Times have changed though, and so have Utah’s crops and industries. As a result, there’s an exciting slate of new seasonal festivals you can check out:
Highland City Botox Days—Bring the whole family to admire Northern Utah county’s bumper crop of plastic surgery procedures. In the main street parade you’ll see floats carrying Utah’s “Rhinoplasty Royalty,” the “Middle-Age-Crisis-Hair-Plug-Kings of 2019,” and an inclusive tribute to the broad array of orangish spray tan colors you might encounter on young women in this corner of the state.
At the local park a face painter will give your preteens a fun preview of the places a cosmetic surgeon might suggest they get work done someday. For the littlest ones there’s the always exciting—but incredibly challenging game of “Pin the Age on the Grandmother.” My favorite is the Facelift Judging Contest. When the results are announced it’s so fun to see the look of excitement on the winners’ faces—which is actually just a subtle twitching of the left eyebrow (easy to miss), but you just know they’re thrilled on the inside.
Vernal’s Natural Gas Fracking Festival—Did you know there’s a ton of natural gas in Utah? And, no, it's not due to our tremendous per capita burrito consumption. It's underground, out in Dinosaur country, and they've developed a new and effective (though perhaps environmentally unsound) way to harvest it: FRACKING. (I know, I thought that sounded like another made-up Utah swear word, too.) I'm not clear on how the process works... They find natural gas deposits by shooting sand and water into underground crevices? Like some kind of landscape-sized colonoscopy?
Anyway, don't dwell on that image--instead, come celebrate its Eastern Utah's good fortune at this new fun festival. My favorite part--in addition to the giant, natural-gas-fueled barbecue at the center of town--is a massive scavenger hunt spanning three Utah counties. Get points by spotting: a clueless scoutmaster on the verge of desecrating a natural wonder; a bus of Chinese tourists about to invade the lone diner in a small town; a new dinosaur native to Utah (Orrin Hatch doesn't count; or a wealthy, out-of-shape California tourist about to biff it on a fancy mountain bike.
Orem’s “Essential Oils Days”—The LDS church may have abandoned the pageant business, but the essential oils industry is just getting started. At this yearly celebration they put on an inspiring, epic musical “Annie Get Your Diffuser” in Orem’s Scera Shell.
Show up and sing along to these original tunes: “Miracle of Miracles (When I Repeatedly Applied Tea Tree Oil to My Chronic Eczema),” “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables (After I Announced to My Extended Family that I Was Getting into an Essential Oils MLM),” “Sixteen Going on Seventeen (Distributors in My Downline),” “A Spoonful of Lavender (Helps the Dementia, Anxiety, and Diabetes go away),” “It Was a Hard Knock Life (Until I Discovered the Miraculous Healing Powers of Peppermint),” “I Feel Pretty… (Pessimistic about Conventional Doctors)” “Who Will Buy (My Overpriced Aromatherapy Products),” “There’s No Business Like the Wellness business,” and “You’ve Got to Pick a Pocket or Two.”
The Sugarhouse “Gluten-Free Avocado Toast Days”—Granted, none of the ingredients in the artisanal foods featured in this annual event are sourced locally, but the hipster attitudes on display are definitely products of certain upscale neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. So turn off those NPR podcasts, pull on your yoga pants, grab your bearded buddy, and get on your fixed-gear bicycle to come down to this woke Bourgeois/hemian gathering.
You can enjoy a fashion show of poorly-fitted vintage dresses, get the tiniest of buzzes from some homemade Kombucha, and use your iphone to take insta-friendly pictures of expensive Vegan bites from food trucks with overly ironic names like “The Mamas and the Tapas,” “Be More Pacific,” “Truck Norris,” and “Guac and Roll.”
South Jordan’s “Newly Built McMansion Days”—Come celebrate the unregulated sprawl of one of the fastest expanding metro areas in the United States. The highlight is a carnival midway with something for every member of your brood: Mac and Cheese vendors in honor of the signature cuisine of this region of Utah; carnival games run by local mortgage companies to determine the variable interest rates on your unaffordable home loans; and a shaded pavilion where your teenagers can sit and stare at their cell phones.
There’s also a fun visitors’ center where you can see dioramas of what one of South Jordan’s current subdivisions—let’s say, "Tuscan Spring Townhomes”—would be named if the developers were more accurate about what actually got plowed under the asphalt: “Ancient Microbiotic Desert Crust Estates,” “Traditional Goshute Hunting Grounds Manors,” “Toxic Mining Tailings Homesteads,” or “Poor Brother Jeppson’s Third Generation Peach Orchard Avenues.”
Lehi’s “Unnecessary App Days”—Finally, Silicone Slopes now has its own yearly festival. This is a nerdy-cool celebration of getting one year closer to the Singularity when robot overlords will rule the world from their Utah headquarters at Thanksgiving Point. Come enjoy the following futuristic attractions: self-driving bumper cars, self-bouncing bounce houses, drone-delivery of energy drinks, and a fireworks display that previews which traditional jobs will be taken over by artificial intelligence next year. Welcome to The Matrix—er, I mean good ol’ friendly Lehi, Utah!
Comments
Post a Comment