Cover Story
Top 10 Stories of 2013
Summing up the tumult and transformations of a year in Humboldt County with only 10 stories is impossible. Collected here are some — definitely not all — of the events that stayed with us. For more on these stories, go to northcoastjournal.com. The Fires The communities tucked along the rivers in our mountains know fire.…
UPDATE: St. Bernard’s Pastor Killed Overnight in Church Rectory
Update: Eureka Police are asking for the public’s help in finding a car believed to be associated with the killing. From a press release: The vehicle is described as a dark grey Nissan Altima Hybrid, bearing California license plate 6NDW400. The Eureka Police Department requests that if the public has information regarding the vehicle’s whereabouts…
Tri-tip Tumult
Many mourn the closure of Porter Street Barbecue in Arcata. The anger stage of our collective grief focused on the local attorney who has become the Voldemort of Humboldt County. Are we ready to celebrate the remaining Eureka branch of Porter Street (605 Broadway)? Blind Justice can still smell the smoke funneling up from the…
Cheap Booze: Thataway!
Long gone are the days of having to use the North Star and a sextant to find the nearest happy hour (other people do that, too, right?). NCJ is proud (gleeful, really) to present The Cocktail Compass, a one-click, smartphone app that points you in the booziest direction possible. Free to download, easy to use…
Prayer OK-er
A lawsuit intending to stop invocations at city of Eureka functions was denied last week after nearly a year in court. Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Bruce Watson ruled — on Christmas Eve, no less — that invocations at council meetings do not violate the California Constitution, according to a press release issued by the…
Burying Old Grudges
Matthew Caldwell (with the shovel) and his friends — (left-right) Miles Gonzaga, Jordan Brunnell and Logan Bailey — took turns late Sunday afternoon burying each other up to their chins at Trinidad State Beach. Seems as good a way as any to finish off the moldering old year.
Recycle Your Tree
That tree looking a little dry? You’ve already returned those novelty socks, so recycle your tree before it turns into a sparkly fire hazard. Take Humboldt Waste Management’s advice — pluck off all your ornaments and let the folks listed below take the tree off your hands. From Humboldt Waste Management’s press release: Arcata Free…
Party Planner
Start chilling the bubbly for New Year’s Eve. Dressed up or down, it’s a big night on which you are constitutionally guaranteed to get to first base with somebody at the stroke of midnight. But before you plan your assault on the party circuit, sort out a designated driver. And let’s talk about designated drivers…
Be A King Tides Groupie
King tides are exciting: The ocean creeps up and up into our faces, higher than usual, until we can’t help but stop in the middle of the Eureka Slough Bridge to gaze and wonder, “Where’d that skinny island go?” And then, driving around Humboldt Bay, we marvel at the overtopped dikes and waterlogged bay islands…
Sweet!
Oh, we still cry for the loss of that Old Town institution, Bon Boniere. And what do we do when we’re this sniffly sad? Stuff our faces with sweets, wherever we can get them (sniff!). So it is with mixed joy and, well, joy, that we share news of this new development down there in…
A Merry Co-op Solstice Story
After half a year of dickering and angst, North Coast Co-op management and its United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 5 employees have ratified the new contract they tentatively agreed upon in November — 81 percent of the union members voted for it. According to the Co-op, the contract includes 5 percent annual raises…
Systematically Misled
Gil Kerlikowske is worried about our nation’s teenagers. Or so he claims. As the Obama administration’s drug czar, he says he’s concerned that kids today just aren’t scared enough of marijuana. Last week, Kerlikowske spoke soberly to the media about the latest survey from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. He blamed softening attitudes (read:…
Humboldt’s Swinging News Scene
For its size, Humboldt’s lucky to have the robust print/online media scene that exists here. A daily paper. A couple of weeklies, including the one you’re reading. Monthly magazines of varying quality. A thriving news website, the Lost Coast Outpost, just hired award-winning news guy Ryan Burns away from the North Coast Journal. That’s just…
Spit Swapping
Editor: I was aware that, in its heyday, the Army Corps of Engineers had pulled off some pretty amazing feats of landscape manipulation. All the same, I was truly astonished to discover from the NCJ’s graphic of the 1852 configuration of the mouth of Humboldt Bay that the North and South spits actually got transposed…
Write a Letter
Next week’s another early deadline, so get your gripes, grievances and praise into letters@northcoastjournal.com by Friday, Dec. 27 at noon to run in the first Journal of 2014.
Cheers!
Well, Humboldt, here we are. Time to unwrap the gifts and wrap up the year. If Christmas is your thing, I hope it was a merry one. If it’s not, congrats on surviving/avoiding the mayhem. In either case, you’ve no reason to stay home when the live music opportunities continue to roll onto the calendar…
Crab.
Decadence does not have to be complicated. Christmas dinner in our family consists of three simple ingredients: homemade mayonnaise, sourdough bread and crab. That crab sandwiches have usurped ham and turkey at our table for close to a century is no surprise: The rosy-limbed crustaceans hold a special place in the heart of Humboldt County…
Plenty of Fields
North Coast stages depend on a relatively small number of producers, directors, designers and actors who often work on several shows in a given year before moving on or staying for decades. But even within this context, Michael Fields had a remarkable 2013. Fields directed four major productions and was responsible for the final script…
Einstein, Newton andthe Eclipse of 1919
Britain launched two expeditions to observe the total eclipse of May 29, 1919. One was from Greenwich Observatory, under the direction of the British Astronomer Royal Frank Dyson. “He was at that time very skeptical about [Einstein’s] theory, though deeply interested in it; and he realized its very great importance,” wrote Arthur Eddington, director of…
Fine Burgundy
Reviews ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES. Since the first Anchorman, Will Ferrell has become the biggest comedy star of his generation, maybe of all time, and his writing/producing partner Adam McKay has refined his directing skills and sense of style and nuance with slept-on classics like Stepbrothers (2008) and The Other Guys (2010). This sequel…
Eureka: Winter Solstice
From here, sighting between buildings like an Anasazi between sandstone monoliths at the Solstice I see a distant sliver of yellow moon sinking into the blue-gray Bay. And at eight and three, the wan sun reflects into my northern window from the apartments opposite a pittance to my sun-starved succulents craning towards the glass. But…
