Machete duel ends with one man hogtied.
The article laconically notes that, “Fists where thrown and one man picked up a machete, police said. The second man also retrieved a machete, according to police, and they began dueling with the weapons.”
Who has not just one but two machetes laying around the house? In Salt Lake City?
I’m telling you, kids, it’s getting weird out there…
In hunting around YouTube for videos of this morning’s implosion, I found a few clips that may be of interest to sentimental slobs such as myself who want to reminisce about the downtown malls. The first is an appropriately titled “last look” that’s heavy on schmaltz (warning: Barbera Streisand’s “Memories” ahead!) and includes a little too much footage of the parking garages for my tastes, but also nicely encapsulates what’s going away in the name of progress:
At a little after 6.30 this morning, the Key Bank Tower, a 30-year-old high-rise office building in downtown Salt Lake, was imploded to make way for the new City Creek Center redevelopment project. It was the first such implosion in the downtown area since the old Hotel Newhouse was demolished back in ’83 (which I didn’t care about at the time, but in retrospect seems a deep shame, especially since the place where the hotel stood is now — can you guess? — a parking lot! Moreover, a parking lot that is rarely anywhere near capacity! That was really worth taking out a historically interesting and beautiful building, wasn’t it?)
I haven’t been able to find an embeddable video of the Key Bank’s death to post up here, but if you go to KSL-TV’s site, there are several nifty clips for your viewing pleasure. I especially like Angle #1, which has a couple of men in the foreground to provide some scale and drama, and Angle #4, which is a long-distance shot that includes the First Security Building I wrote about a while back. (Look for the red glow; that would be the big neon sign I like so well.) With the Key Bank’s destruction, the so-called Crossroads Block — named for the mall that used to wrap around the base of the tower — is now clear. Meanwhile, across the street, the demolition of the ZCMI Center Mall continues. (Yes, you out-of-towners, Salt Lake used to have two malls right across the street from each other; it actually wasn’t as insane as it sounds, as they had a different mix of retailers and catered to different demographics. As with so many other things about Salt Lake culture, it’s a little complicated and it reflects the social schism between Mormons and non-Mormons…)
Well, here’s a small feather in my home town’s cap: a pair of wine tasters have declared that Salt Lake’s tap water tastes best out of the 12 cities whose water they tested for a recent segment on The Today Show. The other cities they considered include Portland (Oregon, I assume, since this list seems to work its way east), San Francisco, Dallas, St. Louis, Phoenix, Chicago, Cleveland, Memphis, Boston, Miami and Columbia, South Carolina.
While I’m not about to dispute any positive press that comes this way — we Utahns have to put up with a whole lot of jokes and snide remarks about our fair state and our, ahem, unique local culture — I would like to know specifically where in the Salt Lake area the sample came from. It certainly wasn’t from my neighborhood, where the water is so hard that you can watch the mineral deposits swirl in a freshly drawn glass. Mmmmm, tasty! And chewy!
A number of items from the Department of Changing Landscapes have caught my eye in recent days, but one in particular makes me a very happy boy indeed: I’ve learned that there is a genuine 1940s-vintage diner on its way to Utah even as I type this, the very one you see in the photo above.
I confess, I have a deep affection for old-tymey cafes and greasy spoons, the sorts of places where both of my grandmothers slung hash and where men in hats hunched over their eggs and coffee at long counters while they read the latest news about the War in Europe. There aren’t many such places left in Utah, and the ones that do still endure tend to be pretty far from the Wasatch Front, out in the small outpost towns of the state’s hinterlands. (I recommend Mom’s Cafe in Salina, if you ever find yourself in Salina for some reason.) As far as I know, however, Utah never had a diner like the one in the photo above, one of those streamlined prefab jobs that resemble train cars and turn up in period movies like, well, Diner.
