Cover Story
Props and Measures
There’s a lot at stake Nov. 8, when voters across the country will take to the polls. That much is obvious. But while Donald and Hillary are capturing all the headlines, Humboldt County voters will be staring down 17 state propositions and a total of 18 local measures. Below, we’ve taken a closer look at…
Alcohol, Hearing Evidence May be Excluded in McClain Trial
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge said Tuesday he is unlikely to permit evidence that a man shot and killed by an officer in Eureka two years ago was drunk and had hearing problems when the case goes to trial this November. According to his parents’ May 2015 lawsuit, 22-year-old Thomas McClain was complying with…
Public Defender to Retire, Judgeship Not Likely
After a decade on the job, Humboldt County Public Defender Kevin Robinson has informed the Board of Supervisors that he will be retiring in January. In a short letter sent to the board last week, Robinson says his last day heading the Public Defender’s Office will be Jan. 20 and offers to assist with training…
ArMack Silent Film Festival
OK. Enough of all that scary stuff. The ArMack Silent Film Festival promises an evening of old-fashioned film fun with showings of Buster Keaton’s The Haunted House (1921) and Charlie Chaplin’s The Adventurer (1917), featuring live sound effects and orchestral soundtrack ($5). Performances run Oct. 13-14 at 7 p.m. and Oct. 15 at 2 and…
Sheriff’s Office Investigating County’s 19th Homicide
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is investigating another homicide, after a 23-year-old was stabbed to death in Weott on Friday night. The homicide is the 19th recorded in the county so far this year, and comes in the midst of the county’s single grisliest annual homicide total in at least 30 years. It also puts…
HumBug: Seasons Change
Seasons change, and with them the insects we see. Headed toward winter now, there are fewer dragonflies. It seems the big common green darners are all gone now, migrated elsewhere. But on a recent stroll along the Van Duzen, I saw several others. A solitary dusty, old-looking western river cruiser and a couple too far…
Fortuna Police Investigating Apparent Murder-Suicide
UPDATE: The Fortuna Police Department has identified the deceased as 50-year-old Steve Sisson and 81-year-old Jerry Sisson. No motive has yet been identified in the case. PREVIOUSLY: The Fortuna Police Department is investigating what it believes to be a murder-suicide that claimed the lives of a father and his son. Police were called to a…
McKinleyville Man Killed in Morning Crash
The California Highway Patrol is investigating a single car crash that left a pedestrian dead in McKinleyville before dawn today. According to the CHP, Kevin Leigh Patton, 48, of McKinleyville, was travelling about 30 miles per hour westbound on Airport Road at about 5:10 a.m. in his 2005 Chevrolet Silverado. For unknown reasons, a pedestrian,…
The Corpse Bride Ballet
Want to get into the Halloween spirit this weekend, but Sweeney Todd is a bit too gruesome? How about Tim Burton Lite? The Dance Scene Studio and SunDance Ballet Company present highlights from The Corpse Bride Ballet (based on Burton’s film), Oct. 9 at 2 p.m. at the Morris Graves Museum of Art ($5, $2,…
Gyro-pean
Yearning for a gyro? Weaning off wiener schnitzel but not there yet? Satisfy your cravings for Greek and Central European cuisine at the 13th annual Ethnic Food and Dance Festival, Saturday, Oct. 8 from noon to 4 p.m. at St. Innocent’s Orthodox Church (free admission). The popular “Taste of Orthodoxy” event features an array of…
Cheer the Walking Dead
Last Saturday’s Zombie Walk jump started the Halloween season with its third annual lurch and drag through Eureka’s Old Town by a small army of the undead. Fake blood enthusiasts of all ages, from toddlers with barely enough teeth to gnaw the living to adults with serious makeup skills, groaned and dragged their decaying corpses…
Starting the Conversation: HSU forum focuses on race, police
Against the national backdrop of a recent spate of high profile shootings of unarmed black people by law enforcement, students, police and community members gathered on the Humboldt State University campus Thursday evening for a far-reaching conversation on race and policing. Local law enforcement and members of the HSU black community sat side by side…
Haunted Mill Tours at Blue Ox Millworks
Lurking around an old mill at night is creepy enough, but add cleavers, liches and deranged lunatics and you’ve got a night of total terror. Don’t miss the Haunted Mill Tour at Blue Ox Millworks every Friday and Saturday from 7 to midnight, Oct. 7-29, with an additional night of scares on Oct. 31 ($12).…
Trinidad Art Nights
Shuttle Service available from top of the hill down to the bay. This is the final art night for the 2016 season. BERGERON WINERY 359 Main St. Charles Klabunde, etchings. THE LIGHTHOUSE GRILL 355 Main St. Susan Mayclin Stephenson, acrylic on canvas. MOONSTONE CROSSING 529 Trinity St. Kathy Reid, straw art. Music by Tony Roach. NED SIMMONS…
Who’s Driving the Bus, Eureka?
