Liquor Run
After an earthquake shakes Humboldt, the Harbor District continues its push to avert looming disaster.
Cover Story
Liquor Run
When the undulations of the March 9 earthquake rousted Jack Crider from his sleep, his first thoughts were the Samoa pulp mill; specifically, the nearly 3 million gallons of caustic fluids poised to spill out of old, failing storage tanks and into Humboldt Bay. Those liquors — remnants of the pulp mill’s production days —…
Raise Your Glass
The National Brewers Association, having finally sobered up from trying all the craft beer in the land, has released its top 50 craft breweries in the country. Lost Coast Brewery made 37. (Pause for moment of local pride and hearty belch.) Check out the full list on the Huffington Post.
Rain, But Not Out of the Drought
Above average rainfall in February and March is helping Humboldt County climb out of its precipitation deficit. We’re still in a drought, and the grasslands of Southern Humboldt in particular will suffer the dry effects, folks from our local branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warn. But there are good signs as well.…
Tonight’s Setlist: Ann from Darsombra, Scott Pemberton
We get email. “I’m Ann from Darsombra. We are an audio-visual live performance experience (a band!), and we’ve got a show coming up in Eureka at the Ink Annex. The show is part of an eight-week cross-country tour and it marks the 20th anniversary of my bandmate Brian Daniloski’s first tour around the country with…
Tonight’s Setlist: Experimental Jazz, Electronic Beats, Beats, Beats!
Pianist, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist producer Marco Benevento, a man who has never suffered from lack of talent and whom you might know from Garage A Trois, Surprise Me Mr. Davis and numerous other bands, brings his legacy of experimental jazz and rock to the Jambalaya. It’s $12, $10 advanced and The Getdown will apparently be playing, too.…
Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em
I only ever see the plumes of smoke shooting up from the behemoth of a barbecue stand at the Eureka Veterans Hall when I’ve already eaten. So when we drove by last week on the way to lunch, I hollered at my colleague to pull over, which she did, Transporter style. Bracing. There are no…
And one more
We’ve learned that Ryan Burns is up for a prestigious Mirror Award — and a $5,000 prize if he wins — for a story he wrote while still with the Journal, “Ferndale Gothic.” The Mirror Awards are presented by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and recognize the best reporting by media on the…
Supes to Consider GPU Slowdown
The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors will consider Tuesday whether to pump the brakes on its General Plan Update, which is some 14 years in the making, in response to a plea from county planning staff. County Planning Director Kevin Hamblin sent the board a letter last week noting that the Humboldt County Planning Commission…
Update: Journal Snags TEN Awards
Second Update, final results: Make that FIVE FIRSTS, one second (in the photo essay contest), plus the four blue ribbon honorable mentions. Update: The CNPA folks just shipped along four more awards announcements for the Journal. These ones are our Blue Ribbon Finalists, which means they were among the top four finalists in their categories.…
Jazzy Jumpin’ Jehosephat
Well, swoosh, that was Jazz Fest 2014. Saturday night at the Eureka Muni saw a flood of young and old slipping around the dance floor in slick duds and shiny shoes or hip tennies. Who knew so many kids could swing dance? There were quite a few of them kicking it up with the Fogtown…
Island Buzz
Check out this morning’s NPR segment on Future Islands, a North Carolina indie band fresh from SXSW and slated for an April 7 show at Humboldt Brews ($10). The band killed it on Letterman, so get to Hum Brews early and catch them at the smallest, cheapest show they’ll probably be playing for some time.
