News

The almost-annual carnival is back at the Eureka boardwalk. It runs from Friday thru Monday July 4.

Nearly 100 Eureka residents filled the basement of the Eureka Veteran's Hall Monday night for a community forum scheduled to discuss the firing of former Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen.

While praise for the changes witnessed under Garr's tenure made up a significant portion of the sentiment, displeasure with the power wielded by City Manager David Tyson quickly became the theme of the night.

The following are -- shaky -- video highlights from that meeting featuring resident Sylvia Scott, Eureka City Councilmember Linda Atkins, former Eureka Mayor Peter LaVallee and former Eureka City Councilmember Larry Glass. If you get motion sickness, you might want to wait 'til Ryan Burns breaks it down in print in tomorrow's NCJ.

Nah, watch this.

Yes, blogosphere. Larry Glass "called out" county supervisor Virginia Bass's husband Matthew Owen. If that's all you want to see, scroll south. Have fun, kids.

"It's completely out of the blue," he told the T-S. "It caught me completely off guard."

Nielsen had been in the running for the chief of police position in Bend, Ore., but he found out Thursday that he didn't make the final cut, the T-S reports.

Update, 2 p.m.: City Manager David Tyson confirmed that he notified Nielsen of his termination, effective immediately, this morning at 11. Tyson said firing Nielsen was his own decision but added that he could not discuss any details or identify the reason(s) for that decision since it is a personnel matter.

Captain Murl Harpham has been named interim chief. The process of recruiting and hiring a new chief will likely take about six months and will begin with asking the council and the public what they want in a chief of police, Tyson said.

Update, 6/27: Just spoke to Jeff Farley, the mayor of Ferndale. He said he'd just finished running a meeting of the Humboldt County Association of Governments (HCAOG) at Eureka City Hall when he got a call on his cell phone from a Eureka resident who'd gotten his number off some papers that the alleged car thief was throwing out the window on his fateful drive.

The alleged thief is a transient with no belongings, Farley said. And he totaled the truck. As for My Badass Neighbor, Paul King, Farley remarked, "Hey, he is [badass]. Anymore you don't know if the guy's got a gun."

Farley's trying to get a hold of King to thank him personally.

Original post:

So my wife and I are making dinner when, out the kitchen window, we see a cloud of smoke screaming down the street. It's a white Chevy Z71 pickup careening down Huntoon at breakneck speed on three blown-out tires. So I do what any self-respecting American citizen would do in that situation: I walk outside and gawk like a moron.

My Badass Neighbor, on the other hand, sprints out the door, hops into his own truck and proceeds to chase the fucker down. Like he's Jason Bourne or some shit. He finds the guy fishtailing and kicking up gravel in a nearby alley. Evidently it's not so easy to drive on three blown tires. My Badass Neighbor then hops out of his truck, yells at some of my fellow gawkers to call the cops and engages in a foot pursuit with the guy, eventually tackling his ass to the ground.

Cops arrive, arrest the dude and throw him into the back of a patrol car. My Badass Neighbor --whose name is Paul King, by the way -- tells the cops what happened, then comes and tells me that, according to the cops, the Chevy Z71 belongs to Fortuna Mayor Doug Strehl. [Update: It actually belonged to Ferndale Mayor Jeff Farley.] It had been parked at Eureka City Hall when the guy stole it, My Badass Neighbor says.

A handsome, crew-cut officer with the Eureka Police Dept. kindly declined to offer more details. We'll provide them when we can. In the meantime, here's the truck and the handsome officer:

Here are some of my kind neighbors and a few of Eureka's finest:

Here's the crazy driver/alleged truck thief being arrested:

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is My Badass Neighbor, Paul King, showing off some of the blood he shed for our freedom:

Dogs are cute. Fluffy. Scruffy. Loyal. Irascible. Smart. Hard workers, sometimes. Slackers, usually. Heroes. Bums -- good for stories! And, of course, Man's best chums.

Which is why most everyone in the whole snookered world will be tickled as fleas to learn that tomorrow, June 24, is Take Your Dog To Work Day. Except, uh, those of us with ALLERGIES and life-threatening asthma (like me, dammit).

