I love Salt Lake City in the wintertime. Sure, it's freezing cold outside and the air is often poisonous. Sure, the days are short and dark. And sure, the one-two punch of November's election and January's Utah legislative session is a special kind of shit sandwich.

But my heart can't help but grow three sizes when I see the Walker Center tower blinking through the smog, the holiday decorations on Main Street or the quaint snow-globeification of our trails and neighborhoods when a dusting of lake-effect powder eventually descends.

Winter is a time for hot chocolate at Hatch, ice skating at Gallivan Center (or Millcreek Common—hat tip), for riding TRAX and Frontrunner, for dog-sledding on the Jordan River Parkway (wait, is that just me?) and for the once-a-year pilgrimage to the now-partially-reopened Temple Square to see the lights and displays while elbowing through throngs of suburban tourists. Deck the food halls! Ring out, Liberty Wells! Visions of Sugar House dance in our heads! Let it snow!

This December, in lieu of our typical editorial Gift Guide, City Weekly is checking in on some of our biggest stories of the year. In the pages that follow, our writers and partner contributors round up the notable developments to hit Utah and its capital city in 2024, updating with the latest twists and turns, when applicable, and looking ahead to the coming months, when possible.

There's nowhere near enough space to include everything of note, so allow me a moment to shout out some of the other great work published in our newspaper this year: Carolyn Campbell's features on cold-case DNA testing, dating counselors and supernatural encounters; Bianca Dumas' profile of local skiing legend Junior Bounous; Eric S. Peterson's police and government watchdogging through the Utah Investigative Journalism Project; our annual Pride Issue, guest-edited this year by state school board member Sarah Reale; Jared Blackley's eye-opening analysis of radon dangers; Zak Podmore's book excerpt on the changing face of Lake Powell; M'Lisa Dall's trips down memory lane in Rose Park and to the mining town of Eureka; Arica Roberts and B.I. Empey's deep dive into the local EDM scene; and the analyses of Utah's anti-pornography efforts by Michael Dean McGrady and Matt Pacenza. All of these stories—and many, many more—remain available at cityweekly.net.

And I would be remiss to end this introductory message without a reminder and invitation to shop locally this holiday season. Studies show that a larger share of each dollar spent at independent retailers recirculates in the area economy compared to that spent at big-box and chain stores. This is known as the local multiplier effect, and it means more benefits to both you and your neighbors when you proactively support homebred Salt Lake City businesses and entrepreneurs.

Pro tip: Start with the amazing advertisers you see in this and other issues of Salt Lake City Weekly, whose ongoing support, along with donations from our community of readers (see the button at the top of our home page!), has made it possible for us to deliver hyperlocal content, free of charge, every week of the year for the last four decades (see page 36!). For additional gift inspiration, find the recent Best Of Utah issue at our partner distribution locations or on our website, where you'll find the winners in more than 450 categories, chosen by locals.

However you celebrate the season, may the new year find you in good health, in good company, with a good beverage in your hand. Cheers!

— Benjamin Wood

City Slickers
Big crowds, big money and big projects dominated Salt Lake's government in 2024.
By Josi Hinds

From the masses of ceasefire advocates who swarmed Salt Lake City Council meetings to a divisive mayoral pay raise and the creation of new districts upon new districts, Salt Lake experienced its fair share of buzz and controversy this year. Here's a recap, in case you forgot.

Calls for Ceasefire
Over a span of several months last winter, dozens of residents appeared at City Council meetings calling for a resolution in support of a ceasefire to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

"We do not want our so-called 'representatives' at any level of government to continue to be passive," Liz DeFriez told the Council in January.

As more and more people made comments like DeFriez's, Council meetings started lasting up to four hours. But the Council did eventually respond to the demonstrators, passing a "resolution for peace" in February and later ending the same Council meeting early after disruptions from ceasefire advocates.

"Thank you for taking the first step in passing the resolution, though it's clear it only meant to appease us," Ryeleigh Hewlitt said at that meeting. "We will be relentless until you do the bare minimum and pass a permanent ceasefire."

Living up to their promise, the commenters threw chants and insults at the Council as they were escorted out of the building. At the next meeting, the Council announced changes to its general comment policy, limiting the cumulative time for comments to one hour.

"Today we're updating our general comment policy to preserve our ability to effectively conduct city business and maintain a safe and welcoming public forum for all constituents," Councilmember Chris Wharton said.

