Elite Takes on Salt Lake City
Move over, SoHo and SoCal. Utah now has its own chichi abbreviation.
Elite Model Management - the haute talent agency featured on the TV hit "America's Next Top Model" - has rechristened South Salt Lake as "SoSaLa" before it moves into the industrial 'burg this week.
A handbill announcing Saturday's grand opening invites guests to the new Market Station in "SoSaLa." It also touts the list of maybe-more-elite cities where the agency already has offices: New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Toronto.
"And now," proclaims the flier, "South Salt Lake City."
Those familiar with South Salt Lake - Elite's new office is moving into a developing area at 2150 S. Main St. - might be confused by the handbill's backdrop. It shows a downtown Salt Lake City skyline, complete with the LDS temple.
But picking a site in Utah's capital wouldn't have spawned such a great nickname for Elite's newest office. "SaLa" doesn't have quite the same ring as "SoSaLa."
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Eat, drink and be wary: So, if the Legislature whacks those pesky private-club memberships (as the governor has urged), all the perceptions (and misperceptions) about Utah's loony liquor laws will evaporate - right?
Tourists will flock here. Conventioneers will converge. Big businesses will bust down the doors. Everything will be wine and roses.
It's not that simple, says Salt Lake City's newly anointed economic-development czar.
"It's always a bit of an issue when you're trying to roll out the welcome mat," explains Bob Farrington, the former Downtown Alliance boss and newest member of Mayor Ralph Becker's team. "Any misperceptions people may have about the city become an obstacle for visiting or investing. But I don't want to make [elimination of the private-club rule] seem like Shangri-La."
Got it. Paradise still may be lost. But the change would make it easier for a drink to be found.
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Where there's smoke, there's lawbreaking: When Jen Tischler was making her case for banning smoking in Utah County parks, she used bags of cigarette butts collected by volunteers to illustrate the problem.
But it seems that Tischler and the teens she oversees in the Outrage anti-tobacco group didn't have to go too far from the Health and Justice Building to make her point. Tischler presented the Utah County Board of Health with a one-gallon bag of butts the teens picked up right outside the Health Department's headquarters.
Many of the cigarettes, TischÂler said, were picked up within 25 feet of the building's doors, evidence that smokers were flouting the Utah Indoor Clean Air Act, which bans smoking within 25 feet of the entrances to public buildings.
The board agreed to work on an outdoor-smoking ban. Maybe it will consider enforcing the existing law around its own building as well.
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Tag - it's no game: Provo's Municipal Council is considering ways to crack down on graffiti - and signs may play a part.
A proposed ordinance originally would have required sellers of paint, broad-tipped markers and other tagging tools to keep such wares locked up in the same way tobacco is in stores.
To avoid the added expense to shopkeepers, though, the ordinance was amended to merely require signs warning people that spreading graffiti is a crime.
Councilwoman Midge Johnson thinks that may be enough.
"You go into department stores and there are signs that say shoplifting is a crime," Johnson said. "It deters people."
"Has it helped you?" Councilman Steve Turley asked.
"I haven't stolen anything in a long time," Johnson quipped.
