on the cover / By Heidi Walters

Who’s Your City?

The third guy, Jay Laughton, says he’s a traveler, not a transient. “I’m here because my 5-year-old daughter lives here,” he says. He gets up, says, “I’m going to go see if that guy has a cigarette,” and walks into the busy plaza. When he comes back a few minutes later, he’s laughing. “I asked him if he had been to Hawaii, because he’s wearing a shirt from there. He said, ‘Yeah.’ Then I asked him for a cigarette, and he said, ‘I’m just a tourist.’”

Laughton says he’s been living outside for 15 years — half his life, in fact, ever since he left a childhood home inhabited by drug-addicted, abusive parents. “I don’t use drugs,” he says. “I do like beer.”

Meanwhile, the other two have disappeared together into the men’s bathroom. They’re in there a long time. Laughton says, “I really like Arcata, myself. But it’s gotten kind of violent. Up in Redwood Park, the pirate crew — they like to fight. It’s whoever goes down first. See who’s toughest. And down at the [Arcata] plaza I’ve heard it’s gotten pretty crazy towards nighttime. Eureka — I feel pretty much safe here. At night I go stash myself way in the tall bushes. And I feel that the tourists are more kind in Eureka than in Arcata. I think that’s because there’s so many kids panhandling there, and they’re more aggressive.”

The Shanty, Old Town Eureka, 4 p.m. Clint Capehart takes his pint of Steelhead from the fanciful dark interior of the bar — red chandeliers and tin stars sparkle from the ceiling — outside to the patio. He’s been in the army the past decade, and is now finishing up a forestry degree at Humboldt State. He’s lived in Eureka a year.

“Actually, I tried to find a house in Arcata, but I couldn’t,” he says. “I lived in my car a month, looking for a place. I did not want to live in Eureka because it looked like Tweakerville.”

But he likes Eureka, after all. “I think I like the ‘scene’ better here,” he says. “I’m 31, and there’s a little more of an older crowd here, a little more mature. I mean, I definitely live across the street from some drama, but…. It’s easier to make friends here. After the army, I grew a beard. Then I shaved it — I went home, and my family was weirded out because I had a beard. After I shaved it, though, in Arcata people treated me differently. Maybe I didn’t look as ‘down.’”

Inside, Chris Colland, drummer for the band Eureka Garbage Co., has settled in at the bar with some books, including a David Bowie one, and a vodka cranberry tonic. “That’s funny, just yesterday we were talking about this, about Eureka and Arcata, because of the music scene,” he says. “There’s always been a mock rivalry between Arcata and Eureka, since the early ’90s at least.”

He says he and his friends would start up bands just to mock Arcata bands.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT PAGE >SHARE