If you've lived in Salt Lake City for a while, you've most likely had your fair share of random bumping into acquaintances. Such chance encounters seem so serendipitous that even the cheesiest of rom-coms would find them implausible. These happy happenstances have given rise to the city's cheeky nickname—"Small Lake City"—a real life version of Cheers, where no matter how improbable, somebody, somewhere always seems to know your name.
My encounters are not so much with people but with places. A photo of some spot in SLC that I post online, regardless of how unusual or secluded I believe it to be, often garners responses by those who know about it. A garden statue on a cul-de-sac in Capitol Hill? They've delivered food there. A mailbox on a side street in Westpointe? That's their neighbor. The driving course in Highland High's parking lot near 1700 South and Parleys Canyon Boulevard (photo above)—something that was surprising for me to find—led to a slew of stick-shift-learning stories stretching back decades.
But where most residents associate this feeling of smallness to one of closeness, my interpretation of the phrase has morphed into something different. Through my project of running every street in SLC, I have a newfound appreciation of scale. With each mile I logged on foot, I was reminded that the city itself isn't what's small but, rather, we are.
Aerial photography—such as the two photos taken below around Sugar House Park, near 1300 East and 2100 South—reinforces this idea as even large crowds appear tiny when photographed from high above. Throngs of sledders after a recent fresh snowfall (on left) appear like ants on the slick hillside, whereas cars from a low-rider festival this past summer (on right) are more Hot Wheels than hot rods.
Apologies if this column elicits a slight existential crisis, but I'd imagine you're not the only one in the city feeling that way—Small Lake City strikes again!
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