Cover Story
Eureka Street Art Festival’s Last Splash
If there’s a drab, gray concrete wall in Eureka, it’s not the fault of Jenna Catsos, Michelle Cartledge or Swan Asbury. The three women have been the driving force behind the annual Eureka Street Art Festival for the past seven years. “It got started in 2018, when Michelle Cartledge was on the Economic Development Commission…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Aug. 15
Here are a couple of free gigs to fill out your late-week, midsummer musical calendar. First up at 6 p.m. at Madaket Plaza, the summer concert series rolls on with Decades, a group that plays pop songs from over the years. The name kind of says it all, really. An hour later at the Basement,…
Music Tonight: Tuesday, Aug. 13
It’s Taco Tuesday at Richards’ Goat, which means the place is open at 6 p.m. for dinner for those in the know. Two hours later in the attached Miniplex, you will find the musical stylings of Rushadicus the Cello Goblin, a guy with a cello who has turned his musical virtuosity into something whimsically out…
Photos: Return of ROTR
For the 35th year, Reggae on the River, which has seen its share of tumult and financial struggle, brought crowds, musicians, artists and vendors to a multi-day party on the North Coast after a five-year absence. From Aug. 2-4, reggae lovers returned to County Line Ranch for camping and live performances, hosted by the Mateel…
Music Tonight: Sunday, Aug. 11
No Metal Monday this week but Metal Sunday ain’t too shabby. At 6 p.m., you will find Sorcia, Witch Ripper and Tigers on Opium holding down the volume knob at the regular spot, Savage Henry Comedy Club, for the usual price of $5-$10 sliding. As always, this gig is all-ages but you need an ID…
Paula Casillas Taizan: 1927-2024
Paula Casillas Taizan was born in San Gabriel, California, on Jan. 25, 1927. She passed away on Wednesday, July 31, peacefully in her sleep in Eureka, California, at age 97. She was the sixth child of 12 of her parents Alejandro and Trinidad Salazar. Paula lived almost her entire life in the San Gabriel Valley,…
Music Tonight: Saturday, Aug. 10
If you like day-glo and oil-slicked psychedelia from a better time, when San Francisco had more soul than capital, you’re in for a treat tonight at the Miniplex at 8:30 p.m. Magic Fig plays its own shimmering pop dewdrops of lysergic dee-lite channeled by a host of musicians from various Bay Area garage bands. Also…
Mystery Developer Blames Eureka for Defunct Property Exchange Deal; City Official Says That’s ‘Laughable’
A day after the Eureka City Schools Board of Trustees voted unanimously to deny the company’s request to extend escrow for a third time on the Jacobs Middle School property exchange agreement reached in December, the mystery developer AMG Communities-Jacobs, LLC, issued a statement confirming it is pulling out of the deal and blaming the…
Music Tonight: Friday, Aug. 9
I am hearing news that this afternoon and evening will see the final Arts Arcata, which I am receiving with stoic indifference because I have learned to never say die about our institutions — even when the organizers of those institutions are saying it — and because Arts Arcata honestly never did much for me.…
Eureka School Board Denies Extension Request, Potentially Killing Jacobs Deal
The Eureka City Schools Board of Trustees voted unanimously in closed session tonight not to extend a $6 million property exchange agreement with a mystery developer in advance of tomorrow’s deadline for the deal to close. The district controversially entered into the agreement Dec. 14, 2023, agreeing to trade 8.3 acres of its former Jacobs…
Street Art, Measure F, Tandoori Bites Pizzas and More…
On this week’s episode of the NCJ Preview, we’re joined by Arts & Features Editor Jennifer Fumiko Cahill to talk about the cover story on the Eureka Street Art Festival, as well as the new Tandoori Bites Pizzas coming to Humboldt. We’re also joined by California Local Journalism Fellow Kelby McIntosh as he covers Measure…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Aug. 8
Faun Fables are back in town, playing an immersive theatrical gig at Synapsis at 8 p.m. ($15-$25 sliding scale). Regular readers might recognize the name from an interview I did two Junes ago with the duo, creator/singer/performer Dawn McCarthy and multi-instrumentalist and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum member Nils Frykdahl. As was the case before, this show…
‘The Exact Opposite’
Editor: I read your recent article concerning the student protest at the CPH campus. It blows me away to see what our schools of higher learning are producing and preparing for society. These are nothing more than woke, spoiled brat, young people who don’t have a clue about morality and what is right or wrong.…
Correction
The Best Of Humboldt listings in the Aug. 1, 2024, edition of the North Coast Journal contained an error. Arcata’s The Carriage House — 937 10th St., carriagehousearcata.com won — the contest’s Best New Restaurant category. The Journal regrets the error. Related Stories Related Stories Related Stories
From Mars Believer to Skeptic, Part 1
