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City Cast Salt Lake

We ask local movers and shakers the essential questions.

Tattoos are more than skin deep in the Pacific Islands. Although they may go by different names — in Hawaii it’s “kākau,” in New Zealand it’s “tā moko,” and in Samoa it’s “tatau” — the Pasifika tradition of tattooing is deeply rooted in ancestral connections, spirituality, identity, and culture.

On the City Cast Salt Lake podcast, lead producer Emily Means spoke with Verona Mauga, co-founder of the Pacific Islander advocacy organization 

, about this tradition and its revival, as well as 

“The word ‘malu’ actually means to shelter and protect. And so that is what the tatau is called that the women wear. It comes from our upper thigh, just right down below our knee, and then to the back of our calves. It's a reminder to us [in] everything that we do there's meaning and purpose behind it. It's something sacred that we wear daily, it's tattooed onto our bodies, but it's also a connection to our ancestors. My great-grandmother had her malu, and my aunties have their malu. I've always admired the women who had the courage to go under the au [tattooing tool].”

“Three summers ago, my sisters and I went through our own special tatau journey and it's something we grew up always wanting. It meant more than a regular tattoo. It was something that was a reminder of our culture, our heritage, how we serve others, how we serve our family. It was a very special journey that we prepared for and were fortunate enough to experience it with each other. My sisters are actually the other founders of Le Malu, which we created after we received our malu.

“It's all done traditionally. We're not sitting on a massage table or even in a chair, we're laying on a floor on mats, just how you would do it back in the islands. And it's done the traditional way with the au, which is the tool that's used, and so they're hand tapping it. You're surrounded by your family members, people bring pictures of family members who have passed on, and so it's a very inviting space for connection.”

How did you feel while taking part in this tradition?

“It was one of the most spiritual experiences I've ever experienced, to be surrounded by your loved ones and to be laying there on the floor. You're also very vulnerable because it's on a part of your body that you may not always show to others … and you have needles being tapped into your body. But at the same time, you open your eyes and you see that you're surrounded by your loved ones, and when your eyes are closed you feel it.”

” exhibit at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. It’s open now through December. Plus, this 

An Interview on Tatau, the Legacy of Samoan Tattooing

3 Questions With

Do you know the tale of Hogi Yogi/Teriyaki Stix? They disappeared over the years, but 

. On City Cast Salt Lake, she regaled her personal story of love, loss, and redemption with the hoagie/frozen yogurt/chicken teriyaki chain.

“Hogi Yogi was a chain of restaurants that sold hoagies and frozen yogurt. There's nothing better to me than a build-your-own sandwich situation. They had a variety of breads, freshly baked — [at least] in my mind they're freshly baked. A really good sandwich artist would put together this hoagie for you, and then the frozen yogurt, to me, was the star of the show. They did a blackberry frozen yogurt that you could get in a waffle cone.

“Then later they decided, ‘Hey, we're not Japanese, but let's add some Japanese food to our menu,’ and opened a Teriyaki Stix at a separate counter, which sold chicken bowls with a really starchy rice and a teriyaki sauce that I believe was mostly corn syrup mixed with soy sauce and then like Cisco chicken. Disgusting, but also delicious, you know? So Hogi Yogi had something for you, depending on whatever mood you were in. It was a magical place.”

What is your best Hogi Yogi/Teriyaki Stix memory?

“It's kind of a tragic story, and I'm sorry to take us to this dark place. But I was in the car with my mom, grandma, and two siblings, and we were on our way back from St. George. There was a gas station that had a Hogi Yogi attached, which many did at the time before the great Hogi Yogi rapture. We all got our sandwiches, and my mom got this beautiful sandwich that had sprouts, freshly sliced cucumbers, banana peppers, and really good turkey. She went to get in the car, and the sandwich fell on the ground, and my mother, bless her heart, started crying. She was so devastated to have lost this perfect sandwich. And every time I ate Hogi Yogi after that, I was like, do not take this for granted. Understand the value of what's in front of you, because it could be gone at any moment.”

