On Thursday, June 26, the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) celebrated the hard work of the state’s best journalists, photographers and editors from newspapers, television, radio and, yes, magazines. Salt Lake magazine’s team was honored to be among the award-winning media creators in the state of Utah. 

The SPJ judges recognized Salt Lake magazine in 20 categories, including top nods for design and graphics, reporting and a second-place win in the Best Magazine Category. (We’ll get you next year, Deseret magazine.) 

The SPJ, both locally and nationally, exists to highlight the important work journalists do to keep the public informed and shine a light on public issues and the team at Salt Lake magazine is honored to be in such good company. Fun fact: The national and local SPJ gave the Utah State Legislature its annual “Black Hole Award” for restrictions on media and public access to government documents.

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1st Place

• Design and graphics: Best single-page design
• Salt Lake magazine: “Anarchy in The SLC! SLC Punk 25 Years Later”
• Chelsea Rushton, designer

1st Place

• Design and graphics: Feature page design
• Salt Lake magazine: “Off The Radar: How Utah Helped Win the Atomic Race”
• Editor, Jeremy Pugh, Designer, Kimmy Hammons

3rd Place

• Magazine category: Best cover design
• Salt Lake magazine – July 2025 Issue “75+ Reasons To Love Utah”
• Chelsea Rushton, designer

2nd Place

• Magazine category: Best magazine
• Salt Lake magazine
• Jeremy Pugh, editor, Christie Porter, managing editor, Chelsea Rushton, designer

1st Place

• Magazine category: Food and Drink
• “The 2024 Salt Lake Magazine Dining Awards: The Where to Eat Now Edition”
• Jeremy Pugh, writer/editor, Christie Porter, writer/editor, Chelsea Rushton, designer, Adam Finkle, photographer

2nd Place

• Magazine category: News story
• Salt Lake magazine: “Big Trouble in Little Cottonwood: The Gondola Debate”
• Tony Gill, writer, Jeremy Pugh, editor, Chelsea Rushton, designer, Adam Finkle, photographer

1st Place

• Magazine category: Solutions journalism
• Salt Lake magazine: “Let’s Wade In: Water Issues in Utah”
• Christie Porter, writer, Jeremy Pugh, editor, Chelsea Rushton, designer

Honorable Mention

• Salt Lake magazine: Writing and Reporting – Arts and entertainment
• “40 Years of Footloose: Cuttin’ Loose in Payson” 
• Christie Porter, writer, Jeremy Pugh, editor, Janine Miller, designer

2nd Place 

• Writing and Reporting 
• Best reporter
• Christie Porter – Reporter/Editor

1st Place 

• Writing and Reporting – Business/consumer writing
• Salt Lake magazine: Seventy-five Reasons to Love Utah
• Jeremy Pugh, writer/editor Christie Porter, writer/editor Chelsea Rushton, designer

1st Place 

• Writing and Reporting – Climate and Environment
• Salt Lake magazine: “Let’s Wade In: Water Issues in Utah”
• Christie Porter, writer, Jeremy Pugh, editor, Kimmy Hammons, designer 

2nd Place

• Writing and Reporting: General feature
• Salt Lake magazine: SLC Punk!
• Jeremy Pugh, writer, Chelsea Rushton, designer  

1st Place

• Writing and Reporting – General news
• Salt Lake magazine: The Uncertain Future of Abravanel Hall
• Christie Porter, writer

1st Place

• Writing and Reporting – Government
• Salt Lake magazine: Farewell To The Last Old-School Republican: Mitt Romney
• Christie Porter

1st Place

• Writing and Reporting – Division B: Growth and development
• “Try to Escape ‘The Maze’ in Sugar House”
• Christie Porter, writer

2nd Place 

• Writing and Reporting – Division B: Humor/lifestyle column
• Salt Lake magazine: Campers on Parade
• Jeremy Pugh, writer

2nd Place

• Writing and Reporting – Longform Storytelling
• Salt Lake magazine: “Dust to Dust: Remembering the Scofield Mining Disaster”
• Jason Mathew Smith, writer, Jeremy Pugh, editor, Ari Jiminez, designer

Honorable Mention

• Writing and Reporting – Review/criticism
• Salt Lake magazine: “Go Beyond Chicken Noodle Soup”
• Lydia Martinez

3rd Place

• Writing and Reporting – Series
• Salt Lake magazine: Utah Lore
• Jeremy Pugh

2nd Place

• Writing and Reporting – Sports Feature
• Salt Lake magazine: “Pickleball: What’s All The Racquet?”
• Heather Hayes, writer, Jeremy Pugh, editor, Chelsea Rushton, designer

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The annual People for Bikes rating of bike-friendly cities is out for 2025. Cities are scored on a 1-100 scale, with Mackinac Island, which bans cars and moves everyone and everything around by bike, scoring a perfect 100. Where’s SLC? At a very respectable 62, up a massive ten points from last year. But more importantly, we now beat New York City! 

