City Weekly June 6, 2024

Cracks in the ‘Sin Screen’

Church-owned Ensign Peak Advisors holds Northrop Grumman stock—despite the Latter-day Saints' historic opposition to nuclear weapons.

BY TAYLOR BARNES

By Taylor Barnes

S AP

GOP Death Rattle

With nary a breath of variation in their script, Utah Republicans have condemned the Trump hush-money verdict as a massive conspiracy by Democrats to destroy everything lovely, true, patriotic and right about America.

Republicans look past the matter of the stealing of the 2016 election by means of illegal manipulation of business records as if that were a totally inconsequential concern.

They similarly marginalize Ameri-

ca’s jury trial system as if that were a small matter as well.

When interviewed on June 2 on Fox & Friends Weekend, Trump said he is “not sure the public would stand for [him being sentenced to jail time].”

His supporters could possibly reach a “breaking point.” This is a dog-whistle signal for them to break a lot of things in protest.

This all sounds like the death rattle of a once admirable political party.

On May 30, Donald Trump’s wannabe running mate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, went on Fox News’ Hannity show to say that the Manhattan hush-money trial was “the most outrageous travesty” he has ever seen. He said: “This is a quintessential show trial. This is what you see in communist countries.”

Let’s see now—in Communist show trials, juries are packed with party loyalists; whereas in the Manhattan trial, the 12 jurors were approved by attor-

neys from both the prosecution and the defense. In Communist show trials, the defendant loses his life. In the Manhattan trial, Trump lost a little campaigning time.

In a Communist show trial, the justice system is run by a totalitarian dictator without elections. In the Manhattan trial, the prosecutor, governor, president and everyone else down to dogcatcher is elected in the light of day in free elections.

MAGA Republican voters believe whatever a party bigwig like Rubio says. They just want to go with the flow, have some fun wearing red hats and save their own skins.

In fact, it’s Rubio and his boss who are the ones using Communist smear tactics in America.

Democrats don’t seem to have the ability or the will to expose the propaganda Republicans are throwing at them.

KIMBALL SHINKOSKEY Woods Cross

MAGA Saints

It’s so revealing of their true moral and ethical values as the white, straight, Utah Latter-day Saint GOP elected officials all clutch their pearls in shock as their savior Donald Trump is facing prison for having been found guilty of 34 felonies.

This is interesting as the Latter-day faithful who masturbate even once without confessing to their bishops can’t get into the LDS Celestial Kingdom. I eagerly and foolishly await for top church leaders to explain this.

TED OTTINGER

Taylorsville

Trump Verdict

Oh, happy day! Guilty—34 counts.

DIANA LEE HIRSCHI

Salt Lake City

Care to sound off on a feature in our pages or about a local concern? Write to comments@ cityweekly.net or post your thoughts on our social media. We want to hear from you!

THE WATER COOLER

What is your opinion on artificial intelligence?

Benjamin Wood

I can see how rote tasks could be handled by AI, freeing up time for productivity and creativity. On the other hand, mass media is already trending toward the shallow, deceptive and superficial. I don’t see AI making that any better.

Eric Granato

It’s a bad idea. People behave like they didn’t see Terminator. The machines will rise up like humans never could.

Wes Long

A moral decline of both the mind and soul ... but a perfect opportunity for those who worship money to undercut craft and skill for their bottom line. What little good AI could do for society will be ignored for the countless ways in which it will be misapplied to the arts, crafts and especially education.

Bryan Bale

Large language models like ChatGPT, in spite of their ability to process natural language, are not examples of true artificial general intelligence. They’re predictive text engines on steroids. They’re good at writing exercises, but they’re unreliable sources of knowledge. Using generative AI to create art—in a world where artists need to sell their work to survive—is unethical, especially when artists created the material on which those systems were trained, without permission, credit or compensation.

PRIVATE EYE

BY JOHN SALTAS

Hair Loss Lee

Alot of noise is frequently made by the supporters of Donald Trump that we must “make America great again.” I’ll not debate whether he is the right person for that on the simple predicate that I am not yet convinced that—while many convicted felons have any number of redeeming qualities—Trump stands alone as lacking a single redeeming quality.

In fact, “convicted felon” is nearly the only moniker I’ve ever heard attributed to him. I’ve never heard: “Donald Trump—what a great father he is!” “Donald Trump—he’s the smartest person I know!” “Donald Trump—a compassionate man, a visionary, brave, honest and honorable man of faith!”

Nope. I’ve only seen his name mentioned with less positive descriptors, such as “cheater,” “whiner,” “liar,” “narcissist,” “craven,” “adulterous” and plain “dumb.”

I’ve never met him. He may be all of those, or he may be none. But in picture dictionaries, his face sure shows up a lot next to words that are most often associated with the most vile of human traits.

The same is true of Utah’s own senator, Mike Lee, who was one of Trump’s harshest critics back in 2016. He refused to endorse Trump at the time, when character mattered to him just a wee bit. Upon hearing the Access Hollywood tape, Lee said as validation for his non-support of Trump that, “We can get into the fact that he accused my best friend’s father of conspiring to kill JFK [Note: Lee’s “best friend” back then was Sen. Ted Cruz]. We can go through the fact that he’s made statements that some

have identified correctly as religiously intolerant. We can get into the fact that he’s wildly unpopular in my state, in part because my state consists of people who are members of a religious minority church.”

It’s hard to forgive a man whose best friend is Ted Cruz. Today, Lee’s voice has curved so far that he’s among the most full-throated supporters of Trump. That causes people to think that, perhaps, Mike Lee is not a very honest person, or that his own integrity is only as thick as the dollar bills that flow his way every time he takes to social media.

He’s a scoundrel, that Mike Lee. I mean, he even takes a rake of cash when he does endorsements for fellow Republican candidates, as he is currently doing for Republican candidate Colby Jenkins, who is running for Congress in Utah’s 2nd congressional district. That seat is currently held by Celeste Malloy, who filled the position when former U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart stepped aside for personal reasons.

For every dollar that Lee raises for Jenkins, he keeps 10% as political tithing. Gee, a guy has to make a buck right? Especially a guy who makes nearly $200,000 per year (before all the perks like expensed meals, flying here and yon and the free spankings from Donald Trump). Not only did Lee later step in line and change his tune for Trump—ostensibly because Trump is such a fine protector of the U.S. Constitution that sideshow dalliances and every manner of chaotic behavior can all be left aside—but Lee has taken a couple of pages from the Trump playbook.

For one, he knows a gravy train when he sees one. When Lee lent his own terrible name to the fundraising efforts for the failure of a human being and accused wife beater, Herschel Walker, in the 2022 mid-year elections, Lee cut a revenue sharing deal with him. His cut was not 10% then, but 50%. If this were the 1970s, and this was the set of Blazing Saddles, at this point Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) would be told by Jim (Gene Wilder) about the people who are getting fleeced by politicians such as Lee:

“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know … morons.”

For another, Lee added a second persona to his social media pages. He was once just Mike Lee, a U.S. senator who posted about the things he was elected to do in D.C., like comment on how he’d vote and inform his constituents about his position and intentions. Now, as alter-ego moniker “Based Mike Lee,” his inner jackass pops off all day long in a manner less senatorial and more Trumpian.

Like Trump, Based Mike Lee likes to fill any void with a gripe or accusation. It’s as if once he came to realize that the Trump heist was something he could also benefit from, he enrolled into Trump University, where he majored in assholery.

There is nothing that Based Mike Lee seems to like about anyone, especially Democrats or members of the Biden family. There is nothing that cannot be denied, nothing that he cannot project as unworthy. There is no lie he cannot make.

He’s taken to doing little more as U.S. senator than proclaim at every turn the denigrating of our institutions and the bloodied soil of our country. He never so much as finger-scolds members of his own party who defile the religious tenets he proclaims to care about. If Mike Lee were ever a seriously religious man, he no longer is.

He doesn’t care about you or Utah. Mike Lee, like his mentor, only cares about Mike Lee. And it’s taking a toll.

Look at his photos from just four years ago, when he was thinking he would get away scot-free for undermining a fair and honest election. Now look at him today all sullen, doughy and losing his hair. There’s always a price. Lee is paying up and looking, daily, more like God’s personal laboratory rat. Verily, a truism is born: when Mike Lee lies, a hair follicle dies. CW

Send comments to john@cityweekly.net

HITS & MISSES

KATHARINE

MISS: Bathroom Break

Welcome to Pride Month and the beginning of bathroom monitoring, if not threats to the community. Oh, and then there’s politics. Election year posturing also played a part in the celebrations. First, we’ll deal with John “Frugal” Dougall, Utah’s bedeviled state auditor who’s been combing through 12,000 hoax reports since the misguided bathroom monitoring bill passed the Legislature. To the delight of sponsor Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, Dougall has now found five that just maybe show some government entity hasn’t appropriately labeled bathrooms to keep transgender folks at bay. Secondly, Gov. Spencer Cox continues his effort to show the MAGA base he’s just bad enough. After his primary opponent, Blanding Republican Rep. Phil Lyman, claimed Cox is too damned friendly to the LGBTQ+ community, Cox issued a watered-down declaration calling for “bridge building” in June, rather than a Pride month salute. Finally, Salt Lake police were on high alert after a worldwide security notice that there could be terrorist attacks on LGBTQ+ communities, leaving Utah with a Pride in Hatred month.

MISS: School’s Out

Driving Through “B

efore industrialism, most cities stood apart as modest workshops or markets whose ethos was bounded by their own walls,” wrote Theodore Roszak in Where the Wasteland Ends (1972). “They were an option in the world, one way of life among many possibilities. The supercity, however—or rather the artificial environment taken as a whole— stretches out tentacles of influence that reach thousands of miles beyond its already sprawling perimeters.”

As growth spreads into more corners of the state, open spaces become mechanized, ecosystems are bulldozed and the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds are assaulted for extraction, with little to show for it but a pile of miasmic garbage. And still the artificial environment’s infernal work is not done, as Roszak notes, for it has a damaging effect upon people, too.

