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With Valentine’s Day around the corner, the last minute frenzy has begun. People are scurrying the streets looking for perfect gifts for their loved ones. Grocery stores all over the city are stocked with pink flower bouquets and heart shaped confections, boutiques are advertising lace intimates and restaurants are preparing for one of the busiest nights of the year. GOOD HEAVENS! I’m so sick of it!

Since when did love become something to capitalize on? And why do we feel the need to run around throwing away money on meaningless things such as unethically sourced chocolates or teddy bears made by underpaid sweatshop workers in China.

Here’s a (not so) crazy idea. Let’s use Valentine’s Day as a day to do good deeds in honor of our loved ones (or in honor of ourselves).

• For the adventurer: Support the National Park Service and buy an annual parks pass. Not only does this give you a reason to visit parks and make memories, but the fee keeps the parks running. Don’t have time to hit the road? Donate to the NPS in honor of your adventurous loved one, or any of these local environmental groups:
  • Utah Chapter Sierra Club
  • HEAL Utah
  • Save Our Canyons
  • Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
• For the animal lover: Want to help animals in need and bring a smile to your loved ones face? Adopt or foster a furry friend from Best Friends Animal Society. Best Friends is hosting a Valentine’s Slumber Party on Thursday, February 13th. You can take home a dog, cat or kitten for a one night foster slumber party before their Valentine’s adoption promotion on Friday, February 14th. Not ready to take that step in your relationship? No sweat. Best Friends accepts loving donations.
• For the foodie: 12% of Utahns don’t know where their next meal will come from. Instead of a dinner date, why not go on a grocery store date? Take your loved one out to the grocery store and fight hunger by purchasing and donating non-perishable food items to the Utah Food Bank.
• For the artist: Support the arts and art educational programs by donating, volunteering or becoming a member at any of the local art museums such as:
  • Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
  • Utah Museum of Fine Arts
  •  The Leonardo
• For your Galentine: What better way to spend time with your galentine than spending it standing up for women? According to VIPP, one in three Utah women will experience some type of sexual assault in their lifetime and one in eight will be raped. Together we can reduce these statistics to nothing. Grab your gals, get passionate and volunteer together at any of these incredible women’s organizations:
  • Utah Domestic Violence Coalition
  • The Center for Women and Children in Crisis
  • Rape Recovery Center.
• For anyone: There are those of us less fortunate who deserve all the love we can offer. According to the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, there were almost 3,000 people experiencing homelessness in Utah in 2018. Organizations like the ones listed below need our help. So grab your loved one, pick a nonprofit and work together.
  • Odyssey House
  • American Red Cross
  • Shelter the Homeless
  • Volunteers of America
  • The Road Home

All in all, remember that Valentine’s Day is a day for giving love. Be sure to express your love through acts of kindness.

And if you want to stay traditional this Valentine’s Day, no problem. Just make sure you shop local and stay sustainable. Here are some of our recommendations:

ANIMALIA: They sell incredibly beautiful handmade jewelry, pottery, locally made cards, sustainable household items and they have a bulk refill dispensary!

Caputo’s: This is your one stop shop for chocolate. Caputo’s offers a wide variety of ethically sourced craft chocolates.

Native Flower Company: Support your local florist. Native Flower Company has a beautiful selection of flower bouquets.

It’s 2020, and we’re all over those New Years’ resolutions. You know, the “be better” list: eat less sugar, drop social media, join a gym, no boyfriends… What else could be better? We want our city to listen up and get better too. Welcoming in a new Mayor, 20/20 vision also means seeing things with more clarity. And why not add a few resolutions for our very own SALT LAKE CITY? We may not be perfect, but we continue to dream better for our city.

Free Public Transportation

That’s right, no fares, period. While the UTA does offer free passage inside a finite downtown area known as the “FREE FARE ZONE” and a FAREPAY system is a start, not having to deal with fares at all would be ideal. With Utah’s population boom and our number of AQI (Air Quality Index) action days which boast air pollution levels unhealthy to everyone, why is this even debatable?

Bag the Plastic. 

The list is at three. Park City, Moab and Logan have adopted a plastic bag ban. Being Utah’s big city, the big question is if SLC will join them?

Local Culture vs. Imported Culture

From theatre to dining, we lost some good ones this year (Aristo’s, The Paris, Sea Salt), can we lean a little more to locally-made and locally-owned?