At the Council's March 27 meeting, fewer than 10 people commented on a ceasefire. By April, ceasefire advocates had largely stopped attending Council meetings.

Pay Raise for the Mayor
But the Council wasn't left unoccupied for long. As winter turned to spring, the Council turned to adopting its new annual budget. Unsurprisingly, nothing got people talking about the budget quite like Mayor Erin Mendenhall recommending a raise for herself.

"This compensation adjustment addresses a pay disparity both in comparison to cities and towns in the state and within Salt Lake City Corporation," Andrew Wittenberg, the mayor's spokesperson, explained via email in June.

Mendenhall recommended a 26%—or $44,000—raise for herself, increasing her annual salary from roughly $168,000 to $212,000.

"I'm completely opposed to this [raise] because in the real world that we all live in, we get pay increases according to our performance, and her poor performance has been abysmal at best," Julia McGonigle said during a City Council meeting in June.

Per city policy, council salaries were adjusted in proportion to the mayor's, jumping from roughly $42,000 to $53,000. Plus, members adopted legislative intent to further discuss Council compensation.

As of now, the Council has discussed conducting an external evaluation of pay levels and whether to award stipends for Council leadership positions. According to a staff report, the Council is considering a $3,000 stipend for the Council chairperson, a $2,000 stipend for the vice-chair and stipends for Redevelopment Agency leadership.

But that wasn't all the budget had in store for us. Salt Lake City residents also got an increase in utility fees, garbage container fees and property taxes.

Sports, Entertainment, Culture and Convention District
Speaking of tax increases, Salt Lakers also got a 0.5% sales tax increase thanks to the proposed Sports, Entertainment, Culture and Convention District. The tax could last up to 30 years, and it subsidizes Smith Entertainment Group's (SEG) development of the district.

The district is planned to cover three downtown blocks from the Delta Center on 300 West to the Salt Palace at West Temple. It could include 600-foot-tall buildings, a revitalized Japantown neighborhood on 100 South and the rerouting of 300 West underground to create a pedestrian plaza that connects the basketball and hockey arena with its neighboring block to the east.

The plan received its fair share of pushback, with critics taking aim at the sales tax increase being used to subsidize private development, despite SEG's notorious wealth, and the district's rushed timeline, which was mandated by state law. But, the development also received support from other stakeholders like the Downtown Alliance, the University of Utah, the Utah Restaurant Association and more.

"The success of our city is intrinsically attached to our downtown," Councilmember Alejandro Puy said at an Oct. 3 Council meeting. "A dying downtown will mean a shrinking tax base, a lack of an anchor, a failure to ensure safety, not enough resources to pay for our growing population—our downtown dying means the death of all of our dreams, really."

Now, SEG has 10 years to complete development of the new district before Salt Lake City hosts the 2034 Olympic games. Construction is slated to start this coming spring.

Power District
The year wrapped up with considerations for another district, this time on Salt Lake City's west side. The Power District is planned to span more than 90 acres of dilapidated land at approximately 1500 W. North Temple and would be developed by the Larry H. Miller Corporation.

It's slated to include mixed-use development, access to the Jordan River Parkway (including construction of a commercialized "riverwalk") and a potential new Major League Baseball stadium.

The district opens the opportunity for needed economic development and investment on the west side, but it's also made some worry about the implications for existing residents. The Council adopted an agreement for the district last week, at its final meeting of the year.

"I am really proud of what we've done, even though I'm still nervous for those spaces where we're going to have to relinquish control," Council chairperson Victoria Petro said. "We're all stumbling through this together, but I do think this one is set up for success."

The agreement encourages efforts to draw a new Major League Baseball team to Salt Lake City, requires a certain portion of residential units in the district be family-sized and affordable, mandates at least 9.5 acres of open space and permits buildings up to 400 feet tall. Construction on some of the outlying and adjacent areas to the Power District has already begun and will continue into the new year.

Living Downwind
Utah's congressional delegation must act fast to protect the victims of nuclear testing.
By Mary Dickson

The decades-long fight to strengthen and expand a federal program that compensates victims of exposure to radioactive fallout from nuclear testing has been fraught with challenges and controversy. Now, the program has officially expired, leaving many Utahns without the help they need and dealing a blow to the many communities who hoped to finally be included.