It’s like the Salt Lake City School District Board has just rolled over and given up. Let’s see what they’re so determined not to do. Students from East High School recently marched the 5 miles to Glendale Middle School to show how far they have to travel each day just to get to school. Sure, they get bused, but that doesn’t help with after-school activities and other things. Simply put, they want a west side high school. Enter the number crunchers, who point out that student populations in Salt Lake are falling and, gee, there’s just no place to put a high school over there. Let’s just say there’s area enough for sports complexes and golf courses, but that’s another story. There is a history of bad decisions, including the closing of South High, while the school-age population on the west side grows. The school board needs to focus on the well-being of all students, and not just the bottom line.

HIT: Bloom Towns

We hear a lot about how toxic the water in Utah Lake is. That’s because of the massive algae bloom that has killed dogs and keeps people from the water. Now there’s hope, and it’s all because of—wait for it—science. A company called BlueGreen Water Technologies has come up with an environmentally friendly algicide that already cleared the Mantua Reservoir at no cost, according to the Good News Network. The no-cost solution was a result of selling carbon credits to companies that want to offset the effects of their greenhouse gas emissions. We’d like to say that’s a positive sign but in Utah—carbon credits have been used, but the idea of any carbon tax has been roundly dismissed. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. A 2023 citizen-led initiative is still trying to make the ballot—although it’s going to court to try and make it happen.

With no offense intended to actual astronauts, Roszak uses the image of a space traveler as an avatar of the kind of person the artificial environment demands and begets. “Here is a human being who may travel anywhere and say, ‘I am not part of this place or that. I am autonomous. I make my own world after my own image.’ He is packaged for export anywhere in the universe. But ultimately, all places become the same gleaming, antiseptic, electronic, man-made place, endlessly reproduced,” he wrote. “One can traverse half the earth in passing from one such building to another, only to discover oneself in a structure indistinguishable from that which one has left.”

The impact of this lifestyle is inestimable, warping the way we live, see and relate. Take freeway driving: How often do we get stuck in our daily ruts traversing from one artificial environment to another by vessels of electronics and glass, our vision narrowed to what’s before us and prone to impatience with any impediments—inanimate or living—that get in our way?

Rather than being fully human and alive, we devolve into shortsighted, raging creatures like Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton) in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Ranting and raving about the drivers around him, and oblivious to his own role among them, Reynolds screams to no one in particular: “When I show up to work, everybody will be like, ‘Why is there blood all over you?’ Because I had to slit the guy’s throat who causes all this traffic.”

To counteract such antisocial tunnel-vision, my friend Mike Jones has recently taken advantage of an office relocation to switch up his transportation and make intentional efforts to interact with others. “This has flipped a switch in how I think about my time after work,” he told me. “Instead of rushing home on the freeway to isolate, I get off the train and pedal the 9-Line,” planning regular get-togethers with friends and associates at local bars and eateries. “It has honestly changed my life,” Jones reported. As one of those whom he has chosen in this intentional revolt against the artificial environment, I can say that it has changed my life as well. CW

TRUE TV

New TV for June

There’s fresh TV to kick off the summer, including The Acolyte, Clipped, and Orphan Black: Echoes

BY BILL FROST comments@cityweekly.net

This month brings new seasons from three of TV’s hottest shows: The Boys (June 13), House of the Dragon (June 16) and The Bear (June 27). There are also some promising new series premiering this month, which is an improvement over June 2023—remember The Idol? Secret Invasion? Stars on Mars? None of these newcomers, fortunately, will make you set your TV on fire in the backyard (not that I’ve done that … as far as you know).

The Acolyte (premiered Tuesday, June 4; Disney+): Aside from 2021’s The Book of Boba Fett—so much hype, so little payoff— the Disney+ stable of Star Wars series has been entertainingly solid. The Acolyte, set 100 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, follows a Jedi master (Lee JungJae, Squid Game) and his former padawan (Amandla Stenberg, The Hate You Give) as they investigate a string of Jedi murders. You won’t see any familiar characters in The Acolyte, but there is a Wookie Jedi(!).

Clipped (premiered Tuesday, June 4; Hulu): Will a future bio-drama about the Utah Jazz be called Jazzed? How could it not be? Clipped tells the true tale of the 2013 Los Angeles Clippers under the shaky ownership of Donald Sterling (played here with asshole gusto by Ed O’Neill) and the rivalry between his personal as-

Ritter in Orphan Black: Echoes

A&E

sistant (Cleopatra Coleman) and his business partner wife (Jacki Weaver). Even if you don’t care about basketball (guilty), there’s plenty of juicy drama and scenery chewing to be had here.

Fantasmas (Friday, June 7; HBO, Max): If you’ve never seen the fantastic 2019–2022 show Los Espookys, go watch it now on Max (Warning: It’s mostly in Spanish). Julio Torres, one of the stars and creators of that show, is the beautifully surrealist mind behind Fantasmas, playing a version of himself in a bizarro-world New York City. In the dream-like series, he interacts with a wild variety of characters, including some played by Steve Buscemi, Emma Stone and Bowen Yang. Oh, and it’s in English.

Presumed Innocent (Wednesday, June 12; Apple TV+): After taking over the Patrick Swayze role in the Road House remake, the next move for Jake Gyllenhaal was obviously to step in for Harrison Ford in a Presumed Innocent series adaptation of the

Scott Turow novel, right? Best not to dwell on it. In this David E. Kelley/J.J. Abrams production, Gyllenhaal plays Rusty Sabich, a Chicago lawyer accused of murdering his mistress. If Gyllenhaal’s next role isn’t the Bruce Willis character in a Wild Orchid remake, we’ve been robbed.

Hotel Cocaine (Sunday, June 16; MGM+): It’s not the most creative show title, but Hotel Cocaine does grab your attention before you can ask, “Wait, what’s MGM+?”

In late ’70s Miami, Roman Compte (Danny Pino) manages the Mutiny Hotel and nightclub, a bustling hotspot for politicians, models, sports stars, musicians and, of course, international coke dealers, the FBI and the CIA. If you liked Narcos but wished it had more disco dancing, polyester suits and muted pastels, Hotel Cocaine is for you.

Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution (Tuesday, June 18; PBS): Speaking of disco, the maligned ’70s music genre gets a posi-

tive spin in the PBS documentary Disco: The Soundtrack of a Revolution. (The 1979 Kiss “sellout” disco track “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” was all over both The Fall Guy and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire this year—redemption achieved.) The three-part docuseries chronicles disco’s rise from the New York underground to the crash-and-burn backlash of “Disco Sucks!” This all really happened, kids.

Orphan Black: Echoes (Sunday, June 23; AMC, AMC+): The 2013–2017 sci-fi series Orphan Black—about a woman, played by Tatiana Maslany, who discovers she’s one of many clones—was a cult hit with so many layers that it was ripe for spinoffs. AMC has finally gotten around to one with Orphan Black: Echoes, a sequel series set in the same universe but fast-forwarded to the year 2052. The shadowy corporate biotech cloning is still happening, and amnesiac Lucy (Krysten Ritter) may be a product of it. There must be a sequel/clone joke here … CW

Krysten

Ballet West Choreographic Festival VI: Asian Voices

Like the rest of society, arts organizations are often still playing catchup at representing the diversity of society. Ballet West and artistic director Adam Sklute are using the occasion of the annual Choreographic Festival to address that need with Asian Voices, a showcase of new work by Asian choreographers. The program is scheduled to include American Ballet Theater soloist Zhong-Jing Fang’s Somewhere in Time, set to newly-commissioned music by composer Deanna H. Choi; New York-based choreographer Caili Quan’s Playing on Impulse; the Ballet West premiere of Amber Waves by Phil Chan; and guest performers BalletMet presenting Edwaard Liang’s Seasons.

“For an art-form that has had so many brilliant Asian performers, ballet and dance in America has far too little Asian representation in choreography, composition, and directorship. While it is my honor to celebrate Asian leadership in ballet, I hope given time we see more and more great Asian creators and leaders to bring ballet further into the 21st century.”

Chan adds, ““Adam has been a leader on this conversation since 2010 when he updated the Chinese variation in  The Nutcracker  to really get this right. … Asian artistic excellence has a home at Ballet West, and the next step is to weave them into programing, beyond these festivals.”

The Ballet West Choreographic Festival runs June 5 – 8 at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center (138 W. 300 South), with performances 7:30 p.m. nightly plus a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday, June 8. Tickets are $50; visit arttix.org to purchase tickets, or balletwest.org for additional event information. (Scott Renshaw)

SALTCon Summer Convention

The word “gaming” can mean different things to different people, depending on their particular avocations. For many, it refers to the entertainments that involve computers and videogame consoles, whether for individual home use or for online multiplayer experiences. But for others, it involves a world of sitting around tables, rolling dice, flipping cards and otherwise engaging in the experience of inperson board gaming. Welcome to the world of SALTCon.

Several events take place throughout the year under the SALTCon umbrella, and the Summer Convention provides a fairly typical experience. Throughout the three-day event, attendees have a chance to sample offerings from the Game Library, with more than 2,000 games available to try out. Many hot new games are set up at dedicated tables, with experienced players helping newbies to learn the ins and outs; publishers bring new games for “Play to Win” events, allowing players a chance to win the game in exchange for playing and trying it out. You can even bring games to buy, sell or trade at the Game Flea Market. Mostly, it’s about gathering with other folks, either to share the fun of your already-favorite games or to discover a new favorite.

The 2024 SaltCon Summer Convention takes place at the David Conference Center (1651 N. 700 West, Layton) June 7 (10 a.m. – midnight), June 8 (9 a.m. – midnight) and June 9 (9 a.m. – 6 p.m.). Admission badges range from $15 - $40 per day, to $70 for all three days, and quantities are limited at press time. Visit saltcon. com/summer to purchase badges and for additional event information. (SR)

Utah Asian Festival

For 47 years, Asian diaspora communities from throughout Utah have come together for a grand celebration of many unique heritage traditions in the Utah Asian Festival—an event programmed by the Asian Association of Utah that drew more then 20,000 attendees in 2023. According to Festival Co-chair Gechlang Ear, “This celebration is important to us because we believe in the ‘Utah’ that isn’t celebrated enough. The ‘Utah’ that is home to over 60,000 asylum-seekers and thousands more, like myself, who have come from far-away lands but take pride in calling this place our refuge... Of course, we walk in the footsteps of giants. Thank you to all who kept the flame of Pan-Asian unity in Utah burning for decades, without whom we might have never found each other in the first place.”