Other cities we trounced included Philly, DC, Tucson and Austin. We owned Boise and San Diego, and left LA long in the rearview mirror. Even better, we beat such acclaimed bike meccas as Portland, Madison, Chico and Burlington.

San Francisco did edge us out by a point. Something to aim for next year!

Read the full ranking at People for Bikes.

P.S. Park City came in right behind SLC at 61. 

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Many publications do “best of” issues (which sometimes are pay-to-play, FYI). But we take a different approach. Every year, we create Salt Lake magazine’s Best of the Beehive Issue by assembling our little coterie of writers and folks we know about town to talk about the things that tickle us, surprise us, and inspire us and just say, “yep, that’s the best” all around.

Because how is anything “The Best?” It’s a subjective term after all. But we know it when we see it. And the goal here is to pack this issue with a list of, well, stuff, to tickle your intellect, fill your belly, spark your imagination and inspire ideas for exploring the place where you live. We reflect on the talk of the town—newsmakers and civic upheavals—that inspired both cheers and jeers. We pile it all together into an always-incomplete list to create a snapshot of life in the Beehive in the Year 2025.

I love the randomness of this issue. The idea that a little pie shop in Veyo or a Cat café in Salt Lake is the “best of” anything brings a smile to my face. Because, in this world of data-mined listicles and focused searches to find the “best” toaster, or whatever, the idea of merely browsing—just wandering down the bookstore aisle and waiting for something to catch your eye—seems like a lost art. Oftentimes, the things we cherish most in our lives are those very things that one day just caught our eye.

This idea is the basis of what we do at this magazine. We make a pretty paper book six times a year, designed for you to browse. And we’re certain that inside these pages are plenty of things that will catch your eye. 

Don’t blink. You just might miss the best thing you never knew you were looking for.

Nestled at the corner of Main Street and Burton Avenue, the newly opened One Burton stands as the cornerstone of South Salt Lake’s transformative downtown district. With its ribbon officially cut in June, this eight-story mixed-use development marks the city’s long-awaited push toward a vibrant, pedestrian-centric downtown. The project is the result of a multi-firm collaboration between Abstract Development Group, Architectural Nexus, Greystar and Jacobsen Construction. 

A mastery in mid-century modern design, with an emphasis on modern, the complex boasts a sleek façade that echoes the surrounding Wasatch backdrop. Inside, residents are greeted by a double-height lobby enriched with mid-century art including a commanding timepiece that doubles as an art installation: a monumental clock composed of thirteen sculptural “eyes.”

Clean lines, expressive geometry and bold accents carry the aesthetic throughout the building, inviting residents to live not just in a space, but in a statement.

Designed with active lifestyles in mind, One Burton is more than just an apartment complex—it is a gateway to connected living. Spanning 180 thoughtfully designed units, from studios to two-bedroom layouts, One Burton caters to both young professionals and urban adventurers seeking close proximity to everything downtown South Salt Lake has to offer. Features like built-in mudrooms, secure gear storage, a state-of-the-art fitness center and inviting communal spaces make it easy to live well, connect with the community and feel at home.

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This June, the reign of the automobile has come to a screeching halt on Main Street downtown, at least on Friday and Saturday nights. Open Streets, Salt Lake’s summer season street party, has been running with a whole new concept to welcome folks downtown.

Started during COVID as a way to preserve restaurants and businesses along Main by letting them spill out into the roadway, this public party has become a recurring feature of the summer months. This year, it’s been divided into four zones to offer you four distinct experiences.

The first block south of South Temple has been dubbed the Family Commons, featuring games, jugglers, and other activities designed to engage the young ones. One block south, the Arts Avenue surrounds the Eccles Theater with live music, street performers and an evolving mural project. 

Further south in the Village Market, vendors will be hawking their wares and a community stage will provide a venue for local musicians to get their noise on. The final block is Restaurant Row, with the eating houses extending shady patios out into the street. The bottom of the block features a beer garden at Exchange Place, complete with mini-golf and DJs. 

Open streets will wrap up this weekend on Friday and Saturday from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. 

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Picture this: A typical day in Heber City, Utah. Cars parked along Main Street, locals shopping, going to work or church, and a man with a mustache holds the lead, guiding his companion, a 1,500-pound grizzly bear, to the Dairy Keen for a hamburger—one of the bear’s favorite treats. 

