision of an evolved Taurus is potent because it peels away superficial truths and uncovers deeper truths. Would you like to tap into more of this potential superpower? The coming weeks will be a good time to do so.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

The ingredient you would need to fulfill the next stage of a fun dream is behind door #1. Behind door #2 is a vision of a creative twist you could do but haven’t managed yet. Behind door #3 is a clue that might help you achieve more disciplined freedom than you’ve known before. Do you think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Here’s the catch: You may be able to open only one door before the magic spell wears off— unless you enlist the services of a consultant, ally, witch, or guardian angel to help you bargain with fate to provide even more of the luck that may be available.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

I trust you are ready for the educational adventures and experiments that are possible. The uncertainties that accompany them, whether real or imagined, will bring out the best in you. For optimal results, you should apply your nighttime thinking to daytime activities, and vice versa. Wiggle free of responsibilities unless they teach you truths. Finally, summon the intuitive powers that will sustain you and guide you through the brilliant shadow initiations. (PS: Take the wildest rides you dare as long as they are safe.)

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

Fate has decreed, “Leos must be wanderers for a while.” You are under no obligation to obey this mandate, of course. Theoretically, you could resist it. But if you do indeed rebel, be sure your willpower is very strong. You will get away with outsmarting or revising fate only if your discipline is fierce and your determination is intense. OK? So let’s imagine that you will indeed bend fate’s decree to suit your needs. What would that look like? Here’s one possibility: The “wandering” you undertake can be done in the name of focused exploration rather than aimless meandering.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

I wish I could help you understand and manage a situation that has confused you. I’d love to bolster your strength to deal with substitutes that have been dissipating your commitment to the Real Things. In a perfect world, I could emancipate you from yearnings that are out of sync with your highest good. And maybe I’d be able to teach you to dissolve a habit that has weakened your willpower. And why can’t I be of full service to you in these ways? Because, according to my assessment, you have not completely acknowledged your need for this help. So neither I nor anyone else can provide it. But now that you’ve read this horoscope, I’m hoping you will make yourself more receptive to the necessary support and favors and relief.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

I can’t definitively predict you will receive an influx of cash in the next three weeks. It’s possible, though. And I’m not

able to guarantee you’ll be the beneficiary of free lunches and unexpected gifts. But who knows? They could very well appear. Torrents of praise and appreciation may flow, too, though trickles are more likely. And there is a small chance of solicitous gestures coming your way from sexy angels and cute maestros. What I can promise you for sure, however, are fresh eruptions of savvy in your brain and sagacity in your heart. Here’s your keynote, as expressed by the Queen of Sheba 700 years ago: “Wisdom is sweeter than honey, brings more joy than wine, illumines more than the sun, is more precious than jewels.”

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Your assignment, Scorpio, is to cultivate a closer relationship with the cells that comprise your body. They are alive! Speak to them as you would to a beloved child or animal. In your meditations and fantasies, bless them with tender wishes. Let them know how grateful you are for the grand collaboration you have going, and affectionately urge them to do what’s best for all concerned. For you Scorpios, February is Love and Care for Your Inner Creatures Month.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

Revamped and refurbished things are coming back for another look. Retreads and redemption-seekers are headed in your direction. I think you should consider giving them an audience. They are likely to be more fun or interesting or useful during their second time around. Dear Sagittarius, I suspect that the imminent future may also invite you to consider the possibility of accepting stand-ins and substitutes and imitators. They may turn out to be better than the so-called real things they replace. In conclusion, be receptive to Plan Bs, second choices, and alternate routes. They could lead you to the exact opportunities you didn’t know you needed.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Author Neil Gaiman declared, “I’ve never known anyone who was what he or she seemed.” While that may be generally accurate, it will be far less true about you Capricorns in the coming weeks. By my astrological reckoning, you will be very close to what you seem to be. The harmony between your deep inner self and your outer persona will be at record-breaking levels. No one will have to wonder if they must be wary of hidden agendas lurking below your surface. Everyone can be confident that what they see in you is what they will get from you. This is an amazing accomplishment! Congrats!