Every year, the Utah Asian Festival showcases cultures including Chinese, Japanese, Pacific Islander, Vietnamese, South Asian and more, featuring more than 60 distinctive modern performances. The festival area also includes vendors representing Asian-owned businesses, plus artisan handcrafts and educational activities for children. And of course, there’s an opportunity to sample cuisines from more than 40 Asian-owned purveyors of food, with flavors spanning the pan-Asian spectrum.

The 2004 Utah Asian Festival comes to the Grand Building at the Utah State Fairpark (155 N. 1000 West) on Saturday, June 8 from 11 a.m. – 8 p.m. Admission is free, but if you download a ticket ahead of time, it can serve as your TRAX fare to and from the venue (use the Fairpark station on the Green Line). Visit utahasianfestival.org for tickets and additional event information. (SR)

Cracks in the ‘Sin Screen’

Church-owned Ensign Peak Advisors holds Northrop Grumman stock—despite the Latter-day Saints’ historic opposition to nuclear weapons.

BY TAYLOR BARNES comments@cityweekly.net

The following report was originally published by Inkstick, a nonprofit news platform. It is reprinted here with permission.

OUtah is home to several Northrop Grumman facilities producing missiles for nuclear warheads.

n March 28, 1979, a handful of Air Force officers and a Mormon civilian employee from Hill Air Force Base arrived in Salt Lake City for an unusual meeting. They were seeking a blessing: For the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ top leaders to endorse a plan to construct 8,500 miles of roads and 4,600 concrete garages for a nuclear weapons system.

The system would constantly shuttle 200 missiles on racetracks, playing a “shell game” intended to keep the Soviet military guessing where America’s nuclear warheads really were located at any given moment. The Soviets could, of course, just build more nuclear weapons and take out the entire missile field at once, so American war planners imagined the project—called “Missile, Experimental,” or MX—would continuously expand, becoming 8,250 garages and 360 missiles by 1990. And so on.

That sort of arms race meant the Air Force needed Americans willing to host the ever-growing missile field. The desert landscape of the Great Basin spanning western Utah and central Nevada appealed to them. It had few highways, little infrastructure and relatively sparse numbers of human residents.

Of the population that did exist in the basing area, however, roughly 80% was Mormon, according to an account of the

MX battle in The Mormon Military Experience, a book recently published by historians Sherman L. Fleek and Robert C. Freeman from West Point and Brigham Young University, respectively.

The generals left the meeting with the church’s then-president, Spencer Kimball, and his two top counselors feeling “elated,” according to an academic who interviewed one of the officers. They would later be blindsided by the church’s opposition, apparently unaware on that March day that Kimball, who had visited Hiroshima for missionary work, was already entertaining dissent.

Kimball had—three years prior to the meeting—published a jeremiad about the state of the nation and the Cold War arms race. His essay, “The False Gods We Worship,” was—somewhat awkwardly due to its critical take—featured in an edition of the church’s official magazine that was dedicated to patriotism and America’s bicentennial.

“When enemies rise up,” Kimball wrote at the time, “we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance.”

Church leadership quietly debated the MX proposal for the next two years. According to an account by historian Jacob W. Olmstead, they were lobbied by a charismatic law professor who descended from Brigham Young and who convinced them that the Soviets would see the basing area—and the 2.1 million Mormons living in it—as a prime target for a nuclear strike.

Other local opponents formed a noisy and colorful anti-MX coalition that drew together a cattle ranchers’ trade association, Indigenous residents who made up much of the remaining 20% of that basing area, state legislators, homebuilders and hippies.

Two years after meeting the generals, the church’s governing First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gathered to hold a special fast to pray on the issue. The result, within less than a month, was a remarkable anti-war maneuver in which the church disavowed

both the missile program and the supposed local economic boom that would come with it.

“We may predict that with so many billions of dollars at stake, we will hear much talk designed to minimize the problems that might be expected and to maximize the economic benefits that might accrue,” Kimball and two counselors wrote in a statement wired directly to then-President Ronald Reagan’s administration. But Mormons came to Utah in order to “establish a base from which to carry the gospel of peace to the peoples of the earth,” they wrote. “It is ironic, and a denial of the very essence of that gospel, that in this same general area there should be constructed a mammoth weapons system potentially capable of destroying much of civilization.”

The following year, the government scrapped the shell game proposal and greatly scaled down the MX. (In addition to the church, Reagan’s own Pentagon had soured on the missile project.)

The church then went quiet on nuclear weapons, taking no more institutional positions like it did in 1981. The next glimpse into its stance came four decades later, this time in the form of

Elisabeth Eaves

A Minuteman I, Trident and Peacekeeper motor are on display at the Rocket Garden, one of the only public areas of Northrop Grumman’s Utah missile plant.

Continued from page 17

legally required financial disclosures the church released amid outcry over its finances.

In 2019, a whistleblower had alleged that the church had been misleading its tithe-payers for decades, resulting in an embarrassing settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As church-watchers began delving into its stockholdings, they would find the ticker symbol for the world’s largest nuclear weapons contractor. In the meantime, that contractor, Northrop Grumman, was flush with billions in new Air Force contracts and revving up its rocket plants in Utah, building the 21st century’s successor to the MX.

“A Deviation”

Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages a reported $100 billion in assets for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, is a rare self-identified faith-based investor in Northrop Grumman.

Inkstick Media analyzed market research conducted on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) that identified more than 1,300 investment managers with financing or investing relationships with Northrop Grumman, and that have publicly available financial records appearing on the specialized financial database Refinitiv, now known as LSEG.

Using a data scraping and parsing tool, Inkstick systematically queried the list to find investors that publicly identified themselves as affiliated with a faith group, given that many Christian denominations have long excluded investments in nuclear weapons as part of so-called “sin screens.” Ensign Peak was among seven such investors identified in the results.

Neither Ensign Peak nor a spokesperson for the LDS church responded to Inkstick’s repeated requests for comment by email and phone about its investments in Northrop Grumman and other major nuclear weapons contractors. Spokespeople for five of the six other faith-based investors also did not provide comment to Inkstick.

(The public stock and bond data used in ICAN’s research are extensive but not comprehensive; however, entities that manage investments on the scale of the LDS church are required to file disclosures of their securities, such as stocks, with the SEC, which mandates that all investment managers with more than $100 million in assets do so. Bondholding depends largely on self-reporting, and some investment managers may not do so. Faith-based investors could the-

oretically be making other types of investments— like in real estate or via private equity—that benefit defense contractors and would not be covered in the Refinitiv database.)

The investments by Ensign Peak are disturbing to some in Utah’s peace community. “I think most tithe-payers would be really concerned about their money being invested in defense firms that are building weapons of mass destruction,” former Salt Lake City Mayor Ross “Rocky” Anderson told Inkstick. “They think their money is going toward helping people and humanitarian causes.”

Anderson is a veteran of Utah’s anti-war movement, dating back to his days as a young law school graduate campaigning for an anti-MX Senate candidate. He’s also a lapsed Mormon who, as a child, went door to door with envelopes to collect “fast offerings” from fellow church members—that’s when, in addition to regular tithing, members forgo food for a day and contribute the amount saved on groceries to the church.

Anderson said church members pay tithes and those additional financial offerings because doing so is required to remain in good standing and take part in temple ceremonies, like marriages.

Ensign Peak only began publicly disclosing its stockholdings in 2020, less than three months after the whistleblower—the twin brother of a portfolio supervisor who became alarmed that the church was amassing billions without accountability to its members—filed a complaint to the Internal Revenue Service. The complaint accused Ensign Peak of abusing its tax-exempt status, meant for charitable organizations, and hiding its wealth lest members decide to cut back on tithing.

Last year, Ensign Peak and the church agreed to pay $5 million in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges that it had used 13 shell companies that SEC said “obscured the church’s portfolio” and that the investment managers had not filed proper public disclosures of their equity investments through a form known as 13-F. In response to the settlement, the church said it “regret[s] mistakes made.” Those forms are the basis of Inkstick’s analysis of Ensign Peak’s nuclear weapons investments.

(See chart above.)

American Christian institutions have been applying socalled “sin screens” to their financial portfolios since at least the 17th century, when Quakers disavowed investments in slavery. Many Christian churches in the United States nowadays exclude a host of products and services from their investment portfolios, from pornography to

private prisons to fossil fuels to drugs used in abortions or medically assisted suicides.

The LDS church has publicly stated that it employs a screen for areas its members find objectionable—including alcohol, tobacco, coffee and gambling.

Susi Snyder, a program coordinator at ICAN’s “Don’t Bank on the Bomb” campaign—which lobbies investors to divest from nuclear weapons-producing companies like Northrop Grumman—told Inkstick that the LDS church’s lack of a public statement on its nuclear weapons policy is “very far behind the curve” compared to other Christian denominations. “This is a deviation from mainline Christian norms,” Snyder said.

Both the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), for example, recently took unequivocal positions against investments in nuclear weapons, with new guidelines published in 2022 and 2021.

“The Catholics have come around on this,” Snyder said, “and that’s a big change.”

Doing so brought them in line with the investment managers for some of the biggest names in Western Christianity, such as the Methodist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, as well as the United Church of Christ, the Church of England and the Mennonites. Many go well beyond nuclear weapons—the Presbyterian church’s sin screen has banned all defense contractors since 1982, and others screen out all producers of indiscriminate weapons, a category that also includes landmines and cluster munitions.

Still, some faith-based investors haven’t aligned their funds with their denominations’ values. The Knights of Columbus says on its website that it is committed to the “socially responsible investment guidelines set by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops” but did not respond to questions from Inkstick about the tens of millions of dollars in bonds and stocks it holds in nuclear weapons producers, according to ICAN’s market research.

Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the USCCB, told Inkstick that the conference welcomes when Catholic investors “independently” choose to follow their guidance, which she said many have done, but that the USCCB does not have oversight of other organizations’ investments, like the Knights.

Justin Herndon, a spokesman for Thrivent, told Inkstick the fund does not consider itself to be a faith-based investor, though he linked to a company website describing Thrivent as “a membership-owned financial services organization serving members who share a common bond

Continued on page 21

TAYLOR BARNES

Continued from page 19

of Christianity.” Herndon added that Thrivent formed from the merger of Lutheran Brotherhood and Aid Association for Lutherans but that it does not adhere to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Social Criteria Investment Screen, which states that the ELCA makes “no investment in firms which are contributors to nuclear, biological or chemical weapons research and development.”