In 1990, Congress enacted the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) that was championed by Utah's Sen. Orrin Hatch, supported unanimously by both parties and signed into law by then-President George H.W. Bush. The program provided partial compensation to so-called "downwinders," whose cancers were presumed to have been caused by radioactive fallout from atmospheric testing during the 1950s and 1960s.

But it never went far enough.

Since RECA's passage in 1990, evidence has shown how far radioactive fallout from above-ground testing spread, how the uranium industry endangered workers, and how nuclear weapons production and waste harmed other U.S. communities.

To date, RECA has compensated some 42,000 Americans at a price tag of $2.7 billion over the last 34 years—709 claims are still pending. The program covered only 10 counties in southern Utah and 12 in Nevada and Arizona. Communities along the populated and heavily-impacted Wasatch Front were excluded not because they lacked exposure to radiation, but because they were on the wrong side of arbitrary county lines.

Advocates in Utah and other states have made great strides to correct that injustice. Things were looking hopeful last March, when the U.S. Senate voted 69-30 to pass a bill expanding RECA—a bipartisan vote nearly unheard of in a bitterly-divided Congress. That was one month after City Weekly published "Ticking Clock," my report on the need for congressional action and the negotiations surrounding expanded protections.

The Senate bill proposed to add all of Utah, Arizona and Nevada as well as four other western states and Guam, additional categories of uranium workers and communities elsewhere in the country harmed by radiation from weapons production and waste storage. It also would have extended RECA for another 19 years and adjusted compensation to help make up for the dramatic increase in the cost of cancer care.

But advocates' hopes were dashed. The Senate bill stalled in the House of Representatives after Speaker Mike Johnson refused to bring it to the floor for a vote, saying it cost too much. While he waited, the entire program expired in June.

According to press reports, Johnson said he wouldn't bring the bill to the floor unless he had buy-in from the Utah delegation. Utah was the most heavily impacted state and eligible Utahns have filed the most claims.

But our delegation hasn't stepped up. Senators Lee and Romney both voted against the Senate bill and not one of our House representatives supported it, echoing concerns that the projected $50 billion price tag was too high even as the government plans to spend $1.7 trillion upgrading its nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years.

Enter a workable compromise rolled out November 20 by the bill's sponsors.

It keeps the additional geographic areas and compensation increase, but it would cap claims at $5 billion over the next 5 to 6 years. Anything beyond that would have to be reauthorized by Congress.

The lame-duck session of Congress ends December 20, and it's unlikely that downwinders will see any last-minute action before the end of the year.

If the expansion doesn't make it through this session, the last hope is to get it through the new Congress early in March. In that case, it's up to the Utah delegation and Congress to finally bring justice to affected communities after all they've suffered at the hands of their own government.

Game, Set, Match
A year of relocation, resurrection, disappointment and debuts for Utah sports.
By Connor Sanders

This year was one of both new beginnings and farewells in Utah sports.

Fans welcomed Utah Hockey Club into the market with aplomb. Brigham Young University and the University of Utah reignited their rivalry, playing for the first time as Big 12 Conference opponents. The Utah Royals returned to action after a four-year hiatus.

On the other hand, the Salt Lake Bees played their final game in the city and are heading out west to start a new era in South Jordan.

Before we close the book on 2024, let's take a look back at what may turn out to be one of the most important chapters in Utah sports history.

Hockey Is Here to Stay
The Arizona Coyotes' near-overnight exodus to the Beehive State this spring marked a massive development for the future of sports (and land use) in Salt Lake City.

The Wasatch Front market has long been characterized as one that couldn't support more than one major sports franchise, but the response from Utah Hockey Club fans settled any doubts on that front.

Even with obstructed-view seating and no concrete details about the long-term branding, UHC is clearly the hottest game in town, with tickets commanding almost twice the price, on average, compared to Utah Jazz games.

The squad has yet to really get cooking on the ice, but has shown some encouraging signs early on. After the club's 4-1 win over Colorado last week, UHC was sitting in 5th place in the NHL's central division with 31 points as of Dec. 12, right on pace with the Coyotes' 30 points through 29 games last season.

There's a lot of season left to play, and UHC is in striking distance of making the playoffs. But they'll have to leapfrog five teams to do so.

