Gerald Nielson, an avid angler and attorney, waited years for a case that could open all Utah’s rivers to fly fishing, rafting and bird watching. In Utah, the public has always owned the river waters and had the theoretical right to use them, even on private property. But unlike the fly-fishing haven of Montana, those who try to cast their lines on Utah rivers risk getting shot. nNielson fi...
In 2008, many Utahns made like a torch and pitchfork mob, clamoring outside the Capitol for legislators to address the issue of illegal immigration. The Legislature listened—and passed the omnibus Senate Bill 81. The law, which takes effect on July 1 of this year, would, among other things, cross-deputize local law enforcement officers to perform federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement ...
Here at the Church Information Office, we have been swamped with inquiries about an article that appeared in the Jan. 30 Deseret News. Under the headline, “Pres.Monson makes time for ‘promptings,’” the article revealed that the current Prophet, Seer and Revelator “always acts on promptings, whether it is to make a telephone call or call on someone in person.” nP...
Maybe it was the sound scolding Rant Control administered last week—or, more likely, the spate of unseasonably glorious weather we had around Groundhog Day—but recently, the comments on CityWeekly.net have been more constructive and less rude than usual. nKatharine Biele’s cover story about the impact of a planned Rocky Mountain Power substation on a University neighborhood (&ldq...
By most measures of small-business success in Utah, Tony Chlepas would be in the Hall of Fame. nHis mother, the late Helen Chlepas, was widowed with her four children still in grade school. In the early ’70s, Helen secured a small loan to buy a ramshackle little tavern near the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. Tony and his siblings grew up helping their mom, including in the bar’s tiny ...
nEighteen months ago, Rocky Anderson stood on the steps of Salt Lake’s City & County Building calling for the impeachment of the president. Protesters, some wearing rubber Dick Cheney masks, surrounded him, along with papier-mâché tableaus of Bush cabinet members chained together in black-and-white prison stripes. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, famously dismissed the protesters a...
City Weekly’s first downtown office was in the Shubrick building, along with Port O’ Call. Now that she’s gone, what’s your favorite Port memory? n nVictor Serrano: My last and only Port memory was City Weekly’s 2006 Christmas Party! It was a blast! nJamie Gadette: Pretty much every City Weekly function, especially the Wells Fargo bomb-threat cocktail hour. nNick Clar...
nLegislative LiarsnIt was only a few years ago that conservatives pressing to mar Utah’s Constitution with a gay-marriage ban promised they weren’t going to take legal protections from homosexuals. Nowadays, it’s crystal clear that the 2004 line was a lie. Gay activists are presenting this year’s Utah Legislature with a list of bills to give elementary legal protections to...
January’s gone but we’re still enjoying an extra-hearty dose of inversion gravy whenever we step outside. Seriously, how long until we start sporting those SARS face masks around town? Lucky for us we’ve got some good forums coming up on how to green up this city/state/world.n n nBuilding a Green EconomynThursday, Feb. 5nThe University of Utah will be capping off its second annua...
As Utah lawmakers debate an ethics proposal to stop retired lawmakers from becoming lobbyists for a one-year cooling-off period, they’ll have familiar faces to advise them.
I walked into Port O’ Call for the very first time on the very first day the club opened. At the time, our offices were on Historic Main Street in Midvale, not downtown. But our back page was always sold to Mainstay Vodka, and I knew the distributor of that product Terry Nish (he of Salt Flats race-driving fame), very well. All I really remember is that the tables had green tablecloths on th...
If you embrace movies as works of art, not just as works of commerce, then here’s why you should embrace Coraline: Not a frame of it looks like it was crafted with a thought to who might actually want to buy a ticket. nI mean that as a compliment, and not a backhanded one. In contemporary Hollywood, there’s only one paradigm for selling any kind of feature animation, and that’s s...
Panicked letters have been flooding in about the Feb. 17 (maybe) Digital TV Transition—not to The Only TV Column That Matters™, of course, but I’m always here to help. The following is a compendium (means summary) of concerns compiled into convenient FAQ (means Frequently Asked Questions, or Frost Ain’t Qualified) form. Prepare to have your Fears All Quelled (another FAQ). ...
Dear Mexican: I can’t tell you how disappointed I’ve been these past few days, as a U.S. citizen and ciudadano Mexicano, how I’ve been seeing more and more stories about los narcos and how the Mexican government keeps getting screwed over in newspapers. I think that you should dedicate a whole article in your column telling your gringo readers what their pot and crack consuming h...
nARIES (March 21-April 19)nI was watching a martial arts competition on ESPN TV. It featured a fierce macho dance-off, in which rivals took turns brandishing their high-octane warrior choreography. At one point the announcer waxed poetic as the eventual winner pulled off a seemingly impossible move: “And that was a corkscrew illusion twist rodeo spin!” In the coming week, Aries, I urge...
