Noah Kahan fills the stadium in Sandy Tuesday, Goose closes out Twilight, and temple tour tickets drop September 1
Plus handmade noodles in Midvale, a 1916 burlesque house still putting on plays in Magna, Bryson Tiller in West Valley, and 128 more affordable apartments headed for North Temple.
Good morning, Salt Lake Valley.
Sunny and 93 today, dropping to 67 tonight with a slight chance of a storm before midnight. Tuesday is 94 and sunny, then Wednesday and Thursday both sit at 96. No advisories, no smoke, no excuses.
The week's biggest night is Tuesday, and it belongs to Sandy. After that it's a slow build to Saturday, when downtown gets the last outdoor concert of the Twilight season.
π 30 seconds in the valleyβ±οΈ 6 min read
- βNoah Kahan plays the soccer stadium in Sandy Tuesday
- π°Salt Lake Temple tour reservations open September 1
- π
Goose closes out Twilight at the Civic Center
- π΄Handmade noodles on Union Park Avenue
- π‘Magna's 1916 theater started as a burlesque house
β The Big One
Noah Kahan plays the soccer stadium in Sandy on Tuesday night
Noah Kahan brings the Great Divide Tour to America First Field on Tuesday, with Gigi Perez and Annabelle Dinda opening. This is a stadium run of 23 stops across North America, and Sandy is the only Utah date on it. The last time a crowd this size showed up at 9400 South on a weeknight, it was for a playoff match.
The box office is gone. Resale is the only door left, and it has been sitting around $345 and climbing toward $469 on the average seat, which is a real number to sit with before you talk yourself into it. If you already have tickets, the rest of this is for you.
Three things decide how your Tuesday goes. Parking is $15, card only, sold on site while the six lots hold out, so it runs out. The TRAX Blue Line stops at Sandy Expo, which puts you a walk from the gates and skips the whole lot situation. And the bag rule at this stadium is small enough to catch people every single event: nothing bigger than 4 by 6 by 2 inches, clear or not. Diaper bags and medical bags get an exception. Everything else goes back to the car, and on a sold-out night the walk back to the car is the part that costs you the opener.
π° Around the Valley
Salt Lake Temple tour reservations open September 1
Reservations for the Salt Lake Temple open house go live Tuesday, September 1 at 11 a.m. on TempleSquare.org and the Temple Square app. The tours themselves run April 5 through October 1, 2027, from 8:40 in the morning to 8 at night Monday through Saturday and noon to 8 on Sundays. They are free and open to anybody, but they are timed and ticketed, and each person can hold up to six. There will be a limited walk-up line, first come, first served, which is not a plan so much as a last resort.
The North Temple affordable project pulled permits for its second half
22 Communities filed building permits this month for phase two of The Cooperative at 1881 W. North Temple, adding 128 apartments to the 198 already under construction on the site. All 128 come in at 60 percent of area median income, and the mix leans family: 40 three-bedrooms, 60 two-bedrooms, 28 one-bedrooms. Phase one delivers in 2027 and phase two in 2028, for 326 apartments total. The city currently has more studios and one-bedrooms than it can absorb, so a building that weights itself toward three-bedrooms is answering the part of the shortage nobody has been building for.
π
This Week
Best of the week Goose closes out the Twilight season at the Civic Center on Saturday
The last Twilight show of the summer is Goose on Saturday, with Theoretical Blonde opening. Doors at 5. It is at the Civic Center at 200 East and 400 South, not the Gallivan Center, which is where four of the six Twilight shows this year landed.
Our take
Goose is the rare jam band that draws a crowd who came to hear the songs and a crowd who came to hear the twenty-minute middle of the songs, and both leave happy. That works better outdoors than in any room in this city. The Civic Center is the part worth knowing about: the Arts Council moved two of this year's six shows off the Gallivan block to a bigger open lot, and this is the one that gets the benefit. More grass, more room to actually stand somewhere, and the sound is not bouncing off six stories of office building. Rain or shine, per the Arts Council, so a cloud is not a reason to stay home.
β οΈ Heads up: The Civic Center lot has no shade to speak of and doors are at 5 on a 90-plus afternoon, so the first hour is the hard part.
$$ musicnight outoutdoors
Book now Water for Elephants is at the Eccles for six days and then it leaves
The touring production of Water for Elephants runs Tuesday through Sunday in Delta Hall. Seven performances: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, 7:30 Friday, 1 and 7:30 Saturday, and 1 and 6:30 Sunday. Sara Gruen's novel, staged by circus performers.
