Lazio’s Last Stand
Eureka’s waterfront started dying in 1968, and there’s no good news on the horizon
Cover Story
Lazio’s Last Stand
The year was 1968. The place was Eureka, Calif. Down near the waterfront on C Street, the finest fish cuisine and the most popular joint in town sat on the right on the pier, overlooking the bay full of sailboats and the skeleton of the nearly built Samoa Bridge. At the renowned Lazio’s Seafood Restaurant,…
Making Friends, Influencing People
Confidential to KHSU’s Sista Soul: You know, inviting your Pelican Bay listenership to send “KHSU love letters” to Rob Gunsalus may have sounded like a good idea at the time, but there is just a wee chance that the gesture will be misinterpreted.
Zucchine al Parmigiano
Last year, as part of my first attempt at vegetable gardening at home, I planted a couple of seedlings of zucchini, hoping for a bountiful reward. To my dismay, the flood of zucchini that I was expecting never materialized. I know that such flooding happens — to other people: I was still cheerful two…
Flight of Farce
You wind it up tight in the first act and in the second act it flies apart, only to somehow come together in the end. That’s the basic mechanism of farce, and it’s a lot harder to accomplish than it sounds. The script is of paramount importance, and if you wanted a textbook example of…
Mr. LaFarge’s Blues
After watching Robert Altman’s 1973 film The Long Goodbye for the upteenth time, Altman had commented that he and lead actor, Elliot Gould, had decided to reinvent the legendary Phillip Marlowe as if he was a Rip Van Winkle-like character who, after a long slumber, woke up in the middle of the early 1970s Los…
Cove Defender
Editor: Aaaah, Shelter Cove. Always a controversy of some sort. ("Mailbox," July 17.) I consider myself a native. I was born in Garberville but was raised from birth at the Cove. I have spent a fair portion of my life living there, and have also been a property owner more than once. My family has…
Bat-mania!
Previews Opening Friday, July 25, is the next-in-line summer blockbuster, The X-Files: I Want to Believe. This is the second feature film spin-off from the popular TV series, and I want to believe too but it features the Charlie-designated “Most Boring Actor in The World” David Duchovny as Fox Mulder and the much more…
Port o’ Gold
It’s been a month since more than a hundred people crammed into the Wharfinger Building to first hear a plan to turn Humboldt Bay into a major industrial, international shipping port connected to the railroad, with a big cruise-ship enterprise on the side — and to let one of the world’s top investment banking firms,…
Beaten and Bloodied
It came in with a bang, but it’s ending with a whimper. That’s the story of the maximally important Pacific Lumber bankruptcy case, which has offered the county one of the greatest moments of crisis and opportunity in its recent history. The danger, back in January 2007, was that Houston sneak Charles Hurwitz and his…
Arms Race & Species
Herpetology, the study of amphibians and reptiles, sheds much light on the nature of evolution. Consider the range of body plans and lifestyles among salamanders (amphibians with tails). They commonly hatch from eggs in water or moist places, though a few species give birth to live young. Some are confined to water and use external…
Golden Monuments
No flagstones in the forest Too many…
As You Like It
Directed by Kenneth Branagh. HBO Films. With Henry V in 1989, Kenneth Branagh burst onto the world cinema scene as a combination Orson Welles (theatre enfant terrible who directs and stars in his first major film while in his twenties) and Laurence Olivier (choosing the same play as Olivier did for his first of several…
Control
Directed by Anton Corbijn. The Miriam Collection. When Anton Corbijn, best known for his work as a rock photographer and music video director, announced plans to film the story of Joy Division front man Ian Curtis, anticipation amongst Joy Division followers immediately rose, for although there has always been a great deal of familiarity with…
The Future Is Unwritten
Directed by Julien Temple. Parallel Films/Sony Legacy. Joe Strummer was a son of a British diplomat, boarding school bully, bohemian, busker, scoundrel, field general, passionate soul, survivor, obsessive lyricist, cheerleader, wandering beatnik, father and punk warlord. Director Julien Temple excellently weaves the complex and often contradictory lines about the former frontman and mouthpiece for the…
Choses du Jardin
A couple of months ago, I spent an afternoon at the di Rosa Preserve, a private art collection housed on a lovely piece of land between Napa and Sonoma along the Sonoma Highway. The collector, Rene di Rosa, is almost 90 years old. His collection of modern art, which now totals over 1,700 pieces, fills…
