Fight
Family, blood and legalized assault
Cover Story
Fight
Taneisha Kyle is 16 years old, a junior at Eureka High School, and she’s just been locked inside a cage with a woman who wants to kick her ass. Hundreds of amped spectators surround the chain-link octagon where the fighters have squared off. “Let’s go, Taneisha!” one man yells above the rumbling din. “Get her!…
Economic Report: ‘Moderately Dismal’
Woof. The latest issue of the Humboldt Economic Index is a major bummer. The leading indicators of our economic health “universally soured in November,” the report states. The monthly economic barometer, assembled by students in H.S.U.’s economics department, measures changes (with seasonal adjustments) in six sectors of the local economy. Here are the lowlights: Unemployment…
Occupy Winter Break!
Deck the walls of your Occupy tent and color the sidewalks, then get yourself on home for your usual seasonal merrymaking. Occupy Humboldt’s takin’ a break. That’s the news from Humboldt State University’s campus-based Occupy camp — news graciously passed along by the university’s official media arm via Paul Mann. The news release notes a…
Fight: Video
This week’s Journal cover story prominently features the mixed martial arts debut of 16-year-old Eureka High junior Taneisha Kyle at Blue Lake Casino’s October NorCal Fight Fest event. Below you’ll find some YouTubed video of that fight. Skip to 9:15 on the first vid for introductions and round one. Rounds two and three follow. Rounds…
Gas Leak in Eureka Prompts Evacuation
A Eureka city block was evacuated and Hwy. 101 traffic diverted for nearly two hours this morning after a semi truck backed onto the sidewalk, breaking through a PG&E natural gas vault and severing a pipe. The recessed access vault was located in the sidewalk outside the county’s Republican Central Committee headquarters at 311 Fifth…
“The Soul of Eureka”
As you know if you read this week’s paper, Eureka’s monthly arts night, Arts Alive! takes place Saturday night and many of you be out and about. Occasional Journal contributor Jim Hight produced this fine little vid extolling the many virtues of Arts Alive with Benjamin Bettenhausen handling camera duties. Our own art critic R.W. Evans…
Labyrinth Missing
Editor: Barry Evans was informative and great as usual re: “The Lure of Labyrinths” (Nov. 17). I was happy to see a paragraph devoted to local labyrinths, but disappointed that the list didn’t include the beautiful labyrinthine earth sculpture “All Happy Now” by Santino, available to all for walking at the Humboldt Botanical Garden adjacent to College…
Plant-eaters Dilemma
Editor: I read with interest Jeff Bird’s thoughts on hunting entitled “Carnivore’s Dilemma” (Nov. 17) in last week’s Journal. This week I read with some distaste the letters of two rather self-righteous guilt-slingers taking him to task for his views, so I felt moved to reply myself. First of all, we are all the descendants of ancient…
Don’t Regulate Herbs
Editor: While I commend your concern for the health of North Coast citizenry, your “Drugs In Disguise” article (Nov. 10), was a one-sided and somewhat condescending opinion piece. The author, a Washington D.C. resident with a doctorate in molecular and cellular biology, seems to suggest that mere folks are not capable of using herbal “folk medicine”…
Xmas Inflation
Xmas Inflation
Food For People 12/01/2011
Special Insert to the North Coast Journal
Sanctuary
Wisps of sea smoke curl around the little…
Meek’s Cutoff
The hand-drawn map of southern Oregon that opens the new Kelly Reichardt film is subtly foreboding and apt. Reichardt, best known for smaller independent films set in the Northwest, such as Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy, has stepped up production values with her exceptional period work, Meek’s Cutoff. The film, availalbe on DVD, focuses…
Arts Alive! December
Humboldt State University’s First Street Gallery presents its annual Regional Holiday Exhibition, a fundraiser featuring artwork by 32 North Coast artists working in diverse styles and mediums. The exhibition, running through Dec. 23, emphasizes works by four of our region’s leading innovators in ceramic art: Scott North, Louis Marak, Keith Schneider and Nancy Frazier including…
Barbie Redux
“My full-time job is to find me a guy who’s going to take care of me,” Elizabeth declares, before lending weight to this bracingly feminist cause by saving up for a pair of bigger breasts. (Anthony Lane, review of Bad Teacher in The New Yorker 7/4/11) So what is it about our — I mean,…
Cosmic Mickey
While Mickey Hart is invariably referred to as the drummer from the Grateful Dead, he has long had a life outside of that fabled band. He’s travelled all over the planet collecting rhythms and recording musicians ranging from indigenous jungle bands (“Endangered Music”) to Tibetan monks. In October he turned 25 albums from his “The…
Zip-hippity!
