{"id":44,"date":"2008-11-19T14:49:16","date_gmt":"2008-11-19T20:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lalato.com\/wp\/?p=44"},"modified":"2008-11-19T14:49:16","modified_gmt":"2008-11-19T20:49:16","slug":"salt-lake-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/salt-lake-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Salt Lake City"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what we learned on our trip to Salt Lake City&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>About 80% of the population is Caucasian.\u00a0 To give you a little perspective on that, I&#8217;m from Florida where the non-Hispanic white population is roughly 60%.\u00a0 So yeah&#8230; 80% is a whole lot of white people.\u00a0 Not that I have anything against that, it&#8217;s just an interesting factoid.\u00a0 One side effect of this is that there appear to be a lot of blond people.\u00a0 More than what one might normally see elsewhere.<\/li>\n<li>Roughly 50% of the population of the city is Mormon&#8230;\u00a0 more commonly called LDS (Latter Day Saints).\u00a0 For the smart ones out there that means the other half is something else, and while we were there I saw several other denominations and religions.\u00a0 Liz even noted that there were a couple of Buddhist temples.\u00a0 I only bring this up because I had assumed that it would be Mormons as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 Yes, there are plenty, but there is more diversity in religion than I expected.<\/li>\n<li>That said&#8230;\u00a0 Salt Lake City is like an oasis of diversity compared to the rest of Utah.\u00a0 When the rest of Utah is included, Mormons make up 62% of the population.<\/li>\n<li>There is a great public transit system in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 The local train\/trolley service is especially good.\u00a0 Thought it does have an odd way of collecting fares.\u00a0 You pay for your fare at the station.\u00a0 However, there is nothing to stop you from boarding a train without paying a fare.\u00a0 You could, in fact, ride for free.\u00a0 The transit authority simply reserves the right to ask you to show proof of fare purchase if needed.\u00a0 We rode on the train several times, and didn&#8217;t see one transit cop the entire time.<\/li>\n<li>Liquor laws in Utah are weird.<\/li>\n<li>The counter-culture is alive and well in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 We saw a lot of punks around, especially downtown where the gutter punks seem to congregate.\u00a0 Beyond the punks, we met some folks that may not fit into a pre-defined sub-culture, but are definitely anti-establishment (at least what passes for &#8220;the establishment&#8221; in Utah.\u00a0 Apparently you have to show some outward sign of your counter-cultureness because by doing so you&#8217;re doing more than being trendy&#8230; you&#8217;re making a political statement against &#8220;the man&#8221; which in this case is the LDS church.<\/li>\n<li>There is a sizable LGBT population in Salt Lake City.\u00a0 Definitely larger than one would expect for a city this size.\u00a0 Liz and I went to an anti-Prop 8 rally on Saturday with an estimated crowd of about 3000.\u00a0 That would have been an impressive crowd just about anywhere, but amazing in Salt Lake City.<\/li>\n<li>The Great Salt Lake is enormous.\u00a0 Antelope Island is pretty darn cool too.\u00a0 Liz kind of dragged me out there.\u00a0 I just wanted to chill in the city, but I&#8217;m glad she got me to go.\u00a0 Very beautiful.\u00a0 I recommend it as a fun little side trip.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We took some pictures, but they weren&#8217;t all that great.\u00a0 If I get a chance to post them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;sam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s what we learned on our trip to Salt Lake City&#8230; About 80% of the population is Caucasian.\u00a0 To give you a little perspective on that, I&#8217;m from Florida where the non-Hispanic white population is roughly 60%.\u00a0 So yeah&#8230; 80% is a whole lot of white people.\u00a0 Not that I have anything against that, it&#8217;s&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lalato.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}