The Salt Lake Tribune reports on Utah's strange gangsta scene, April 29, 1998:

Two college students who were smoking cigarettes on a Salt Lake City street Saturday were confronted by a gang of twenty bleach-haired teenagers wielding chains, bricks, and a giant spray can of pepper gas. A violent gang called Straight Edge is being blamed for the brawl that took place in front of The Pie restaurant, which put one University of Utah student in the hospital after he was beaten on the head with a baseball bat.

The fists started flying at about 1:15 A.M., when some members of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity were leaving The Pie after a night of drinking beer.

A pair of Straight Edgers reportedly confronted two fraternity members and told them to put out their cigarettes. After an exchange of words, a gang member purportedly threw a large metal bolt at the fraternity members.

Witnesses said the Straight Edgers went back to their cars as if to leave, but came running back with bats, chains, a hatchet, and other fearsome weaponry in their hands.

Straight Edgers blend the punk-rock style of the early 1980s with militant health standards. They do not drink, smoke, or take drugs, and some are known to enforce their moral standards on strangers by beating them severely. Some vegetarian members of the group have been responsible for firebombing leather stores, vandalizing egg trucks, and torching a West Jordan McDonald's restaurant, said Sergeant Chuck Gilbert of the Salt Lake City Police Department's gang unit.

It is not uncommon behavior for them to cruise around looking for cigarette smokers or beer drinkers to harass, he added. "They'll get four or five of them in a car to look for someone smoking cigarettes and then they'll beat the tar out of them."

Last year, a gravel pit in Kearns was the site of two mass battles between Straight Edgers and a rival group who, in open defiance of the Straight Edge ethos, called themselves "Smoke More Pot."

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