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

“I want to raise up the magic world all round me and live strongly and quietly there,” wrote Aquarian author Virginia Woolf in her diary. What do you think she meant by “raise up the magic world all round me”? More importantly, how would you raise up the magic world around you? Meditate fiercely and generously on that tantalizing project. The coming weeks will be an ideal time to attend to such a wondrous possibility. You now have extra power to conjure up healing, protection, inspiration, and mojo for yourself.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)

Before going to sleep, I asked my subconscious mind to bring a dream that would be helpful for you. Here’s what it gave me: In my dream, I was reading a comic book titled Zoe Stardust Quells Her Demon On the first page, Zoe was facing a purple monster whose body was beastly but whose face looked a bit like hers. On page two, the monster chased Zoe down the street, but Zoe escaped. In the third scene, the monster was alone, licking its fur. In the fourth scene, Zoe sneaked up behind the monster and shot it with a blow dart that delivered a sedative, knocking it unconscious. In the final panel, Zoe had arranged for the monster to be transported to a lush uninhabited island where it could enjoy its life without bothering her. Now here’s my dream interpretation, Pisces: Don’t directly confront your inner foe or nagging demon. Approach stealthily and render it inert. Then banish it from your sphere, preferably forever.

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ACROSS

1. British financial giant founded in Hong Kong

5. Centers

9. Editor’s “leave it in”

13. Donald Duck, to his nephews

14. One, on a one

15. One of Pakistan’s two official languages

16. Winner of the first season of “Survivor”

18. Author Gaiman

19. Medical-scanning option for claustrophobes

20. Minor hits?

21. Rod and Todd’s dad on “The Simpsons”

22. Runner-up to Albert Einstein as Time’s Person of the Century in 1999

25. Delivery room possibility

26. Fish whose preparation is strictly regulated in Japan

27. ____ O’s (breakfast cereal)

30. Greiner of “Shark Tank”

31. “Levitating” singer Lipa

34. Group with the 1983 hit “Safety Dance”

... or a hint to solving 16-, 22-, 44- and

55-Across

38. Jupiter or Mars

39. ____ parm

40. Iowa State’s city

41. Julia’s “Ocean’s Eleven” role

42. Org. for D.C. United and LA Galaxy

44. He collaborated with Roberta Flack on the 1972 album “Where Is the Love”

48. Lie a little

51. “So long, amigo”

52. “Let’s do this thing”

54. Be at an angle

55. Lewis Carroll character who asks “Does your watch tell you what year it is?”

57. Fashion magazine since 1945

58. Tabula ____

59. Part of a comparison

60. Black and Red, for two

61. Worldwide: Abbr.

62. Bouquet holder DOWN

1. Second-largest Great Lake

2. Take potshots

3. Looped in secretly, in email 4. “High Hopes” lyricist Sammy 5. It can follow two hips 6. Raise the lights back to regular level 7. Tampa NFLer

LIVING

The Moon Tree

Did you know Utah has a NASA Moon Tree? Pardon me, but as a tree hugger by nature, I’m surprised I’d never heard of this beauty in our state.

“This tree has gone places only some of the boldest and most extraordinary among us have gone,” said a 2019 KSL news report. Sci-fi fans love the thought of humans growing plants in space, so this bit of local news might help you win any local pub’s trivia night!

First, the tree is located in an exterior corner of the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands’ Lone Peak office at 271 Bitterbrush Lane in Draper. Second, it’s a 52-year-old sycamore tree that was planted here in 1976. Third, the tree brings a lot of history. And fourth, it may be dead or almost dead due to fungal infection.

8. Texter’s “I can’t believe this”

9. George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff John

10. Blow up on Twitter

11. Wharton who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction

12. Gabbard who was the first Hindu elected to U.S. Congress

17. Pies, in a slapstick fight

20. Quit, slangily 23. “Don’t play me for ____!” 24. Spiritual leader 25. Pull (out) 27. “!!!”

45. “Swan Lake” maiden

46. Nabisco wafer brand

47. “Parenthood” Oscar nominee Dianne

48. Nickname of jazz great Earl Hines

49. Notions

50. David of the Talking Heads

53. 1999 Ron Howard film

55. Start to cycle?

56. China’s largest ethnic group

Last week’s answers

In 1971, Apollo 14 blasted off, and one of its astronauts, Stuart Roosa, brought a stash of tree seeds with him. Each astronaut was allowed to bring a personal k it with them, and this former Forest Service smokejumper was just the guy to give the seeds a ride.

In his canister, there were some 500 seeds—not just sycamore seeds, but hundreds of redwood, pine, fir and sweet gum seeds. As command module pilot, Roosa flew the orbiting spacecraft while his crewmates explored the lunar surface. And after orbiting the moon, he brought the seeds back to earth safely to see if they would germinate.

