Growing Pain
Arcata’s sidelined Creek Side project, a case study in the complicated politics of development
Cover Story
Growing Pain
When it comes to community planning and growth, we here on the North Coast are a wary lot. Go to any planning commission meeting and you’re almost guaranteed to hear someone fret about preserving our county’s unique character and quality of life. In fact, that very phrase appears as a guiding principle in the current…
Yet Another Pot Home Invasion
That’s what it looks like so far, according to the news release from Humboldt County Sheriff’s Lieutenant George Cavinta. This time in Garberville. A man, Chris Collins, 56, bloodied by blunt-force trauma to the head, likely by a couple of louts driving a green Chevy truck who barged into his trailer home, likely going after…
WaPo on Humboldt Weed
WaPo on Humboldt Weed: The Washington Post credits mom ‘n’ pop Humboldt County with achieving something the federal government cannot — taking a bite out of the Mexican drug cartels! The article features a brief interview with a Mexican man who claims to have recently grown and harvested 800 Humboldt County plants for some sort…
Buju Banton show cancelled (update)
The following was sent to Queer Humboldt on Monday by Carol Bruno, confirming the cancellation: Greetings, This email is to confirm that after lengthy consideration, Gil and myself decided that we will cancel the upcoming Buju Banton concert at the Nocturnum Nightclub scheduled for the October 11th, 2009. We have been diligently speaking with the…
A Note From Our Sponsors
Guest post from AJ , friend o’ the Blogthing : I saw this display at the Humboldt Sponsors rummage sale at Redwood Acres today. My daughter asked me, “Papa, why do those panties have a hole in them?” The only thing worse than being asked that question is having women watch you take pictures of…
Poem Store at Pastels
I first met Jacqueline Suskin this summer at the Farmers’ Market in Portland where she was selling custom poems near rhe entrance. She’s since relocated to Arcata and was set up on Saturday during the combined Pastels on the Plaza and Arcata Farmers’ Market.
A Mile High
Denver’s gone bonkers for the blunts, according to the city’s best newspaper — which happens to be looking for a pot dispensary reviewer: Here in Colorado, the medical-marijuana industry has been growing like crazy, and while some dispensaries resemble swanky bars or sterile dentist offices, others feel like a dope dealer’s college dorm room. To…
KEET’s Redwood Park doc on KHUM
KEET-TV’s Claire Reynolds paid a visit to KHUM this morning with a couple of the “redwood warriors” featured in KEET’s new documentary, Redwood National Park: Preserving Ancient Forests. Here’s a portion of the interview:
Trinidad Murder Suspect In The House
From the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office comes this: The suspect in the September murder of Trinidad resident William John Lundy has been extradited from Kansas and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility (HCCF). Donny Ray Best, 52 of Tellico Plains, TN, was transported to the HCCF early this afternoon and booked for murder, vehicle…
Nephew of Ferndale Mayor Busted
From the office of the Humboldt County Drug Task Force comes news that Jason and Sara Farley of Ferndale were busted on suspicion of illegal marijuana cultivation yesterday. Jason Farley is the nephew of Ferndale Mayor Jeff Farley. Press release: On 10-01-2009 at 1310 hours the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office assisted by the Humboldt County…
Poets, Painters and Photographers
It began with the notion of auctioning off a poem. A friend had asked poet/filmmaker Anthony Lucero if he might contribute one of his poems for a benefit auction she was putting together. "I told her you can’t really do that," said Lucero over lunch at his Arcata bungalow. He figured that only works by…
Fear Factor
Seasons pass like the fog creeps across the landscape here — summer to autumn, baseball to football, sown seeds to bountiful harvests. So it is with marijuana in places like Humboldt County, where isolation and optimal weather create a breeding ground for vast commercial (and illegal) grow operations. And as the loud booming swooshes of…
Fame Redux
Previews Opening Friday, Oct. 2, is Michael Moore’s latest satiric documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, this time dealing with the current economic crisis. Moore says it’s a crime story, a class warfare story and a comedy. Rated R for some language. 120m. At Broadway and Minor. Drew Barrymore’s directing debut, Whip It, features Ellen Page…
