The Voice of Local Utah

Utah Stories

At Look Back at Cosmic Aeroplane

Cosmic Aeroplane changed the face of Salt Lake City during its “heady” run.

by

Connie Lewis

|

366_cosmic150by640a
Photos courtesy of cosmicaeroplane.wordpress.com

When Steve Jones and his partner, Sherm Clow, opened Cosmic Aeroplane in 1967 they brought Salt  Lake its first adyad shop. “Salt Lake needed a place where you could get cigarette papers and things like the Berkeley Barb the L.A. Free Press and other underground newspapers,” Jones said.

Steve moved to Salt Lake City from New York City in the 1950s when he was 13. Bit of a culture shock to say the least. Opening Cosmic helped him feel more at home and those seeking to tie into the growing counterculture movement found a home there as well.

The first incarnation of Cosmic was on 817 E 9th South – 9th and 9th. The store was performing reasonably well, but when the landlord died and his sisters took over Jones and Clow received an eviction notice. The sisters  were not thrilled with a recent obscenity case the store was involved in concerning a poster with a Kama Sutra theme among other things. They ultimately lost the case. It was time to find a new landing zone.

00st_outside_west01
Steve Jones outside Cosmic Aeroplane on South Temple

They chose a space near the Union Pacific Train Station. It was a radical move in 1969 to locate on the crime-ridden west side. As Jones says, “No one knew the west side existed.” It was a great space with a storefront area and a garage space in the back that they converted to a performance venue. It was a bare bones operation with no stage, no curtain and folding chairs, but attracted some memorable acts.

The Smoke Blues Band practiced and performed there. The Human Ensemble, which later became Salt Lake Acting Company, staged plays there. Juda Youngstrom directed the first two plays and went on to become the first artistic director. Some great artistic handbills were created for each production on 8 ½ X 11 paper. So many have been lost over the years. It was the start of a proud graphic history associated with the Human Ensemble.

The floors, windows and ceiling were  covered with Richard Taylor artwork. An in-store underground newspaper, the Electric News, started to circulate.

Good things started to happen on the west side and businesses started to move in and the landscape changed. Mike O’Leary opened the Railroad Exchange Club on the corner. It was one of the first places in Salt Lake where all kinds of people felt comfortable. Steve said, “Gay, straight, black, white, whatever. It was a total mix”

But commercial success still proved elusive for Cosmic and so the owners moved again in 1974,  this time to 366 South West Temple. It was a smaller space, but business immediately went up.

After a couple of years Jones, with the encouragement of new partners Bruce Roberts and Ken Sanders, opened at Cosmic’s final stop on 258 E. 1st South.Bruce had talked to Steve for several years about opening a bigger places. When his parents died and he came into some money he offered to become a partner. Ken Sanders was a part of Cosmic before going on to open his own book store, Ken Sanders Rare Books.258_with_logo

Almost immediately they started printing Cosmic Aeroplane calendars with art work from local artists. The most iconic print features “The Cosmic Lady”.

Artist Neil Passey did the original painting for a pyramid power religious group called Summum led by Claude R. Knowell also known as Corky Ra. Steve said  that Knowell started the religion for two reasons. “He could write off his house and property on his taxes and he could make homemade wine for religious purposes,” Steve explained.

After a falling out with Knowell, Passey gave the painting to Sanders. Passey modified it by giving the cosmic lady some hair and changing the pyramid in the background to a Greek temple. The Cosmic Lady was featured on their second calendar.

They printed around 10,000 calendars each year. Some of the calendars featured original artwork, but they also had calendars with nature and historical photos.

island_500aCosmic was a store with everything: books, comics, records, jewelry, head shop paraphernalia. But eventually they had to compete with stores that specialized in one thing. A store that did many things gave way to comic book stores,  jewelry shops, bookstores, Blue Boutique and the advent  big box stores. CDs led to the decline of traditional record stores.“The energy went away and it just dwindled.”

Eventually Steve moved on to other things and Ken was bought out in 1981, leaving Bruce to run it alone until it finally closed down in 1991. “It was the sort of thing that wouldn’t last forever, but it was great while it worked,” Steve said.