What shall we eat for dinner tonight? The possibilities have shrunk around Salt Lake. BOO! We want more than just another burger joint or pasta tossed around in a cheese wheel. Don’t we?

SLC, yes, we need to see more stuff like this!!

While writing a post about elotes, my mind was blown reading about a menu item at Antojitos Lokos in South Salt Lake called takislokos (yes, those brightly red-colored rolled TAKIS tortilla chips). A TAKIS bag is cut lengthwise and filled with cukes, jicama, Japanese peanuts, pork rinds and hot sauce.

More room for more bikes and pedestrians. 

Sure sure, we’re making progress, but this is right in step to improve our air quality. Let’s make public health and wellness a priority for SLC too.

Support our local publications (we’re kinda partial to print). 

We don’t care who you support but stay informed, big issues (i.e. inland port) will impact our future (and the Great Salt Lake), so read and support local journalists.

What about gardens?

According to Forbes, Utah ranks among the fastest-growing in the Nation, yikes. Along with housing and urban development, we hope that community gardens (Wasatch Community Gardens just turned 30), parks and creating green spaces (including your very own) will become an equally high priority for SLC.

More DIVERSITY.

Getting out of our comfort zones is another ambitious resolution for our city. Let this encourage you. Along with supporting local, seek out the organizations that are doing that and doing good at the same time.

To read more about the issues and aspects that we care about, go here.

A few pockets of snow linger in shadowed corners of the Westminster College campus. Salman Sayyed, head covered in a borrowed ski cap, shivers. The 33-degree air is new to the Mumbai native, who has lived in Utah for less than three months.

“I have a heavy jacket in my bag,” he says, nodding to the full pack slung over his shoulder. The library is just a few hundred yards off, and gearing up simply for the short walk from the school cafeteria seems impractical.

But practicality is kind of Sayyed’s thing. It always has been. It was practical when he dropped out of school at eight to help his mother collect trash and resell recyclables to feed his family. It was practical to bundle up their belongings and family home—nothing more than a plastic tarp—and hide it among bushes to keep it from being stolen while they worked. And it was practical to dart between cars at one of Mumbai’s busiest intersections, hawking English-language bestsellers for just more than $3 a day.

Now, in Salt Lake City, Sayyed is farther away from home than he could have ever imagined, considering he first heard the word “Utah” less than two years ago. He came with lofty goals for his return. He wants to help change the system that has kept kids like himself in poverty. To that end, he started a $56,000 Master in Business Administration program at Westminster in August (the tuition alone would cover his parents’ monthly rent and bills for 52 years) and has plans to launch a non-profit focused on Mumbai street kids.

“In India, there are so many poor students who are passionate about studying, but cannot complete [school],” Sayyed says. “My goal is to start a tour company with students to create job opportunities as guides and to support their education.”

Sayyed’s story reminds Westerners of the hit movie, Slumdog Millionaire. But two women replace the role of the film’s game show. Caroline Nagar, whom Sayyed now considers a second mother, met 15-year-old Sayyed as he sold books at the crowded Haji Ali intersection and urged him to go back to school after a seven-year hiatus. Utahn Beth Colosimo helped him get to Salt Lake to earn his MBA.

Sayyed was born on the pavement near the family tent when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out across Mumbai and prevented his mother from getting to the hospital. He had no birth certificate or documented evidence he existed. He dropped out of school after second grade, teaching himself how to read English from the books he sold and the billboards lining the major thoroughfare. Several friends, also booksellers, were hit, some killed, by cars.

Nagar, then a teacher at the Akanksha Foundation, a nonprofit that educates children in urban India, had a hunch Sayyed would do well if he returned to school. She convinced him to give up bookselling. A year later Sayyed was a full-time student—in three years he’d moved through the equivalent of eight grades.

Sayyed had one year instead of the usual 10, to study for the tests necessary to move on to junior college, where he earned back-to-back accolades as Student of the Year. In 2017 he graduated from Kischunchand Chellaram College with a bachelor’s in humanities and arts; his final semester was at Houston Community College via the U.S. State Department’s EducationUSA program.

Back from Houston for two months, Sayyed met Colosimo, executive director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program, as he guided a group of Salt Lake Community College and Westminster students and staff visiting India in the summer of 2018. The two started chatting on the long bus ride from into Mumbai.

