Mormon Graffiti

Just before New Year's I took a spin up past Brigham City to take pictures of this abandoned mill off I-15. It has become tradition over the years to use it as a makeshift billboard welcoming home local returned LDS missionaries.

It was a little tricky getting the shots; it's not what I would call an "accessible" area, between the barbed wire and the frozen marshes...and the freeway, of course. But I think the subject matter made it worth it. Plus it gave me an excuse to get a burger at Maddox on the way home.

A Galaxie Far, Far Away

This vacant building might be familiar to longtime (or not so longtime) residents of Bountiful.  It's planted halfway between Burger King and Barnes and Noble just off the 500 South exit.

For about ten years starting in the mid 1990's, this place was home to the Galaxie Diner, a 1950's throwback restaurant pimped out in chrome and vinyl.  From the summer of 1994 to the fall of 1995, I must have eaten there more than fifty times.

I wasn't in love with the food or anything, though they had some great fries and a jukebox with an assortment of proper 1950's-60's tunes.  Galaxie was a popular destination because it was one of the only places around town that stayed open past 10PM on the weekends that wasn't called Denny's, Village Inn or Dee's.

By the time I got back from my mission, the place had lost most of its luster.  When it first opened, the Galaxie Diner employees would jump up on counters and tables to dance whenever someone put "Greased Lightning" on the jukebox, but by the dawn of the new millennium, a lot of the enthusiasm had waned.  Eventually the place shut down, was reborn briefly as an obligatory Chinese Buffet, then landed in its current state.


The End.

RIP: Gateway 8

The other day while driving through Bountiful I noticed that all the Gateway 8 marquees had been taken down.  A few months ago I heard that the place was closing up for some upgrades, but I get the feeling that isn't the case anymore.

The Gateway 8 has always been a puzzling institution for me.  It was built at the worst possible time in the early '90's, after the dawn of multiplexes, but before they started outfitting them with surround sound and stadium seating.  But before the decade was even out, the Gateway 8 had been relegated to a second-tier venue at best.  Eventually it wasn't even the best place around called "The Gateway."

The last movie I saw there was "Signs" in August of 2002. Yet even in recent years, I would see cars filling up that parking lot, presumably from people who were willing to pay full price for an inferior experience, even though a superior one waited only ten minutes to the north or south.  The Gateway 8 had become Bountiful's second-greatest business mystery next to the old Renny's on 500 West.

But now, like Renny's, it looks like the Gateway 8 has finally given up the ghost.  For years I thought they would be better off converting into a dollar theater like the Sugarhouse 10.  I would have gone all the time if they did that.  Maybe they still will; otherwise the Gateway 8 is just going to be the next theater to join the Davis County graveyard, along with The Sandcastle, The Queen, and the Trolley North.