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Shake

31. Hydroelectric

SUDOKU X

Complete the grid so that each row, column, diagonal and 3x3 square contain all of the numbers 1 to 9. No math is involved. The grid has numbers, but nothing has to add up to anything else. Solve the puzzle with reasoning and logic. Solving time is typically 10 to 30 minutes, depending on your skill and experience.

The great news was that most of the seeds sprouted, and NASA then divvied them up and sent them to various forestry departments around the country to see which would take root and if there were any anti-gravity effects. Would there be freak trees? I couldn’t find any reports of odd growth.

Folks around the country nicknamed them “moon trees,” and local interest was high as to these special plants. Utah reportedly received two sycamore seedlings, one of which was planted at the Draper location, and two Douglas fir seedlings, one of which was planted at the Utah State Capitol. No one knows what became of the other two seedlings.

Sadly, the Douglas fir at the Capitol was split in half by the wind of the August 1999 freak tornado. Utah’s last known moon tree remains located by the old prison site in Draper. For many years, the nursery there (now defunct) gave out cuttings and clones to customers who knew the tree’s history.

This past November, NASA launched the Artemis rocket as part of a plan to get humans back to the lunar surface. NASA has decided to reactivate the moon seed program for the future.

It’s a bummer that NASA forgot about the program for many years and lost track of where the trees had been planted around the country.

A NASA employee was contacted by a teacher who found a plaque near a moon tree, who had asked where others were planted. The employee had not heard of the program but ended up posting on social media asking for the public’s help finding the trees and hopefully plaques around the country.

The Moon Tree Foundation is now run by Roosa’s daughter, who seeks to plant moon trees around the world. n

NEWS of the WEIRD

BY THE EDITORS AT ANDREWS MCMEEL

Irony

Early on Jan. 14, in Monterrey, Mexico, Carlos Alonso, 32, allegedly broke a glass door at Christ the King Parish and entered, intending to rob the church, Catholic News Agency reported. But as he tried to flee with a statue of St. Michael the Archangel in hand, he tripped and fell on the angel’s sword, seriously wounding his neck. Passersby saw the injured Alonso and called for help; he is expected to be charged after he recovers from the fall. The statue was unharmed.

Recent Alarming Headline

On Jan. 16, a drive-thru customer at a coffee shop in Auburn, Washington, wanted more than an extra shot, KCRA-TV reported. As the barista handed Matthew Darnell, 38, his change through the window, a surveillance camera caught him grabbing her arm and pulling her toward him as he fumbled with a zip tie. The barista was able to pull away from him and close the windows as his dollar bills went flying. He drove off, but a distinctive “Chevrolet” tattoo on his arm was captured on video, along with his side profile. Police later reported that Darnell had been arrested at his home in Auburn and was held on $500,000 bail.

Molehill, Meet Mountain

After getting into a dispute with staff at Jinling Purple Mountain Hotel in Shanghai on Jan. 10 over a misplaced laptop, a 28-year-old man named Chen decided to escalate, CBS News reported. He crashed his car through the glass lobby doors and careened around the space, knocking over fixtures and terrifying other guests, who tried to get the driver out of the car. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Are you crazy? Are you?” onlookers screamed at him. As he attempted to exit the lobby, he hit a door frame and came to a stop, and police took him into custody. It turns out the laptop had been stolen and was found outside the hotel; no one was injured.

Animal Antics

Carrier pigeons have been couriers of legitimate and nefarious items for centuries, but officials at the Pacific Institution in Abbotsford, British Columbia, nonetheless were stunned when a gray bird with a tiny backpack landed in a fenced inmate prison yard on Dec. 29. The CBC reported that officers “had to corner it,” according to John Randle, Pacific regional president of the Union for Canadian Correctional Officers. “You can imagine how that would look, trying to catch a pigeon.” After some time, they were able to grab it and remove the package, which contained about 30 grams of crystal meth. “We’ve been focusing so much on drone interdiction ... Now we have to look at, I guess, pigeons again,” Randle said. They set the little guy free and are investigating its origin.

Fail

When Minnechaug Regional High School in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, was built in 2012, the district installed a high-tech lighting system that was intended to save on energy costs, NBC News reported. But the software that controls the lights failed on Aug. 24, 2021, and every light in the school has been on since then. Aaron Osbourne, the assistant superintendent for the district, says the glitch is costing taxpayers “in the thousands of dollars per month on average, but not in the tens of thousands.” Teachers have removed bulbs where possible, and staff have shut off breakers to darken some of the exterior lighting. But help is on the way! Parts from China have arrived to fix the problem, which is expected to be completed in February.