But I do like the doggies and have not one single problem with their personalities. So, if you insist on foisting your wonderful dog on your workmates -- who either a) already celebrate dogs and don't need proselytizing, b) hate dogs and won't be charmed, or c) could die from a sloppy kiss-and-hairy-lean maneuver -- please consider this please-all solution:

Thanks.

Last weekend, we spotted this unusually large western rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis) on the bank of the Trinity South Fork near Wild Mad Road (Nf-30).

We went to press before Humboldt County's Community Development Services Director Kirk Girard came out of closed-door negotiations on Tuesday to announce a settlement with Housing For All, the housing-advocacy outfit that intervened in a lawsuit filed by Humboldt Sunshine. In the settlement, the county agrees to set a firm deadline to finish its plan to rezone more land for multifamily housing.

The Times-Standard's Donna Tam-a-lam-a-dam (sorry, Donna, everybody's doing it) put together a fine report once the negotiators emerged and fired off a news release.

The gist: Humboldt Sunshine, Inc, associated with our man-about-town Robin Arkley Jr., sued the county because the county's housing element was out of compliance with the state mandate to find ground to build housing for all income levels. The group also said the county's land inventory figures were bunk.

Housing For All -- a much different group -- jumped on as interveners, saying it wanted the low-income folks to have a voice in the matter.

Without an up-to-snuff housing element, the county stands to lose out on grants that help fund low-income housing projects, and worse:

The settlement provides a timeline for completion of the multifamily rezoning effort in order to avoid a court-imposed building moratorium... . If the county does not obtain its recertification for its housing element by Aug. 15, the Humboldt County Superior Court will impose a permit moratorium that could take effect on Oct. 3.

You can read about the rezoning program in this week's Journal:  Keeping up with the Rezoneses and The Multifamily Myth and Are you "low-income"?

If you read those, you'll gather we've got about a month of serious angst -- expect hives, hair loss, tantrums -- left to finalize the rezone maps. Some folks are removing their properties from the rezone list, others want on, and Humboldt Sunshine is not budging from the lawsuit -- it wants a re-do on that land inventory.

Cardelli was arrested last September and charged with one count of recurring sexual conduct, three counts of lewd and lascivious acts and five counts of oral copulation, all with a single victim -- a child under the age of 14. Early this year, prosecutors added more charges, alleging that there was a second victim and that Cardelli violated a court order by repeatedly contacting the alleged victim(s).

In the deal, entered on Monday, Cardelli pleaded guilty to one count of continuous sexual abuse of a minor under age 14, one count of attempting to dissuade a witness, 25 misdemeanor counts of violating a court order by contacting a victim, and, regarding the second victim, a misdemeanor count of annoying or molesting a child, according to District Attorney's Office Public Information Officer Lynette Mullen. He faces a maximum of 18 years in prison, Mullen said. 

Cardelli is scheduled to appear before Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Bruce Watson in mid July to address the status of his sentencing.

Eureka is finally Oprah-ready.

As you may recall, Carson Kressley -- ex-queer peepers for straight peeps -- worked Humboldt into a frenzy last December while filming scenes for his new Oprah Winfrey Network show Carson Nation. Now, six months later the show is finally debuting next Saturday, June 25 at 10/9c.

Here is the episode description from the OWN website:

Carson Nation

Eureka, CA

Carson is in Eureka, making over Kongmany, a bride-to-be battling Lupus; John, a tattoo artist who needs to reconnect with his wife; and Bobi, a Coast Guard medic who lost touch with her feminine side while working in a man's world.

PG, CC

The site also includes a show trailer. It mostly features scenes from future episodes but does include a brief shot of a Eureka man crossing the street in a hat Carson finds rather unfabulous.

However, savvy Humboldtians should note a bit of TV trickery. The man is crossing on 3rd between H and I sts wheras Carson makes his hat crack in a car clearly driving past the Starbucks on 5th. Could it be that Carson's clever, catty critiques are contrived? Ahh!

You be the judge by watching here.

And tell us who the dude in the hat is! He should be allowed an opportunity to defend his fashion choices, right?