Salt Lake Pretty

While waiting for the bus at the Denver Greyhound station, I ended up meeting a friendly trio of dudes, they had all been on the Greyhound for about 48 hours together and were all headed to Salt Lake City to go to training for truck driving. They were nice and funny and seemed to be amused my me. It was kind of comforting to have some big dudes to look out for me on the bus.

Once I arrived in SLC, I bid adieu to my trucker budz and met up with David, my very nice SLC host. I had met him once at Silent Barn, when he came through to visit Kevin, but we didn't really hang out then.
He took me to grab a beer at this local movie theatre/bar called Brewvies to grab a post-bus-wind-down beer (something that has become a necessity to me in the past few weeks). David got mad at me when I tried to order a Bud Light (my favorite beer, so sue me!) so he made me order a craft beer... it was pretty good but I don't remember what it was called.


After one beer and some quality chatting we hopped into David's Jeep and drove to his house in Kaysville, a little town not far from Salt Lake. He lives in a nice big house that his parents own, and it was a pretty night with snow all over the ground.

Once inside, I got to meet David's adorable cat and we hung out and listened to records for a bit. David has a really great collection of punk and garage records, and the evidence of extensive mailorders from Siltbreeze, Florida's Dying, S.S. Records, and Goner was visible. We listened to some cool stuff and talked about people we knew in common and he showed me Destroy All Movies, a really cool glossary of every movie that has ever had a punk in it, but I was sad to see they missed Drive Me Crazy, a movie that depressed me a lot in middle school because the popular girl reforms the punk rock boy and he realizes he's happier that way.


In the morning I woke up and got to meet David's parents. They were super nice and had seen me on TV so they kind of knew me already. I ate a locally grown apple and a hard boiled egg from David's sister's chickens, it was delicious. David's mother is from Germany and she used to run a German Deli. The Deli had a cookbook and she showed it to me and gave me a copy. I will cook delicious German food when I get home. I think she really liked me, which will be good for when David decides to marry me... JUST KIDDING DAVID, DONT WORRY.



We finally left the house and I made David take me to see the Great Salt Lake. We went to Antelope Island to look at nature and all that cool stuff. We parked and walked down the beach to the shore of the lake... it smelled pretty bad. I tried to run up and taste it but David stopped me... now I'll never know for sure if it's actually salty or if that's just a rumor. Maybe next time.





After that we picked up my stuff and headed out to do some sight seeing in SLC (after David played me some music from his old band The Zillionaires). We first stopped in a "cool" coffee shop and then hit two record stores. First was Slowtrain, which was the kind of record store that carries mostly mainstream indie stuff. It wasn't bad but definitely not the kind of place that makes you want to dive into the bins and shuffle around until your fingertips get sore. Second was Raunch Records which was a teenage punk's wet dream. They also sell skateboards and skateboard parts, and have an extensive collection of band t-shirts and stickers. The owner was a really nice guy who seemed to know every customer... when David walked in he told him about some record he got in that he would like, and then when a 14 year old girl walked in he told her he got in the stickers that she wanted and this chick was fucking thrilled to get them. The kind of place you would totally love to hang out in high school.





We then went to meet up with fellow Termbo User Jared and go eat at the Blue Plate Diner, the third Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives featured restaurant of my trip so far. It was pretty underwhelming, I didn't see anything that interesting on the menu so ended up just getting a cesar salad with salmon. It was fun meeting Jared and bullshitting about music.



After that we had several hours to kill before my next bus so Jared, David and I went to Twilite Lounge to have a few drinks. It was a cool place, but eventually Jared had to leave to go back to school so David and I were on our own.

David and I headed back to Brewvies to drink a bit and watch a free showing of Lost in Translation. I had never seen it before and I enjoyed it. I can't believe that Bill Murray was a ghost the whole time!
David then dropped me off at the Greyhound station around midnight and I was sad to leave. I really had a great time in Salt Lake City, David was maybe my favorite person I've "met" so far on my trip... SORRY EVERYONE ELSE, I just have a soft spot for old, record collecting weirdos.
Gonna miss you, SLC, now on to Sacto...