It’s been a while since I mentioned The Great Simple Tricks Pizza Challenge, that crazy scheme hatched by Chenopup and Brian Greenberg to somehow fly a pie from Salt Lake’s own Este Pizza Company to New York City to see how it stacks up against the Big Apple’s finest, hopefully while the TV cameras roll. Er, capture. Whatever. The terminology of the digital age isn’t nearly as colorful as the jargon which preceded it…
My curmudgeonliness aside, the dream hasn’t died; it’s just been sleeping while Cheno and Brian experience this thing called “Real Life.” Cheno was telling me just a couple weeks ago that he still wants to make it happen. But a very large wrench has been thrown into the works since then: Este Pizza experienced an electrical fire on June 30th and was pretty badly damaged by smoke and water. Dave Heiblim, Este’s owner, saved his equipment, if not his premises, and now he’s searching for a new location. Cheno’s got the details over at his blog, as well as a request:
While they are out of commission for awhile, drop Dave an email at beardyouno at hotmail dot com. Let him know you care. Number two, howzabout sending $6 bucks to him. After all it’s the price of a lunch combo and could very well help him in the quest to restore this great establishment. Address and information is on the link below to their website.
Sounds like a good suggestion to me. Help out one of the little guys and maybe some good karma will come back your way…
Just in case you read my pointless ramblings via an aggregator, or otherwise don’t follow the comments, there’s been an interesting development in regards to yesterday’s entry on the new Flash Gordon series. I’ve been contacted by Andrea, the webmaster for EricJohnsonWeb.com, who informs me that the head shot of Eric I saw is seven years out of date. She directed me to this more recent photo, and, based on it, I’ve got to admit that I was wrong. A little older now, Mr. Johnson has definitely acquired what I would consider the proper “Flash Gordon look” since that Smallville shot was taken. So this latest incarnation of Alex Raymond’s legendary adventure story has that much going for it at least.
Interestingly, I failed to notice yesterday that Eric has, in fact, done some work I have some passing familiarity with, namely the Work and the Glory films. If you haven’t heard of these, don’t feel bad. I doubt that many people outside of Utah have.
Here’s a genuine headline from today’s Salt Lake Tribune:
Satan behind illegal immigration, Utah County Republican claims
And the relevant graf:
District 65 Chairman Don Larsen submitted a resolution to be discussed at Saturday’s Utah County Republican Convention that opposes the devil’s plan to destroy the country by stealth invasion of illegal immigrants.
I love living in this state. No, really, I do…
There were zombies wandering the streets of Salt Lake this past Sunday… and no, I don’t mean the usual handful of homeless guys or would-be shoppers who didn’t get the memo about the downtown malls being demolished. No, I’m talking about genuine, flesh-eating, shambling-corpse, movie-style zombies. Seems there was a film crew here last week shooting a pilot for a new TV series called The Rising, about the undead taking over an unnamed American city.
This really is the perfect location for a zombie project — anyone who lives around here can tell you that Salt Lake is eerily appropriate for the anonymous role of “unnamed American city,” and filming downtown on a Sunday provides that deserted, end-of-the-world look without even having to redirect traffic.
Brandon Griggs of the Salt Lake Tribune lent a helping hand as an extra; he writes about the experience here. There’s also this nifty little behind-the-scenes video:
A quick note of explanation for the out-of-towners: that distinctive “cuckoo” sound you can hear as the zombie crowd begins to move is a audio cue that’s linked to all the “walk/don’t walk” lights in the downtown area. I guess it’s intended to help blind pedestrians. If you’re crossing in the north-south direction, you get the cuckoo; east-west is a “cheep-cheep” noise. As far as I know, this system is unique to Salt Lake. I’ve never heard these sounds in any other city I’ve ever visited.
Also, if you’re curious, that zombie crowd is only about two blocks from my office building…
Here’s an interesting random factoid: according to this, Salt Lake’s light-rail system — the train I mention so often on this blog — is ranked tenth out of 27 cities in terms of ridership. Not bad, considering a lot of people protested its construction a few years ago on the grounds that “no one would ride it.” (We’re still hearing that argument from folks who don’t want extensions running through their neighborhoods.)
Now, if only I could find some statistics on the number of people who leave chicken bones under train seats and pretend no one saw them…