Nuns at Northrop Grumman

Christian “sin screens” on weapons producers tend to have one exception, said Pat Zerega, a former board member at the Heartland Initiative, which provides research for faithbased investors.

She said faith-based groups are allowed to hold the bare minimum amount of stock necessary to engage in shareholder advocacy at companies’ annual meetings.

For example, in 2023, one resolution called on Northrop Grumman to explain how its political activities—such as lobbying against an amendment that would have required the Department of Defense to study alternatives to the landbased nuclear missiles that Northrop is building in Utah— aligned with the company’s stated human rights policy. The resolution cited the fact that weapons of mass destruction are inherently indiscriminate and harm civilians.

If it sounds like something you don’t expect to hear at a gathering of investors at a top nuclear weapons producer, that’s because the filer was a congregation of nuns. Even more surprising is that the shareholder vote won 20% support.

Zerega said that Christian denominations began adding nuclear weapons to their sin screens during the Cold War, spurred by members calling for divestments at general body meetings.

The Rev. Jim Wallis, now the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice, told Inkstick that he used to get phone calls from those lay people as they prepared to make their cases to church leadership. On a recent video call from his office, Wallis pulled out yellowing booklets published decades ago by Sojourners—a Christian social justice magazine that he founded—with titles like, “The Nuclear Challenge to the Christian Conscience,” “Peacemakers: Christian Voices From the New Abolitionist Movement” and, “Waging Peace: A Handbook for the Struggle to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.”

The study guides sold by the “tens of thousands,” Wallis said, and the topic was “a mainline church discussion.”

“I think most tithe-payers would be really concerned about their money being invested in defense firms that are building weapons of mass destruction.”—Rocky Anderson.

Sojourners itself was the Washington office of the “Nuclear Freeze” movement, which drew hundreds of thousands of people across the country together in a campaign to halt U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons production.

“We were an animating core of the anti-nuclear movement—very religious in its foundations,” he said

“Crowning Savagery”

There isn’t exactly a Latter-day Saint corollary to Sojourners or Catholic Plowshares activists. The anti-nuke Christian pacifist movement is made up of nuns, priests and lay people who periodically sneak into nuclear weapons facilities for daring publicity stunts meant to reawaken public awareness of the ongoing threat of atomic war.

(As a secondary effect, the protesters also often expose lax security at national security sites. In 2012, a nun and two accomplices broke into a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee using flashlights and bolt cutters, resulting in what experts at the time called the worst security breach in the history of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.)

Patrick Mason, the chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University, told Inkstick that peace agitators within the church nowadays amount to “a few people on Facebook”—including himself. But they do have some lineage to draw on, dating back even before Kimball and his advisors’ remarkable dissent on the MX missile in 1981.

Chief among these forebears was J. Reuben Clark, an American ambassador and a member of the church’s governing First Presidency. Clark delivered bone-chilling remarks to the church’s General Conference a year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

As the crowning savagery of the war, we Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few if any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than were we, and perhaps most of them no more aiding Japan in the war than we were aiding America. … And the worst of this atomic bomb tragedy is not that not only did the people of the United States not rise up in protest against this savagery, not only did it not shock us to read of this wholesale destruction of men, women, and children, and cripples, but that it actually drew from the nation at large a general approval of this fiendish butchery.

The year before, a new church president named George Albert Smith, advised by Clark, lambasted a rumored proposal that a permanent military draft of young men would be instated after World War II. Through such “creation of a great war machine,” Smith, Clark and a third advisor wrote in a letter to Utah’s congressional delegation, “we shall invite and tempt the waging of war against foreign countries, upon little or no provocation; for the possession of great military power always breeds thirst for domination, for empire, and for a rule by might not right.”

Clark’s and Smith’s critiques were exceptional and made them outliers in a church whose leadership generally had “just an implicit trust in both political and military leadership,” Mason told Inkstick.

Missile Cancellation

Despite Utah’s centrality to the production of nuclear weapons, Mason said it’s not something he hears about from peers. Northrop Grumman’s ongoing contract to build 659 intercontinental ballistic missiles involves 11 industrial sites across the state, from the small suburb of Magna south of Salt Lake City to the remote desert rocket testing plant in Corinne. There, a billboard outside the weapons plant tells passers-by, “We’re Making America’s Next Generation Deterrent.”

The new ICBM project has, in recent years, been the scourge of both disarmament activists and fiscal watchdogs. They complain that the missile is an antiquated way to launch nuclear weapons compared to more sophisticated and less vulnerable methods by submarines and bomber aircraft. Unlike the land-based ICBMs, those weapons are mobile and don’t place hundreds of targets inviting enemy attack across the American landscape.

Taxpayer advocates deplored that such a lucrative contract would go to a single bidder—Northrop Grumman faced no competition for the ICBM after Boeing dropped out of the race. Boeing did so when Northrop acquired a key company with facilities in Utah that produce solidfuel rocket engines, which make the ICBMs lift off.

Boeing complained that the process to bid on the new ICBM was unfair.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Northrop Grumman’s ICBM is nowadays on the chopping block as Congress is forced to scrutinize its runaway price tag. In January, the Air Force announced that the weapon had notched so many cost overruns that it had surpassed a “critical breach” threshold in 1980s-era legislation known as Nunn-McCurdy, meant to keep a lid on Pentagon spending by mandating that programs with cost explosions face automatic termination. The fate of the ICBM program could be decided over the coming months.

Kimball’s rejection of the MX missile was the most categorical anti-war stance the church took for decades, according to Mason—until Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022. Current church President Russell M. Nelson said the conflict was a “calamity,” and called on church members to fast and pray. “Any war is a horrifying violation of everything the Lord Jesus Christ stands for and teaches,” he said at the April 2022 General Conference, two months after the invasion.

His speech that year on the Ukraine war—surely unwittingly—got to the heart of why faith-based investors have long employed sin screens targeting military weapons: “None of us can control nations or the actions of others or even members of our own families,” Nelson said. “But we can control ourselves.”

The following year, he gave an allegory-heavy address, titled “Peacemakers Needed,” in which he called on members to “to bury your weapons of war.” CW

A control panel used during the Minuteman missile program.

COURTESY PHOTO

All Killer, No Filler

Blatch’s Backyard BBQ takes a plant-based approach to classic barbecue—and it’s awesome.

BY ALEX SPRINGER comments@cityweekly.net @captainspringer

I’m starting to think that my being drawn to Les Barbecue Sandwiches last week was the result of some circadian rhythm deep in my bones that associates summer with barbecue, because I have just been craving that stuff lately—so much so that I finally ventured into the Avenues for some plant-based barbecue from Blatch’s Backyard BBQ. I had been following Blatch—otherwise known as Chris Blatchford—on the socials for awhile, so I’ve spent plenty of time drooling over photos of his handiwork. As barbecue is on my mind a lot during the summer months, I decided it was time to take the plunge into Blatch’s world of smoked jackfruit and house-made seitan. When it comes to plant-based cooking, I’m no skeptic. I’ve been touring Utah’s restaurant scene for long enough to know that we have some talented people doing marvelous things with plant-based ingredients. Barbecue, however, has always seemed so dependent on the protein trinity of pork, beef and chicken. Some argue that these proteins provide an irreplaceable flavor in the barbecue process, but there are others who say that the root chakra of barbecue can be found in the preparation itself. I decided to discuss this ongoing debate with Blatchford himself, who was kind enough to welcome me into his back yard before he opened for business.

Blatchford’s interest in pitmaster culture came from his late father, who would often come home from fishing and throw his spoils on the grill. “I remember standing on my tippy toes to watch him grill the fish he had just caught,” Blatchford says. “He died when I was eight, so my way of honoring him is to do the thing we did together, which was a lot of barbecuing.”

As the de facto pitmaster of his adolescent social group, Blatchford was often tasked with barbecue duties for many high school parties. “I noticed that barbecues always sucked for my friends who didn’t eat meat, so I tried to fix that for them,” he says.

Thus, Blatchford’s current occupation of providing award-winning plant-based barbecue to the people of Utah came from a desire to simply share his love of barbecue with everyone. “It’s 2024 and having a huge carnivore diet isn’t as responsible as it used to be,” he says. “I love barbecue, and if there’s a way to honor it and bring

it into the next century, I’ll do it.”

This brings us to our discussion of barbecue as more of a spiritual concept that can apply to any range of ingredients— you just have to have the love. Oh, and time. Lots and lots of time. “Our process to make vegan brisket takes five days, and it took me about 50 iterations to get it right.” Blatchford says.

Most of the proteins at Blatch’s start with his made-from-scratch seitan, upon which he layers different umami-centric flavors using ingredients like smoked mushrooms and even a bit of seaweed; “We smoke 14 different types of mushrooms to get our flavor,” he says. I tried one of Blatch’s raspberry jalapeño fried chickenless sandos after our chat, and it was fantastic. At Blatch’s, you get all the bombastic presentation of a traditional barbecue joint, and all that visual flare is properly matched by the flavor. After a few bites of the sandwich, I appreciated how it wasn’t trying to replicate a piece of fried chicken note for note. Instead, it uses the classic fried chicken sandwich as a blueprint to create something uniquely flavorful and satisfying out of seitan. Blatchford’s preparation is packed with just as much protein as its meat-based cousin, so all you protein evangelists out there can just chill out.

In addition to getting heaping plates of plant-based barbecue, sides and sandwiches, Blatch’s home-restaurant concept further speaks to Blatchford’s

ingenuity. He and his wife Joy have converted around 70 percent of their home in the Avenues into a preparation area and storefront, so when you visit, they will literally welcome you to their table. If you do want to pay Blatch’s a visit, it’s a good idea to get there early. Since he and Joy started running a business out of their kitchen three years ago, word has gotten out, and the place can get a little crowded, especially on weekends.

Though Blatchford will still encounter a few customers who aren’t on board with the vegan barbecue–“They’ll go out and eat a chicken nugget without a second thought, but they’ll have this phobia about trying raw, plant-based ingredients,” he says—his barbecue business continues to thrive. “I’ve met some people who have been vegan for 20 years or so, and told me they missed barbecue, but then they’ll try my stuff and talk about how it legit made them cry.” Blatchford says.

