The last time we made a fuss in print about City Weekly's 40th anniversary was about a year ago, with the conclusion of our Rewind series. But some of our most devoted readers (*respect*) may not be aware that the party kept going, in a different forum.
Since last May, City Weekly has been republishing archive material to our website. Called FLASHBACKS, these weekly installments turn back the clock on 40 years of alternative media in Salt Lake City. And with the recent conclusion of this project, the complete Rewind and FLASHBACK collections can now be located under the "40th Anniversary" section of the News tab on CityWeekly.net.
Remember in 1997, when John Harrington penned his withering review of then-District Attorney Neal Gunnarson's probe of then-SLC Mayor Deedee Corradini? How about Christopher Smart's look at Utah lawmakers' 1995 effort to turn public lands over to a developer in the name of the Winter Olympics? Both works are available to read online for the first time since their initial publications in print.
Curious about Salt Lake City's underground music scene, circa 1989? We've got that. What about the 2000 debut of Larry H. Miller's extravagantly kitschy Mayan restaurant? It's there.
Remember the time that the Olympic Committee threatened to sue City Weekly in 1999? We certainly do. What's more, we've got details about the Utah Arts Fest from 1984, the experiences of gay military personnel under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in 1993, and a tribute to the departed Centre Theatre movie palace from 1988.
What you'll find in the FLASHBACKS are snippets of the paper as it served readers during any given time, whether in the form of investigative journalism, unique commentary and even examples of our video and blog content. While these newly-transcribed and -digitized entries are relatively few in number compared with the mass from which they were pulled, they represent a greater whole—countless people who have contributed to and read this paper under its assorted titles, page counts and fortunes.
Since CityWeekly.net contains sporadic bits of our output from the mid-aughts back to 1998, we largely favored materials that weren't on the website already. Added to these considerations were the desires to represent each year of our paper's lifespan with something at least once, and to touch upon a variety of topics and authors.
As you peruse the contents, ask yourself whether the issues they treat lend themselves to greater reflection. Even for the shorter pieces involving places and people that are no longer with us, I hope they elicit gratitude for what has been (or as the case may be, for what is not any longer).
But whether the year is 1985, 2005 or 2025, the truth of the matter remains that we have a fascinating, complicated and rich community about us that is worth writing about.
That warrants an extended celebration, don't you think?