Bees' Past and MLB's Future?
The 30th year of Triple-A baseball in Salt Lake City was the last one for the Salt Lake Bees, who will be moving to Daybreak Field in South Jordan in 2025. However, there was plenty of excitement about the future of baseball in Utah's capital this year.

Rumors about Major League Baseball's interest in Salt Lake City as a candidate for its expansion plans ran wild this summer, with ESPN's Jeff Passan writing in July that while where and when it'll occur are still up in the air, expansion "is an inevitability." Add that to the Oakland Athletics' brief flirtation with Salt Lake City as a temporary home next season?

There was a whole lot of smoke about baseball in the Beehive State, but no fire as of yet. And expansion "is unlikely to happen until the early 2030s," Passan wrote.

As far as the on-field product? The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim—the Bees' affiliate—have lived up to their reputation as one of the worst franchises in baseball once again.

The Angels not only have baseball's second worst farm system, according to MLB.com's rankings, they also finished second-to-last in the American League with a 63-99 record in 2024. No good MLB players and no good prospects? It could only be the Angels.

On top of that, the team teased fans about a potential injury rehab assignment at Smith's Ballpark for former MVP Mike Trout in July, only to bench him after a couple of innings in center field and a strike out at the plate. Best of luck in South Jordan.

RSL's Promising Season Falls Short
For most of the first half of the season, Real Salt Lake looked like a serious contender in Major League Soccer. The attack was electric. Striker Cristian Arango led the league in goals and looked like the frontrunner for MVP.

That all changed when the team sold Colombian winger Andrés Gómez to French club Rennes for a club record $11 million. After a so-so first season with RSL, Gómez put up an absurd 13 goals and 7 assists in 23 matches before he jumped across the pond.

Nothing was quite the same without him. Arango dealt with injuries and faded as the season went on. The squad limped into the playoffs and got knocked out in the first round by Minnesota United. Both matches went to penalties and RSL lost both shootouts.

On the bright side, coach Pablo Mastroeni led one of the youngest squads in MLS to the playoffs once again. Diego Luna, Emeka Eneli and Braian Ojeda all had excellent seasons and will form the core of the team going forward.

The Royals' Second Inaugural
After a four-year hiatus, the Utah Royals returned to action in 2024.

The road is always tough for an expansion team in its first season, and the Royals took their lumps early. Head coach Amy Rodriguez started with a 1-9-1 record and was let go on June 30.

Jimmy Coenraets was hired as one of Rodriguez's assistants on June 7 and took over the role on an interim basis 23 days later. The Royals' offense finally came to life under Coenraets, though the midseason arrivals of Japanese international Mina Tanaka and Spanish youth international Ana Tejada certainly played a big role as well.

The squad scratched its way out of the bottom of the table and finished 11th out of 13 teams in the National Women's Soccer League. Coenraets was named the head coach on a permanent basis on October 24.

All things considered, the Royals look well positioned to improve in 2025. Forward Ally Sentnor notched 3 goals and 4 assists, got her first USWNT call up and was a key figure for the U.S. at the U-20 World Cup this summer. Sky's the limit for her.

Tejada's a special player too. She won the U-17 and U-20 World Cups with Spain and earned her first cap with the senior team in 2022. Soccer sickos will weep with joy at her percentiles on Football Reference.

Will the Jazz Ever Be Good Again?
Yes, but not for a good long while.

The Jazz are clearly in tank mode, and it's probably a wise move given how stacked the Western Conference is this season.

The 2025 Draft features some intriguing players as well, including Duke star and known cold-ass white boy Cooper Flagg. Danny Ainge might give both his kidneys to draft Flagg.

It's hard to be too disappointed in the front office, though. Small market teams have no other option than to bottom out and rebuild through the draft. Thankfully, some of the young guys have looked promising early in the 2024-25 season, with Kyle Filipowski and Isaiah Collier securing spots in the rotation.

Taylor Hendricks' brutal leg injury put a real damper on this season. Right when it looked like he was turning the corner, he's out for at least a year. Tough season for Jazz fans.

One More Song!
Music festivals and concert venues flex as the Wasatch Front becomes a must-stop spot for acts big and small.
Words and photos by Josh Scheuerman

Utah's music scene is one of the best-kept secrets, and its rise to national attention is a testament to the dedication of local artists, promoters and music fans who have supported it for decades. The state's unique combination of underground music culture, passionate local following and the emergence of large-scale music festivals has created a perfect storm for Utah's music scene to thrive.

