The year 2025 being what it was — and the less said about that, the better, although the New Year doesn’t seem much better, so far — it was easy to miss some things. No excuse, but the unraveling of the social fabric, geopolitical fuckery, one’s own laziness and the continuing inability of the movie […]
Arts + Scene
Reviews, interviews and upcoming highlights from the week in visual and performing arts around Humboldt County.
Posted inPoetry
Checking Out at Northtown Books (cancrizan)
She looks up. Smiles. “Are you in our system?” “Used to be, but I moved away.” “But you’re back now?” “Yes.” I smile at my son. “When I knew he was on the way, I brought us back.” She smiles at him, too. “I understand. I found you. You’re here.” I look from her to […]
Posted inFeature
A Table for All
David Holper’s Bord för En At the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, a Swedish pop-up restaurant opened in an open field. There, a basket of food was sent to just one person at a time via cable. Bord för en, Swedish for “table for one,” closed on Aug. 1, 2020. In his fourth collection of […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Top 10 Dick Moves of 2025
It’s been a year of yikes, folks. Humboldt had far more bad looks and petty deeds in 2025 than a brief list can contain, but these are the selfish choices and low blows that really sprang out at us. 10. Painting hanging figures in Eureka. The graffiti that showed up on downtown buildings (and over […]
Posted inScreens
On Screens in 2025
So. That has been the year that was. Anecdotally, I can’t say it’s been a good one for anybody who isn’t a despot. Despite having such a futuristic-sounding enumerator, it has been a time of regression, retrenchment and (justifiable) fatalism. Even the movie nerds, those definitive solipsists, have found occasion to gnash their teeth and […]
Posted inScreens
Solo at the Mic
Stand-up from Hoffman, Nanjiani and Chappelle If we’re not laughing, we’re crying, right? Or, more often, both at the same time, in a rictal horror that may never be unmade; it is still 2025 after all. As much as I relish the grand collaboration of the movies, there is something immediate, undiluted and handmade about […]
Posted inPoetry
Walk
I stopped to see the moon Sneaking through the day I watched a file of pelicans Patrol the breakers through the spray I spied a beached sea lion in the sand As two prospecting ravens pecked their prey While from the hills rang antiphonal psalmody Performed by rapt coyote choirs, far away. —Ellen Taylor
Posted inDance
Holiday Dance Performances
Holiday magic takes center stage this weekend with two jolly dance productions for all ages. The Sundance Ballet Co. presents its 13th annual Nutcracker ballet at the Van DuzerTheatre on Saturday, Dec. 20, at 2 and 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 21, at 2 p.m. ($25, $20 children, $20, $15 children advance). This classic production […]
Posted inScreens
Mother Christmas
Oh. What. Fun. and If I Had Legs I Would Kick You OH. WHAT. FUN. I probably don’t need to defend my undimming affection for Christmas movies, but I am of a defensive, decking-the-halls extraction, so here we find ourselves. I am as aware of all the hypocrisy and bad faith action and indelicate consumerism […]
Posted inPoetry
Soulstice
Fall has fallen The twilit light The day neatly folded into night White wintry eve The silent loon The frostbit fingernail called the moon The world is cold, my son, and bare And this, our darkest even of the year, May seem to cling forever near But feel this heart, its warmth, its care It […]
Posted inFeature
Embracing the Long Night of the Winter Solstice
It seems much of the Northern Hemisphere is collectively irritated at the cold and lengthening darkness. Every year, complaints roll in as if the Earth has personally offended us by tilting its northern half away from the sun for an entire quarter of the year. Yet this tilt, this predictable and essential cosmic rhythm, is […]
Posted inFront Row
Arcata Playhouse Rolls the Dice
With The Dungeon, the Dragon and the Wizard of Doom: A D&D Holiday Show Adventure Arcata Playhouse is bringing the British tradition of a Christmas pantomime to Humboldt once again. Pantomimes are often thought of as silent endeavors but this incarnation is the opposite. Christmas pantomimes, or “pantos,” are community centered, derived theater that combines […]