This spring Rob Christensen, a Eureka resident who works at Humboldt State, hopped a ride to San Francisco to hang with a friend for the weekend and catch a flight from SFO. His buddy, proudly car-free in the city, rented a Zipcar to take Christensen to the airport. “It was cool because he reserved…
The Poop Scoop
There is no such thing as a bad question. But how you ask it, well, that’s another matter. A question becomes an accusation if, by asking it, you force people to defend themselves for something you have no evidence they did — more so, when a reporter repeats the question again and again. Did you…
The Envelope, Please
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that the Journal was teaming up with KHUM radio (104.3, 104.7 FM) to raise money and collect food to benefit Food for People, the umbrella agency for all hunger-relief efforts in Humboldt County. This week KHUM folks are broadcasting live from a different grocery store each day as they do…
Zombie Throw Down
Rome had bread and circuses. Arcata has stuffing and zombie wrestling. Scores were settled in gravy this past Saturday night at the Arcata Playhouse during the second annual Zombie Throw Down. Billed as a way to manage the local zombie problem, the show featured plenty of ghoulish makeup and audience participation. It was my…
S.H.I.T. is Funny
Their business is funny. And business is (kinda) good. But be honest. Did you really think when Savage Henry Independent Times launched almost two years ago that it would make it past the gangly, newborn calf stage? We’re talkin’ print media, people! C’mon! But in S.H.I.T.’s logic-defying lifespan, Chris Durant, Monica Durant, Sarah Godlin, Josh…
Abstracted
This month the Piante Gallery mounts Abstraction, a show by 16 artists for whom abstract art is a signature technique. This kind of focused exhibit affords an opportunity to experience in depth the many approaches by these local artists. As one of the artists involved, I attended a meeting back in October with the…
All Ages
Reviews HUGO. For a while, I was frustrated with Martin Scorsese. Duped by my fixation on the visual and narrative style of Goodfellas (my jumping-off point), I mistakenly thought he’d taken a turn for the blander in his later films. I realize now that his inimitable directing style has evolved to suit each script…
Tax the Rich
Editor: Publisher Judy Hodgson recalls how in the 1950s we had rapid economic growth and a strong middle class (“What’s it All About?” Nov. 24). She infers it was economic growth that “narrowed” the differences in income and allowed the middle class to prosper. It’s not that simple. In the 1950s we had a very…
Wonderfully Mysterious
Chicago’s The Sea and Cake is one of those bands that falls somewhere between genres with jazz, folk and post rock playing a role in its alt. something music alongside vibes from Brazil and Africa. Formed in the early-‘90s by Sam Prekop and Eric Claridge (formerly of Shrimp Boat), Archer Prewitt (formerly of The Coctails)…
Liberals? Ha!
Editor: I was amused to see that Ryan Burns seems to think that the “liberal elite appear to be lining up behind Huffman.” (“Blog Jammin,'” Nov. 24) Liberal elite? Please. Thompson, Chesbro, et al are politics as usual, the “I’ll-scratch-yours-if-you’ll-scratch-mine” crowd. Thompson is running in a more conservative area than he’s used to and Huffman…
Those Windows
Editor: I’ve built computer energy performance models on millions of square feet of commercial and residential buildings, and I’ve long been lobbying local window vendors and installers to look at exactly this issue (“Sun Block,” Nov. 17). There absolutely are high solar gain low-E windows available that maximize free solar heating without sacrificing any of…
Pricey Permits
Editor: I read, with keen interest, your Nov. 17 Blogthing regarding matsutake mushroom gathering. It made me wonder if the Six Rivers NF cappo bothered to read the law they cite to justify charging a Mafia-esque $200 fee for gathering forest fungi. I read the law (FSH 2409.18, Chapter 80), and several points came to…
