40 years of City Weekly—Volume 11, 1994-1995 

Culture wars and violent turmoil were recurring themes in the news of 1994 and 1995. Abortion clinics were targeted with terrorism, corporate backlashes against environmentalists proliferated and particularly nasty electoral campaigns were waged under the shadow of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh.

A militia movement brewed in Box Elder County, a nude painting was the center of controversy at the Anderson-Foothill Library, and the poor found themselves not wealthy enough to live in low-income housing. Coupled with stories on the 2002 Olympic bid and Lynn Packer's ongoing series on the Deedee Corradini/Bonneville scandal, this made for a busy year.

But not all was gloom and despair. The South Downtown Alliance fought against Sinclair Oil's push for a blight study, Food Not Bombs worked to feed the needy, and bisexual Utahns spoke of their fraught positions within gay and straight communities.

"When we go outside the perceived boundaries on occasion," wrote then-editor Tom Walsh, "we hopefully gain your trust, because then you know we can't be bought or told what to print."

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Remembering Vol. 11: In the ditch
"To the first-time visitor, the Utah Salt Flats are a brilliant, shimmering white blanket—so flat you can actually see the curve of the earth," wrote Stacy Steck for the Sept. 14, 1994, issue.

Straddling Interstate 80 at the Utah-Nevada border, the Salt Flats had been host to annual races since the 1930s. But on Aug. 21, 1994, Steck reported, "a terse note at the end of the salt flats access road read simply, 'Speed Week Canceled Due to Salt.'"

Racers and environmentalists blamed Reilly Industries Inc., a potash and magnesium outfit leasing land from the BLM. The company was responsible for hundreds of evaporation ditches stretching across the desert, extracting chemicals from brine water and discarding the dry salt.

"Between Mother Nature and the mining industry," Steck observed, "nearly 1.5 million tons of salt each year are eroded. An area once spanning 33,000 acres now covers only about 19,000 acres."

The flats had already obtained landmark status and were designated as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern. But in the absence of proactive monitoring, the deterioration was continuing.

While Reilly and the Save the Salt Foundation were in talks for a potential re-salinization project, the BLM was holding back on collaborating until a long-gestating study provided more answers. "This might be a story about achieving compromise," concluded Steck, "but it's a story without an ending. ... Thus far, it's the story of three factions, all with their own agendas, poised on the threshold of cooperation."

In the years since, potash mining continues its work on the flats, the BLM has considered funding another study and "Speed Week" was again canceled in 2022.

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In the ads
"Congratulations to all of us for surviving the Great Heat Wave Summer of '94," declared an ad for Great Harvest Bread Co. on Aug. 31. For 71 days that summer, the area experienced temperatures above 90 degrees—including 21 days in triple-digits.

Appearing in the Oct. 12 issue was a notice for a televised debate between U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and his opponent Patrick Shea. Moderated by columnist Jack Anderson (1922-2005), the debate was put on by the Utah chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, with Private Eye's Tom Walsh taking a lead in organizing the event.

"Fax, drop-in, or mail the question you would ask either Orrin Hatch or Pat Shea," the ad stated.

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In a single quote
"You may not think you need a Dick Tracy decoder to figure out where your news comes from, but at times you do. Next time you read a story in the Tribune or Deseret News and find the phrase 'local weekly tabloid,' or any similar derisive and non-specific attribution, it's in all likelihood a reference to the Private Eye Weekly. After all, we don't exist, and they don't like to give credit. As often as not though, even a negative disclaimer doesn't appear, leaving the impression that those newshounds are really breaking all the news. They're not." (Best of Utah issue, March 2, 1995)

In the game
For the "Vibes '95" insert of the April 27 issue, Ben Fulton found a uniquely tongue-in-cheek manner to guide readers through the local music scene: a board game, titled "Don't You Play Cover Tunes?"

"This game is a lot easier if you'd just give up your idealistic dream of being a rock star and stick to covers of 'Louie, Louie,' 'Brown Eyed Girl,' and 'YMCA,'" Fulton warned.

The object of the game was to be the first original band to put Salt Lake City on the music map. Starting in the "rehearsal room hell" space, players rolled the dice hoping to land on a "Big Fat Lucky Break" and to avoid the "Original Sin" sections. The latter spaces could potentially send players back to the beginning and signified "no one short of your pet dog is interested in hearing 'original' music," Fulton clarified.

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The following are a sampling the spaces to land on through the course of the game:

Space 2: "Band's guitarist accidentally puts two effects pedals together to create something that sounds like a chainsaw and beehive. Everyone is inspired, and the band's first song is born. Advance 3 squares."

Space 3: "In order to buy a decent P.A. system, the entire band sells plasma for 4 months straight. Your bones are sore. Advance 2 squares."

Space 15: "The band gets a write-up in SLUG. The article is written by a loser with a cryptic pseudonym, and like a fool, you take it seriously. No one cares, and besides, you're not cool by their next issue. Not even the GRID will touch you now."

Space 20: "Your national debut LP We're a Utah Band and We Want to Die goes platinum, and you're invited to play at Bob Dole's inaugural Ball. Your left-wing friends hate you, but after band video airs on 120 Minutes, you'll be richer than Jon Huntsman."

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In the world wide web
By the time of Bill Dunford's cover story in the April 20, 1995, issue, that "electronic vine" called the internet was propagating a "tangle of trunks and branches linking a global community teeming with more than 25 million men, women and children."

This new cyber ecosystem facilitated the exchange of research papers, viewing recent satellite photos or even taking a virtual tour of the White House. But there were other parts of the "electronic undergrowth" as easily accessible to visitors: Holocaust-denying bulletin boards; repositories for tasteless jokes; bomb-building instructions; and of course, pornography.

"For now," Dunford wrote, "the electronic communication network is a relatively lawless frontier, full of openness, raucous debate and hyper-weirdness. ... "What you can and can't do in cyberspace is about to become the next conflagration in the culture wars."

An estimated 25 million people were online in those days and yet, it remained in Dunford's words, "dimly lit and chaotic." There was no central control and no borders—qualities that its boosters never tired of extolling.

John Ellsworth, an investment broker who ran the Utah-based online bulletin board Lower Lights, noted the benefit of this form of communication, binding those of similar interests in an (ideally) less-judgmental fashion: "Anyone can greatly expand his or her circle of friends." But Lower Lights had also experienced other issues, such as flame wars, sexual harassment and stalking. "Yes, those things happen," Ellsworth said.

The controversy over whether to censor cyberspace was already in full force. The people whom Dunford interviewed preferred a hands-off approach to "flamers and hate-mongers" of all stripes.

For his part, Dunford surveyed the terrain well when he observed that "the law is probably still some time away from being able to control the electronic jungles. Whether or not it ever does, when you enter cyberspace, watch your step."