In the late '90s and early 2000s, when the Warped Tour came to town, it opened the door for many local bands to experience national exposure. However, despite the popularity of national acts, the local scene continued to grow quietly beneath the surface, fueled by local venues like Kilby Court, which has long been a cornerstone for indie music in Salt Lake City. These grassroots spaces provided a platform for bands to hone their craft, build local fanbases and get their music heard, leading to a steadily growing reputation for Utah as a place where new, authentic talent could be nurtured.

Fast forward to the present, and we're seeing the fruits of this underground scene with the emergence of major festivals like Ogden Twilight, the Twilight Concert Series and Red Butte Garden's amphitheater concerts. These events not only bring top-tier national acts to Utah but also give local artists the opportunity to perform alongside some of the biggest names in the industry. The Kilby Block Party in particular has become a defining event, showcasing the diversity and creativity of the local music scene while also pulling in crowds from across the country.

What makes Utah's music scene so unique is its blend of genres and the growing crossover between indie, rock, electronic and even hip-hop acts. With the state's rapid population growth, more young people are coming to Utah from all over, bringing with them new musical tastes and further expanding the cultural fabric of the scene.

The continued success of these festivals and concerts signals that Utah's music scene is far from a passing trend—it's a movement that will only gain momentum as more and more artists find their footing in the local scene and venture out into the wider national market. With strong promoters, a growing fanbase and an abundance of talented musicians, Utah is poised to continue its rise as a key player in the national music landscape.

Bombs Away
LDS church's Ensign Peak is still investing—a lot—in nukes.
By Taylor Barnes

Last June, City Weekly and Inkstick published "Cracks in the Sin Screen," an exposé about the until-recently secret investment manager for the LDS church holding stock in nuclear weapons contractors. Their latest filings reveal they're still betting on swords rather than plowshares.

In August, a few peaceniks and an ex-Mormon gathered for a vigil to mark the 79th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their meetup point? The 22-story World Trade Center Utah next to the City Creek mall where—according to an address you can dig up in Securities and Exchange Commission filings—the secretive investment manager for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has its offices.

One demonstrator approached the concierge desk and asked to be buzzed up to the fund, Ensign Peak, a request the security officers swiftly denied. The protestor had wanted to deliver a postcard to Ensign Peak's staff, calling on them to repent for investing tithe-payers' mites in nuclear weapons manufacturers like Northrop Grumman—which is producing the Air Force's new intercontinental ballistic missile in Utah—and other mainstays of the military-industrial complex, like Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and so on.

The former Mormon, Eric, told me that he'd paid plenty in tithes during his time in the church. He'd heard about the vigil on an evening radio show, grabbed a piece of cardboard, and joined the Utah Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons on that hot Friday morning. His cardboard sign read "Sword of Laban?" a reference to a story in 1 Nephi, the first book of the Latter-day Saint Book of Mormon.

In it, Nephi slays a powerful man named Laban in 600 B.C. Jerusalem by using the latter's own sword. Nephi, according to the scripture, had been "constrained by the Spirit" to kill Laban. He then brought Laban's gold-hilted sword to the Western Hemisphere, where it was regarded as sacred among the Nephites. Eric told me the story is sometimes allegorized in LDS circles to justify military force.

Why is the Utah-based faith's stance on weapons of mass destruction noteworthy? For one, the state occupies a crucial node on the American map of nuclear weapons production, a history that dates back to the early days of the Cold War, when a scout for the Thiokol Chemical Corporation set out to find "cheap, unproductive land" where it could conduct "explosive" operations to produce missiles for the Air Force. The desert lands of Promontory fit the bill.

The six mile-long plant, nowadays owned by Northrop Grumman, will churn out more than 600 new intercontinental ballistic missiles in the coming years. They'll then be loaded with warheads and dropped into silos across the American West, on continuous alert for launch orders to shoot over the North Pole and reach Russia or China in about 30 minutes.

Another reason the church's take matters is because, in a rare moment in which the United States backed down from the nuclear arms race, Mormon leadership contributed to a favorable political climate for disarmament by issuing an extraordinary dissent against nuclear weapons.

That occurred in 1981, when then-church President Spencer Kimball and his advisors wired a statement directly to the Reagan administration opposing the MX missile, a mobile nuclear weapons program that the Air Force wanted to deploy to Utah.

