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I took a few days off and went up to Cedar City, Utah, with my boyfriend Captain Crunch.
Captain Crunch is OBSESSED with mountain biking, and he figured we could do some quality hiking and biking in the mountains up there, which are staggeringly beautiful. I was all for it, as I am an avid outdoorswoman myself, so I took a day off from shooting photos of the wax Sally Dingdong mannequin to head up there with him. We got a room in town and set out for some hardcore exploring.
One of my favorite things about Captain Crunch is that he likes to celebrate a good workout with a drink or three—just my style. The only problem was, it stayed light out until about 9PM up there, so we never really got back into town til closer to 10PM—by which time the liquor stores were long closed. If you’ve never been to Utah, it’s a really, really creepy, fucked-up place that only sells liquor at these weird state-owned Alcoholic Beverage Control stores that close at 7PM!
The problem is, the State of Utah is owned and operated by a cabal of aggressively wholesome Mormons, and they don’t take kindly to boozing…or anything else that goes against the writings on the golden plates found by Joseph Smith on a hill in upstate New York back in 1823. Driving around Utah is a weeeeeeeeeird and unsettling experience—all around you is astounding natural beauty, dotted with picturesque little towns full of white-picket-fenced houses with well-maintained gardens and lawns. Everything is so squeaky-clean and wholesome it just makes you want to puke!!!
For boozers like Captain Crunch and me, there ain’t much to do after the sun goes down. Everything shutters up pretty early in that state, but thanks to Yelp!, we were able to find the only two bars in the entire town of Cedar City (aside from the local Applebee’s, which we also shamefully patronized one night). Our first night in town we checked out Toadz, a sort of college watering hole that was completely deserted this time of year. We were literally the only two patrons in the bar, so we chatted up the poor lonely bartender, a likely young buck with flair-bartending ambitions who could not wait to get out of Utah and move to Vegas. I despise flair bartending, but everyone’s gotta have a dream…and there was something touching about his earnest juggling of Smirnoff bottles as he demonstrated his skills to us big-city judgmental types.
The next night we ventured over to Mike’s Tavern, said to be more of a rough-and-tumble biker bar with what must be the only stripper pole in the entire state of Utah. This place too was totally deserted. We bellied up to the bar nonetheless, but Cap’n Crunch got off to a bad start by ordering a double vodka tonic—BY LAW, they are not allowed to pour doubles in Utah! The bartender’s liquor gun even had some sort of fucked-up locking mechanism on it to ensure that the law was followed! WTF—what the hell was to stop her from pouring two separate shots into two separate glasses, then dumping one into the other? Answer: nothing! She didn’t do it, though—we just sat there and ordered multiple rounds until we FINALLY got a buzz. (I think the amount of liquor in a shot is less up there, too…and the proof of the alcohol might even be less, too. That’s Utah for ya—doing whatever they can to cockblock you from getting a buzz. That should be the inscription on their license plates.)
I felt as if we had stumbled onto the set of that stupid-ass movie Footloose: Two big-city boozers come to the country and show the square-ass natives how to par-taaaay. But that would be assuming that the natives were square—WRONG! According to the local news we watched in our hotel room, there is all KINDS of fucked-up shit going on up there—on the day of our arrival, they found the body of some molested six-year-old girl in a ditch! This in addition to the crazy shenanigans down in Colorado City, where the polygamists are marrying 13-year-olds to 80-year-olds…and the fabulously fabulous fact that Utah downloads more online pornography than any other state in the nation. I’m telling you, that place might LOOK nice and wholesome, but they’re a bunch of fucking perverts behind blue eyes!!!! Don’t let all those Jell-O salads fake you out.
Aside from the alcohol situation, we had a fantastic time and actually met some super cool people. Besides being obsessed with mountain biking, Cap’n Crunch is also a hardcore indie music fanboy, so before leaving town we stopped to check out this BAD ASS local independent music store called Groovacious, run by a really cool oldtimer from Portland, OR. They have a fantastic selection of new and used tapes/LPs/CDs/8-tracks, plus a bunch of other wacky counterculture paraphernalia. Come to find out, we just missed this big music festival they have every year out there—50,000 hippies and weirdos came to town for it, so apparently there IS cool stuff to do up in Utah after all.
Before heading back to Vegas, we also stopped at a local thrift shop. I love going to thrift stores in other cities just to see what kinds of crazy crap the locals throw out. In Cedar City, I got an autoharp and a single maraca—I’m obsessed with music and musical instruments and have a growing pile of shit that I can’t really play, ranging from a steel drum to a ukulele. Well, now I also have an autoharp (already tried and failed to play it) and a single maraca. The maraca intrigues me, as it is inscribed “Melissa and Doug,” and I was wondering if it might have been a relic of some South-of-the-Border-themed wedding where the couple ended up divorcing and splitting up the set of maracas. Who knows in Utah?
Cool story and nice ass. And entirely appropriate since butt sex is not too uncommon among Mormon women “saving” themselves for marriage.
You have the body of a child. Hot.
Melissa and Doug manufacture high quality wooden kids toys.
How can you not play the Autoharp? It’s got buttons for all the chords? It practically plays itself!!! That’s why they call it the AUTOharp!!!
I like that trollers are starting to be nice to you.
Utah Saints!