Roadhouse Resurrection
The venerable Mendocino County Caspar Inn is reopening — at least in some capacity — according to announcements on the inn’s Facebook page. The inn is booking shows, but not rooms. The spot was/is a favorite for local bands willing to make the haul and, sure enough, Arcata’s own Rooster McClintock has already petitioned to…
Local Boy Garners Industry Award
Picture a joint where the pool table’s slanted and the jukebox skips. Your Twix just got stuck in the machine and the coin return doesn’t work. Oh, and the coffee’s cold. Nuh uh. Lucky for us, that kind of dilapidation is banished to the imagination ‘round here, thanks to the fine work of nationally recognized…
Tonight’s Setlist: Saturday satisfaction (and Germanic deep house future thizz)
Humboldt’s dark new wave darlings Space Biscuit play The Palm Lounge with Arcata’s Wownd following some stand-up comedy with Ben Feldman. The funny stuff starts at 8 p.m., theoretically, and the music kicks off around 10 p.m. Cover is $5 from 8 to 9:30 then a $3 to $5 suggested donation. Maybe you want to…
Tonight’s Setlist: Get Your Friday On With Fiddles or Livetronica or Jazz or Not-Jazz
Austin heroine Carrie Rodriguez and renowned roots fiddler Luke Jacobs perform at Arcata Playhouse in support of their new album Live At The Cactus. Tickets are $15 general and $13 students. Show starts at 8 p.m. Livetronica pioneers Particle are best known for marathon sets at Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music…
First Liquor Trucks Leave the Pulp Mill
The very rain soaking reporters and government officials at the Samoa pulp mill this afternoon could have overflowed tanks of toxic chemicals near Humboldt Bay, Environmental Protection Agency coordinator Steve Calanaog said, had his agency not installed temporary overflow tanks. EPA bigwigs, Congressman Jared Huffman, members of the U.S. Coast Guard Strike Team and others…
County Declares Shenanigans on Itself
Humboldt County just blew the whistle on itself. Apparently, the county violated California’s open meeting law last week. County staff seems to regret the error and to be taking steps to correct the situation. Check out the full press release below: County Unintentionally Violates Brown Act, Takes Steps to Improve Compliance On Tuesday, March 25…
It’s a Toss Up
Leave your jokes about clown college at the door — Jamie Coventry and Natasha Kaluza have the sort of hand-eye coordination usually reserved for surgeons and super heroes. They take clowning to a level so high you almost don’t want to be afraid of clowns. The San Francisco Circus Center Clown Conservatory graduates are about…
#tasteofmain
That little packet of Taste of Main Street tickets is a challenge. It’s a gauntlet of 26 eateries … not that you have anything to prove. But it’s like a trip to Disneyland — all that pressure to hit the big rides and still make it back to the car without anybody passed out or…
Aloooo-ha!
Thank you, Winter, that will be all. We’re done here. We are tossing the wool socks and sweaters. In fact, some of us are even jumping the gun and going straight into summer — a flash of sun and suddenly people are in cut-offs and flip-flops. Daylight savings? Pfft. We are on island time. If…
Tonight’s Setlist: Choose-your-own-adventure Thursday
Let’s start in Eureka. Meskalito, a new Arcata funk ensemble, joins funk improv quintet Ultra Secret Good Guy Organization in support of Ashland’s moody alt rockers The Jawbone Club at the Palm Lounge. Show starts at 9 p.m., is free (tips appreciated, touring costs!) and 21-and-over. Moving over to A-town, Arcata mega-poppers The Wild Lungs…
Coffee or T and A?
