Humboldt: The Brand
Inside the county’s new Facebookin’, YouTubin’ strategy to market itself.
Cover Story
Humboldt: The Brand
Eureka, California is the city where I’m from but if you ask me what I’m reppin’ then I’ll tell you The Hum.– Never Die, Humboldt County hip-hop duo The poster announces a “Red Carpet World Premiere.” Love, Humboldt short films, it says, Saturday night at the Arcata Theatre Lounge. A comely redhead in lace…
Another Candidate Joins Assessor Race
Professional real estate appraiser Jon Brooks will formally announce his candidacy for Humboldt County Assessor next Monday, Feb. 22 at 5:30 p.m. at the Hotel Arcata, according to a release sent to the Journal . In vying for the surprisingly competitive position, Brooks will be challenging Assistant Assessor Mari Wilson and former Second District County…
Hooker Booker on JPR
extraordinaire? Journal Table Talk columnist Jada Brotman discusses one of her former jobs on today’s edition of The Story, a syndicated radio show broadcast on local JPR affiliate KZPN today at 3 p.m. Jada’s segment is a little more than half way through the program following a piece on Olympic athlete Katie Uhlaender. Jada talks…
Durant to Leave T-S, Launch New Mag
Chris Durant, longtime Times-Standard reporter/onetime ” Fat Guy “/all-time eathquake juker , has informed the Journal (in a World Exlusive!) that he will soon leave the trusty daily to create a “scene zine with a tongue-in-cheek view on local issues.” (Disclosure: I used to work with him at the T-S.) Savage Henry — named after…
Pistol Quips
Editor: Regarding the letter from Emily Hobelmann (“Mailbox,” Feb. 4): I’m always amused when someone thinks that violence will cease when guns are outlawed, as if guns were the problem. Saying guns kill people is the same as saying pencils misspell words. Bill Connors, Eureka Editor: Emily Hobelmann was understandably upset about her friend Courtney…
The Sound of Green
Whimsical pagodas, surreal temples, and bridges to nowhere inhabit the fantastical world of Las Pozas, an 80-acre garden about seven hours north of Mexico City. Although the structures look like they were designed by a committee jointly headed by M.C. Escher and Lewis Carroll, they were in fact the brainchildren of an eccentric Englishman, Sir…
Dissent is Good
Editor: Your reporter’s account of the Mendocino MLPA community meeting made it sound like a failure (“Mendo Muddle,” Jan. 28). Why, because there wasn’t consensus? This is Northern California, this is 21st century America and this is a very important issue. Consensus would be a miracle. For the past few months, we’ve all been on…
Shake and Quake
Tragedy, comedy, musical, historical-pastoral and all possible combinations crowd the stage, but one old standby — the thriller, the suspense drama — has mostly been ceded to movies and television, which have more ways to scare people. That’s the conundrum faced by Ferndale Rep in presenting the thriller Wait Until Dark, opening this Thursday (Feb.…
Auf’ing Arnold
Editor: When I read the Town Dandy’s recent characterization of Gov. Schwarzenegger as some sort of harmless, guileless inspirational cheerleader, I was dumbfounded (Jan. 21). Miss this insensitive, craven, cynical, grandstanding incompetent? I and a host of other Californians will miss him as much as we’d miss a tooth abscess. What a woefully superficial and…
The Dancer
Dance is the only art in which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made. – Ted Shawn The performance of a fine dancer triggers admiration. Beholding an entire company dance with all the grace, elegance, power and strength necessary offers art’s most desired effect: transcendence. One’s self is absorbed by the alchemy…
Education, 1961
Previews Based on the Christopher Isherwood novel, A Single Man is the story of a gay college professor trying to deal with the death of his long-time partner. With Oscar nominee Colin Firth, Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode. Rated R for some disturbing images and nudity/sexual content. 99m. At the Minor. Crazy Heart features Jeff…
Rail With Trail
The overt rancor that’s been known to occur between train enthusiasts and trail advocates seems to have been put on simmer of late, as the City of Arcata leads the way with a multi-stakeholder, collaboratively conceived plan for an initial trail-with-rail project. The project would be to build a trail that mostly follows the rail…
Love, etc.
How did the heart become the symbol of love, the supposed romantic focal point in our bodies? It may trace back to a time when the heart was considered the center of thought, because surely love is something that comes from the mind. But when your heart seems threatened, you quickly learn how much you…
Messy Footprint
To hear Footprint Recycling owner and founder Andy Cooper tell it, last month’s oil spill at the company’s biodiesel refinement plant has inflicted more damage on his business than on the environment. The City of Arcata issued a cease and desist order, effectively halting production at the West End Road facility, after a fuel storage…
Enter the Backlash
Here’s a nearly infallible rule of thumb: When a lawsuit is launched with buttons and posters and emotional speechifying, it’s safe to assume that there’s more to the thing than a disagreement over the application of statute to facts. Such was certainly the case at Tuesday’s rally for Citizens for a Better Eureka v. California…
Arts! Arcata
1 Arcata Artisans 883 H St. Eve Miller, glass art; Jeannie Fierce, paintings, fabric art. 2 Arcata City Hall 736 F St. Ashley Sutherland, metal sculpture. 3 Arcata Exchange 813 H St. Jay Brown; music by Vacation Life. 4 Arcata Main Street* 791 8th St. Marceau Verdiere, mixed media. 5 Big Blue Café* 846 G…
Winterdance
Virginia Niekrasz-Laurent has been training ballet dancers here in the vast expanse that lies behind the Redwood Curtain, as far away from the dance Mecca of New York City as one can get, since 1972. Going further back into Humboldt dance history, she began her studies at the Betty Merriweather Studio, the very first in…
After The Show
Oh the glamour coiling up the wires Oh…
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
We all know the formula: The Protagonist, feeble and indistinct, gets accidentally exposed to radiation or some other freak scientific derivative. This in turn gives him supernatural powers, which he nobly uses to protect the public. Leading a duel life as an average man and superhero, he attracts the girl of his fancy, but is…
Love, Roses and Haiti
It’s been three years since Flower Confidential was published, and in that time I’ve come to expect a few calls from reporters around Valentine’s Day looking for a comment on so-called "green" issues in the flower business. The narrative in the media has shifted somewhat over the last few years; it’s moved from "behind every…
Kode Kops
Editor: Thanks to Heidi Walters for resuming her coverage of a story our media have almost entirely neglected (“Code Cops, Not Real Cops,” Feb. 4). Here’s a bit of what readers have missed between her reports. A week before Christmas a year ago, three months after the Board of Supervisors had received a scathing 153-page…
