The Salt Lake ValleyPost Malone ends his tour at Rice-Eccles, Death Cab doubles up in Sandy, and West Jordan gets brisket
Plus a 15-story condo tower pitched next to Trolley Square, five straight days near 100, and what the lake's dust is leaving in valley gardens.
Good morning, Salt Lake Valley.
Twenty-three cities got a night of the BIG ASS Stadium Tour this summer. We get the ending. Post Malone and Jelly Roll close the whole run Tuesday at Rice-Eccles with Carter Faith opening, and the Red Line drops you at the west gates without ever asking you to find a parking spot.
The rest of the week belongs to the south and west valley. Midvale kicks off a full week of Harvest Days today, Death Cab for Cutie plays Sandy two nights running, and Murray's farmers market finally opens Friday morning. Plan all of it around the heat: today runs 101 under an advisory that holds until midnight, and the forecast doesn't dip below 99 all week.
📍 30 seconds in the valley⏱️ 6 min read
- ⭐Post Malone closes his stadium tour at Rice-Eccles
- 📰Lake dust in the garden, and a condo tower by Trolley Square
- 📅Harvest Days in Midvale, Death Cab in Sandy, a market opens in Murray
- 🍴The brisket plate that earns the drive to Jordan Landing
- 🌲Which Mill Creek trails still work this summer
⭐ The Big One
Post Malone and Jelly Roll end the tour here Tuesday
The BIG ASS Stadium Tour Part 2 ran 23 cities across the summer, and Rice-Eccles is the last stop on the sheet. Tuesday night is the final show of the run, with Jelly Roll co-headlining and Carter Faith opening. A closing night is the one date on a tour where nobody is pacing themselves.
Stadium shows here have a logistics problem that this one mostly solves for you. The west gates sit a short walk from the TRAX platform, so the train beats the car by a wide margin on a night when 1400 East turns into a parking lot in both directions.
One practical note before you leave the house: bags get you stopped. The stadium allows a clear bag no bigger than 12 by 12 by 6 inches, and the main gates run a separate no-bag line that moves at a completely different speed.
Our take
Every tour has a last night, and for once it lands in our stadium instead of somewhere we read about after. If you were going to pick one show this summer, the one where the band has nothing left to hold back is a reasonable pick.⚠️ Heads up: A 7 p.m. start on a 100-degree Tuesday means the first hour is still full sun on an open bowl. The concrete holds that heat well past sunset, so water and a hat matter more than they sound like they do.
$$$ musicnight out
📰 Around the Valley
Lake dust is showing up inside garden vegetables
Researchers looking at dust blown off the exposed Great Salt Lake bed found the metals in it do not stop at our lungs. A team led by Utah State's Molly Blakowski and Janice Brahney, working with a University of Utah geochemist, dusted greenhouse crops twice to mimic two storms and found leafy vegetables held elevated arsenic and uranium even after a thorough wash. In simulated stomach acid, a large share of the cadmium, lead and arsenic in the dust dissolved, meaning a body can actually take it up. It matters here because roughly 40 community gardens sit across Salt Lake, Weber and Davis counties, plus every backyard tomato row downwind of Farmington Bay.
A 15-story condo tower is pitched a block from Trolley Square
A developer filed plans this month for a 15-story building at 705 East 500 South, just northeast of Trolley Square, holding 97 for-sale condos over ground-floor retail. What makes it unusual is the for-sale part. Nearly everything going up in this valley is rental, because condos carry construction-defect liability and tougher lending, so a tower full of units people can actually buy is close to extinct here. At 182 feet it would be one of the tallest things east of 700 East, on the lot where a historic church stood until it came down last summer.
📅 This Week
Worth it
Twilight Concert Series: Suki Waterhouse, the Gallivan Center
Twilight rolls on downtown tonight with Suki Waterhouse, the actor turned dream-pop songwriter whose live show leans slower and heavier than the records let on. Charlotte Lawrence opens. Doors are at 6, which on a night like this is the part that matters, because the plaza takes a couple of hours to shed the afternoon.