“He started unraveling this jaw-dropping story,” Colosimo recalls. “He was just super passionate about wanting to change the trajectory of his life, and that was the springboard to overcome so many obstacles without having any real family guidance.”

Sayyed shared his plans to go to graduate school in the United States, and Colosimo left India with a promise to keep in touch about school in Utah. “A lot of people come and say a lot of things,” Sayyed says. “So I was just like, ‘let’s see.’”

They did stay in touch, and Colosimo started planning to bring Sayyed to Utah. “I was sending him information about the University of Utah and Westminster and we just started ticking off all the things that needed to happen,” says Colosimo—all the basic college application requirements plus English language exams, student visas and financial documents. By May 2019, Westminster accepted Sayyed.

Colosimo signed on as Sayyed’s sponsor—she makes sure his tuition is covered, he lives in the Colosimo’s basement apartment and he’s quickly becoming a part of the family. He works the maximum 20 hours a week at two on-campus jobs and to offset expenses, Colosimo has set up “Salman Education Fund” fundraisers at Mountain America Credit Union and on Go Fund Me.

For Colosimo, the reason she committed to bringing a virtual stranger across an ocean and into her home has become increasingly obvious.

“He is not prideful about how he’s overcome circumstance, and he’s super happy to be giving back,” she says. “I think he’ll carry that forward in his career and the social impact he wants to see in his country. He wants to see kids get educated and he wants to help change the course of India. He can be a real role model.”

For more information about Salman, check out his Youtube channel here.

In an unassuming space on West Temple, international flags line the walls, classical music blasts from a stereo, and children spend the afternoon engaged in epic sword fights.

Utah Swords Academy teaches people of all ages and skill levels the art of this fascinating sport. They offer classes for child and adult beginners, competition opportunities and private coaching. They even have an adaptive fencing program for wheelchair-bound athletes.

Carli Call, an administrative assistant at Utah Swords Academy, says fencing is not necessarily about being the tallest, fastest or strongest. “They call it physical chess,” she said. “The sport is based a lot on thinking, preparing and adapting.” Though fencing doesn’t exactly resemble the swashbuckling fights in Hollywood classics, Call says the adrenaline rush is similar. “That basic spirit of getting to swing a sword around and go as fast as you can—that’s the truth.”

Steinn Portmann started at Utah Swords Academy when he was nine. Now, five years later, he competes internationally and practices five days a week. “It’s one of those sports where you fall in love with it as soon as you start,” he said. “You get out there and it feels so different. It’s so hands-on.”

Call admits the sport is unconventional—“People don’t even realize fencing is in the Valley.” But participants have found a unique community that fosters mutual respect, personal development and some friendly competition. Plus, the swords look cool as hell.

For more information about fencing go to utahfencing.club

For more on sports, click here.

Mr. Nate spends the first 15 minutes of his allotted hour of class time taking attendance. But this isn’t any ordinary roll call and it’s the first clue that Nathan Holcomb (the kids call him Mr. Nate), the theater teacher at Hillside Middle School, has a different idea about why theater is important and how to teach it.

Each student has to look him in the eye and quickly answer a random question. “How was your weekend?” “Who is your favorite celebrity crush, male and female?” “What did you have for breakfast?” The kid has to answer in clear sentences spoken so everyone can hear. It’s called conversation and Mr. Nate considers it a foundational skill for theater and for life.

For a teen culture that does most of its communicating with fingers flying on a keyboard, this kind of exchange is revolutionary. Some naturally have confidence, enjoy being heard, seen and even laughed at, but even more students don’t. “Public speaking, just answering a simple question in front of others, matters,” says Mr. Nate.

“One of the main premises in theater is speaking up,” he says. “And learning to be comfortable with that will make a difference for your whole life.”

It’s a safe bet that we won’t ever see the names of these kids on the marquees at Sundance. But learning to empathize through role-playing and communicate by speaking up is an education in itself.

Fundraiser for Hospitality Workers in Dire Straits, a fundraiser for One Small Miracle was held August 11, Bar-X patio, SLC 

 

See more #loveutah content here.

Leaders of Peace House, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending domestic abuse and family violence hosted a public ribbon cutting at their new Community Campus.

September 21, 2019, Park City, Photos by Kyle Jenkins

See more #loveutah content here.