Tell us about your journey to rediscover the Utah Teriyaki Stix.

“I'm into adulthood, not really understanding that these things were vanishing from underneath my feet, until recently when my friend Scott Wessman posted a photo in front of the Teriyaki Stix at Lagoon, saying, ‘I believe this is the last Teriyaki Stix on Earth.’ I was like, ‘oh my gosh, there's only one of these left, I must visit.’ And so I did. It’s over by the entrance to the white rollercoaster, which I cannot believe is still functioning. It is just a lone little island in the middle of Lagoon. There's a crew of 12-year-olds operating it. [I] ordered my Teriyaki Stix — it still hits. Sadly, no Hogi Yogi available. You cannot get one of those sandwiches or that blackberry frozen yogurt. That is lost to time and a real shame, in my opinion.”

 opens Sept. 8, so it’s a perfect time to visit the last Teriyaki Stix. And while you’re at it, listen to the full episode on your commute 👇

How the Last Hogi Yogi/Teriyaki Stix on Earth Holds Up

An Interview With Hogi Yogi/Teriyaki Stix Stan Meg Walter

 in Utah. On City Cast Salt Lake, we talked with sixth grade teacher 

 about school closures, new leadership at Salt Lake City school district, and how teachers are feeling as they open their classroom doors this year.

“Every school closure means there are suddenly students who need a new home. It's a complicated issue. School is such a critical piece of our community, and it's where people go for not just education but services. This is where people come when they need help with getting connected to medical care, and getting their kid glasses, and food insecurity. They also know that we are a building full of trusted adults who will go out of our way to try and connect them with whatever it is that they are looking for.

“But at the same time, when you've got dwindling enrollment numbers, if your school suddenly gets an influx of children, that's also an influx of funding. That means more teachers and resources coming into that school. So some people are looking at this issue and thinking, ‘how do we not get left out as more attention and resources are focused on the places that are most impacted?’”

“I wanna see the same thing I wanna see from any leader. First, and foremost, I wanna see empathy for the situation and humans that she's coming in to work with. The majority of our students are not Caucasian. It's beautifully diverse and culturally rich here. 

"I'm really heartened by the credentials that Dr. Grant is bringing to the table. Her level of experience and the fact that she does come from here [having previously worked in Salt Lake City School District]. The best thing she can do, and that I've seen her doing, is talking with administrators and other people in our district and asking them: ‘What do you need? What has worked? What needs to be fixed?’ She's been listening to folks, and I hope she just continues on in that spirit.”

What is the best way we can show up for teachers and students this school year?

“What other job do professionals have to go on and say, ‘Hey, I'm going to work tomorrow. I need a stapler, tape, and water bottles, who can help me out?’ So as you see those lists, help 'em out, but also recognize when it comes time to vote, pay attention to funding during the legislative session for folks who are prioritizing funding for teachers in classrooms.

“At the same time, we don't just need supplies — we need support. And no one's leaving the profession because they don't have enough pencils. They're leaving because they don't have enough people standing up in our defense.”

How New Laws Will Play Out in Classrooms This Fall

It’s back-to-school season in Utah. On City Cast Salt Lake, we talked with sixth grade teacher John Arthur about school closures, new leadership at Salt Lake City school district, and how teachers are feeling as they open their classroom doors this year.

An Interview With Elementary School Teacher John Arthur

The Utah Supreme Court just heard arguments to determine whether the injunction 

 can be upheld under the state constitution. While we don’t have an answer yet, the ongoing battle over the legality of abortion in our state is causing stress for patients and providers (Note: You can still get an abortion in Utah, up to 18 weeks of pregnancy). On City Cast Salt Lake, host Ali Vallarta talked with the executive director of 

 Rachel Dyer to find out what we can learn from the conversations being had on the post-abortion textlines.

What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about the psychology of abortion?