As someone who has very much come to appreciate our local plant-based scene and all the delightful vegan junk food that is on hand, I’m continually impressed by people like the Blatchfords who are repping for all the barbecue fans out there.

CW

E 2100 S Sugar House

2 Row Brewing

6856 S. 300 West, Midvale 2RowBrewing.com

Avenues Proper

376 8th Ave, SLC avenuesproper.com

On Tap: Midnight Especial- Dark Mexican Lager

Bewilder Brewing

445 S. 400 West, SLC BewilderBrewing.com

On Tap:  Cerveza De Mayo for Bewilder.

Bohemian Brewery

94 E. Fort Union Blvd, Midvale BohemianBrewery.com

On Tap: California Steam Lager

Bonneville Brewery 1641 N. Main, Tooele BonnevilleBrewery.com

On Tap: Peaches and Cream Ale

Chappell Brewing

2285 S Main Street Salt Lake City, UT 84115 chappell.beer

On Tap: Crispy Boi - cerveza-ish Cream Ale

Craft by Proper 1053 E. 2100 So., SLC properbrewingco.com

On Tap: Gungan Sith Lord - Dark Lager

Desert Edge Brewery

273 Trolley Square, SLC DesertEdgeBrewery.com

On Tap:  Ay Curuba! Curuba Sour

Epic Brewing Co.

825 S. State, SLC EpicBrewing.com

On Tap: HOPEulent IPA (A portion of proceeds are donated to Project Rainbow)

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: Cask Nitro CO2

Helper Beer

159 N Main Street, Helper, UT  helperbeer.com

Hopkins Brewing Co.

1048 E. 2100 South, SLC HopkinsBrewingCompany.com

On Tap: Stonewall Sour Saison

Kiitos Brewing

608 W. 700 South, SLC KiitosBrewing.com

On Tap: Tropical Haze IPA - HBC 1019 Hops with Heavy Notes of Peach

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

On Tap: Sun Slope Sour (on Nitro too!)

Level Crossing Brewing Co., POST

550 South 300 West, Suite 100, SLC

LevelCrossingBrewing.com

On Tap: Bat Country Blonde Ale

Moab Brewing

686 S. Main, Moab

TheMoabBrewery.com

On Tap:  Bulliet Bourbon barrel-aged Brown

Mountain West Cider

425 N. 400 West, SLC MountainWestCider.com

On Tap: Mango Pride Cider and Ruby’s Gay

Offset Bier Co 1755 Bonanza Dr Unit C, Park City offsetbier.com/

On Tap: DOPO IPA

Ogden Beer Company

358 Park Blvd, Ogden OgdenBeerCompany.com

On Tap: 1851 Premium Lager

Park City Brewery 1764 Uinta Way C1 ParkCityBrewing.com

On Tap: El Jeffe Hefeweizen

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

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

On Tap: Golden Hour Belgian Sour

Proper Brewing/Proper Burger 857 So. Main & 865 So. Main properbrewingco.com

Proper Brewing: SLC Pils - Pilsner

Proper Burger: Salted Caramel PorterPorter Brewed with Caramel and Salt

Proper Brewing Moab 1393 US-191, Moab properbrewingco.com

On Tap: YRJB - Juicy IPA

Red Rock Brewing 254 So. 200 West RedRockBrewing.com

On Tap: Gypsy Scratch

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

Red Rock Fashion Place 6227 So. State Redrockbrewing.com

On Tap: Munich Dunkel

Red Rock Kimball Junction 1640 Redstone Center Redrockbrewing.com

On Tap: Bamberg Rauch Bier

RoHa Brewing Project

30 Kensington Ave, SLC RoHaBrewing.com

On Tap: Steamy Boy California

Common (a collaboration with Heber Valley Brewing)

Roosters Brewing

Multiple Locations

RoostersBrewingCo.com

On Tap: Pineapple Sour Seltzer

SaltFire Brewing

2199 S. West Temple, South Salt Lake SaltFireBrewing.com

On Tap: Pride Beer - Rainbow Cult Kettle Sour with Blackberries

Salt Flats Brewing

2020 Industrial Circle, SLC SaltFlatsBeer.com

On Tap: Luau Rider - Coconut Chocolate Milk Stout

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

On Tap: Scion Cider TopoTopo 6.8% ABV

Second Summit Cider 4010 So. Main, Millcreek https://secondsummitcider.com

On Tap: Pineapple Jalapeno

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

BEER NERD

Reimaginings

Two new takes on a couple of classic styles

BY MIKE RIEDEL comments@cityweekly.net @utahbeer

Saltfire - Mobius Trp (In Bruges): Belgian-style sour ales are known for their distinct sharp, fruity, sour and tart flavors, which are created by special yeast strains. They’re quite complex, produced under the age-old tradition of long-term cask aging in oak, and the blending of young and old beers.

White foam settles to wisps, with a solid collar and spotty lacing over the lightly-hazed red-brown body. I get a flash of strawberries in the aroma, and definitely some red berries. Nice oaky tannins emerge, with very light pinot notes. I do get a little metallic aroma that comes and goes, but other than that nice light acidity, it smells spot-on for the style: wet wood, lemony lactic acidity, tart cherry, perhaps a hint of balsamic vinegar. There is, however, surprisingly little sweetness for the style, making it somewhat barrel-dominated.

The taste is similar to the nose, with nice barrel notes, oak, maybe a slight flash of vanilla and a hint of caramel malt to support the lactic and oaky notes. The wine barrels impart an acidity and vinous tang that I don’t normally get from the Belgian foudre-based takes on this style. Nice red berries are present, but with light wine notes, and good vinegar flavor but without the biting sourness, plus a solid malt backbone without being sweet. Finish has an assertive tartness, complementing the medium body, pleasant carbonation and dry, oaky texture. Some lingering stickiness reveals the base beer’s 8.0 percent ABV, but there’s not much noticeable alcohol, as one would expect.

Verdict: This was a very nicely done Flanders red featuring excellent barrel notes. The finish isn’t aggressively tart—or, more importantly, it doesn’t

leave your palate too phlegmy, which is really impressive.

Offset - Fast Hand: This new take on a West Coast-style IPA focuses on some new American-grown hop varieties (HBC 586 and Strata) combined with some classics (Centennial and Simcoe). These new-school hops, combined with the tried-and-true, really deliver an amazing blend of stone fruit, citrus and tropical notes on top of a bit of that classic resin and pine you remember from when West Coast IPA was all there was. This 16-ounce can pours into a shaker glass with a clear golden body and one finger of foamy head. The bartender started to pour it before I could stop them, so head retention could have been much better; the foam dies to a small ring at the edges, with several small sheets of lacing. There’s citrus right as the can opens, with a mix of tropical and stone fruits absolutely saturating the nose. Sweet and ripe stone fruits lead the way, with huge peach, apricot, mango and nectarine notes supported by dank, tangerine, citrus oil, melon and bubble gum. It all suggests a medium sweetness and cereal grains.

It becomes a bit grassy and has an herbal bitterness and a tea-like flavor on the taste buds, contrasting the incredibly juice-forward aroma. You get fruity hints with grapefruit, bitter orange, mango and papaya, plus bitter herbal, floral, melon, bubble gum and cereal grains. This moderately sweet, light-to-medium-bodied brew features a moderate level of carbonation; the texture is frothy and foamy, ending with an herbal bitterness.

Verdict: This one was constantly pulling my expectations back and forth, but in the end felt like a good marriage of two different styles of WCIPA. While nothing mind-blowing, it’s still a damn tasty IPA at a perfect 6.3 percent ABV.

If you want Offset’s stuff to take home, you’re going to have to make a trip to Park City, though plenty of bars in SLC—like The Bayou, Slackwater and Beerhive—have them to enjoy on site.

Saltfire’s In Bruges is a very limited batch that can go home or be enjoyed at Saltfire’s South Salt Lake brewery. As always, cheers! CW

BEER + PIZZA = <3

SUN-THU: 11am - 10pm • FRI-SAT: 11am - 11pm

the BACK BURNER

BY ALEX SPRINGER | @captainspringer

2024 Downtown Farmers Market

This year’s Downtown Farmers Market (slcfarmersmarket.org) is officially underway at Pioneer Park (350 West 300 South), which means summer has officially come to the Wasatch Front. This year marks the event’s 33rd year in operation, as it’s provided an avenue for the Salt Lake metro area to get a taste of all the great growing, fermenting, baking, brewing, juicing and smoking that is going on all over our fair state. This year’s market will take place every Saturday from now until Oct. 19 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Food vendors, local produce, live entertainment will be waiting for you every week.

Seven Brothers Burgers Expands

Hawaii-born Seven Brothers Burgers recently opened their Farmington location (1060 Park Lane, Ste.3), but they’re not quite finished with Utah. They’re gearing up to open their City Creek location (55 W. South Temple) on June 8, and a Uintah location (6658 S. 2500 East) on June 17. This burger franchise that began nearly 20 years ago in Oahu has expanded all over Utah. Its signature dish is the Shez’s Paniolo, a towering burger stacked with thick onion rings and grilled pineapple. These new locations bring the total to eight, with another location planned for Herriman in the near future.

Sukiya Sushi and Japanese Buffet Opens

A new sushi and Japanese buffet recently opened its doors, and it’s looking pretty fantastic so far. Sukiya Sushi and Japanese Buffet (198 W. 7200 S.) is the name of this acme of seafood and sushi, and it will be serving up everything from snow crab legs and steak to sashimi and desserts. I think people tend to sleep on all-you-can-eat seafood restaurants, but they’re among the best places to get a decent surf-and-turf meal for a good price. Perusing pics of this new seafood buffet has me looking forward to checking it out; there are a lot of familiar favorites here along with some new things to try.

Quote of the Week: “A good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist.”

