on the cover / By Hank Sims

Top Ten Stories of 2007

Year of the Shuffle

(Dec. 20, 2007)  Rails, trails, bankruptcy and dope. It was a topsy-turvy year in Humboldt County — a wierd, shook-up year now spilling its contents into the next.

The politically active portion of the community is still divided along lines that were drawn almost 40 years ago, when the first hippies started showing up in Arcata and Eureka and Garberville. The age-old struggle for power between the two creaky old battalions, each of which grows more tedious by the year, hasn’t really gone away. In 2007, though, the lines got blurry.

GALLERY >

More and more people seemed able to shake free of the tribal impulse that finally overwhelmed Humboldt County politics with the Maxxam-sponsored recall attempt against District Attorney Paul Gallegos in 2004. They didn’t instantly run to the barricades to defend themselves against the imaginary monsters that were said to populate the other side of the aisle; they put thought into the future, and the conclusions they reached were not predictable. Strange bedfellows were everywhere. It helped that it was an off year for elections (with one important exception). But the key thing is that the ground everywhere seemed to shift beneath the feet. Players that once moved mountains suddenly evaporated overnight. Brand new issues sprang to the fore. Allies turned upon each other, perhaps because they had nothing better to do. People representing interests once thought irreconcilable sat down at the table.

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The county hasn’t reached that third stage; it’s not quite ready to move on to the next new thing. But the items we place in the time capsule this year are cracks in the wall. If you’re eager for progress, if you’re weary of the same old debates between the same old people, if you hope that Humboldt County’s children will have better things to do than reenact their parents’ fights and prejudices, then this year you should have plenty of reasons to celebrate.

1. Bankrupt

It was both tragedy and farce, and it recast 20 years of Humboldt County history.

No one can yet be certain whether Houston’s Charles Hurwitz and his Maxxam Corp. — the central figure in the area’s politics for the last two decades — have permanently exited from the stage. Key judicial decisions have yet to be rendered, and though things are looking pretty grim for Hurwitz right now the crafty son-of-a-bitch may yet have cards up his sleeve. If he does lose, though, there are very, very few people who will be sorry to see the back side of him. That’s the thing that changed.

The Pacific Lumber Company, a 150-year-old institution that Hurwitz acquired in 1986, declared bankruptcy in January. The ‘80s-era business model he had pursued throughout his ownership of Pacific Lumber — draining the company of equity while simultaneously loading it with debt — finally had its inevitable consequence. No one was surprised: The company had been attempting to wholesale property for a couple of years in an attempt to meet its mortgage. But the bitterly satirical, fraud-filled manner in which the bankruptcy played itself out left many stunned, even considering that it was Hurwitz who invented it.

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