Salt Lake City and Utah would be worse off without City Weekly calling 'BS' for 40 years. 

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I wish I could say it feels like yesterday that this newspaper printed its very first issue back in 1984. But I can't—it actually feels like a different lifetime ago.

In 1984, I was single, a bartender and a pretend songwriter. I'd spent my college years and beyond as if I were in retirement, golfing when I wanted, working if I wanted, hanging out anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted.

One day, I woke up and went, "Oh, crap! All my friends have kids and mortgages, and I don't even have a decent job." So, I created this one. I'd never worked at a newspaper before, never made a page dummy, never sold an ad, never built an ad, never solicited columnists, never edited copy, never knew how to send an invoice or billing statement.

The 8-hour days became 12-, then 16-, and along the way, I learned how to make the best with no resources and accumulated many good friends and an alliance of boosters. They spent little money with us, but they were great at boosting!

Those alliances made with external communities and with co-workers—along with lots of band-aids and tissues—became the secret sauce of what evolved into City Weekly. We were blessed to be ignorant enough to not know the pitfalls in front of us, young enough to enjoy it all, scared enough to keep fighting, ambitious enough to do better, innovative enough to stay in front of the competition, brazen enough to spit in anyone's eye and selfish enough to surround ourselves with people just like us, and only just like us. We had lots of drinks. We made lots of friends. We made a few enemies. We had a blast most often.

I'm sometimes asked about what might have been my favorite City Weekly story. I'm asked about who among the hundreds of employees to find expression or employment with us I favored (or dis-favored) most. I'm asked what is my, or the paper's, proudest moment. I'm asked if I would do it again. I'm asked to be George Bailey, the protagonist of It's a Wonderful Life, and wonder what Salt Lake City would be like if there were no City Weekly.

I'll start with the last one. Salt Lake and half of Utah would suck if there were no City Weekly. That is not immodesty—it's true and anyone who's honest about it and knows our history and that of our city also knows it's true. From fighting city hall, to helping "liberalize" Utah's liquor laws, to advocating for any and all marginalized communities and voices, to being an early ally of a movement that enables so many Pride flags to fly high these days, to giving unwavering support to locally owned businesses and to stand with our David readers against the behemoth Goliaths, City Weekly has made a big difference in Utah.

We extracted a special pride when hounding those rascally, pious hypocrites and scoundrels, who somehow still find their ways into prominent positions of power here, both in business and politics. From the early days, we were never kind to those folks, because frankly there was no reason to be, and we couldn't buy them off with free drinks. Ron Yengich, Richard Barnum-Reece, John Harrington, Tom Walsh and Christopher Smart comprised most of the early voices of what some people regarded as us being radicals. Today, Katherine Biele among others fills that role. We just called BS. Nothing more, no agenda—we just don't like creeps.

My favorite story was Stephen Dark's cover story in 2007, titled "The Things We Carry," honoring the 40-year anniversary of the three "Boys From Midvale" who grew up together and then were killed within three weeks of each other in Vietnam in 1967—Tom Gonzales, Jimmy Martinez and LeRoy Tafoya. I've known their families my entire life. That one hurt. I'm so proud of Stephen Dark, who so delicately told their story so full of open wounds.

There were many others, as there should be since we published over 1,500 cover stories in our time. Our most important period was back in the 1990s, when Lynn Packer revealed Utah's ugly underbelly with his years-long series on the Bonneville Pacific scandal, which begat the CityGate scandal, which begat the Olympics scandal. If you're wondering where all the scandals are these days, they remain in plain sight. It's just that today's citizens are more prone to ignore news of such in favor of death-scrolling perpetual bad news dished out to them by the likes of baseless, incompetent, anti-patriots and shameless liars like Utah's own Sen. Mike Lee.

Speaking of which, Lee's mentor Donald Trump was barely in his puberty years of creepiness in 1984, having just helped kill the U.S. Football League—which he shamelessly barged into, but which taught him to be ever more brazen when it comes to public thievery. If there's anything 40 years on that I and this nation can do without, it's Donald Trump.

That leaves one more item. Thank you to everyone who ever worked on the newspaper in any fashion. Each of you left a positive imprint. Today, I fondly recall Bien Hoang. He spent more than 10 years with us after leaving his native Vietnam in a bit of a rush, one might say. He was a poet, artist and beatnik, and he followed his muse to become our art director and production manager.

Everyone loved Bien. Jerre, Jim, Christa, Susan or Ben could fill you in on my feelings for Bien, as he was City Weekly in the flesh. He's gone now.

Merci pour tout mon cher ami Bien.
Khi chúng tôi cht, tôi hy vng bn ang ch i chúng tôi.
Πολ αγπη και ευχαριστ στην οικογνει μου.
Next week, we do it again.

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