–Wendell Berry

THE BEEHIVE

CINEMA

Under the Radar

New movies outside the multiplex mainstream

BY SCOTT RENSHAW scottr@cityweekly.net @scottrenshaw

Hit ManBBB½

Richard Linklater has spent more than 30 years being so good at making risk-taking indie cinema that it’s easy to forget how great he can also be at pure pop entertainment. Wildly fictionalized from the story of a real person, it follows Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), a philosophy professor who moonlights as an audio technician for New Orleans Police Department sting operations—until he’s called into undercover duty himself to pose as a contract killer, trying to nab those attempting to “hire” him. The job gives the mild-mannered Gary an opportunity to dig into alternate facets of his personality, and Powell has an absolute blast playing the different variations on an assassin-for-hire he concocts for his would-be clients (including one that feels like he’s doing Tilda Swinton). Things go a bit sideways when he gets personally involved in the case of a woman (Adria Arjona) trying to get rid of her emotionally abusive boyfriend, and the two leads have such a great chemistry that it’s easy to forget how improbable it seems that Gary so effortlessly leaves behind his Clark Kent persona (complete with glasses) to become a badass Superman. And that’s really the bottom line for how effective Linklater and Powell (who co-wrote the screenplay) are at making this an effervescent blast to watch, no matter how convoluted the completely manufactured portions of the plot get. Sometimes, you just want to watch a filmmaking team commit completely to a crazy premise—and like Linklater did with Jack Black in School of Rock, find the perfect delivery system for a star’s charisma. Available June 7 via Netflix. (R)

Songs of Earth BBB½

Individually, both of these things sound like the stuff of a nice, earnest documentary: plenty of beautiful photography of natural landscapes, and reflections by a filmmaker’s parents on their lives. Yet somehow, director Margareth Olin pulls them together for a surprisingly affecting reflection on the passage of time and the relationship between humans and their environment. Olin spends a year with

her parents, Jørgen and Manghild Mykløen, in her hometown of Oldedalen, Norway, observing the changing of the seasons and following Jørgen—still an avid hiker at the age of 84—through the mountains and fjords surrounding the family land. Along the way, we hear them describe a generations-long family history in that place—represented physically by a century-old spruce tree planted by Jørgen’s grandfather—and many of those stories describe hardship and tragedy. Instead of coming off as depressing, however, those narratives capture the reality of the natural world as sometimes harsh, which works in perfect counterpoint to Olin’s images of calving glaciers, roaring waterfalls and majestic hillsides. This is also clearly a tale of mortality— Olin occasionally zooms in on the weathered topography of Jørgen’s skin—as the filmmaker contemplates the inevitable passing of her parents, who clearly adore one another. But by linking this story to the cycle of the seasons, Olin creates something about living within a grand scope of time, and appreciating our place within it. Available June 7 at Broadway Centre Cinemas. (NR)

Am I OK? BB½

“Nice” is such a wimpy descriptor, but I’m struggling to come up with something that feels more apt for this amiable comedy drama from co-directors Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allyne and writer Lauren Pomerantz. It’s the tale of two 30-something best friends in Los Angeles— Lucy (Dakota Johnson) and Jane (Sonoya Mizuno)—whose relationship faces the complication of Jane’s upcoming work transfer to London, just as Lucy is struggling with the realization that she might be gay. Pomerantz’s screenplay leans into the shorthand relationship between the two besties, and finds some delicate moments in the less-often-told later-in-life coming-out story, as Lucy contemplates risking a relationship with a co-worker (Kiersey Clemons, radiating flirty energy). The challenge is that most of the dramatic weight falls on Lucy’s side of the story, with Jane feeling more like a supporting player than an equal part of the narrative since “how do I feel about moving to London” can’t possibly feel as potent as “how do I feel about taking on a radically different identity.” Still, there’s an easy chemistry between Johnson and Mizuno, and Johnson nails a kind of risk-averse quarterlife uncertainty that in her case could all go back to an inability to understand her true self. It’s funny, sincere, a little clunky—but mostly, it’s nice. Available June 6 via Max. (R) CW

Music Mailbag

June

2024

New local releases for your summer mix

BY EMILEE ATKINSON eatkinson@cityweekly.net @emileelovesvinyl

F

ur Foxen, Fox, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes: Counter-country band Fur Foxen is one of the best bands you can see in the local scene that plays this type of music. They effortlessly blend elements of rock, country, folk and indie sounds to create something refreshing and all their own—and Fox, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes is Fur Foxen at their best. The five-track EP takes you on a journey similar to going on a walk at your favorite park during your favorite time of year. You’re immediately hooked with the opening track “Rosa,” which ends up being a great warmup for what comes after. Because Fur Foxen utilize a range of instruments, each track will have you wondering what they’re going to break out on the next one. A favorite of this listener is the middle track “Throwing Stones,” which chugs along like a train down railroad tracks, complete with a whistling noise that mimics the sound of a train’s horn. It has an Old West feel that transports you to another time and place. I talk about escaping a lot into music, because who doesn’t love escapism? But putting an EP on like this and sitting back to listen and take it in is the best kind of escape you can get. Fox, Shoulders, Knees, And Toes is streaming everywhere now.

Bone Throwers, II: “This EP came mostly out of our love for weird, heavy psychedelic music,” Bone Throwers said of their new EP. “Occult surf-rock, dark southern-gothic folk music, shoegazey grunge and retro fantasy metal somehow all wormed their way into this short record and we’re very proud of

how it turned out, warts and all. Over the course of the last two and a half years we’ve been learning to write and record tracks in our basement studio. It took a long time to build enough inertia to start releasing music, but we’re doing it the way we want it done, which is well worth the extra time and effort.” The surf-rock is strong on II, and that’s fantastic. It seems like an underrated genre at times, but Bone Throwers really go all-out with their sound, expertly blending elements from the genres listed above. The EP never feels directionless or that there’s too many sounds going on. Those sounds have an air of familiarity, but Bone Throwers make them their own in the unique arrangements on the EP. All of the love and time in the cozy basement studio shines through on the band’s latest release. II is streaming everywhere now.

Soulfang, Passions, Potions, Wicked Lullabies: Soulfang has been entrancing listeners with their special brand of genre-bending “sex metal,” as they’ve described in the past. Since releasing their first single “Chemical Meditation” in Jan 2023, the band has come a long way, finally gifting us with their full-length debut album Passions, Potions, Wicked Lullabies. The album is chock full of Soulfang’s delightful personality, along with their unique sound and use of elements from different genres. You’ll get a little funk, a little rock, a little metal, a lot of things that come together and make the tasty potion that is Soulfang’s debut album. Not only did Soulfang deliver this beautiful concoction to us, you’re also able to buy the album on gorgeous, limited edition purple vinyl—so not only does the album sound amazing, it will also look amazing while spinning on your record player. You can also get the album on CD, which is a bit less cool but still a great way to listen to the album if you are not a vinyl person. You can grab copies of the vinyl and CD on Soulfang’s website, but if you want a chance to say hello and grab a copy in person, the band will be at Lighthouse Lounge in Ogden (130 25th St.) on Wednesday, June 12 for Vinyl Wednesday. There you can grab the album, grab a few signatures and chat with the band. If you can’t make that date, mark your calendar for their album release party

MUSIC

on Saturday, June 22 at Down River. The 21+ show is only $10, so don’t miss out! The full album will be streaming the day before on Friday, June 21. Give Passions, Potions, Wicked Lullabies a listen, you won’t be disappointed. Order vinyl: soulfang. myshopify.com/ Release show tix: 24tix.com

Drusky, Cake and Absinthe: It’s hard not to completely fall in love with Drusky after hearing them even one time. If you have an absence of angsty, emo rock band Drusky will cure the longing for those sounds in your life. Their latest album Cake and Absinthe is an inspired, epic and emo-

tional journey that has insane replay-ability. Lyrically the album peers into your soul with lines like, “I’m sorry for this new behavior / Just know that what we have is ruined / We loved loud and now we’re two cold strangers / Just moved fire to the music,” as heard on “Insults.” Musically the album is very dense and rich; leaving no room for empty space and allowing you to fully encompass yourself in its sound. I’m tellin’ ya, slapping your best headphones on cranking this one up to 10 is going to leave you feeling so many feelings in the best way possible. Cake and Absinthe is streaming everywhere now. CW

THURSDAYS

FRIDAY JUNE 7

SATURDAY JUNE 8

SHARK

MONDAYS

REGGAE

TUESDAYS WEDNESDAYS KARAOKE

Homestyle Dinner Rolls, Lonely Heights, Queenadilla @ Kilby Court 6/6

What’s better than some fresh rolls from your favorite restaurant, or that amazing family recipe? I’d venture to guess not much—unless we’re talking about the smooth and exciting sounds of Orem’s altrock duo Homestyle Dinner Rolls. The Rolls have been busy touring and sharing their face-melting songs with as many people as possible. If you’re in need of some asskicking rock ‘n roll vibes, these guys have you covered. Their latest single, “A Bit Too Heavy,” is the perfect amount of heavy, in my opinion. It’s catchy, fast and doesn’t skimp on the shredding guitar solos. Joining the duo is punk group Lonely Heights, a group listeners will love if they were big into pop-punk of the early ’00s; their EP Welcome to the Carnival is dripping in those early aughts vibes, with lots of hard-hitting vocals, intense rhythms and lyrics you can scream at the top of your lungs. Their 2023 single “Lovesick” has more of the same, and will be a treat to hear live (if they choose to play it, that is). Also on the bill are Provo rockers Queenadilla, who bring their “riffheavy rock n roll played from the hips,” as stated on their Instagram. Their 2021 selftitled debut is full of epic rock anthems more than worthy of slapping their name on as the title. Come rock out on Thursday, June 6 at 7 p.m. Tickets for the all-ages show are $10, and can be found at 24tix.com. (Emilee Atkinson)