Our take
A Monday night show is a strange gift, and this is the kind of set that suits one: unhurried, a little melancholy, ending early enough that Tuesday still works.⚠️ Heads up: Doors at 6 means an hour of standing in direct sun before anything happens. Come later than you think you should unless you need the rail.
$$ musicnight out
Best of the week
Death Cab for Cutie, two nights, Sandy Amphitheater
The I Built You a Tower tour books Sandy for a pair of nights, Tuesday and Wednesday, with Nation of Language opening both. A band this size booking two dates at a city amphitheater instead of one downtown room is the kind of thing that happens once a summer, and two nights means two different setlists.
Our take
We'd take Wednesday. Same band, thinner crowd, and by then they've had a night to figure out what this room sounds like. Twenty-five years on, they still play 'Transatlanticism' like it costs them something.⚠️ Heads up: Parking empties into a single neighborhood outlet, so the last song and the drive home are separated by a solid twenty minutes of idling.
$$ musicnight out
Worth it
Harvest Days week, Midvale
Midvale spreads its city celebration across six days instead of cramming it into one, and the weeknights are the good part. Block parties run through the neighborhoods tonight and Tuesday, the Arts Council hands out its Hall of Honors on Wednesday, Thursday is library night with puppet shows and mini train rides, and Friday's free concert fills Midvale City Park before Saturday's parade, festival and 10 p.m. fireworks.
Our take
This is what a city party looks like when nobody is trying to make it a destination. Six nights, a park, a parade, and neighbors who mostly know each other. Go Thursday or Friday and skip the Saturday crush.⚠️ Heads up: The block parties are neighborhood-organized and scattered rather than one central event, so Monday and Tuesday are only worth it if yours is one of the streets doing it.
Free festivalfamilyfree
Worth it
New Roots Wednesday Market, West Valley City
Refugee and immigrant farmers run this one, through the International Rescue Committee's New Roots program, and Wednesday afternoons are the smaller of its two weekly markets. Produce comes off plots these families farm themselves, CSA members pick up here, and there are kids' activities and resource booths alongside the stands.
Our take
Half the point is what's on the tables you won't find at a chain store, grown by people who brought the seeds and the recipes with them. The other half is that the money stays with the farmer standing in front of you.⚠️ Heads up: It's a three-hour window on a weekday afternoon and the best produce goes early, so a 6:45 arrival is mostly a look at what's left.
Free marketfamilyfree
Worth it
Murray Park Farmers Market opening day, Murray
Murray's market opens for the season Friday morning and runs Fridays and Saturdays into Halloween. The Utah Farm Bureau keeps this one strictly food, so there are no craft booths or clothing racks to walk past: produce, bread, jams, salsa and tamales, and that's the list.
Our take
A market with a no-crafts rule is a market that respects your time. You come for peaches and you leave with peaches, and it's done before the day hits 100.⚠️ Heads up: Late July is early for the good stone fruit, so opening weekend leans heavy on greens, berries and bread. The peaches show up in a few weeks.
Free marketfoodfree
Skip unless
Hadestown: Teen Edition opens at Draper Amphitheater
Draper Arts Council gives its summer youth production the outdoor stage starting Friday, running into the second week of August with Cassidy Ross directing. It's the shortened teen version of the Broadway show, staged by local kids under the lights at the mouth of Corner Canyon.
Our take
Skip it unless you know somebody in the cast or you love this show enough to watch teenagers take a swing at it. Those two groups will have a great night. Everyone else already has a full week.⚠️ Heads up: Opening night for a youth production is the roughest performance of any run, and the August dates will be the tighter shows.
$$ theaterfamily
🏟️ The Scoreboard
The Royals hang four on the Courage and come home third
Utah put up the most goals in club history Saturday in North Carolina, and three of the four came off set pieces. It's back-to-back wins, it's third place in the league, and the reward is a home date Wednesday against a Washington side that always turns into a track meet.
RSL loses a second straight on the road
Juan Manuel Sanabria put RSL ahead in the 19th minute at Providence Park and it held until Felipe Mora scored twice in his last match for Portland. Two road losses in a row now, and the club stays fourth in the West with another away game up next.
