I’m not a hipster
But you might be.

On a roadtrip West this summer, we traveled from Moab, Utah, the Gateway to Arches National Park, to Brigham City, Utah, Gateway to the World’s Greatest Wild Bird Refuge. Not the biggest or oldest — just the greatest.

Brigham is a town of 17,000 and shows signs of what looks like the crisis on every corner. Across from our hotel, Donna’s restaurant is closed with a sign that proclaims “Rent for Cheap.” Main Street has nearly more empty buildings than occupied ones. At 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, only Domino’s and a copy shop were open. If you enter past the cracked plexiglass windows, you’ll find the copy shop runs without employees, instead using a payment slot on the back wall next to a sign that says thefts have been on the rise, so smile, you’re on camera. One corner is crowded with ancient copier machines, a graveyard of sorts.

Across the street, another copy shop, although this one sells copiers you can buy too. The downtown only lasts a few blocks, but in the orange sunset, the red brick buildings glow, and the moutains that frame the city to the east bask warmly in the last rays.