The city of Eureka just made a very big decision, one that could change the law in California and ultimately cost city taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. So who made this call? Was it the city attorney? The city manager? The elected members of city council? We don’t know and that’s a problem, especially…
Deep Water
Reviews DEEPWATER HORIZON. It feels like yesterday when director Peter Berg and star Mark Wahlberg collaborated on Lone Survivor (2013). This is due as much to the punishing, visceral immediacy of that movie as to the fact that 2013 wasn’t really all that long ago, and here the boys are again with an even larger…
Not Me
Editor: I am insulted by the Journal editorial that includes me as part of the “community problem” of DUI and drug related accidents (“You and Me and the Keys,” Sept. 22). I have never taken up smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. I don’t go to places where this happens. The media, including TV, radio, and written…
Unsettling Developments
Editor: An unsettling circumstance is upon us. We are about to lose most of the nursing homes in our area because they are economically unviable (“State Approves Closure of Three Skilled Nursing Facilities,” posted online Sept. 28). I propose that this is because they are privately owned, in our case by one Schlomo Rechnitz, who…
No Warning
Editor: How disheartening it was, as a retired newspaper reporter and former journalism lecturer myself at Chico State University, to read Marcy Burstiner’s Sept. 29 column, “Warning: This Column Contains Objectionable Material,” advocating “warning people about content and trying to present content that people are emotionally capable of consuming.” And this from a journalism department…
Bad Call
Editor: I read the North Coast Journal nearly every week and generally am not overly informed or even that interested in the small town, “community” rag. That being said, I read your article “Service Call” about presumptive City Councilmember Heidi Messner in the Sept. 22 issue and was both disappointed and saddened that you would…
Vote!!!
Editor: John Fullerton has been with the city of Eureka for many years. He has an education in business. As a CPA, he has created jobs and has helped others develop their businesses. He has worked with the Eureka City Schools Board, the Eureka Planning Commission (over two years), and the Greater Eureka Chamber of…
Yes We Can
Open our hearts To the promise Of tomorrow, Steeped in DREAMers Coloring cooling waters Only clouds can carry…
Appropriate Use
It’s the last long week of summer before school starts. In Highland Park, three small kids – two boys and a girl – race past the slide and swings and begin to clamber up a tree with graffiti spray-painted on it. There is no adult watching them but they say, cheerfully, that their dad is…
Brius This, Seaview That
You know that feeling you get when people around you suddenly start talking about you in the third person, as if you were not there. As if you did not exist. “Excuse me, I am standing right here; talk to me,” or some such phrase is what I use to reaffirm my existence and to…
Art of the Deal (With Video)
A trio of short videos taking aim at the war on drugs and the burgeoning legal marijuana industry have been tearing though the interwebs in recent weeks. (Watch them below.) First we have music mogul Jay-Z, who turned money made from selling crack as a teen into a career rapping about selling crack, which he…
Rocky of Ages
I have a long relationship with the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I’ll try to keep short. Midnight shows as a teen in the mid-1980s were my first exposure to its live casts and hollering audience participation. Then as a manager at the Arcata Theatre in the 1990s, back in its cinema-only days,…
Vote, Dammit
In the event you have been dead for the past year, there is an election coming up next month. We’re the most No. 1 country on the goddamn planet but we need to be made great again (go figure). To make America great again — again — we have to vote. And to get many…
Hum Plate
When Bacon is Your Jam There is nothing like the crushing disappointment of sharing intel on a favorite hole-in-the-wall — the labyrinthian directions! the semi-sketchy location! the limited hours! — only to find your confidante has already eaten there. Sniff out whether or not members of your carnivorous inner circle have hit up BullDoggies hot…
Fright Nights
Say goodbye to summer, the season of darkness is upon us. To celebrate, the Eureka Theater wants you to get your freak on every Friday night in October at its Frightful Friday Flix series. The sequence of screamers opens in the nick of time with Tim Burton’s ultra-stylish, unflinching take on Stephen Sondheim’s bloody opera…