Life is Better on the patio! Live Music

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5 J.EZRA

TUESDAY, JUNE 11 JON O RADIO

THURSDAY, JUNE 6 REGGAE THURSDAY SUN DIVIDE FRI. & SAT., JUNE 7 & 8 STONEFED

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12 THE TWO TRACKS

THURSDAY, JUNE 13 NATE ROBINSON TRIO

MUSIC PICK S

Sarah McLachlan @ First Credit Union Amphitheater 6/6

Canadian singer, songwriter and chanteuse Sarah McLachlan possesses the credentials needed to make her a stand-out star: more than 40 million albums sold worldwide, three Grammys and twelve Juno Awards. The original organizer of the Lilith Fair tour, she’s a member of both the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia, and a recipient of an Elizabeth Cady Stanton Visionary Award in recognition of her efforts to advance the careers of women in music. And the honors have kept coming throughout her career. She was accorded the 2013 Kiwanis International World Service Medal for her efforts to establish the Sarah McLachlan School of Music; a free music school for at-risk youth, and bestowed an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alberta, as well as an honorary degree from Simon Fraser University. In 2012, McLachlan was inducted into Canada’s Walk Of Fame and, three years later, accorded a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, Canada’s highest honor in the performing arts. Her charitable efforts on behalf of the ASPCA, the Red Hot AIDS organization, the Leonard Peltier Defense Fund, Live 8, the tsunami relief telethon and Artists Against Racism also affirm the fact she’s achieved a singular stature. And by the way, her music happens to be utterly beautiful and beguiling as well. McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstacy Tour with special guest Feist takes place at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 6 at First Credit Union Amphitheater. Tickets cost $57 - $233. Go to Ticketmaster.com. (Lee Zimmerman)

Sarah McLachlan

JOSHUA

Brit Floyd @ Maverik Center 6/7

Brit Floyd

Pink Floyd was in the top echelon of the rock era. The British foursome’s eighth album—1973’s landmark The Dark Side of the Moon—broke the band through to a massive, worldwide audience. That work would also go on to break records as one of the most enduring albums in history, remaining on the Billboard 200 charts for 900 consecutive weeks and selling in excess of 45 million copies worldwide. Its critical status is well-established, too; DSOTM consistently ranks among critics’ picks for the greatest album of all time. And in 1979, Pink Floyd released another juggernaut, the double-LP concept record

The Wall. Founding bassist and lyricist Roger Waters left the group in the ’80s, but lead vocalist and guitarist David Gilmour continued on with founding members Nick Mason (drums) and Richard Wright (keyboards). That latter-day Pink Floyd lineup toured worldwide to great acclaim, releasing two additional studio albums and two live releases during their time together. Pink Floyd was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. After the death of Wright in 2008, the band ceased activity, but along the way, a set of tribute groups sprang up to fill the void. One of the most popular and long-running Floyd tribute groups is Liverpool-based Brit Floyd; founded in 2011, the group recreates the feeling of a Pink Floyd concert for 21st-century audiences. This current tour celebrates the 30th anniversary of Pink Floyd’s 1995 live album, P*U*L*S*E. Tickets for this concert are $36.50 - $52.50 at ticketmaster.com (Bill Kopp)

Fork Fest @ Art Dye Park 6/7-8

Lineup posters for music festivals never fail to excite me, and this year I looked at the Fork Fest announcement with an audible “oof.” This celebration of Utah’s vibrant music scene is second to none, and they have really stacked the musical choices in 2024. Presented by the Harrington Center for the arts and Velour Music Gallery, the two-day spectacle features 32 bands across three stages. The idea of doing a local Glasto, or something of that proportion, shouldn’t put one off. Art Dye Park feels less like a fenced-in gulag than other locations—and best of all, there are quite a few attractions outside of the music, such as art installations, food trucks and a vendor village featuring local artisans and craftspeople. The headliner for this event is indie pop juggernaut I Dont Know How But They Found Me (styled out/shortened as iDKHOW), fronted by singer/songwriter Dallon Weekes. Their latest effort, Gloom Division, showcases a sure-shot take on a stylized ’80s sound. iDKHOW excels with that ironic, gleeful twist in songs that other bands would probably just play straight lyrically and melodically. Some of the other acts performing over the weekend are Book On Tape Worm, Ryan Innes and The Moth & The Flame. Catch all these musicians (and more) at Fork Fest (1000 N. 550 E. American Fork) on Friday, June 7 and Saturday, June 8. Tickets for the all-ages show range from $30 - $60. Ages 11 and under are free. Tickets can be found at forkfest. org (Mark Dago)

Excision

@ The Saltair 6/8-9

“Millions of years ago, ravenous beasts roamed the earth dominating their prey and feasting on the weak. Scientists tell us that these beasts have long been extinct…but one lives…Rexcision.” This is the intro to the 2011 Shambhala music festival mix by Jeff Abel, known as Excision. The intro displays both the Canadian producer’s longevity in the electronic music scene and his brand. Abel brings bass-heavy beats with Jurassic Park-level visuals for a truly unique live set. Considering Utah’s rich dinosaur history, The Great Saltair is the perfect place to experience the earth-shattering bass vibrations where one can feel transported to a different time. Expect an absurd amount of lights, lasers, immersive visuals on a massive screen and subwoofers for days. It is also not uncommon to see people in full T. rex suits— however, don’t fear! Just be prepared: At Excision shows, where headbangers reign, don’t forget your earplugs for this sensory overload extravaganza. V2 Presents brings Excision as part of the Nexus Tour. This 18+ show is at The Great Saltair on Saturday, June 8 (5 p.m. – 2 a.m.) and Sunday, June 9 (3 p.m. – midnight). One-day passes cost $75 and 2-day passes cost $131. Go to v2presents.com (Arica Roberts)

free will ASTROLOGY

BY ROB BREZSNY

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

What potentials should you strive to ripen as the expansive planet Jupiter glides through your astrological House of Connection, Communication and Education in the coming months? I’ll offer my intuitions. On the downside, there may be risks of talking carelessly, forging superficial links and learning inessential lessons. On the plus side, you will generate good luck and abundant vitality if you use language artfully, seek out the finest teachings and connect with quality people and institutions. In the most favorable prognosis I can imagine, you will become smarter and wiser. Your knack for avoiding boredom and finding fascination will be at a peak.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Since 1969, Taurus singer-songwriter Willie Nelson has played his favorite guitar in over 10,000 shows. His name for it is Trigger. Willie doesn’t hold onto it simply for nostalgic reasons. He says it has the greatest tone he has ever heard in a guitar. Though bruised and scratched, it gets a yearly check-up and repair. Nelson regards it as an extension of himself, like a part of his body. Is there anything like Trigger in your life, Taurus? Now is a good time to give it extra care and attention. The same is true for all your valuable belongings and accessories. Give them big doses of love.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

Off the coast of West Africa is an imaginary place called Null Island. A weather buoy is permanently moored there. Geographers have nicknamed it “Soul Buoy.” It’s the one location on Earth where zero degrees latitude intersects with zero degrees longitude. Since it’s at sea level, its elevation is zero, too. I regard this spot as a fun metaphor for the current state of your destiny, Gemini. You are at a triple zero point, with your innocence almost fully restored. The horizons are wide, the potentials are expansive, and you are as open and free as it’s possible for you to be.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

When I worked as a janitor at India Joze restaurant in Santa Cruz, California, I did the best I could. But I was unskilled in the janitorial arts. I couldn’t fix broken machines and I lacked expertise about effective cleaning agents. Plus, I was lazy. Who could blame me? I wasn’t doing my life’s work. I had no love for my job. Is there an even remotely comparable situation in your life, Cancerian? Are you involved with tasks that neither thrill you nor provide you with useful education? The coming months will be an excellent time to wean yourself from these activities.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22)

I foresee two possible approaches for you in the coming months. Either will probably work, so it’s up to you to decide which feels most fun and interesting. In the first option, you will pursue the rewards you treasure by creating your own rules as you outfox the system’s standard way of doing things. In the second alternative, you will aim for success by mostly playing within the rules of the system except for some ethical scheming and maneuvering that outflank the system’s rules. My advice is to choose one or the other, and not try to do both.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Please note that during the next 12 months, I may seem a bit pushy in my dealings with you. I will encourage you to redefine and enhance your ambitions. I will exhort you to dream bigger. There may come times when you wish I wouldn’t dare you to be so bold. I will understand, then, if you refrain from regularly reading my horoscopes. Maybe you are comfortable with your current success and don’t want my cheerleading. But if you would welcome an ally like me—an amiable motivator and sympathetic booster—I will be glad to help you strive for new heights of accomplishment.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Three months after Rachel Denning bore her fourth child, she and her husband sold everything they owned and embarked on a nomadic life. They have been roaming ever

since, adding three more kids along the way. She says they have become addicted to “the personal transformation that travel extracts.” She loves how wandering free “causes you to be uncomfortable, to step out of the familiar and into the unknown. It compels you to see with new eyes and to consider things you had never been aware of. It removes preconceptions, biases and small-mindedness.” If you were ever going to flirt with Rachel Denning’s approach, Libra, the next 12 months would be a favorable time. Could you approximate the same healing growth without globetrotting journeys? Probably. Homework: Ask your imagination to show you appealing ways to expand.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Among the Europeans who first settled in South America were Jews who had been forcibly converted to Christianity by Portuguese and Spanish persecutions. Centuries later, some families resolved to reclaim their Jewish heritage. They led a movement called la sangre llama—a Spanish phrase meaning “the blood is calling.” I invite you to be inspired by this retrieval, Scorpio. The coming months will be an excellent time to commune with aspects of your past that have been neglected or forgotten. Your ancestors may have messages for you. Go in search of missing information about your origins.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

If you simply let the natural flow take you where it will in the coming weeks, you would become a magnet for both degenerative and creative influences. Fortunately, you are reading this oracle, which will help ensure the natural flow won’t lead you toward degenerative influences. With this timely oracle, I am advising you to monitor and suppress any unconscious attractions you might have for bewildering risks and seemingly interesting possibilities that are actually dead ends. Don’t flirt with decadent glamor or fake beauty, dear Sagittarius! Instead, make yourself fully available for only the best resources that will uplift and inspire you.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Capricorn politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is campaigning to be U.S. president. But oops: He recently confessed that a parasitic worm once ate a portion of his brain, damaging his memory and cognitive skills. “The worm is dead now,” he assured us, as if that were a good reason to vote for him. Why am I bringing this up? Like most of us, you have secrets that if revealed might wreak at least a bit of mayhem. As tempting as it might be to share them with the world—perhaps in an effort to feel free of their burden—it’s best to keep them hidden for now. Kennedy’s brain worm is in that category. Don’t be like him in the coming weeks. Keep your reputation and public image strong. Show your best facets to the world.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

The English and French word “amateur” comes from amatus the past participle of the Latin word amare, which means “to love.” According to one definition, an amateur is “someone who pursues sports, studies or other activities purely for pleasure instead of for financial gain or professional advancement.” In accordance with astrological omens, I encourage you to make this a featured theme in the coming months. On a regular basis, seek out experiences simply because they make you feel good. Engage in lots of playtime. At least part-time, specialize in fun and games.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20)

Good news, Pisces: In the coming weeks, one of your flaws will mysteriously become less flawed. It will lose some of its power to undermine you. If you engage in focused meditation about it, you could rob it of even more of its obstructive force. More good news: You will have an enhanced capacity to distinguish between skillful pretending and earthy authenticity. No one can trick you or fool you. Can you handle even more good news? You will have a skillful knack for finding imperfect but effective solutions to problems that have no perfect solution.

urban LIVING

California Forever

A lot of folks love California, with almost 40 million people living in the state these days. Sure, I love the natural beauty of the beaches, the redwood forests and even the deserts—but I would not live there.

