Evanston is an interesting case study because this place has been largely overlooked by the elites gobbling up land everywhere else. “Why can we launch rockets that could cause fires in Evanston, but we can’t do that in Salt Lake?” one kid asked his dad. “Because nobody gives a crap if Evanston burns down,” was the reply.

Still, housing is not cheap here, but a few years ago I discovered Evanston had an interesting Main Street, mostly due to its brew pub so I stopped for a beer. 

For Pete’s Sake Coffee

“Fireworks, Firewater and Fornication is what you get here,” said Pete Bass, proprietor of For Pete’s Sake Coffee, smiling through his long, white beard and mustache. Pete has the relaxed attitude and demeanor of a hippy, and his coffee shop epitomizes what Starbucks set out to create (until they sold their soul to Wall Street). A “third place.” 

Pete tells me he is a former addict and dope dealer. “[Dope dealing] is how I got my entrepreneurial spirit,” he says with a chuckle. Pete served 11.4 years in prison for dealing dope, but like Daniel in the Bible, Pete says he “purposed in his heart” that he would never use dope again. “I have no desire to do dope anymore. None at all.” Pete is a pastor and he helps recovering addicts become recovered addicts.

Pete’s low-key, unassuming, charming demeanor is not unlike the other contradictions that make Evanston a fascinating place. Evanston is a sleepy railroad town, but around Main Street there are signs of new vitality and energy. Residents here love their noisy UTVs and powersports and high-flying fireworks, but there is also the Bear River Nature Preserve nearby, with several white buffalo and a riverwalk that feels nice and cool on this hot summer day. 

Pete is a hippie, but he’s a conservative and is part of a group of freedom fighters working to lower property taxes, which he says have risen by three times in the past five years. Nobody fits inside of a box here. People here are cowboyish, but in a progressive way. 

I wait for Pete at a table as he trains a new employee: a fifteen-year old boy, in his first job. “He’s nervous.” He had to learn how to make dozens of drinks. I could see Pete’s calm patience in showing the boy the steps. 

The old-timers were gathered at the table next to me, sharing stories and laughing. Ladies, young and old were at another large table. I was told to visit For Pete’s Sake Coffee by the ladies operating the flower shop up the street. I’ll return to Pete’s after I rant about the loss and demise of most Main Streets around Utah.

Flourishing Evanston Main Street

Flourishing Main Streets only last for a few years in the US (and maybe everywhere). A flourishing Main Street is a natural “opportunity zone” where government leaders and real estate speculators have not yet secured their niche by creating excessive taxes, regulations and rents. 

Instead, business owners on authentic Main Street’s have the opportunity for a low-barrier to enter into the market. Old buildings offer lower rents, making it easier for small business owners to meet capital requirements and create places for aspiring entrepreneurs to incubate their ideas and have time to adapt as needed. 

These zones are becoming more scarce because so many real estate speculators like to buy cheap real estate en masse and redevelop it and rent it to the highest-bidding corporate franchise. Not so on flourishing Main Streets like this one, where historic buildings are preserved. Here, there is a hodgepodge of people who are not pawns in a scheme to maximize the flow of capital out of the pockets of the poor into the hands of the wealthy. We need these less optimized old streets that are walkable, because here we can see and meet those who are not just like we are. We need a community to get us out of our isolation bubbles and to get kids away from screens and into the real world.

Why do we need community? Why do we need to meet others unlike ourselves? I think the presidential debate stage last week showed us why. In isolation we become hyperbolically tribal; we learn to hate those who are unlike us. Now we have not only red states and blue states, but red cities and blue cities. An authentic Main Street with genuine gathering areas couldn’t care less whether someone is red or blue, but care more about creating something that rises above tribe, creed, religion and politics. It’s a place for making business and creating community. Okay, now that my rant is over, let’s meet the business owners. 

I start at the top of the street at Iron and Ivory or The Green Horn. Inside I find Squish Lamb, who has gone by Squish since she was baby. The eleven-year-old girl is crafting a necklace beside Hannah Cook who is making a flower arrangement. Amber Lamb later enters and tells me how her business has grown. 

“We started as a home decor shop seven years ago, then we moved down here. This is just the best location!” Lamb tells me that Main Street on the lower side gets less attention than the top of the street, but there are still lots of people walking around and coming into her store. “Last year there were lots of vacancies down here, now it is getting much better.” Lamb says she gets a lot of business doing funerals and weddings from Kamas, Utah, and her business just keeps getting busier. 

I walk into the business next door called CDW & Co. Inside, I find Tinisha Day, who appears to have enough energy to climb Mount Everest while crocheting a sweater. As owner and proprietor, Day is raising four kids in Evanston. Her oldest is now attending Weber State. Her twins are going into second grade next year. “I’m so happy to be here on Main Street!” she says with a smile. Her shop offers custom t-shirts, jerseys for local area school sports teams, and custom laser signs, as well as chic, sparkly cowboy shirts. She informs me that she operated her business for five years out of her garage and traveled to farmers markets and craft shows before she settled on Main Street. “My husband wanted his garage back,” she says with a smile.

Day recommends for me the best local places I should visit besides those already on my list – Rustic Sage, Jalisco (good Mexican food), For Pete’s Sake Coffee and Jodi’s Diner. She tells me the Evanston Farmers Market begins Thursday evenings starting July 20th, where she does a mobile charcuterie and live bands perform. 