I thought I was reasonably good, but then I was completely overpowered by a 12-year old,” said Adam Davis. “The game’s all about speed, agility, touch and the mental aspect, not strength. That’s why it can be appealing to such a wide variety of people.” Davis is the owner of Salt Lake City Table Tennis (SLCTT), a 4,000 square-foot, 24-hour facility on the west side of the city devoted to the sport where an opponent of diminutive stature can easily humble you.

Inside SLCTT are six professional-level Butterfly Centrefold 25 tables that run about $2,500 each. As someone who spent a significant portion of his childhood locked in hyper-competitive, basement ping pong clashes against my brother wherein the most important things to know were which table irregularities would work in your favor and which angles could turn the adjacent wall into your ally, I was in heaven. Whether you’re looking to take a Forrest Gump-style leap in your game or are simply looking for a new outlet and a little fun, SLCTT is the place.

Membership at SLCTT is only $40 a month. For $1.30 a day, you get round-the-clock keycard access to the club to play any time their schedule allows. Day passes are $10 per person, and drop-ins are encouraged. Even if nobody’s around, you can give Davis a call at 801-886-1415 and he’ll open the door remotely for you so you can play. Just fill out a liability waiver, drop your payment in an envelope and get paddling.

Table Tennis has been an Olympic sport since 1988, so it’s fair to say some people take it pretty seriously. If you’re on that end of the spectrum, you can take lessons from former professionals like ParaPanAmerican Games 5th place finisher Valentin Letelier, Chinese National Team veteran Sun Beih and Ukrainian National Team veteran Ruslan Riabokoniev. SLCTT’s weekly Wednesday night round robins help match people up with fun, competitive matches to test your progress against the club ranking system.

Don’t be intimidated by visions of cutthroat competition, however. Davis reminded me the club’s main goal is to help people find enjoyment by chasing down and hitting a little plastic ball. “Above all else, people just have fun here,” Davis said. “We’re such a friendly club, and everyone’s here to get a little exercise, learn a little bit and have a good time, regardless of their level.” 

Don’t Skimp on the Paddle. A paddle is all you really need to get started in your table tennis career, so it’s worth splurging just a little. Davis recommends spending Between $30 and $60 on a pre-assembled paddle from a reputable brand like Butterfly. “The main thing is to get a paddle where the rubber actually has some grip to it,” Davis said. “At the big box stores, you’ll spend $30 for garbage.” Davis can order product through the club to get gear at a discount.

See all of our city life coverage here.

Named: Ben Lomond, north of Ogden, was named after the mountain Ben Lomond in the Scottish Highlands because early settler Mary Wilson Montgomery thought the mountain range resembled the Munro, Scottish “mountains,” which are a meh 3,000 feet above sea level. Our Ben Lomond is 9,716 feet high.

Conquer: Four different trailheads to the north, south, and east of Ben Lomond’s base, lead to the summit. The standard route ascends gradually from the North Ogden Divide trailhead. The most popular route starts from Willard Basin to the north. This is the shortest and easiest way to climb the mountain but requires a long drive on dirt roads south of Mantua. This route goes to the top of Willard Peak and then traverses the ridge over Ben Lomond. You’ll be able to bag two peaks in one day! 

Named: Mount Olympus, because every range has a Mt. Olympus, right? 

About: Mount Olympus’ elevation is only 9,026 feet above sea level, but its profile dominates the Salt Lake City skyline and captured the early settlers’ imagination, who, perhaps lacking actual imagination, named it Olympus after the mythical home of the ancient Greek gods—Zeus and the gang. Because of its imposing presence on the Wasatch and its easy-to-access trailhead along Wasatch Boulevard it is perhaps the most-climbed peak in the range, and, we think, a litmus test for new Salt Lakers. We won’t believe you really live here until you’ve scaled its heights. Think of it as hazing.

Conquer: This strenuous (really) and heavily trafficked hike is a 6.3-mile out-and-back featuring a river and constant views of the valley below as you ascend. And you can bring your dog. But be warned, the trail is mostly exposed, hot and dry (avoid during peak summer) and the final ascent is as unrelenting as the will of Zeus. 

Named: Twin Peaks (Broads Fork side) There are actually two sets of Twin Peaks in the Wasatch. These are  the “Broads Fork” Twin Peaks, overlooking the Salt Lake Valley.

About: “Broads Fork” Twin Peaks are 11,330 feet tall, the second highest in Salt Lake County. Standing atop either you can see the other.