The grizzly bear in question is animal film star Bart the Bear and the man is his trainer Doug Seus. While bears taking a stroll on Main Street is not a common scene in Heber anymore, “The people who have been here for a long time, they were used to it,” says Lynne Seus, fellow wildlife trainer and Doug’s partner in marriage and many other wild adventures. “People would say, ‘Oh, yeah, there goes Doug and their bears.’”

Bart the Bear passed away in 2000, but, he still hangs out on Main Street, in a way. At the end of 2024, mural artist Chris Peterson painted a mural of Bart across the street from Main Street’s Avon Theater. “It was like having a picture up of our kid. It was such an honor,” says Lynne. 

The mural unveiling event also celebrated Bart with a film festival of the movies in which he starred, alongside the likes of John Candy and Dan Aykroyd (The Great Outdoors, 1988), Ethan Hawke (White Fang, 1991), and Brad Pitt (Legends of the Fall, 1995). Friends of Lynn and Doug and longtime Heberites shared memories and stories about Bart. “That little theater was packed and it brought us to tears,” says Lynne. “Just the memories that the community had and—well, I guess, you would remember if you were in a bowling alley and somebody brought a grizzly bear in to have a hamburger and milkshake with you.”

The community event also coincided with the release of Lynne’s memoir, The Grizzlies and Us, a frank and delightful retelling of Doug and Lynne’s decades-long journey raising, taming and training a menagerie of critters to be on screen. Bears, wolves, raccoons, skunks, foxes—there doesn’t seem to be an animal that Doug has met that he couldn’t connect with. “The things he accomplished and the love and trust this man built,” marvels Lynne. “He bonded with Bart I and Bart II, two 1,500-pound bears. That is extraordinary both for the man and for the bear.”

At this point in our conversation, Doug turns the focus away from himself and on Lynne. “She’s the one who wrote this book, and I’m so proud of her for her candidness,” he says. “I think of the honesty that she wrote about life, etcetera, and I don’t think there’s enough candor in the world. My philosophy is ‘be raw.’” It’s the same philosophy of honesty and integrity that they wish other people might glean from their wild “teachers,” as Lynne refers to the animals in their care in her book. “You have to be totally who you are—totally honest with animals,” she says. “If you put on a facade, they’ll see right through it.”

In many ways, Doug and Lynne are the first of their kind, and they might be some of the last. “We were so fortunate to be following our dream and being in the movie business with our bear, while we were,” says Lynne. Now, computer-generated graphics have replaced most wild animals on screen, with few exceptions. Naysayers aside (and there were many), there’s also a bit more red tape between a young couple and their dream of raising wildlife (alongside human children) on their private property   than there was in 1977 when they took on Bart and his brother Zack as cubs from the Baltimore Zoo. Not to mention, compared to the 1970s, there are much higher economic barriers to buying said private property—a farmhouse in Daniels Creek, Heber, Utah (where the median home listing price is now a cool $1.2 million). It’s heartbreaking to realize we’ve lost many of the habitats that support wild, young dreamers and where the odds are slim of ever having another Doug and Lynne Seus. 

Lynne still encourages people to defy the odds and “for anyone who is following a dream, don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t,” she says. Recently, following their dream led to their starting the Vital Ground Foundation, which preserves and restores grizzly bear habitats. Doug says they have already seen the grizzly make a comeback in extending its range more than has been seen in the last 200 years. “We’re seeing the ‘big open’ coming—I call the big open. The massive, beautiful ground that was once just under crops and now it’s coming back to indigenous grasses and indigenous animals that haven’t been seen for years,” Doug explains with contagious passion. “Anyhow, excuse me, if I may—I’m gonna go shovel poop,” he adds. Lynne laughs, “That’s the glamorous side of the job.” Certainly, one of a kind.  

The Wild Ones

The grizzlies in Doug and Lynne’s care (past and present).

Bart (I) Bart’s brother Zack preferred a quiet life, according to Lynne.
He made a new home at a zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

Honeybump and her brother, Bart (II), came to Lynne and Doug as cubs shortly after Bart (I) passed away. Their mother had been baited from their den and killed by a hunter, and the cubs were rescued by Fish & Wildlife rangers in Alaska. Honeybump and Bart (II) appeared in Dr. Dolittle 2 and Evan Almighty, and Bart (II) also starred in We Bought a Zoo and Game of Thrones. Bart (II) passed away in 2021 

Tank the bear was born in captivity and has a gentle demeanor, according to Lynne. He stole the spotlight as a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and in Dr. Dolittle 2.

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Read more stories like this and all of our Community coverage. And while you’re here, subscribe and get six issues of Salt Lake magazine, your curated guide to the best of life in Utah.