I head to The Bakery where I find an immaculately remodeled space full of young ladies ready to serve amazing-looking pastries, fresh sourdough bread and fresh-made sandwiches and avocado toast. The owner, Marijke Rossi, comes out in her baking attire, sits down and tells me her story. 

“We decided to take our money out of Wall Street and invest in Main Street,” she said. They bought the building they are in on Main Street, which was a former deli. For a few years, Marijke and her husband Alex were attempting to grow vegetables to sell at the farmers market. “We are so high in elevation where we live, we just couldn’t get enough produce, so my husband started experimenting with sourdough bread.”

 Made from all-natural flour and with a sourdough starter that takes four days to process, their bread appears artisan-crafted. She said they sold out their bread at every farmers market, so they decided they had something that could carry their business. 

The Bakery also offers many gluten-free options and daily specials including jalapeno cheese bread, and some days they make pizzas. Rossi tells me she has partnered with a lady who attended the Park City Culinary Institute where she learned how to make pastries. I just wish I lived here so I could try their entire menu.

Next, I go directly next door to the Pie Hole where Lisa and Tim are working beside their daughter Kayla and their son-in-law Cameron who are preparing for the lunch rush. The Pie Hole is packed for their inexpensive and delicious panini sandwiches and their chicken and beef pot pies. 

“We are sold out of chicken,” says Cameron. All of their pies are fresh-made from scratch. After the lunch rush, Tim tells me, “This was always my dream.” Tim was a mechanic for years until he saw his brother open a pie shop in Saint George. After working with him, he decided to open his own with his wife Lisa. “We did all of the renovations to this space ourselves, and it took about two years to grow the business, until it just started booming,” he tells me. After the lunch rush, all the fresh fruit pies have sold out and there are only cream pies left. I take home a lemon cream. 

Tim and I talk about Marie Callender’s rise and fall. At some point they stopped making their pies fresh. When I worked there, nearly every pie came into their restaurant as a frozen block. “When my brother worked there he learned how to make them fresh.”

 Marie Callender’s, corporate headquarters, likely after it was bought out by a corporate hedge fund, learned fresh-made pies made little sense from an economic perspective. But bringing it back has made an amazing family business for Tim and Lisa Lloyd and daughter Kayla and Cameron Jones (pictured here). 

I walk into another interesting shop that offers tattoos and rocks. That is, it’s a rock shop, but if you need a tattoo, it looks like they can do a pretty good job of that, too. 

Suds Brothers brewery looks like a decent watering hole, but it needs a makeover. The Evanston Beer Festival happens in July. It  attracts throngs of people, mostly from Utah for the beer and a car show on the street.

There is an historic museum and the old “Round House” which I didn’t get a chance to see. But as I walk down, I can see the street has lots of people making their way up and down. It’s a fun place to walk. A massive railroad mural adorns the corner of 10th Street and Main; flowers hang from lamp posts. It appears a lot of people care about this place. 

Next, on the corner of 9th Street and Main, I meander into For Pete’s Sake Coffee Shop. Pete, the man I mentioned earlier in the story, who started his business here in 2018, tells me how he trains his young staff. He says, “It’s great to get some youngsters. I always tell them before I hire them, ’I don’t pay squat and I’ll work you like a dog.’ That way, if they start complaining, I can tell them, ‘see I told you I’d work you like a dog!’” But Pete says he enjoys working with young people and he greatly enjoys his staff, as well as his new partners in the building; an ice cream shop that now covers half of the rent.

I told Pete I’m writing about the revitalization of Evanston’s Main Street and how it appears to be making a comeback from the demise of Main Streets I witnessed in the mid-nineties due to the rise of big boxes. Pete tells me he worked at Walmart for four years. “It lost its soul after Sam Walton died,” he opined.

Evanston Revival

Regarding Evanston’s revival, he says, “Yea, I guess it is doing better every year.” Pete said when he started in 2018, there were basically banks, insurance agents and a couple of restaurants. “Nobody is going to go downtown that just has banks and stuff … This place was a bookstore and antique shop and it went up for sale. I wanted to buy it, but I wanted to get rid of the books and the antiques and open up a coffee shop, so that’s basically what I did.” 

Pete’s high-ceilinged building was likely built before the turn of the twentieth century, like all of the old buildings here. Evanston’s population remained steady and somewhat stagnant, like most railroad towns, but in the 1980s their population doubled in just a few years when an oil rig was opened up and brought with it hundreds of jobs. 

The town’s original founding occurred when the Transcontinental Railroad was constructed. Nearby timber could be exploited for fuel and building materials. There was also a coal mine nearby. But on the trip east on I-80, the Union Pacific rail line is the most prominent feature of the landscape. The somewhat smooth rolling hills outside of Coalville, Utah make for a nice drive. 

Pete tells me I need to visit the Bear River State Park where they have two young white buffalo. The buffalo are there and two calves are nursing when I arrive. Nearby there is a nice, long pathway along the river. 

This place, where I seldom spent any time, is just 40 minutes from Park City and about 90 minutes from Salt Lake. I think we Salt Lakers get stuck on I-15, believing that everything cool is along that corridor. I highly recommend taking I-80 east and coming here for a day trip; or, come for the fireworks and liquor, stay for the charming Main Street.

Feature Image: Bear River National Park and River in Evanston, Wyoming. All photos by Richard Markosian.