“The relationship between abortion and people's mental health is very under-discussed, and if it is talked about at all, it's typically talked about incorrectly. People assume that if someone has an abortion, they're going to have adverse mental health outcomes, and that is not true. It is clear from decades of research that having an abortion does not negatively affect your mental health. And in fact, if you do not have an abortion when you need one, that is the thing that negatively harms your mental health. Mental health and emotions are also two different things. So while abortions do not impact your mental health, people have feelings about everything, right? So that's where Exhale Pro Voice comes in, to talk with people about their feelings.”

What are some of the common themes in the text messages that Exhale Pro Voice receives?

“Many people don't know this, but 59% of people who have abortions are already parents. They don't want having another child to interfere with their current family structure or financial ability to take care of their kids. So that's a huge consideration for a lot of people and comes up quite a bit on the text line. Abortion stigma is also a very significant factor in people's emotional well-being. We live in a society that often tells us that people who have abortions are selfish and evil. And you can imagine that being immersed in that isn't super great for people's emotional wellbeing.”

It's been just over a year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that protected the constitutional right to an abortion. What have been the ebbs and flows of the text line since then?

“Our utilization [after the decision] increased by over 200%. It decreased a little and then increased again around the anniversary, but a lot more people were sharing our phone number, which was fantastic. People were sharing things like, you know, I haven't really felt distress related to my abortion experiences. I haven't really thought about them, but this is scary and different and I worry about the other people in my life. I worry about my kids, I worry about my loved ones. So a lot of people are reaching out to us for different reasons and in more distress than they had been.”

How Abortions Impact Mental Health

An Interview With Rachel Dyer of Exhale Pro-Voice

 to the Utah Office of Homeless Services. It outlines a strategy to help unsheltered people during the harsh winter months. On City Cast Salt Lake, we spoke with Andrew Johnston, 

Salt Lake City’s director of homeless policy

New laws require other cities and counties, along with Salt Lake City, to think about 

. How will that impact the city's efforts?

“I think we're still committed to doing everything we can to help, because people are here and we have to deal with the reality that people don't have a place to go. What we need from a city perspective is more partners and more resources to help with that. If somebody's experiencing homelessness in another city, in another county, they really shouldn't have to move across the state to get resources. The more that every area in the state can have services available, the more families can stay intact, the more folks can stay in places that they feel comfortable where they've had jobs or housing before.”

 is not a solution, but real solutions — like deeply affordable housing and mental health services — feel far down the road. What relief can the city offer unhoused residents in the short term?

“The first thing we did earlier this year was go after 

. We put out $6 million from the city budget to say, ‘are there programs to get units available quickly that would address this population we're talking about? Do it, apply, let's get the money out the door.’ The state did the same thing with their funding. We knew that some of those were 

. We have motel conversions, essentially. Sometimes it's gonna be a learning experience, so we don't get the units we need as quickly as we wanted to. So I think we gotta be creative in our housing outreach and do that differently.”

The city and state are trying to figure out what a site could be for a sanctioned camp, and the 

Salt Lake City Council allocated $500,000

 in its budget specifically for sanctioned camping. What could this program look like?

“Looking at places we think have done it well, there are some things we've seen pretty consistently. We've seen they have professional staff running them. They have very clear size regulations. You've got services on site, like case management, healthcare, food, whatever it is that's needed to help people move through that to another [housing] location. When it works well, it works a lot more like a homeless resource center, but just not with the bricks and mortar walls of it.

In our case, working with the state makes a lot of sense because $500,000 doesn't go very far, and even a million doesn't go very far in these situations. If we can combine, great, if we need to find separate ways to do it, that's fine, too, but we wanna make sure that we're collaborating with them to get something that works together, so it's most effective long-term. Because nobody wants to close it down in three months if you run outta funding.”

Could the SLC Mayor Declare a Homelessness Emergency?