Conquer: The trail to the top is a 10.5-mile-out-and-back beginning near Salt Lake City in Big Cottonwood Canyon. It’s not an easy hike but the views are worth it, especially for birders from June to September.

Named: Lone Peak or Pfeifferhorn Lone Peak and recorded as “Little Matterhorn” on USGS maps. Pfeifferhorn’s name comes from Chuck Pfeiffer, a local climber who was leader of the Wasatch Club.

About: East of Salt Lake City and visible from North Salt Lake to Provo. It rises sharply from the valley floor to its peak over 11,000 feet, making it a hard climb to the summit, but easily accessible.

Conquer: The steep granite cirque provides climbs ranging from Class-3 scrambles to difficult 5.10s under the Yosemite Decimal System. Its access, proximity to alpine lakes and short (but steep) trail make it a popular hike year-round. The easiest route involves moderately steep hiking and a short scramble. It offers panoramic views from the summit and sometimes mountain goats can be seen above upper Red Pine Lake below.

Named: Mount Timpanogos, a word supposedly from the Timpanogots tribe which translates as “rock” (tumpi-) and “water mouth” or “canyon” (pano.) Locals  just call her “Timp.” Because the mountain’s profile looks (vaguely) like a reclining woman, legends abound about the tragic death of an Indian maiden and a star-crossed brave, yada, yada, yada. (See page 82 for the tale.)

About: Timp is the second highest in the Wasatch, peaking at 11,720 feet. The north end of the mountain is home to Timpanogos Cave National Monument with ranger-guided cave tours daily. During the warmer months, at Timpanogos Glacier, a rocky lump found on that may have patches of snow all year, you can hear water running under the rocks and Emerald Lake, at the bottom of the cirque, often turns blue indicating that the glacier is probably still moving.

Conquer: The 14-mile (23 km) round-trip hike to the summit, with almost 5,300 feet of elevation gain is one of the most frequently visited in the Wasatch and a collegial rite of passage for BYU students.

Named: Mount Nebo, after one of the saddest stories in The Bible which says that at the end of his life, Moses stood on Mount Nebo in Jordan and looked into the Promised Land the Lord said he would never enter. Some early Bible-obsessed settler thought this peak of the Wasatch looked like the mountain in Jordan. Had he ever been to Jordan to make a real comparison? We don’t know. Maybe he was just having a bad day.

About: The southernmost and highest mountain in the Wasatch Range of Utah and way taller than its Biblical counterpart, Mt. Nebo is 11,933 feet high. (The one in Jordan where the Bible says Moses died measures only 2,330 feet above sea level.) 

Conquer: Mt. Nebo has two summits; the north peak is the highest. Several trails from east and west lead to the top, another approaches from the northeast and a bench trail runs along the east side. They’re popular but strenuous trails, and dangerous for horses. An old hand once supposedly said, “There’s dead horses in every canyon on that mountain!” You can just take the Scenic Byway up to 9,000 feet then take the short hike to “Devil’s Kitchen,” a hoodoo-filled area like you see in southern Utah.

That’s me, in a little six-seater plane flying from Moab to the put-in for “Down the River with Everett Ruess and Friends”—the river trip down Desolation Canyon described in this issue’s story, “Nowhere Man.” 

Although thousands of people have traveled down the Green River since Maj. John Wesley Powell’s harrowing first journey in 1869, this was my first river trip—a personal exploration of new territory and new knowledge. After riding the river all day, we would gather together and share songs, readings and thoughts about Everett Ruess, the young artist-wanderer who disappeared into the Utah wilderness in 1934. There were lots of musings about why people explore and the relationship between humans and the land. Our Utah landscape is our most valuable treasure. There is nothing like it in the U.S., likely nothing like it in the world. Countless people have devoted their lives to exploring it and understanding it but the more we know, the more questions there are. In this issue, we explore several aspects of Utah’s natural world—its canyons, its history and its science.

One of the state’s most treasured resources is “The Greatest Snow on Earth.” We say that a lot and most of us have experienced why it’s so great—light, powdery, frequent. Yet we don’t understand what makes it so. Jen Hill looks into what causes our famous powder and then takes a peek into the future—with the climate changing so fast, how long will our snow last? That concern is just a sliver of the bigger question: How long can Utah prosper if we don’t protect our greatest treasure?

 

 

 

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