Gold From Green in a Gray Area
You might be surprised who profits from the semi-legal marijuana trade
Cover Story
Gold From Green In A Gray Area
A gentleman with a neatly trimmed beard stands at the counter of an Arcata business on a weekday morning and asks the clerk for an eighth of an ounce of Trainwreck, a popular strain of sinsemilla marijuana. The young woman on the other side of a glass partition, who looks to be a typical Arcata…
VUB to close at the end of the month
Veteran’s day was Novemeber 11. Nonetheless, I didn’t hear anything on the The California Report about Humboldt State University’s Veterans Upward Bound (VUB) program which lost its funding this past August . Humboldt’s VUB was the only program of its kind on the West Coast — you’d think that warrants some coverage. The VUB has…
Pelican Bay Rodeo?
A state penitentiary hosting a rodeo with convicts riding bucking broncs?! Sounded like bull to me, but it’s true. Five times a year the warden of America’s largest high-security prison in Angola, Louisiana puts on a rodeo and an arts-and-craft fair — “where convicts who’ve earned the right get to buck broncs and straddle bulls,…
This is Current TV on weed…
With Bob Doran’s cover story about weed, Gold From Green in a Gray Area, still circulating the streets, here are three videos from Current, an independent cable and satellite TV network based in SF, that address the medical marijuana issue, each in their own way. Drew Carey, Arnie and presidential hopefuls’ take on weed Medical…
Estelle Fennell Announces
The worst-kept secret in Humboldt County is officially out of the bag. In a decidedly Colbertian move, former KMUD Newsgoddess Estelle Fennell announced this afternoon that she will soon be announcing her candidacy for the Second District Board of Supervisors’ seat. Where: Redway Fire Department Building, 155 Empire Ave. Redway When: Monday November 12 th…
What War Is
Annie Reid works in a small cabin studio in Westhaven. She’s surrounded by redwoods, and this time of year there’s the constant quiet drip of a rainforest in the rainy season. Her garden is a slightly tamed version of a natural forest floor, with ferns in profusion and a thick layer of redwood duff on…
The Alchemist
CD by Witchcraft Rise Above Records/Candlelight Records. The reality that any band immersed in a “retro” rock sound faces is that an inability to transcend novelty can result in them becoming a footnote in music history. After two releases of Black Sabbath/Pentagram-worshipping doom, Sweden’s Witchcraft was close to a point of stagnancy that could have…
The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps
Published by Black Lizard Over the past 15 years, a steady stream of good, bad and indifferent anthologies has promised to deliver the thrills of pulp fiction. But for all the retro cover art, melodramatic blurb copy and Quentin Tarantino allusions, their contents have been shockingly deficient in what aficionados consider to be the real…
Ghostface Killah
Ghostface Killah is a brilliant storyteller and lyricist, and is the only Wu-Tang Clan member still making relevant solo albums. He’s a prolific and increasingly media-savvy artist who nonetheless seems to constantly shoot himself in the foot commercially. He’s also a crybaby. Recently, word got out that Wu-Tang Clan would release its first album in…
Generation to Generation
Ritchie Havens may not be the best songwriter out there. In fact, he’s quick to defer to his peers, and he’ll tell you it took him years to get past singing other people’s songs. And he’s not the greatest guitar player — he has an idiosyncratic style that’s mostly rhythmic strumming. But he knows how…
Changing of the Season
September sun is just coming over the…
Taking Stock
Last week was soup week at our house. This year’s soups are Summer Vegetable (peppers, beans, tomatoes, corn), Winter Vegetable (butternut, potato, celeriac, parsnip) and a small quantity of Roasted Pepper (a thick puree of sweet Italians and smoked bells). Now, having used up my stocks, I have to make more. The late fall and…
Backwoods Brawling
I never claimed to be omniscient. The record will show that a speaker at the Oct. 9 Board of Supervisors’ meeting, at which the board voted to institute a moratorium on new homes in areas zoned for timber production, issued a warning. Don’t believe it, this person said. The county now says that they only…
Civil Disobedience
It was Sunday, a clear and warmish fall day, sun sitting low in the sky, with no wind even on the coast — a perfect day for civil disobedience. It all started some months ago with a letter to the Journal from one Benjamin Garlick. He’s pushing 40 now, but I knew him as a…
Trick our Trucker
His friends, until recently, called him ZZ Top. He had a dark bushy beard down to his chest. He had a belly, too. Mark David loves his drink. And tobacco, and chocolate. And he and Loretta Bradford, his life-love and full-time co-pilot, would be out there on the open road, trucking lumber and pipe and…
Bottled and Blessed
Yes, yes, from Oakland to Baltimore they’re booting the bottle from city government offices and fancy restaurants. The bottle of water, that is, which activists have taken on as yet another villain in the fight to save the planet from choking on plastic or drowning in deep-puddling carbon footprints. Bottled water, critics say, creates mountains…
Can We Extract Energy from Waves?
PG&E is seeking permits to investigate the feasibility of producing energy from waves off Humboldt Bay. The potential is high off our coast because of our winter storms and summer winds. Waves approaching shallow water begin to break and lose energy, so most schemes target waves in water deeper than the “wave base” (about half…
Gangster drags
Previews Alas, the Christmas season is upon us. Opening Friday, Nov. 9, is Fred Claus , in which Paul Giamatti plays Santa, who hires his jealous and irascible older brother Fred (Vince Vaughn) as a worker in order to get him out of jail. Making toys is not what Fred is suited for. With a…