My love affair with Mars goes back decades, when I’d hang out with members of the Mars Underground, a small group of University of Boulder science alumni who ate, talked and slept Mars. Then came the excitement of annual Mars Society meetings, the name of which says it all. More recently, I’ve been speaking and…
Meditation on Approaching the Numinous
Do not go into the wilderness expecting anything. Keep your eyes down, remembering what is wild cannot be easily approached: Ask what you must ask, but ask it slant. Listen to the sound of your breath, the wind, the stream whispering over the cobbles, your heart beating madly in your breast. Just beyond flowers and…
New $88 Million Microgrid Project Aims to Power Hoopa, Karuk and Yurok Tribes
A joint effort between local tribes, Cal Poly Humboldt’s Schatz Energy Research Center, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and the Redwood Coast Energy Authority just received $88 million in Department of Energy funding to bring a solar microgrid system to Hoopa, Yurok and Karuk tribal members in an area more prone to electrical outages than…
War Pigs
For reasons that should be obvious to anyone with a passing interest in international news, I’ve been reading about the current evolutions going down in the world of asymmetrical warfare, specifically in drone technology. Since the days of David and Goliath, the idea of the big guy/little guy match-up being won by novel ingenuity rather…
Tandoori Bites Pizza Finds its Flavors
In the open kitchen of the former Angelo’s Pizza and, more recently, Overtime Pizza and Bar (215 W Seventh St., Eureka), chef Dlbir Singh swirls a ladle of sauce onto a circle of dough. But instead of a red tomato sauce, it’s the deep ochre of curry. It’s one of a handful of Indian-style sauces…
The White Card‘s Dialogue on Race and Art
Like a speck of dirt on a pristine white dinner jacket, a black flatscreen TV hangs starkly against the all-white set, the screen showing the intense tennis battle between the Willams sisters at the 2017 Australian Open. The sound of shoes screeching and the claps of the tennis ball being smacked back and forth on…
Hiking in the Headwaters Forest Reserve
On a Sunday in early June, my friend Lissa and I planned to hike the Headwaters Forest Reserve’s Elk River Trail, about 10.5 miles. At the time, I didn’t realize our timing was perfect, as this year marks the 7,472-acre reserve’s 25th anniversary. It was established in 1999, after a decade-long effort to protect the…
Trap Can’t Find a Way Out
TRAP. The conversation I have been having about M. Night Shyamalan movies for a decade begins with recent disappointment, acknowledges The Sixth Sense (1999), maybe Signs (2002) or Unbreakable (2000), and lands with fingers crossed for the next one. Just as I enjoy being tricked at a magic show, I’m happy to gasp at a…
‘Raking in the Filthy Lucre’
Editor: Ick! I had to wash my hands twice after reading those articles (“Inadvertent Disclosure” and “Jackson’s Retreat”) about our local education administrators in the July 25 issue. Who knew the field of education administration was all about raking in the filthy lucre? We learn that the university system eases out Cal Poly President Tom…
‘A Neon-flashing Example’
Editor: Thadeus Greenson’s report of the resignation of Cal Poly Humboldt’s President Tom Jackson Jr. raises questions that extend far beyond Jackson’s devastating reign that transformed the nascent Cal Poly into what in Humboldt’s parlance has become known as Cal Folly. During Jackson’s reign he disrespected and alienated the county’s public health officials as regarded…
‘Obviously’
Editor: Because old Rob obviously has no involvement whatsoever in the deal to purchase the Jacobs Street property, right? I mean, his “spokesperson” Gail Rymer said he wasn’t involved. Or at least she said Arkley and Security National are not “buyer[s]” of the property or “involved with AMG Communities.” So that settles the question, right?…
‘An Election Year’
Donald Trump narrowly escaped an assassin’s bullet (“The Crises We Face,” July 18). Some GOP congressmembers immediately blamed President Biden for provoking the attack. His sin: using the phrase “put Trump in a bullseye” in a phone conversation, a phrase he intended to mean his campaign should focus on Trump. Most people would interpret this…
‘This Act of Civil Disobedience’
Editor: The following is an open letter to the Humboldt County Jury Commissioner (“Without a Jury,” Aug. 10, 2023): I fully accept my civic obligation to serve on a jury. I am ready, willing and able, nor do I expect any compensation. No longer, however, will I allow you to waste my time. You sent…
‘Redundant’
Editor: It is gratifying to read about the number of volunteers who donated their time and worked at the California Care Force Clinic the weekend of July 12 and July 13 (“Humboldt Lines Up for Free Care,” July 18). We are very proud of the volunteers from our Humboldt County chapter of PNHP/HCA/Medicare for All.…
‘A Big Waste’
Editor: The fact that the DA declined to prosecute the majority of cases associated with April’s protests at CPH, and hopefully will soon dismiss the rest, shows that the administration’s spectacle was a big waste of time and resources (“‘Regrettably Deficient,'” Aug. 1). It calls into question if the high cost and violence associated with…