Curses, Foiled AgainnPolice in Council Bluffs, Iowa, reported that a man who threatened a store clerk with a gun took cash and then pulled out a can of pepper spray and tried to spray the clerk. Instead, he accidentally sprayed himself in the face and ran away. n• A shoplifter who made off with $1,200 worth of designer purses from a store in Cape Coral, Fla., was run over twice by her getaway...
My friend says Christians weren’t actually thrown to the lions in ancient Rome, but when I was at the Colosseum, I saw a big cross there in honor of all the Christians martyred at that spot. He insists this was just made up by the church to perpetuate their religion. What gives? —vbunny nThe story has its suspicious aspects, I guess. According to the historian Tacitus, Christians durin...
nV-Day in ParisnWell, maybe you can’t go to Paris for Valentine’s Day, but you could dine at Paris Bistro. Eric DeBonis and his Paris Bistro crew are taking reservations for Valentine’s Day, which will feature a “magnifique” five-course menu priced at $69.95 per person plus tax and a service charge (20 percent), with optional wine pairings also available, priced separ...
Woody Allen once described Los Angeles as a city whose major cultural contribution was right turns on red lights. By that metric, Utah has SoCal beat: We have given the world fry sauce. nSalmon-pink in color, it is the most efficient way to get additional fat onto the deep-fried potatoes next to a bacon cheeseburger. Creating a new way to up Utahns’ fat intake was a tough assignment, but loc...
A long weekend of touring Phoenix-area wine bars and restaurants had left me with, as Tom Waits once sang, “A bad liver and a broken heart.” Well, not a broken heart, but a broken wallet, for sure. nSo I was in the market for a meal that would be easy on the budget and, for once, not in need of an award-winning wine selection to go with it. Somebody had dropped off a stack of menus for...
Ladies Night was popping off Jan. 29. Some of the hottest in town showed up for the reintroduction of the club’s Champagne Thursdays. There was plenty of action on the dance floor as DJ DAO (U92) mixed it up on the turntables. Not many DJs still practice the art of the scratch, but DAO is an old-school artisan. And the people on the floor showed their appreciation by dropping it hot-like all...
Nine years and nine films after Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit still enjoys some anonymity. Even here in Salt Lake City, where he continues to make his home, he can get around without too much movie-star fuss—or industry rigmarole, which is why he never moved to Los Angeles in the first place. Here, at least most of the time, he can blend in. Not even my neighbors, who’ve seen Almost Fam...
Evil Pat Pardy and Tom Beaufoy—the Brit DJ-duo/band Evil Nine—have just boarded a flight from Toronto to New York City. Pardy, breathless from a pell-mell run toward the plane and up the boarding stairs, tells a tale we thought we’d never have to report in these pages. “I saw a man eat his own son,” he says. “It wasn’t in that erratic, primal way you norma...
Thursday 2.5nCWMA SHOWCASESnThe action continues tonight with City Weekly Music Awards nominees Michael Gross & The Statuettes and Cavedoll at the Urban Lounge. Friday, it's Red Bennies, Tolchock Trio and The Future of the Ghost at the Urban Lounge; High Beams and Andale at Bar Deluxe; and RuRu, Kid Theodore and Neon Trees at Velour in Provo. On Saturday, God’s Revolver, Cave of Roses an...
nnWATCH VIDEO PERFORMANCES ONLINEnnnArtists were selected by an advisory committee made up of supporters of the local scene including record label owners, promoters, members of the media, club owners, producers, engineers and other figures who are deeply invested in Utah music. nnEach committee member selected around 25-30 artists which were then tallied and entered into a database to determine th...
By January 2007, Slamdance wasn’t only a place for indie filmmakers to show off their wares, get a little recognition and, hopefully, catch the eye of a distributor looking to take a chance on an unknown. It was also host to an independent video-game competition known as “Guerrilla Games.” Like its cinematic counterpart, this was a huge opportunity for independent game makers to ...
Descending Valhalla Canyon in the Tetons in 1967, I ran into Yvon Chouinard, the world-class mountain climber. I asked Chouinard what he was up to. He pulled an Italian ice ax from his pack. n“I damned near died on an ice sheet a bit ago, and I put this ax on a forge and dropped the pick,” he said. He was heading up to the ice on the Grand Teton to see if this invention would hold bett...
Have you ever seen the 1931 Dracula, with Béla Lugosi as the Transylvanian bloodsucker? Holy Satan in Hades, is it sexy. This was before Hollywood’s Hays Code—the precursor to the MPAA’s rating system, which was implemented in 1930 but wasn’t enforced with any gusto until 1934—effectively de-fanged movies, and Lugosi’s vampire is handsome, elegant, debona...
nTHURSDAY 2.5nCathode Ray: Video Works by Tyrone DaviesnThere aren’t many local artists working in video art, the Sidewalk Cinema series notwithstanding. Video art is usually thought of as one or two videos on the same number of monitors. nTyrone Davies, however, has assembled an entire constellation of video art pieces on enough monitors to fill an entire gallery. Equally impressive is the ...