Our take
Book this one now or don't bother. Six days is a short window for a touring Broadway show, the two Saturday performances go first, and by Thursday you are choosing between a Tuesday seat and nothing. What makes it different from the rest of the season is that the circus is not a metaphor here. The company hired actual aerialists and acrobats, and the animals are puppets built and operated in front of you, which is the thing that got it seven Tony nominations. Kids old enough to sit still for two and a half hours will remember the elephant.
β οΈ Heads up: Delta Hall is the big house, not the black box, so the back of the second balcony is a long way from a puppet.
$$$ theaterdate nightfamily
Worth it Bryson Tiller headlines a three-deep bill in West Valley on Thursday
Bryson Tiller brings the Neo Trapsoul Tour to the amphitheater Thursday at 7, with Majid Jordan and Ty Dolla $ign both on the bill. Three acts, one ticket.
Our take
Trapsoul came out in 2015 and did more to shape what R&B sounds like now than most albums that outsold it, and this tour is Tiller playing to that. The real value is the undercard. Majid Jordan and Ty Dolla $ign are both headliners in their own right on a different night, and stacking all three on one bill is the sort of thing that happens when a tour is filling a shed rather than a theater. Get there for the 7 o'clock start and you get three sets for the price of one.
β οΈ Heads up: The amphitheater has shows Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday this week, so the Bangerter approach is busier than a normal Thursday.
$$ musicnight out
Worth it The South Jordan market is the one where the artisans are allowed in
The South Jordan Farmers Market runs Saturdays from 8 to 1 at 1600 W. Towne Center Drive, through October 10. The Farm Bureau runs its markets food-only, and South Jordan is the one location that gets an exception for artisans.
Our take
Every Farm Bureau market in the state is food-only on purpose, which is why you can walk one of them without wading through candles. South Jordan is the exception they carved out, so you get produce, bread, jam, salsa and tamales plus a small artisan row, and it still does not feel like a craft fair. Bring the kids, because there is a free craft table every week and it is a real one, not a coloring sheet. SNAP works here and Double Up Food Bucks is running again this season, which doubles what those dollars buy on produce.
β οΈ Heads up: The Towne Center lot fills by 9 and the overflow puts you a long walk from the stalls with your arms full on the way back.
Free familyfreefood
Skip unless Oktoberfest is open at Snowbird this weekend, and there are nine more after it
Snowbird's 54th Oktoberfest runs noon to 6 every Saturday and Sunday through October 11. Admission is free, parking is $12, and the tram keeps running for foot passengers.
Our take
Skip it this weekend. It runs every Saturday and Sunday until October 11, which is nine more chances, and the ones in late September come with cooler air, actual fall color on the ridges and a canyon that is not full of people who all decided the same thing on a 96-degree Saturday. The only reason to go now is the stein: half-off retro steins are on this weekend and next, and if you collect them, that is the whole argument. Otherwise wait a month and get the version of this you actually pictured.
β οΈ Heads up: Little Cottonwood has no shoulder parking and no overflow, so a full lot means turning around and driving back down 25 miles.
Free outdoorsfoodfamily
ποΈ The Scoreboard
Real Salt Lake is one win from a Champions Cup place, and the quarterfinal is Tuesday
Saturday's 2-1 loss at Orlando stretched the MLS winless run to seven matches. Soccer's other season is going considerably better, because Tuesday's Leagues Cup quarterfinal puts them ninety minutes from a Concacaf Champions Cup place.
The Royals gave up four in San Diego and now go to Orlando
Utah lost 4-2 at Snapdragon Stadium on Friday, which snapped the run that had them at the top of the league earlier this month. They are still on the best season in club history and they are back on the road Saturday.
π΄ Eat & Drink
Worth it UT Craft Ramen, Midvale
A ramen shop that opened on Union Park Avenue at the start of this month, making its own noodles from a wheat blend and simmering pork and chicken bones for the broth. Order the UT Black, the tonkotsu with black garlic oil poured over the top. The UT Red is the same bowl with chili oil if you want heat instead of smoke. They opened with a one-weekend A5 wagyu bowl using chashu flown in from Japan, and they have been running guest collaborations with ramen shops from Chigasaki and Tochigi since.