Mayors from Salt Lake County recently submitted a winter homelessness plan to the Utah Office of Homeless Services. It outlines a strategy to help unsheltered people during the harsh winter months. On City Cast Salt Lake, we spoke with Andrew Johnston, Salt Lake City’s director of homeless policy, about the city’s approach to our homelessness crisis.

An Interview With SLC's Director of Homeless Policy

 is happening this week, Aug. 11-13. It’s an iconic SLC market featuring local vendors and small businesses. Founder and Executive Director Angela H. Brown tells us about the upcoming festival as well as its humble beginnings.

“The very first Craft Lake City DIY Festival happened in 2009 at the Gallivan Center. There was no admission charge. We had 72 artisans, four food vendors, eight or nine performers on one stage, and that was it. It was just a really fun one-day event.

[Back then] local artisans had no place that was giving them a voice. There was no community for them in Salt Lake, and they were feeling like they needed to leave to bigger markets. ​​That’s one of the reasons why we created the event, to give them a place where they could meet like-minded individuals, network with other creatives, and sell their work to a really captive audience. I wanted to create a place for locals. We've got some incredible creatives, some of the best in the nation or even in the world right here in our own backyard.”

“We were at the Gallivan Center for 10 years. We loved activating that space, but we were really just bursting at the seams and couldn't grow the festival anymore. So we made the change in 2019 to go down to the Utah State Fairpark.

Change is hard. And with that, we always try and look at opportunities. With the Fairpark, a huge opportunity was to activate the west side, which is something that I'm passionate about as a west sider myself.”

“I like to make jokes and say my favorite thing to craft are events because I spend so much time on those, but honestly, my craft started with silver gelatin photography. That was my first love and actually what I got my degree in. [In my work with SLUG magazine] and my work with Craft Lake City, I'm still able to flex those skills, but printing in the old fashioned dark room is so exciting to me. That is my number one craft although I don't get to do it as much as I'd like.”

Listen to our City Cast Salt Lake interview with Brown where we asked: 

The Craft Lake City DIY Festival is happening this week, Aug. 11-13. It’s an iconic SLC market featuring local vendors and small businesses. Founder and Executive Director Angela H. Brown tells us about the upcoming festival as well as its humble beginnings.

Our Interview with Angela H. Brown, Founder of Craft Lake City

All this talk about 801 Day, but do you know why area codes even exist? Salt Lake Tribune reporter Andy Larsen talks us through the story behind our 801 roots and why we needed to expand (385 and 435, wya?).

“We didn't have enough numbers for everyone without them. At first, the various telephone companies used two-letter codes followed by a string of numbers to indicate which switchboard would handle the call. For example, the Salt Lake Tribune's old number was EM-31511. But as AT&T took control of the national telephone infrastructure in the 1900s, they wanted a number-based area code system that would unify dialing across the country. At first, human operators handled the area code dialing when people wanted to make a long-distance call, but eventually, that was given over to customers instead.”

“To differentiate from the two-letter prefix system (which doesn't assign any letters to the digits zero or one), AT&T decided that the initial area codes would have a zero or one as the second digit. Area codes with zero in the second spot were assigned to smaller states and codes with one were assigned to larger states that needed splitting. From there, AT&T assigned the lower codes to areas with more people in order to be more efficient. NYC's zip code became 212 because area codes with higher numbers take longer to dial on old rotary phones. Utah ended up with 801 thanks to its relatively small population.”

☎️ Why did Utah have to expand to more area codes?

“You would think 801 would be enough for all 3.3 million people in Utah. After all, there are 9,999,999 seven-digit numbers. But two things happened. First, number distribution was spectacularly wasteful at first. If a large business or city signed a contract with a telephone provider, they could be assigned all 10,000 numbers for a given prefix; say, from 801-777-0001 to 801-777-9999, regardless if they needed 2,000 numbers or 8,000. It wasn't until 2002 that this practice ended. Now they're assigned in blocks of 1,000 numbers. Second, in the early 90s, increased numbers of fax machines and pagers made the earlier wastefulness a problem. The 801/435 split occurred in 1997. Today, we only use less than 70% of 801 numbers. Boo.”