The Vax Vandals
Some time between 6 o’clock Sunday night and early Monday morning, somebody journeyed between Willow Creek and Burnt Ranch spraying blood-red opposition to vaccinations on schools, medical clinics, sidewalks and the K-rails — concrete barriers — lining Highway 299. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department was still investigating, said Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Brenda Godsey on Monday…
Good Sound
Once upon a time EOTO was an acronym. "It used to stand for End of Time Observatory," explained the duo’s drummer/beat manipulator Jason Hann calling from his Venice Beach home. "It just got to be too much to explain in interviews — people thought we were talking about something negative like the end of the…
Three If By Segway
Editor: In your Sept. 24 article on Segways at the Arcata Marsh, Jon O’Connor of North Coast Adventure Centers (NCAC) stated, "I wish they’d talk to me," about those objecting to his planned Segway tours. Funny, that’s the same sentiment that Friends of the Arcata Marsh (FOAM) Board members — of which I am President…
Second Wind
Editor: I’m encouraged! After reading Alan Sanborn’s cogent and incisive argument for health care reform we can believe in (Sept. 17), I began to recuperate from my "Will we have a public option?"-induced miasma. Alan gave me hope we could keep alive the movement toward single-payer health care. Now I’m sure we can! With the…
L’affaire Doran
Editor: In your business credibility is everything, for without it, no one would believe anything you print. Considering the tenure of Bob Doran, and the obvious experience gained due to his tenure, I believe that I and other readers of the Journal are due an explanation from the offender himself. (See “To Our Readers, An…
The Pain That Follows
I hear your voice And remember the birth,…
CPR for Rivers?
Editor: I have always liked Estelle Fennell and admired her work as a journalist, but I can’t let her letter to the editor of Sept. 3 stand as the last word. She wrote in response to Richard Engel’s North Coast Journal letter of Aug. 20: "… our river ecosystems are in fact dying of a…
Backspacer
After 2006’s self-titled album reestablished them as a rock band to be reckoned with, the hoopla over Pearl Jam’s current release, Backspacer, has felt more like a pop culturally relevant event than anything they’ve done since the mid-’90s. Eddie Vedder and company had the honor of being the inaugural musical guest on Conan O’Brian’s Tonight…
Clarification
Miscommunication between reporter and source led to an inaccurate characterization of one business’s attitudes toward the Bayshore Mall’s Calvary Chapel Church in last week’s cover story ("Mall Town," Sept. 24). As it turns out, the person Heidi Walters interviewed at Gianni For Men about the church was not a "co-owner" of the store, as he…
Roman Numerals
C-bill. World War I. Pope Benedict XVI. Super Bowl XLIII. Final Fantasy II. Although we normally use so-called Arabic numerals, their Roman counterparts are far from dead. In addition to the above examples, they’re used to date movies; to identify book volumes such as encyclopedias; to mark off the front matter in books from the…
Arts Alive!
1. F ST. CAFÉ 1630 F St. Bill Pierson, Italian Landscape. 1a. WORLD CUP 1626 F St. Berti, black and white photographs; Robert Daugherty, black and white photographs, 1973 NYC Tranny Ball. 1b. ST. INNOCENT ORTHODOX CHURCH 939 F St. Sara Marina. 2. THE INK PEOPLE CENTER FOR THE ARTS 411 12th St. 25th Maskibition.…
All of My Friends Are Funeral Singers
Califone frontman Tim Rutili has been busy since the band’s 2006 release, Roots & Crowns. Recently involved with a brief summer reunion of his previous band, Red Red Meat (in conjunction with the Sub Pop reissue of their seminal Bunny Gets Paid, which was reviewed here earlier this year), Rutili has also simultaneously directed an…
They Came for My Compost
There’s a great Penn & Teller segment about recycling that ran on their "Bullshit!" series on Showtime a few years ago. (If you were reading this on the magical digital paper of the future, this video clip would materialize right about now and you’d watch it without getting out of your chair. As it is,…
Crumple the Paper
Just about this time last year, local financier Rob Arkley was negotiating with media mogul Dean Singleton to kill his 5-year-old Eureka Reporter. Arkley shut its doors Nov. 6 and Singleton folded the ER’s editorial page into his Times-Standard. I thought about that when I read that San Francisco financier Warren Hellman will invest $5…
