9th and 9th Is Where the Grid Relaxes

Salt Lake's grid is relentlessly logical — numbered streets crossing numbered streets with the determination of a city planned by people who valued order above everything. The 9th and 9th neighborhood, where 900 East meets 900 South, is where the grid finally loosens up.

The Coffee Garden has been here since before Salt Lake had a coffee culture. The pour-over is good, the patio is shaded by a tree that might be older than the building, and the crowd is a cross-section: students, parents, retirees, cyclists. Tower Theatre is an Art Deco cinema doing independent and foreign films with the curatorial care of a festival. The neon marquee is the block's heartbeat.

The surrounding blocks are bungalows and Tudor-revival cottages with gardens that produce roses and lilacs that seem slightly miraculous in a desert climate. The Wasatch Mountains rise at the end of every cross street like a stone wall the city decided to treat as a backdrop rather than a problem. Walk two blocks east to Liberty Park — the Sunday farmers market sells the best stone fruit in the Intermountain West, because Utah's climate turns out to be perfect for peaches.