User:Zaui/sandbox
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[edit] Attractions
Salt Lake City offers an array of cultural and recreational resources.
On December 5, 2007, the Salt Lake Chamber and Downtown Alliance announced that a two-block section of downtown south of the planned City Creek Center is planned to become a new arts hub. This will include renovations to two theaters already located in the area, as well as a new theater with a seating capacity of 2,400 and increased space for galleries and artists. The opening of the new facilities are anticipated to coincide with the opening of the City Creek Center in 2011.[1]
[edit] Events
Although the city is often stereotyped as a predominantly LDS city, it is the location of many cultural activities, [2] Mormon and otherwise. A major state holiday is Pioneer Day, July 24, the anniversary of the Mormon pioneers' entry into the Salt Lake Valley. It is celebrated each year with a week's worth of activities, including a children's parade, a horse parade, the featured Days of '47 Parade (one of the largest parades in the United States), a rodeo, and a large fireworks show at Liberty Park.
Salt Lake City has a significant gay population, and the second-largest parade in the city is a gay pride parade, part of the annual Utah Pride Festival held every June.[3]
First Night on New Year's Eve, a downtown celebration emphasizing family-friendly entertainment and activities, culminates with a fireworks display at midnight.
The Greek Festival, held the weekend after Labor Day, celebrates Utah's Greek heritage and is located at the downtown Greek Orthodox Church. The 3-day event includes Greek music, dance groups, Cathedral tours, booths and a large buffet. Attendance ranges from 35,000 - 50,000.
The Utah Arts Festival has been held annually since 1977 with an average attendance of 80,000. About 130 booths are available for visual artists and there are five performance venues for musicians.[4]
Salt Lake City also hosts portions of the Sundance Film Festival. The festival, which is held each year, brings many cultural icons, movie stars, celebrities, and thousands of film buffs to see the largest independent film festival in the United States. The headquarters of the event is in nearby Park City.
Beginning in 2004, Salt Lake City has been the host of the international Salt Lake City Marathon. In 2006 Real Madrid and many of the nation's best cyclist had engagements.[5]
Salt Lake City has begun to host it's own events in the last few years, most notably the Friday Night Flicks, free movies in the City's parks, as well as the Mayor's health and fitness awareness program, Salt Lake City Gets Fit.
[edit] Music
Salt Lake City is the home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, founded in 1847. The Choir's weekly program, called Music and the Spoken Word, is the longest-running continuous network broadcast in the world.[6] Salt Lake City is also the home to the Utah Symphony Orchestra, which was founded in 1940 by Maurice Abravanel and has become widely renowned. It's current director is Keith Lockhart. The orchestra's original home was the Salt Lake Tabernacle, but since the 1990s has performed at Abravanel Hall in the western downtown area. Salt Lake City area is also home to the award winning choir, The Salt Lake Children's Choir. The Choir was established in 1979 and is directed by Ralph B. Woodward.
The city also has a local music scene dominated by blues, rock and roll, punk, and emo groups. There are also many clubs which offer musical venues. Popular groups or persons who started in the Wasatch Front area or were raised and influenced by it include The Used, Shedaisy, Meg and Dia, The Almost and The Summer Obsession. In 2004 over 200 bands submitted tracks for a compilation by a local music zine, SLUG ("Salt Lake Underground"). The 18-year-old free monthly zine trimmed the submissions to 59 selections featuring diverse music types such as hip-hop, jazz, jazz-rock, punk, and a variety of rock and roll.
[edit] Theater
Salt Lake City provides many venues for both professional and amateur theatre. The city attracts many traveling Broadway and off-Broadway performances. Local professional acting companies include the Pioneer Theatre Company, Salt Lake Acting Company, and Plan-B Theatre Company. The Off Broadway Theatre, located in Salt Lake's historic Clift Building, features comedy plays and Utah's longest running improv comedy troupe, Laughing Stock.
[edit] Dance
The University of Utah is home to two highly-ranked dance departments, the Ballet Department and the Department of Modern Dance. Professional dance companies in Salt Lake City include Ballet West, Rire Woodbury, and Repertory Dance Theatre.
[edit] Museums
Salt Lake is home to many notable museums. Near Temple Square is the Museum of Church History and Art; on the University of Utah campus is the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Utah Museum of Natural History; located at the Gateway District is Clark Planetarium, which also houses an IMAX theater, and Discovery Gateway, a children's museum. Other museums include the Utah State Historical Society, Daughters of Utah Pioneer Memorial Museum, Fort Douglas Military Museum, and the Social Hall Heritage Museum.
[edit] Parks
Near the mouth of Emigration Canyon lies This Is The Place Heritage Park, which re-creates typical 19th century LDS pioneer life. Hogle Zoo is located across the street from the park.
Liberty Park, the city’s largest public park at over 100 acres, features a lake with an island in the middle and the Tracy Aviary. The park is home to a large number of birds, both wild and in the aviary.
[edit] Sports
[edit] 2002 Winter Olympics
Salt Lake City was host to the 2002 Winter Olympics. At the time of the 2002 Olympics, Salt Lake City was the most populated area to hold a Winter Olympic games. The event put Salt Lake City in the international spotlight and is regarded by many as being one of the most successful winter olympics ever.[7] Many of the facilities built for use during the Olympics are still in use today.