Does the church still oppose what Kimball called "a mammoth weapons system potentially capable of destroying much of civilization"? If Ensign Peak's lack of a "sin screen" for nuclear weapons speaks for church positions, then nope.

Two public disclosure deadlines have passed since our first exposé on how the fund is a rare faith-based investor holding stock in nuclear weapons contractors, and SEC filings show that Ensign Peak continues to hold more than 1 million shares of the top 11 companies identified by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Those stocks are worth, according to the SEC, about $289,430,858.

We'll keep watching those disclosures for any signs of soul-searching.

Folk Tales
The past is gone, but not forgotten, as City Weekly celebrates 40 years in print.
By Wes Long

One tends to experience a wide array of emotions upon turning 40—everything from nostalgia to regret to pride. Also, some back problems.

Those emotions were in rich supply as we embarked upon a year-long celebration of the people, events and stories that bridge the Private Eye newsletter of 1984 to the City Weekly of today.

As a means of marking its 40th year in publication—and to keep Wes Long and Benjamin Wood out of mischief—City Weekly commenced its extended birthday party with a special "Rewind" feature in August of 2023.

"Over the next 40 weeks," wrote Wood for the inaugural installment, "we'll be counting down (up?) the years, one City Weekly 'volume' at a time—checking in on old friends, old fights and old fads, all leading up to our grand ruby anniversary in 2024."

And so we did, digging through boxes of 40 years' worth of back issues to revisit notable stories, celebrate countless contributors, explain milestone developments for the paper and to provide a glance—as only City Weekly can—at Utah history as it was unfolding.

Whether it was the comics, the venue listings, the advertisements, the comings and goings of our own personnel or the momentous happenings of pandemic and war, every facet of being a community paper was given some degree of attention.

And then there were the stories.

From investigations of public figures to rich profiles of unheralded locals, from cultural reviews to penetrating editorials, countless writers brought forth color, depth, style and soul to the happenings around Salt Lake City and beyond. Whether one was a veteran reporter or an aspiring writer making their debut, all such stories constituted the expansive oeuvre that both Private Eye and City Weekly have showcased from the beginning.

"We had no friends in the protected class that other media danced around, so we weren't afraid of losing a lunch date if we did a story on the mayor or a banker," founder John Saltas recalled at project's launch. "We were doing things far differently in the storytelling, and that's part of being an alternate newspaper."

City Weekly's "Rewind" series wrapped up in May, printed alongside collected messages from former staff members and contributors, a celebratory proclamation from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and a summary evaluation of the paper's future by Wes Long.

"Are [the present media and social conditions] daunting? Absolutely," Long acknowledged. "Is the path ahead assured? Absolutely not. Such has been our tortuous journey since our founding, but thanks to the assortment of rebels and dreamers who kept this paper alive by producing it and reading it, the path forward remains open for further traveling."

Since the weekly Rewind concluded in May, the anniversary celebration has continued online at CityWeekly.net with our ongoing "Flashback" series, which republishes cover stories, news reports and opinion columns selected from 40 years of archive material—many of which have been introduced to public eyes for the first time since their original pre-internet publication.

The Flashbacks constitute only a sampling of countless works on any number of subjects to carry the Private Eye/City Weekly banners.

Looking ahead, the cover stories and retrospectives that constituted the "Rewind" series will be printed in a souvenir book along with special retrospectives from Private Eye/City Weekly alumni and other additional features relating to this paper's history. Updates and details on purchasing a copy can be obtained by contacting marketing@cityweekly.net.

It has been said, in a sentiment popularized by the Presbyterian minister Ernest T. Campbell, that the two most important days of a person's life are the day on which they were born and the day on which they discover why they were born.

Well, the summer of 1984 remains a special time for us here at City Weekly, and the past year has been a fascinating journey to dig into all that has transpired for us as a paper, as Salt Lakers, as Utahns and as Americans.

But with every issue we publish and with every year that goes by, we are continually reacquainted with our other important day: this day.

In this era of fascism, fear and greed, to be able to talk to people across the entire community, to connect readers with resources and fun, to report on the corruption and celebrate the good that people do, is the reason we do what we do and why we came into being.

And no matter how old this paper gets—whether we make it to our 80th, our 100th or even our 150th—this day remains the one that counts.

Maybe it's true that life really begins at age 40.