Our take
Handmade noodles are the whole difference and most places in the valley do not bother, because a noodle machine is expensive and dried noodles are fine. These are not fine, they are chewy in the way that makes you notice the noodle instead of just the broth. Go black garlic on the first visit. The oil is burnt on purpose and it turns a tonkotsu that would already be rich into something closer to smoke, and it is the bowl the regulars talk about. The collaborations are worth watching if you care, because a shop that flies in chefs from Tochigi three months after opening is either very confident or very well connected, and either one is good news for a suburb that did not have this six months ago.
β οΈ Heads up: The 3 to 5 gap catches out anybody trying to eat between school pickup and dinner.
$$ foodcasual
π‘ Hidden Gem
Worth it Magna's Empress opened in 1916 as a burlesque house for Kennecott miners
The Empress at 9104 W. 2700 South is the oldest and best-preserved commercial building on Magna's Main Street. The Western Theatre Corporation put it up in 1916 to entertain the men working the mine, and it opened as a burlesque house before it ever showed a film. Silent pictures started in 1917. It is Neo-classical and Beaux Arts on the outside, which is a lot of architecture for a mining town, and it went on the National Register in 1985. After decades dark, a nonprofit called the Oquirrh Hills Performing Arts Alliance reopened it in 2006, and it runs musicals, plays and youth productions now as a 178-seat house in the round.
Our take
A 178-seat house in the round that started life as burlesque for mine workers is the most Utah sentence in this newsletter, and every word of it is true. Kennecott built Copperton to show off what copper could do and built Magna to hold the men who dug it, and this is what those men had for a Saturday night. The nonprofit that took it over has kept it running for twenty years on ticket sales and volunteers, in a town most of us only see from the freeway.
β οΈ Heads up: Main Street parking out there is street-side and unmetered, which is fine on a weekday and tight on a show night.
Free historyfreedate night
ποΈ Also Happening
5 Seconds of Summer with The Band Camino
Wednesday at 7 at the amphitheater in West Valley City.
Ken Ludwig's Moriarty at Hale Centre Theatre
A regional premiere running on the Jewel Box stage in Sandy, with performances all week.
The Taylorsville Farmers Market
Tuesday from 5 to 9 at Centennial Plaza in Taylorsville, running through the end of September.
π° Valley News
Seven sculptures of Sugar House neighbors are coming to Fairmont Park
The city picked a seven-piece installation called The People in Your Neighborhood for Fairmont Park and McClelland Street, by the local artists Jeremy Morgan and Brooke Smart, who work together as Tomato Tomahto. Two pieces go in the park and five along the street north of it, each one a vignette of a familiar community figure doing an ordinary thing. It is paid for out of the parks improvement money the city set aside in 2022, with $441,000 of the current tranche going to public art commissions. Completion is set for the end of 2028, so this is a long build, but Fairmont has been the busiest green space in Sugar House through years of construction on every side of it and it gets something permanent out of the deal.
Utah's first licensed nature preschool opens on the Jordan River this month
Wonderbloom Nature Play School opens at Tracy Aviary's Nature Center at Pia Okwai in South Salt Lake this month, the first licensed nature-based preschool in the state. The program is for four and five year olds and it uses the center's twelve acres along the Jordan River Trail as the classroom, with kids outside about 75 percent of the day against the 12 percent a conventional preschool manages. The site holds 40 children at a time and around 150 a year counting summer programs. Pia Okwai is the Shoshone name for the Jordan River and means big flow, which is what the aviary named the whole property after when it took it on.
Holy Trinity is finally getting the earthquake repairs it has waited six years for
Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral on 300 South is preparing for $1.6 million in earthquake repairs, part of a seismic and interior project running $16 to $18 million total. The March 2020 Magna quake cracked the building, and the fix is not cosmetic: crews strip the whole thing to the brick and add shotcrete to thicken the walls. The iconostasis, the wall of icons that screens the altar, has to come out and be rebuilt entirely because of the structural work behind it. FEMA is covering 90 percent. Work was supposed to start this spring and slipped, and the cathedral has been holding services in a building it knows is compromised the whole time.
π Good Neighbor
Tell us who's making the valley better
Every issue we want to spotlight one neighbor, teacher, coach, or cause quietly making the Salt Lake Valley a better place to live. Know someone who deserves it? Send them our way.
Nominate a neighbor β That's the week. Tuesday belongs to Sandy, Thursday to West Valley, Saturday to downtown, and Sunday is the last day to see the elephant.
If you took our word for it and drove out to Copperton on Saturday, tell us how the car show was. We sent you there sight unseen.
Reply and tell us where you land Saturday night. We read every one.
β The Salt Lake Valley crew