[edit] Professional sports
Salt Lake City is home to the NBA team Utah Jazz, which plays at EnergySolutions Arena, and Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer that began play in 2005 and currently plays at Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah. An as-of-yet unnamed soccer-specific stadium for Real Salt Lake has been approved for the suburb of Sandy and will finish construction by the 2008 season after undergoing nearly 2 years of funding difficulties.[8] Salt Lake City also received an Arena Football League team known as the Utah Blaze in 2006, who were popular in their first season in Utah, recording the highest average attendance in the league.[9] It is also the home of the Salt Lake Bees minor league baseball team, a Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Triple A affiliate that plays in the Pacific Coast League. Nearby West Valley City has the Utah Grizzlies of the ECHL. The new ABA league has twice attempted to expand into the city, first with the Utah Snowbears in the 2004-05 season (which folded after reaching the quarterfinals of the playoffs) and later with the Salt Lake Dream (who folded before ever playing a game). The Continental Basketball Association (CBA) also attempted an expansion with the Utah Eagles, who folded halfway through the 2006-07 season. The Utah Starzz of the WNBA were once located within the city, but moved to San Antonio and became the Silver Stars.
[edit] Collegiate sports
Because Utah lacks a professional football team of its own, college football is very popular in the state. The University of Utah and Brigham Young University both maintain large and faithful followings in the city, and rivalries are intense during the annual game between the two universities. This is sometimes referred to as the Holy War, despite the fact that Utah is a secular university.
[edit] Recreation
Winter sports, such as skiing and snowboarding, are popular activities in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City. Eight ski resorts lie within 50 miles (80 km) of the city. Alta, Brighton, Solitude Mountain Resort, and Snowbird are located in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons to the southeast, Deer Valley, The Canyons, and Park City Resort are located to the east, near Park City in Summit County, and Sundance is located to the southeast in Utah County. The ski resorts see frequent storms that deposit light, dry snow due to a phenomenon known as the lake effect, where storms amplified by the warm waters of the Great Salt Lake precipitate in the Wasatch Mountains. Alta and Deer Valley only allow skiing, while the others allow both skiing and snowboarding. The popularity of the ski resorts has increased nearly 29% since the 2002 Winter Olympics.[10]
Most of the ski resorts also offer summer activities. The mountains surrounding Salt Lake City are very popular for hiking, camping, rock climbing, mountain biking, and other related outdoor activities. In addition, the many small reservoirs and rivers in the Wasatch Mountains are popular for boating, fishing, and other water-related activities. Salt Lake City is the primary jumping-off point for exploring the national parks and monuments and rugged terrain of the southern half of the state, as it contains the only international airport in the state.
[edit] Culture references
Many films, music videos, commercials, and TV shows have been recorded in the Salt Lake metropolitan area. They include: SLC Punk!, Touched By An Angel, Everwood, Big Love, Dawn of the Dead, Drive Me Crazy, High School Musical, High School Musical 2, Unaccompanied Minors, Dumb and Dumber, Independence Day, Poolhall Junkies, The Brown Bunny, The World's Fastest Indian, The Way of the Gun, Carnival of Souls, The Amazing Race 8, and The Postal Service's "Such Great Heights". In 2006 it was revealed that Dan Brown, the author of The DaVinci Code, was in the city studying the symbols on the Salt Lake LDS Temple and the Salt Lake Masonic Temple, among other historical buildings, for inclusion in an upcoming book.
[edit] Media
[[Image:Cityweekly.jpg|right|thumb|Salt Lake City Weekly, the largest alternative weekly.]]
- See also: List of Salt Lake City media and Salt Lake City in film
Salt Lake City has many diverse media outlets. Most of the major television and radio stations are based in or near the city. The Salt Lake City metropolitan area is ranked as the 31st largest radio[11] and 36th largest television[12] market in the United States.
Print media include two major daily newspapers, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News, and the alternative weekly, Salt Lake City Weekly. Other more specialized publications include Nuestro Mundo of the Spanish-speaking community and QSaltLake and The Pillar for the LBGT community. There are many local magazines, such as Utah Homes & Garden (quarterly), Salt Lake Magazine (a bimonthly lifestyle magazine), [1] Wasatch Woman Magazine (a bimonthly magazine spotlighting the successes of local women), and [2] Salt Lake Underground (SLUG)], an alternative underground music magazine.
KSL-TV is one of Utah's oldest television stations. KSL has downtown studios at "Broadcast House" in the Triad Center office complex. Most other television stations had until recently moved out of the downtown core and relocated in the suburbs. However, KUTV was recently given a Redevelopment Agency (RDA) grant, and moved its studios to Main Street. Its news desk overlooks the street, with a large window behind the anchor desk.
Because television and radio stations serve a larger area (usually the entire state of Utah, as well as parts of western Wyoming, southern Idaho, parts of Montana, and eastern Nevada), ratings returns tend to be higher than those in similar-sized cities. Some Salt Lake radio stations are carried on broadcast translator networks throughout the state.
Salt Lake City has become a case of market saturation on the FM dial; one cannot go through more than about two frequencies on an FM radio tuner before encountering another broadcasting station. A variety of companies, most notably Millcreek Broadcasting and Simmons Media, have constructed broadcast towers on Humpy Peak in the Uinta Mountains to the east. These towers allow frequencies allocated to nearby mountain communities to be boosted by smaller, low-powered FM transmitters along the Wasatch Front.