Family Values

n It’s important to encourage your children in their scholastic endeavors. But an unnamed mother in La Grange, New York, took parental support too far when she snuck into Arlington High School on Jan. 17 before

school started to watch her freshman daughter beat up another girl. The Mid Hudson News reported that Mom was caught on video using vulgar language and egging her daughter on as the girls tussled. Superintendent Dr. Dave Moyer said the woman blended in with the students coming to school by wearing a backpack. “The students and the mother involved ... will be held accountable for their actions,” Moyer said.

n WSMV-TV reported that a car that crashed into a mailbox in Nashville, Tennessee, on Jan. 14 was driven by an underage motorist— really underage, as in 5 years old. The child’s father, John Edwin Harris, 53, was seen by a witness grabbing the kid and running from the scene, police said. Officers found multiple open bottles of alcohol inside and ran the tags; when they arrived at Harris’ home, he was driving away in his wife’s car. He failed a field sobriety test, could barely stand up and smelled of alcohol. He was charged with DUI and leaving the scene of an accident—where’s the child endangerment charge?!—and was released on $4,000 bond.

Repeat Offender

An unnamed 62-year-old man from Garfield Heights, Ohio, was arrested—for the 70th time—in early January after he allegedly stole a shopping cart full of packaged meat to sell to restaurants, WJW-TV reported. The Walmart in South Euclid alerted authorities to the theft; in the parking lot, the thief transferred the goods to a stolen suitcase and threw what wouldn’t fit in a dumpster. He told officers he sells the meat half-price to area restaurants. He was booked, again, for theft.

It’s Come to This

Between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31 of 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a 108% increase in a certain smuggled item at ports of entry, Fox5-TV reported on Jan. 18. It wasn’t fentanyl or heroin, though. Seized egg products and poultry were the hot catch as prices soared in the United States. “My advice is, don’t bring them over,” said CBP supervisory agriculture specialist Charles Payne. Or, he advised, if you do, declare them so you won’t be fined. Thirty eggs in Juarez, Mexico, cost $3.40—a fraction of what they’d cost in the U.S. because of an outbreak of avian flu that forced producers to euthanize 43 million egg-laying hens.

Least Competent Criminal Federal prosecutors charged Mohammed Chowdhury, 46, of Boston with one count of murder-for-hire on Jan. 17, ABC News reported, after he allegedly contracted with “hired killers,” aka federal agents, on the internet. Chowdhury had shared his wife’s and her boyfriend’s work and home locations, photos and work schedules with the contractors, and wanted both of them snuffed out—all for $8,000, with a $500 down payment. The agents met with Chowdhury for two months to plan the murders. “No evidence. No evidence from like, you know, that, uh, I did something, you know?” Chowdhury told them. He was arrested as they met to collect the down payment; he could face up to 10 years in prison.

Awesome!

Dominican sailor Elvis Francois, 47, was rescued by the Colombian navy on Jan. 18 after surviving 24 days drifting from the island of St. Martin in the Netherlands Antilles, NPR reported. Francois said he had been making repairs to a sailboat when currents swept it out to sea. He scrawled “help” on the boat’s hull, then survived on a bottle of ketchup, garlic powder, seasoning cubes and collected rainwater while he waited for a rescue.

“I called my friends, they tried to contact me, but I lost the signal,” Francois said. “There was nothing else to do but sit and wait.” He finally caught the attention of a passing airplane by signaling with a mirror. “I thank the coast guard. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be telling the story,” he said.

Business Systems Analyst (BSA-MN) in Midvale, UT.

Resp for facilitating the flow of business & tech reqs to software dvlpmt & test teams for core banking sys & processes. BS followed by 5yrs prog rltd exp. Send resumes to Zions Bancorporation at ZionsCareers@zionsbancorp. com. Must reference job title & code in subject line.

Solutions Architect, Appls & Integration (SAAI-AK) in Midvale, UT. Resp for applying architectural standards & patterns for appl solution design initiatives across a broad spectrum of techs. Telecommuting permitted. BS followed by 5 yrs prog rltd exp. Send resumes to Zions Bancorporation at ZionsCareers@ zionsbancorp.com. Must reference job title & code in subject line.