Touchy subject about SLC

[graydon]

I've got a sensitive question about living and working in SLC. I moved to Boise a few years back, and was a little dismayed at the cultural and business influence of a certain, very large religious group here and throughout Idaho. Not that I have a particular issue with the LDS or the folks, just that the vibe, culture, and work environment can be exclusionary if you don't belong. I have an opportunity to move to SLC, and wanted to know what others have experienced there.

[BastrdSonOfElvis]

Best skiing in the world. Convert to LSD and move there. (while you're tripping, you don't know/care that you're being excluded).

[MPEARSON]

Lived there for 6 month's. Loved it - great snow, nice people. There is more then just Mormans. Go to the bars, which is a weird experience in it's self and you'll discover other lost souls in the land of zion. Plus the women are hot!!!

[El Flaco]

SLC itself is pretty secular- the mayor isn't even LDS. My take on Salt Lake is that the folks that aren't LDS are a pretty cohesive group. Now, the surrounding communities are heavily LDS, so choose your community based on your expectations.

Also- Sunday mornings are desolate at Alta 'cause eveyone's at Church. But the distance you have to drive to get to decent boating has killed any chance that I'd ever live there.

[Mut]

I have spent a large amount of time in SLC and think that it is a great place. I have a bunch of non-LDS friends who live there and love it. My wife and I were very close to moving there. The outdoor play (with the exception of boating) is epic. The biking, climbing, skiing, paragliding, hiking, etc.. is world class.

The issue that stopped us from moving there was 2 fold. 1 was the lack of boating. The bigger issue was that we had kids.

We were told by a number of different people that you won't notice the LDS influence unless you have kids. People who lived there with kids told us that their children were not included in many normal childhood activates. These people believed that it was due to the fact that they did not belong. I was told that their kids were not invited to birthday parties, play groups, or other similar events.

In my 15 years of visiting SLC I have observed that the city itself is becoming less and less LDS.

El Flaco is very correct to say that the outlying hoods have a substantially higher proportion of LDS's.

Park City is a cool place to be and is very much non LDS and is only 30-40 minutes from downtown SLC.

Good Luck.

[Ture]

I like Mark Twain's take on the Mormons in "Roughing It". I read it years ago and never forgot about it. Here, Mark Twain is talking about how he thought we was going to write an article against polygamy while he was visiting Salt Lake City:

"...With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically 'homely' creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No- the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of
open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'

[El Flaco]

I've heard that kid issue Mut talked about as well. Both my cousins live out there (one married a jack mormon and the other married a non-mormon) and they have a few gripes, but are otherwise pretty happy. You'll occasionally get the Uber-LDS neighbor that never speaks to you again after he hears you drop the F word, but that can happen in lots of places.

Now- the business world is a different issue. I've heard a few folks say they "implied" that they were LDS when applying for jobs, just in case. Whatever influences you saw in Boise, you will see around SLC.