An Interview on the 801

It’s the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the federal law that protects imperiled plants and animals in the United States. We had Utah Division of Wildlife Resources recovery program chief Sarah Seegert on City Cast Salt Lake to give us more information about 

How many endangered species does Utah have?

“Utah has 41 species of threatened or endangered species, and 24 of those are plants. The rest are fish, birds, mammals, and one reptile.”

What is the difference between threatened and endangered species?

“An endangered species is the category that's most imperiled. It is at risk of becoming extinct. A threatened species is not quite as imperiled but is at risk of becoming endangered. Either way, their populations aren't doing very well, and in order to maintain them and keep them alive, we need to undertake some conservation and protections.”

What's something on Utah's endangered species list that might surprise people?

“The desert tortoise is on the endangered species list. It's a threatened species. I don't know if that would surprise people, but they are only found in the southwest corner of the state down by St. George. So they coexist with one of the fastest-growing communities in the country.”

Listen for more on endangered species

An Interview on Endangered Species with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources

 is a full-time artist, business coach, and mother of three. She hosts a backyard art market at her home in Ogden called 

Do you have advice for people who are interested in DIY but aren’t super crafty?

“Start small and choose a project that is simple and manageable. Be patient, and don't get discouraged if your first few attempts don't turn out perfectly. Making DIY or handmade gifts can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it's also a learning process. Keep trying and practicing, and you'll eventually get the hang of it. And remember, the effort and thought you put into your gifts is what really matters, not their perfection.”

What’s your favorite DIY to gift people?

“I love using small embroidery hoops as a base for my creations. I enjoy giving these pieces of art as gifts because it allows me to share a piece of myself with others and bring a little extra joy. Plus, the fact that they can be reused year after year makes them even more special.”

“It allows me to express myself in ways that words cannot always capture. When I am making art, I am able to take a feeling or emotion and turn it into something beautiful. I find this process to be incredibly therapeutic and rewarding. I love being able to create something that has the power to inspire or move someone else.”

Utah has some rad people. If you or someone you know is also doing rad things, contact us at the button below.

Send me an email

Audrey Christensen of Hey Be Fab is a full-time artist, business coach, and mother of three. She hosts a backyard art market at her home in Ogden called the yART sale.

An Interview With Utah Artist Audrey Christensen

An Interview With Artist Audrey Christensen

 are ever changing. We had McKenna Tupai, sustainability coordinator for Wasatch Front Waste and Recycling District, on City Cast Salt Lake to help us understand what can and can’t be tossed in the blue bin.

♻️ What happens to the stuff we put in the blue recycling bin?

“We pick it up from your curb and take it to one of the local material recovery facilities. There are two in the valley. There's the waste management one and then Rocky Mountain Recycling. There they sort it and bale it and then they take out anything that wasn't supposed to be in there, which is basically garbage, for the landfill. The baled recyclables that are accepted get sold across North America, mostly to recycling processing centers. There is where they will be chopped up, melted, cleaned, and turned into new pellets to be sold to whatever company wants to buy them.”

♻️ If we accidentally put something non-recyclable in the recycling bin, is it all a wash?

“No. That is a common myth that we hear. Only things that have been touched by something like food or green waste become garbage. So, for example, if somebody throws a can of tomatoes in there and it gets all over paper or a piece of cardboard, only the paper or cardboard that the tomatoes got on will go to the landfill. And usually it only affects paper products. So if that can of tomato got on a plastic bottle, the plastic bottle should be fine.”

♻️ What do we do with the hard to recycle stuff like remote controls and mattresses?

“There are a lot of private companies that do recycling for hard to recycle materials. Best Buy will take a lot of electronics. They have some limitations. And then there are some private companies Spring Back Utah, they do mattress recycling, so there are options. We offer some information on resources and 