We hope the hotels of the future look a little more like the Evo in Salt Lake City, where there’s a skatepark and a climbing gym and guests never have to be afraid to fall.
By Mark Fedeli
Marketing and Editorial Director, Tablet Hotels
Book the Evo Hotel on Tablet Hotels.
My wife booked skateboarding lessons for herself and our 5-year-old daughter. I’d skated a lot when I was younger. My wife hadn’t really ever done it before. My biggest warning for her was that dropping in should not be taken lightly. Even on 2-foot-high ramp. Heck, even on a 1-foot-high ramp. If you don’t fully commit, if you hesitate at all and lean back, you’re done for. She was skeptical. She’s athletic and she’d done a lot of skiing and snowboarding. But still, I promised her, dropping in on a skate ramp is different.
The lesson was happening at the Evo Hotel in Salt Lake City. The hotel, in SLC’s warehouse-laden granary district, is industrial to the core, and not just because of all the brick, concrete, and steel used to build it. The real industry here is adventure sports, brought to you by evo, the Seattle-based outdoor outfitters. The Evo Hotel has a skatepark and a massive climbing and bouldering facility. There’s also no fewer than four stores where you can buy or rent any gear you need for those sports and a whole bunch of others common to northern Utah’s gloriously rugged landscape.
There’s a more traditional gym available at the hotel, plus yoga and fitness studio. But it’s the skateboarding and climbing that really make the difference. If you struggle with mustering up the courage to try new athletic activities, a hotel built to motivate you into action could be just the thing you need. Of course, being surrounded by the activities is one thing. More important is a staff filled with kind and supportive instructors who will make you feel at home.
Some sports have a culture that can be intimidating. Skateboarding is one of those sports, and not just for the middle-aged. I first started skating as a ten-year-old back in the late ’80s. It was my favorite thing in the world and, as far as I knew, it was a wholly West Coast endeavor. I lived in New Jersey but I loved vert ramps and the Bones Brigade and wore my hair long and swept over like Tony Hawk and I had hot pink G&S trucks on my Steve Caballero dragon deck. And then the October 1989 issue of Thrasher came out, the iconic NYC issue, filled with gritty photos of lower Manhattan street skaters who looked angry and unconcerned with California dreaming. It was a sign of things to come.
Over the next decade, the focus of skateboarding shifted from half pipes and sunny swimming pools to hand rails, city steps, and 360° flips. The sport came out from behind the laid-back shadow of surfing and was adopted by an urban asphalt aggressiveness; a playful rebelliousness replaced by a stance more ironic and anti-social. At least that’s how I perceived it. The fashions changed. The music changed. You’ve seen Kids. You know what I mean. It was an aesthetic shift that I bought in to but always struggled with. As the years passed, I started losing interest in skating, hastened by the time a teenaged Bam Margera sarcastically barked “nice fucking Pearl Jam shirt” at me during a big session at the Philadelphia underground.
Skateboarding’s cultural transition was partly to blame for my disillusionment, but really, I’d been hitting a wall anyway. There was a certain level of risk I was never able to take on. On half-pipes, in pads, I had courage. On the street, my tricks plateaued; I was good but I didn’t want to go any further, faster, or higher. I liked to tell people that I needed to stay unbroken for baseball and hockey, both of which I played into college. The truth is, I was afraid, and Bam Margera had nothing to do with it.
Which brings us back to the Evo Hotel. As we arranged the skate lessons — and later, time on the climbing wall — the staff at Evo always made us feel totally comfortable and completely welcome. Nate, my wife and daughter’s instructor, went out of his way to help minimize any potential for embarrassment or self-consciousness. Absolutely crucial. They had nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. And speaking of fearlessness, my wife did try dropping in and she did learn that it’s a beast. She slammed hard a couple of times, real hard, but never gave up, and kept trying until she got it. She went further out of her comfort zone than I ever did.
As for the rest of the hotel, there’s a rooftop bar, a café, and plenty of comfy couches and chairs to sit in and work from. The public spaces have a nice buzz of activity, as locals visit throughout the day to use the skatepark and climbing walls and visit the shops. Plus, the whole place is filled with works by local artists, including your room. Next to your door, right under the room number, you’ll even learn who created the pieces inside. A thoughtful touch.
The rooms themselves are somewhat basic in terms of luxuries, placing more emphasis on providing sturdy space for storing your gear. Nonetheless, they’re smartly designed to accommodate different configurations of guests. Some have huge balconies, some have bunk beds, and some have queens that are perpendicular to each other, not parallel. A clever way to offer a bit more privacy. There’s no on-site dining at the moment, but there are great options within walking distance in this burgeoning neighborhood, and the hotel is happy to recommend more. And if skateboarding or climbing don’t do it for you, you can rent skis, snowboards, and bicycles — all just minutes from the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, and all with the guidance of Evo’s amazing staff. The world needs more hotels like this.
Epilogue
If you’ve read this far, you might be interested to know a fun story about how me and that October ’89 issue of Thrasher came full circle 25 years later. When I moved into my current apartment in Brooklyn I found a container of photo negatives tucked away at the back of a high closet shelf. I instantly recognized what they were. Unbelievably, they were the actual negatives from that Thrasher NYC shoot, including the famous cover image and shots of late legend and Kids standout Harold Hunter. Seriously, what are the chances? I got in touch with the man who shot them, trailblazing New York skate photographer Bill Thomas, and was able to hand the negatives back to him and let him know how much those photos impacted me.
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Mark Fedeli is the hotel marketing and editorial director for Tablet and Michelin Guide. He’s been with Tablet since 2006, and he thinks you should subscribe to our newsletter.