Salt Lake City

Day 9

Salt Lake City- a city of surprises, for sure. We got a late start, and were unfortunately unable to attend the different churches we had planned to go to on Sunday morning due to traffic delays. We had an exceptionally delicious lunch at a trendy Italian place called Tony Caputo’s and then headed over to the famous Temple Square, home of the headquarters of the church of the Latter Day Saints. I was prepared for an interesting experience here, and boy, they did not disappoint. This trip has provided an abundance of experiences that I would never seek out in my daily life in Nashville and even the ones that shock me, the ones that make me discouraged, the ones that test my patience, are valuable experiences nonetheless because it allows me to base my opinions on personal experience and knowledge rather than hearsay or media portrayals of certain subjects. Two young women who were serving as tour guides for their “mission” guided us through the museum of Mormon Church history. I’m afraid we may have been bad guests, because we apparently asked all sorts of questions that they had no answers for- we asked questions about their rules and rituals and received answers along the lines of “I’m not really sure, but that’s just what our leaders have counseled us to do” multiple times. All in all, qualms about the faith itself aside, for people who were supposed to be serving as informed members of their faith helping others understand their religion, I left rather unimpressed by how much they seemed to accept with blind unquestioning conviction.

Not to mention the very strange set-up of the whole museum: life-size statues of Biblical characters alongside the statues of the Mormon prophets set up in little display booths and the bright mural of the cosmos covering the walls and ceiling that served as the backdrop for the giant statue of Jesus. You sit down on benches in front of the giant Jesus to hear a recording over a loudspeaker that is supposedly Jesus speaking to us first in Japanese and then in English (and with a strange almost-Southern accent). And then the tour guides (who are all young pretty women very conservatively-dressed) thank you for your reverence during the message from Jesus, and inform you that the Jesus statue is now available for you to pose next to so you can get that special picture.

We then moved on to a completely different side of Salt Lake City. A GLBTIQ film festival was being held at the Tower Theater and we made it in time for the new film "Outrage" from award-winning director Kirby Dick ("This Film is Not Yet Rated" and "Twist of Faith"), about closeted politicians, their political life and the media conspiracy that keeps their secrets. It profiled several allegedly gay politicians who had consistently voted against equal rights for the GLBTIQ community. The film showed the efforts of some people to out these politicians who they felt were being hypocrites in an effort to expose their hypocrisy for the greater good of the gay and lesbian community. It was an absolutely fascinating film and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in politics and/or equal rights for the gay and lesbian population; equally fascinating was the fact that this theater was almost completely filled in a city that has a reputation for being openly antagonistic to the gay and lesbian community (and, in fact, says so in lots of polite words in one of the pamphlets that was distributed in Temple Square).

We stuck around after the film for a Q&A with the director and it was so interesting to hear this community speak up about issues both on a national and a community level. We ate dinner at a nice little Thai place that two different locals had enthusiastically recommended that seemed hidden away in a cute neighborhood away from the main part of town and Temple Square. One of our group members, Cory, shared that he had spoken with the owner of the restaurant we ate lunch at, Tony Caputo. Mr. Caputo had come to Salt Lake City from New York several years ago and mentioned that it took at least a couple of years to find his niche within a town so dominated by one religious community and for several years, he felt somewhat ostracized. But eventually he did carve out his own niche and ended up contributing to the makeover of the part of town his restaurant is in. You couldn’t tell today, but apparently his restaurant used to be in a bad part of town and his business helped revitalize it. This got us thinking about communities and how individuals can work to create their own subcultures or renewal projects even within a city that is known for having one set identity. The gay and lesbian community seemed to have done it, the small business owners like Mr. Caputo and those around his restaurant have done it, and I’m sure had we had more time in town we could have found many more subcultures and niche groups within this town that I had honestly thought was populated almost solely by Mormons. Our group had not been overly excited for this day- California was on a lot of minds, and the Grand Canyon had exhausted us all. But we concluded that this had been a good day after all. This was not the Salt Lake City I had expected to experience and it was a pleasant surprise to find this city is not as one-dimensional as I had anticipated.