To view some of the art and history associated with Cosmic Aeroplane, Michael Evans has put together a historical tribute at cosmicaeroplane.wordpress.com/  

or visit Charley Hafen’s site: www.saltlakeconcertposters.com/

Story by Connie Lewis

, , , , ,

Connie Lewis

Connie has been with Utah Stories since 2013, and has enjoyed learning everything involved in producing a monthly magazine. In addition to writing, Connie performs administrative tasks, coordinates writers, photographers and editors, and oversees a million little details. Her least favorite word is ‘deadline.’ A journalism class at the University of Utah sparked Connie’s love of writing. Finding it hard to narrow her interests to just one major, journalism allowed her to explore a wide variety of topics and disciplines. When she is not writing, Connie loves spending time with her family and traveling with her dogs. “It has been a pleasure learning new things about the state I was born in and meeting the people who make Utah great,” she says. Connie plans to continue her love of learning and improving as the magazine moves onward and upward.

Join our newsletter.
Stay informed.

Join Utah Stories Newsletter

  • Utah Stories

    Highway 6 and the Midland Trail: Utah’s Transcontinental Highway History

    From Price Canyon to Delta’s desert stretch, Utah played a central role in building the Midland Trail, one of America’s earliest transcontinental highways and the foundation of today’s Highway 6.


  • Utah Stories

    Utah Acquires US Magnesium Assets in $30M Deal to Protect the Great Salt Lake

    Utah leaders announced the state has successfully won the bid to acquire key assets of the defunct US Magnesium facility on the Great Salt Lake, including its associated water rights and property.


  • Podcast

    Whiskey, Bullets & a Buried Town: Archaeologists Reveal Alta’s Wild Past

    Before Alta was known for powder days and lift lines, it was a silver mining town clinging to the side of a narrow canyon. In the late 1800s, men lived at 8,000 feet, went underground each day, and endured winters that regularly buried buildings in snow. This past summer, that mining town resurfaced — literally — during construction at the Alta Ski Area.

    To understand what Alta really looked like, you don’t begin with legend. You begin with its trash — and this time, that happened almost by accident.

    Alta Ski Area was installing underground water reservoirs to support snowmaking. Because the project sits on Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest land, an archaeologist was required to monitor the excavation. No one expected the trench to produce much.

    But, It did.

    Artifacts began surfacing almost immediately. Enough that the Forest Service contacted the Utah State Historic Preservation Office for help. Lexi Little, who coordinates the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program, helped mobilize nearly 30 volunteers to assist with what quickly became a focused two-week excavation.

    Winter deadlines were approaching. The pipes for the reservoirs had to go in the ground. There wasn’t time for a slow, extended dig.

    “It was two weeks of digging in the dirt and helping figure out exactly what we were looking at,” Little said.

    Most of the people screening soil weren’t professional archaeologists. They were trained stewards from around Utah — part of a statewide volunteer network that now approaches 500 people. They poured dirt through shaker screens, scanning for fragments that could piece together a town long buried.

    “Archaeology is human trash,” Little explained. “Archaeologists are very into trash.”

    Alta had left plenty behind.

    https://youtu.be/hzIHzx3OGoo?si=dKcl2CEz-t6FZzYw

    Victorian-style ceramics appeared first — the kind typically used in hotels. Medicine bottles followed. Ink bottles. Hand-blown glass. A porcelain doll’s foot surfaced from the soil, a small detail that shifted the mental image of the town. Families were here. Children were here. This wasn’t only a camp of miners.

    The bottles helped establish time. Manufacturing details — whether glass was hand-blown or mold-made, whether a maker’s mark appeared on the base — allowed archaeologists to date many of the artifacts to the 1870s through the 1890s, when Alta was booming as a silver mining town.

    “That gives you that range of dates for when Alta was really booming,” Little said.

    One reusable soda bottle clearly stamped “Salt Lake City” connected the canyon to the valley economy below.

    Then something unusual rolled out of a dirt pile.

    A corked bottle. Intact. Liquid still inside.

    To access this post, you must purchase Utah Stories (Digital + Print) or 3 month free trial (Digital).


  • Podcast

    The Only Full Bottle of Alcohol Ever Found in Utah Was Unearthed in Alta

    When a backhoe rolled a corked bottle out of the dirt at Alta this summer, no one immediately grasped what they were holding. It wasn’t empty. It wasn’t shattered. It was full. “The bottle that was discovered up at Alta is the only bottle of alcohol ever discovered in an archaeological excavation in the state…