The Bees snap a skid at home, then head for Texas
Jeimer Candelario and Kyren Paris went back to back in a four-run seventh Saturday, ending a four-game slide for the Bees and an eight-game win streak for Omaha. That one was the club's 30th home win this season, the only team in the Pacific Coast League to get there.
🍴 Eat & Drink
Worth it
Mama Bird Southern Kitchen, West Jordan
Two owners with Texas roots took over the old Famous Dave's at Jordan Landing late last year and turned 8,000 square feet into something that actually smokes its own meat. Order the pecan-smoked St. Louis ribs and beef brisket plate. The brisket is the reason the room is full on a Tuesday, and the fried catfish is what regulars order once they've had the brisket twice in a month.
Our take
There is plenty of chain barbecue out this way and not much of the real thing, so a smoker running pecan wood off a Jordan Landing parking lot counts as a genuine upgrade. Get the combo plate, split it, leave room for nothing.⚠️ Heads up: It's built for volume, with four dining areas and a bar, so a weekend dinner rush feels like a chain even when the food doesn't. Weekday lunch is where it shows its best side.
$$ foodfamily
🌲 Get Outside
Worth it
Mill Creek Canyon, the half of it that's open
The upper canyon road is closed for a rebuild that runs through the fall, which quietly takes the two hikes everybody names first, Dog Lake and Big Water, off the board for this summer. What's left below the gate is still the coolest air within fifteen minutes of the valley floor: Rattlesnake Gulch at the mouth for a short shaded climb, and Church Fork a few miles up for the west approach to Grandeur Peak.
Our take
On a week that never drops below 99, a canyon that runs ten degrees cooler and starts fifteen minutes from most of the valley is the whole plan. Go at 7 a.m., be back before the pavement bakes.⚠️ Heads up: Parking at Rattlesnake Gulch is a small lot at the canyon mouth, and with the upper trailheads shut it takes traffic that used to keep driving.
$ outdoorshikingdogs
🎟️ Also Happening
Alejandro Aranda at Urban Lounge
The Idol runner-up turned folk-rock songwriter plays a 21-and-up room Friday night in Salt Lake City, with Christian Scheller opening.
Daybreak Farmers Market
Fifty-plus vendors take over SoDa Row Saturday morning in South Jordan, in its ninth year of shutting the street down.
Harmony closes at Hale Centre Theatre
The musical wraps its Jewel Box run Saturday in Sandy, the last weekend to catch it.
The Debate
📰 Valley News
The heat holds all week, and Friday is the worst of it
The heat that sat on the long weekend is not moving. A heat advisory runs through midnight tonight with a high near 101, and the rest of the week barely blinks: 100 Tuesday, 99 Wednesday, 101 Thursday and 103 Friday. The part that wears people down is the overnight number, which stays in the mid 70s and never lets the house or the pavement reset. Early mornings are the only comfortable hours on the calendar this week.
A 54-year-old adult class program came back as a nonprofit
Salt Lake City School District shut down its community education program this month after 54 years, saying it fell outside a preK through 12 mission. Two residents, a marketing consultant and a software engineer, started a nonprofit called SLC Pursuit Co. to keep the classes alive, renting rooms back from the district at East High. Registration opened July 20 and dozens of people signed up on the first day. The catch is equipment: woodworking, pottery and silversmithing, three of the most popular courses, do not come back, because those shops do not travel.
A Sandy bar is collecting for the families burned out in West Jordan
The July 10 fire at the Cascade Springs apartments in West Jordan left 24 families with nothing, and two and a half weeks later most of them are still starting over from zero. Club 90 in Sandy is running a collection through August 8, with the big drop-off day set for August 1. They are asking for clothing, shoes, hygiene products, non-perishable food, diapers, wipes and pet food. The point they keep making is the one that usually gets missed: the need outlasts the news cycle by months.
💙 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 →That's the week. A tour ending at Rice-Eccles on Tuesday, Death Cab twice in Sandy, and Midvale throwing a party every night through Saturday.
Reply and tell us where you land on Tuesday night, the stadium or the hillside. We read every one.
Forward this to whoever still thinks there's nothing to do in the valley after Pioneer Day.
— The Salt Lake Valley crew
Got a tip, a new opening, or an event? Just reply, we read everything.
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