Wiley Cope

The Metro Music Hall is sandwiched between a local community arts venue and The SunTrapp, which claims to be the oldest openly gay bar in Utah. The neighborhood is layered with colorful graffiti—a welcome sight in the often too-neat-and-tidy Beehive State.

As the opening seconds of September trickled into minutes, LCRW’s editor sat cross-legged against a granite pillar in the 62-degree Provo night. Across from them was a 27-year-old in a chocolate-chip camo winter coat, aviator-style eyeglasses, and a sleeping bag. His name is Mitchell Manley Jr. and he said he worked for Turning Point USA for a decade.

“If you search the Wayback Machine,” touring drummer Davey Dodge wrote in a Reddit post defending his band, “you’ll find no archived evidence that these tweets ever existed.” “If you meat-headed, green-haired bitches would get your dicks out of your moms’ assholes, you could also find the time to do the same,” Dodge taunted. His band is The SoapGirls, a South African rock duo who, weeks earlier, had been booked into punk clubs from Newark to Minneapolis.