A free two-night culture fest in Taylorsville, Banana Ball in Daybreak, and half-off tacos on Tuesday

Salt Lake County Arts and Culture runs Westside CultureFest at the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center in Taylorsville this Friday and Saturday, 4:30 to 10 both nights, with more than 25 performances spread across indoor stages and the grounds outside. There is an artist market, a run of food trucks, a bar for the over-21 crowd, and art activities for kids. None of it costs anything and none of it requires a ticket. The lineup is the reason to care. Friday brings Mariachi Fuego, the Malialole Polynesian Cultural Arts Ensemble, and the Salt Lake Ballet Cooperative. Saturday is the heavier night, with Carnaval de Barranquilla Utah, the two-time Grammy nominee MV Caldera, and the Vaudeville Underground Circus Company doing aerial work. Between the headliners the programming runs through flamenco, folklórico, jazz, and reggae fusion, with buskers roaming the grounds in between sets. The west side of this county holds most of its cultural depth and gets the least programming money, and this is the county putting a real budget behind that gap for two nights in a row. Parking is free on the north side of the building, and every bit of the festival is reachable from the first floor, so a stroller or a wheelchair works here without a workaround.

The Utah Transit Authority has proposed raising its base fare from $2.50 to $3 across buses, TRAX, the S-Line streetcar, and FrontRunner, which would be the first base-rate increase since 2013. The change would land sometime in 2027 rather than this year. UTA opened a 30-day comment window on August 6 that closes September 9, and an online hearing runs at 5:30 p.m. on August 26. Bundled into the same package is contactless tap-to-pay, so a credit card, a debit card, or a phone would work at the reader without a UTA card.

Granite is the first Salt Lake County district back in session, with elementary, junior high, and high school students all returning Wednesday, August 12. Everybody else waits. Canyons brings grades 1 through 12 back August 17 and Murray starts most students the same day, with seventh graders getting their own head start on the 14th. Salt Lake City and Jordan high schools both open August 18, and Jordan's elementary and middle schools follow on the 19th. Kindergarten runs a few days behind the older grades in Canyons, Murray, and Granite, which is the detail that catches parents off guard every year.

Herriman's Summer Sunset Series runs tonight at Crane Park behind city hall from 5 to 8, and this week's edition is built around safety and back-to-school. Intermountain Health is fitting and giving away bike helmets, Unified Fire runs a firefighter challenge, the police department has a safety course with a kids' bike as the prize, and the K9 team does a demonstration. The regular vendor market and the Hungry Herriman food trucks are there the whole time.

Michael Angelakos plays the Rockwell room at The Complex on Tuesday with Arden Jones opening, doors at 7 and music at 8. This is the Pretty Penny run, so the set leans on the newer material alongside the Manners songs that everyone in the room turned 22 to.

Real Salt Lake answered its shootout loss to Tigres with a 4-0 win over Atlante FC at home Sunday, the kind of result that keeps a Leagues Cup group alive instead of academic. Sergi Solans opened it in the 17th, Zach Booth and Lukas Engel scored inside five minutes of each other after the break, and Pablo Ruiz finished it in the 90th. Tuesday is the phase-one finale.

Utah fell 2-1 to Denver Summit FC on Sunday, with Tatumn Milazzo pulling one back in the 89th minute after the game had already gotten away. Friday brings Bay FC in under the lights.

Salt Lake had not won since the end of July, and the streak reached 10 before Saturday's 14-13 win over Oklahoma City at The Ballpark ended both their slide and the Comets' nine-game run at the same time. It was the club's first double-digit losing streak since an 11-gamer in 2021. They sat 50-61 after it.

A small counter on 4700 South turning out close to a dozen taco styles on corn tortillas pressed in house, plus the guisados the place is named for. The cochinita pibil is the one to order, slow-cooked pork with the citrus and achiote doing the work, and the al pastor off the spit and the birria are both worth a second trip. Aguas frescas are made there too.

The upper 4.6 miles of Mill Creek Canyon Road closed to cars again on March 15 so the federal road rebuild could finish, and it stays that way into late fall. Everything below the winter gate is open and normal. The Pipeline Trail and Upper Pipeline are the through-routes that still work, running the length of the canyon on a bench above the road with almost no elevation gain and shade for most of it.

Thursday night in Salt Lake City, part of the outdoor concert series.

Saturday and Sunday at the Sandy Amphitheater, with Drew and Ellie Holcomb.

Thursday at the amphitheatre in West Valley City, with Southall opening, doors at 5.

The Federal Transit Administration moved FrontRunner 2X into the engineering phase of its Capital Investment Grants program on August 7, which is the last procedural step before the roughly $1.3 billion federal award is decided. UDOT and UTA have been working the project jointly for years. The build adds a little more than 26 miles of second track in 11 separate stretches between Ogden and Provo, plus a new station near the Point of the Mountain, ten new trainsets, and a maintenance facility. What it buys riders is frequency, cutting the wait from 30 and 60 minutes down to 15 and 30, and putting trains on the line on Sundays for the first time.

A ceremony Saturday marked the handoff of the final 50 acres of active military land at Fort Douglas to the University of Utah, with the deed formally changing hands October 1. The Army Reserve moved out in June to a new $127 million, 227,000-square-foot center at Camp Williams in Bluffdale that the state paid to build, and the land was the exchange. The university is talking about housing, recreation space, and a second student union on the site. Building 655 went up in 1863 and is still the oldest structure on campus, the last one left from the original Camp Douglas.

The Community Development Corporation of Utah is aiming to break ground in mid-September on Gladhouse Cottages, eight detached one-level homes on a 0.71-acre parcel at 1084 W. 1700 South. They will list between $367,000 and $387,000 against appraised values of $410,000 to $433,000, which is possible because CDCU keeps the land in a community trust and sells only the house. Buyers have to come in at or below 80 percent of area median income and get picked by lottery after income screening. There are no driveways or garages, just a shared 13-stall lot, and each home sits on roughly 2,000 square feet. Salt Lake City's redevelopment arm put $2.46 million into it.