One of my brothers lives in SoCal and, just to get around, you have to reenact the Saturday Night Live sketch “The Californians,” where convos begin with, “Well, you’ve got to take the 105 to the 405 just to avoid the traffic to the … .” Traffic is hell in and around the big cities like San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco—just to name a few. And let’s not even talk about property values and rental prices!

California Forever is not a local Tshirt slogan there. Instead, it’s a private real estate development company that has purchased, on the QT, more than 50,000 acres of agricultural land in Solano County for almost $1 trillion. The company’s backers include venture capitalists and Silicon Valley investors like the founders and co-founders of LinkedIn, Sequoia Capital, Stripe, GitHub and Y Combinator.

The site is about an hour’s drive—on a good day—northeast of San Francisco and is planned for a new development that would have a potential residential population of 400,000 residents over an area about two-thirds the size of San Francisco.

It would have a solar farm to feed electricity needs to the project, public parks, homes and commercial pads.

Critics have claimed the initial designs (Mediterranean architecture, streetcars) were unrealistic and some compared the whole idea to the futuristic city of The Jetsons

Its location right by Travis Air Force Base has nearby residents and politicos up in arms who worry about security issues with the project being so close to the base, water supplies needed to support the new city (much drought has been experienced in the area) and the lack of mass transit to get there.

CROSSWORD PUZZLE

ACROSS

1. “Come Away With Me” singer Jones

6. Declines, as support

10. Former Queen of Jordan (and a hint to what’s missing from 21-Across)

14. Final Greek letter

15. “Consarn it!”

16. Lhasa ___ (breed from Tibet)

17. Paris 2024 prize

18. Taunting remark

19. “Buenos ___!”

20. Oh’s predecessors

21. Investment returns not realized because of factors like expenses and fees

23. “Insecure” Emmy nominee ___ Rae

26. After-dinner party

27. Like many eruptions

31. Voters’ choices

32. Best case

33. Playground equipment

35. Method

38. Word of caution

39. Most high school students

40. Nursery rhyme trio

41. Gallery work

42. Peek at the answers, say

43. Jordanian ruins site

44. Three in Italy

45. Simultaneously

47. Of a heart chamber

50. Cookie with a 2024 “Space Dunk” variety

51. Stank up the joint

54. Wayside lodging

57. “Take ___ from me ...”

58. In the thick of

59. “We can relate”

61. Prefix for rail or chrome

62. Chess play

63. Gambling mecca near Hong Kong

64. Former Domino’s Pizza mascot (and a hint to what’s missing from 51-Across)

65. Small wallet bills

66. “... I’ll eat ___!”

DOWN

1. Alaska gold rush city (and a hint to what’s missing from 3-Down)

2. “The ___” (1976 Gregory Peck horror film)

3. Didn’t say anything

4. Palindromic Ottoman official

5. “2001” computer

6. Outer limit

Basically, the billionaires are buying out the farmers to build a utopian city, much like what folks thought Daybreak here in Utah was going to be once completed. The developers say the 78-square-mile site will offer walkable neighborhoods, but, in the long run, voters will decide whether or not this project with new housing opportunities becomes a reality.

California is suffering from the same housing shortage we face here in Utah. In 2023, housing affordability in California reached a 16-year low, with only about 16% of homebuyers able to purchase a median-priced, single-family home, as per data from the California Association of Realtors.

As of 2022, the population of Daybreak, Utah, was estimated to be just under 44,000 people. When the Daybreak project was announced, there were plenty of naysayers. But it’s proven to be what homeowners wanted, and Daybreak is a raving success, with more of it planned in a future expansion. n

7. Runny French cheese

8. Rum cakes

9. Banned substances

10. Lowest points

11. Speak your mind

12. “August: ___ County” (Meryl Streep movie)

13. Monica’s brother on “Friends”

21. Enthusiast

22. Pool ball with a yellow stripe

24. Jazz vocal style

25. ___ Paradise (“On the Road” narrator)

27. “Livin’ La ___ Loca” (Ricky Martin hit)

28. Product of pungency

29. “Understood”

30. Golf shoe gripper

34. Enjoying

35. Smoothly, as a successful plan

36. Real estate developer’s unit

37. Rookie of the ___

39. Destination in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”

40. Dole (out)

42. Baby’s night spot

43. KPH part

44. Camera mount

46. Amount of gunk

55. Hurricane-tracking agcy.

56. In-___ Burger (and a hint to what’s missing from 35-Down)

59. Steak-___ (frozen beef brand)

60. Speak

Last week’s answers

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,

47. “Star Wars” droid, familiarly

48. Neighbor of a Tobagonian, informally

49. Citrus with a zest

51. Kendrick Lamar Pulitzer-winning album

52. “___ Talkin’” (Bee Gees #1 hit)

53. Pindaric poems

Field Report

Groundskeepers at the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison were tasked with removing invasive plants from a tulip bed on May 16, the Associated Press reported. Someone planted cannabis amongst the blooms, according to Shelby Ellison, a University of WisconsinMadison botanist. “It was just a large number of plants for it to be anything accidental,” she said. She was unable to determine whether the plants were marijuana or hemp; marijuana is illegal in Wisconsin.

News You Can Use

Are tacos sandwiches? Martin Quintana, 53, has hoped to open a second The Famous Taco location in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a few years. However, businesses in the development he was eyeing are limited to “sandwich bar-style restaurants whose primary business is to sell ‘made-to-order’ or ‘subway-style’ sandwiches”—so Quintana was shut out. He sued, the Associated Press reported, and on May 15, Superior Court Judge Craig Bobay laid down the law: “(T)acos and burritos are Mexican-style sandwiches.” Quintana said the new location should be open in two to three months.

Inexplicable

n Police in Pasadena, California, arrested Art Leon Berian, 63, on May 16 after an investigation revealed he had been setting off explosions in his neighborhood, KABC-TV reported. Berian is believed to be responsible for more than 150 unidentified booms over nearly two years, police said. Most happened in the middle of the night, but while collecting evidence, police heard a loud explosion and saw a white BMW drive through the resulting cloud of smoke. Evidence from that explosion was found in Berian’s car. No injuries have resulted from the bombs; Berian is charged with three felonies, and bond was set at $1.5 million.

n A 45-year-old man identified as Omar B. was located in a neighbor’s house in Djelfa, Algeria, after being missing for 26 years, Gulf News reported. Omar disappeared in 1998 during the Algerian Civil War; his family assumed he had been kidnapped or killed. His captor, a 61-year-old doorman, was taken into custody after he tried to flee; Omar told officials on May 14 that he couldn’t call out for help “because of a spell that his captor had cast on him.” Omar is receiving medical and psychological help.

Police Report

The Escambia County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office, on the lookout for David Jerome Jackson, 31, found him in a heated situation on May 17, the New York Post reported. Jackson was wanted for a March 15 shooting in Pensacola. “After an extensive search,” police said, “deputies ... finally discovered Jackson, folded, not so neatly inside a remarkably small dryer drum. He was pulled from the dryer one limb at a time.” Jackson is being held on $120,000 bail at the Escambia County Jail.

Recent Alarming Headline

“Priest Accused of Biting Woman During Communion,” Click Orlando announced on May 23. On May 19, an unnamed woman attended Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in St. Cloud, Florida, where she attempted to take Communion. Father Fidel, however, allegedly refused to give her Communion bread because he said she had not confessed her sins. The priest said the woman pushed him and grabbed the tray of Communion bread, which is a no-no, and “the only way he thought to extract her from it was to bite her arm,” according to police. The priest has not yet been charged.

What’s in a Name?

Sandra Rogers, 80, of Dunedin, Florida, lives on Peaceful Lane, but it may be time to rename the street. On May 17, The Smoking Gun reported, Rogers left her home and walked over to a neighbor’s house, where John Faraone, 72, was washing his motorcycle. Police said Rogers first “engaged in a verbal argument regarding his water usage” and took pictures of Faraone with her phone. Then things escalated: Rogers allegedly spit on Faraone and “pulled on the victim’s beard.” A witness confirmed that Rogers was the “primary aggressor.” Rogers was arrested on May 20 with a third-degree felony charge. She was freed on a $100 bond and ordered to have no contact with Faraone.

Awesome!

n Cicadas are definitely in the news this summer, but the one Kelly Simkins discovered on May 20 in the Orland Grassland near Chicago is literally one in a million, People reported. Simkins, the owner of Merlin’s Rocking Pet Show, was hunting cicadas to feed to her reptiles when she came across one with blue eyes. Most of the vociferous bugs have red eyes. “I just thought it was unique,” she said—and she was right. Dr. Gene Kritsky, dean of Behavioral and Natural Sciences at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati, said the picture of the blue-eyed insect from Orland Grassland is one of only two he has seen this year so far. He said the cause of the different-colored eyes is unclear.

n Winemaker Andreas Pernerstorfer of Gobelsburg, Austria, was renovating his wine cellar in early May when he came across an unexpected find: a number of huge bones, which were later identified as being from at least three Stone Age mammoths. “I thought it was just a piece of wood left by my grandfather,” Pernerstorfer told the BBC. “Then I remembered that in the past my grandfather said he had found teeth.” Researchers from the Austrian Archaeological Institute have been excavating since the discovery. The bones are believed to be between 30,000 and 40,000 years old. Eventually, they’ll end up at the Vienna Museum of Natural History.

Send your weird news items to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com

Olivia