SLC BLOG : Pattybear for President

Boarding the train from Denver, on our way to SLC. Probably the most beautiful train ride in the US, with stunning landscapes, rocky orange outcrops, towering mountains, red sandstone cliffs, all as we wind our way slowly through the mountains. The pictures do not do it justice. We pull into SLC around 11. Big fat snowflakes falling everywhere. We call a taxi to take us to the International Ute Hostel. We get dropped off, and see a sign.
Place a call to the number on the sign. Wait for Pattybear to arrive. Him? Her? Hippie? Mormon? The giant peace sign on the roof suggests the former. Anticipation builds up and our hearts thump faster. Will she welcome us with open arms? Will he eventually rape us? Will the soup be good?

PATTYBEAR ARRIVES

She is a thin old woman in a robe with a big smile. We don’t talk much that night as she sets us up with a room to get to sleep, but it is clear from the décor of the place, that Pattybear and the Ute Hostel are everything we had hoped:

First we see all of the philosophical posters dedicated to peace on earth. Next, we see a mural of a giant tree and rainbows. Finally, we see a pee-yellow T shirt on display reading “Let it mellow.” This confused Marissa later in the bathroom, and unfortunately this time she didn’t have her phone to text him for flushing advice like she did in Denver. If you are truly committed to saving the world, Pattybear, you will be proud of Marissa.

Pattybear is full of suggestions on where to go.

“Down Main St is a Wal-Mart if you don’t think it’s the beast.”

“A friend of mine runs a vegetarian raw foods restaurant here, so, if you want to meet a beautiful soul, just go 5 blocks this way.”

“I don’t know if you’re building people, but if not, you can go to Memory park.”

She gives us some oatmeal before leaving, because “Mamabear wouldn’t want to send her baby bears out without anything sticking to their ribs.” Hell yes.

We ventured out into what we thought would be the cold, but was just a bit brisk, really. Thrift stores were a necessary stop, but due to the selection or prices, ended up being a fruitless venture. We got lunch at One World Café (on Pattybear’s recommendation of course) a kind of hippy restaurant where they make you up a plate of whatever of their organic, health and veggie oriented dishes they have, and you pay however much you want to pay for it. The food was good, and the principle “everyone should get something to eat” was even more admirable.

Next, we checked out the public library, which was by far the most spectacular library we’ve ever witnessed. First off, it was huge, 6 stories, with beautiful architecture.
Inside was a glass-walled wonderland, with glass elevators, a row of little stands and stores, ranging from coffee to comics to an art gallery. Above us hung a sculpture of hanging books forming a person’s face.


Inside were six stories of books, computers, couches, and in the kids section, assorted theme rooms and cubbies, which were clearly awesome places to be if you were a tyke. S&M could not be more impressed with this place, but after spending about an hour reading and sipping coffee like hip people tend to do (no iMacs to complete the picture, sorry), we headed off to the MORMON tabernacle to see what that was all about. Looked good.

Probably would have been even cooler if we had figured out how to get inside. Probably would have figured it out if we tried harder or cared. But at this point, we didn’t, because we had just gotten off of a tour of the Honeybee House.

Why is it called the honeybee house, you ask?

Well, that is certainly a question the old mormon manager lady and her young, confusingly fobby asian disciple were eager to answer. Multiple times. Twice the old lady asked us, and both times we awkwardly said “I don’t know” only to get a huge, denturey smile from her as she exclaimed, “Why, it’s because he worked SO HARD! Just like a HONEYBEE!” At the end of the tour, the fobby asian grinned like a schoolgirl as she asked us again. She asked us with such enthusiasm that she began to skip articles and mispronounce words. We had to shrug sheepishly only to have her also exclaim, “Because he work so hard! Like honey bee!” It was all-around embarrassing.

We were less embarrassed and more enthralled (also, sad that we couldn’t be shameless enough to put Scott’s voice recorder in a less discreet location) with a fight that went on between three youth group member s and the tour guides in the Honeybee House. The youth were startled by the Joseph Smith movie they had just watched. In it, they learned the man had several wives at once, while the Honeybee House had told them it wasn’t true. What ensued was an uncomfortable squabble about “What God wants.”

But all we want to know about the Mormon scripture, O Lord, is are we human, or are we dancer?

So there's SLC for ya. Some mroe stuff happened, but we'll be honest, we're just not excited enough about it to type it up for you, so let's just say our stay in SLC was uneventful for the most part. Except for pattybear.

Oh yea.

Human statue motherfuckers.