Prepare for sudden stops, turns and slow-downs on Fourth Street in Eureka. Humboldt locals Michael Williams and Tao Chan are resurrecting that little drive-thru kiosk shop (Mary Hana’s florist/juice bar/Indian take-out, Nikki’s Crab Stand) as Bikini Brews, a java pitstop with scantily clad baristas and Muddy Waters coffee. Sure, roll your eyes, but the Tip…
Respect, Please
Beginning tomorrow, the Wiyot Tribe will hold its first World Renewal Ceremony in 154 years. And the tribe is asking for the public’s respect: “While it is customary not to turn away anyone who wishes to participate with an open heart, free of anger toward anyone, we ask that the community respect the sacredness of…
3rd Update: Police Investigating Eureka Double Homicide;
The second of two men shot to death Wednesday evening in a Harris Street home has been identified by the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office as 25-year-old Lance Delbert Henry. Henry and Richard Charles Storre Jr., 60, were both found dead of gunshot wounds to the head by Eureka police at about 6 p.m. Wednesday. Police…
Hum Plate Roundup
The cherry blossoms drifting around town are seen in Japan as a symbol of life’s impermanence, all the more beautiful for their brevity. Just like crab sandwiches and specialty doughnuts. Carpe Crab When crab season opens during the holidays, we go wild, cracking and picking till our shirtfronts are flecked with meat and our bellies…
A Doozy
Please sit down. Don’t worry, you’ll be up soon enough. It’s just that I am about to spew so many your-options-in-live-music at you that if you’re standing, the sheer number might trigger a collapse. So, sit. You’re probably sitting anyway, reading the print version at a coffeehouse or the digital version on your laptop. If…
Forces of Nurture
Dysfunctional Errant winds Screaming, As the Golden Gate Arches defiantly: “Family Comes First!” Irascible Taunting tides Shifting, As the moon rises Unimaginably. We’ll see.
Our Boys
I was thrilled to run into my little cousin working at a gas station in Redway. After all, he’d been watering his meth-addled daddy’s plants from the time he could toddle. Third generation of growers, I never expected him to get out. But there he was with his wide, cheeky grin, slinging high-octane coffee and…
Fumbled Apology
This weekend, the Wiyot Tribe is holding its first World Renewal Ceremony since the last one, in February 1860, was cut short when white settlers massacred as many as 100 tribe members as they slept on Indian Island. And so the city of Eureka has voted to send the tribe an official letter of ……
Trees on Mars
“That looks like a face!” What started out as a bit of whimsy based on a 1976 photo from a NASA Mars orbiter quickly morphed into a full-blooded new-age/extraterrestrial phenomenon. The “Face on Mars” became the centerpiece of theories about an ancient Martian civilization. Only with the release of 100-times-higher resolution photographs in 2006, which…
Divergent Conforms
Reviews DIVERGENT. The need for yet another dystopian near-future, teen-centric melodrama is dubious at best. Not only has the theme been covered exhaustively in recent years, but it reeks of millennial pandering and uninspired adaptation. It’s as if studios that missed the brass ring, failing to acquire the rights to Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games juggernaut,…
Life
Editor: Regardless of where you stand on capital punishment, the statistics pertaining to California’s exercising of the punishment are rather sobering (“A Capital Question,” March 20). Considering that nearly 60 percent of those who have died on death row since 1978 have done so via natural causes, these individuals essentially served a “life without the…
Quality of Life
Editor: The article by Thadeus Greenson on the county’s General Plan Update (“The GPU,” March 13) was both interesting and revealing. I found the comments of the county’s planning director, Kevin Hamblin, especially apropos. Hamblin acknowledges that “people like living here” and are very protective of our physical surroundings. But he adds that people also…
TL;DR
Editor: Like others in this county, I’ve spent time reading long blocks of text in the interest of my education/edification. But I’m pleading guilty right here to feeling somewhat daunted by the 5,000 or so words of your March 13 GPU article, printed in what, nine point type? Duuuudes! And dudettes, average reading speed is…
Bee Friendly
Editor: I was dismayed this beautiful spring morning to open the North Coast Journal (which I read cover to cover every week) to see a local hardware store flyer offering a toxic smorgasbord of gardening chemicals, just when our local bees and pollinators are emerging in all their spring glory! Weed and bug killers, soil…
The Big Chill
Back in April 2007, some 3,500 people peaceably gathered in Redwood Park in Arcata to celebrate weed. I wrote about it in this column, noting how amazed I was that in a county of 130,000 the two daily newspapers we had back then skipped the event. I get high on large, peaceful gatherings. It is…
