Cover Story
Spring in Humboldt
Air bright with sun-charged droplets floods the valleys. Wind kicks up, the sun climbs higher, and the turmoil and energy spur on the clouds, ripple lagoons, quicken the glittering rivers and compel small, new goats into battle for the top of … whatever. A concrete block, maybe, if that’s all their field’s got. Flowers bust…
Tonight’s Setlist: Modern Love
Modern Scot Boston fiddler Hanneke Cassel returns to Humboldt with a performance at the Arcata Playhouse, this time with husband and cellist Mike Block (a member of Yo Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project). Influences from Scotland to China, along with grooves and musical innovations from the hip Boston bluegrass/Americana scene, fuse together to give Cassel…
Tonight’s Setlist: ‘Beatles’ benefit, White Manna release, Electro-Stomp
All You Need is Love (and Money) First up, a benefit for Boys and Girls Club of the Redwoods at the Jambalaya with music by Beatles tribute band Silver Hammer, plus Triple Junction. The Club is running in the red, says show organizer Kris Dickerson, and this benefit will help pay some of the costs…
Hoopa Tribe Just Says No
The attempt to legalize marijuana growing on Hoopa tribal lands has been defeated. Unofficial results of yesterday’s Hoopa Valley Tribe election show the measure, which would have repealed a ban on any marijuana cultivation — medical or otherwise — that’s been in effect since 1999, failed by a wide margin (63-36). The movement was launched…
Southern Comfort
This far northwest, Southern cooking is exotic. Slice of Humboldt Pie (Redwood Acres, 3750 Harris St., Eureka), in its rotating menu of sweets and savories, features a pair of dueling southerners. First there is the Kentucky Derby pie ($20), which is essentially a walnut pie that got drunk on Bourbon at the track. The crust…
Humboldt Style: Everybody Goes to Rick’s
The Eureka Theater was packed like a wartime visa office for the screening of Casablanca on Friday night. The upper and lower lobbies were transformed into Rick’s Café Americain, the gin joint run by Bogie in the film, and more than a few patrons took the opportunity to work their 1940s vintage best. Upstairs, the…
Woman Shot to Death in Phillipsville
A woman died following a shooting in Phillipsville on Saturday. Sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of the shooting on the 400 block of Phillipsville Road around 8:30 p.m. and found 47-year-old Jessica Jane Hare, who died on the scene. Witnesses reported that another Phillipsville resident, 59-year-old Earl C. Orr, had a gun and had…
Making Eureka Purty, One Concrete Monument at a Time
The consultants in charge of South Eureka’s facelift unveiled the latest designs for a spruced up entry into the city. The “preferred alternative” design, which takes into account feedback from the city and community from prior public meetings, features decorative landscaping, street trees, medians with lights and banners, and a curvy concrete monument welcoming northbound…
Arkley Volunteers Balloon Track for Possible Homeless Camp. Seriously.
Rob Arkley’s Security National has offered up its Balloon Track property as a potential site for the sanctioned temporary campground for the homeless being proposed by Eureka Police Chief Andrew Mills. The offer comes about 18 months after Arkley convened a packed community meeting to discuss homeless issues at Eureka’s Wharfinger Building, where he strongly…
Police Play Ketchup, Replace Smashed Tomatoes
Last week’s bizarre chase through the backyards of south Arcata ended with a warrant suspect taken into custody at gunpoint. He was apparently unharmed, but there was one casualty: a tomato plant trampled in the Arcata Police Department’s takedown of the fleeing man. High pursuit! Shits going down in my sister’s backyard! Po-po stepped on…
Happy to See Me?
Cheesecake meets beefcake when Portland’s Cocked and Loaded boylesque troupe bumps and grinds it out at 9 p.m. on Saturday, April 25 at the Eureka Inn’s Palm Lounge ($12 door, $10 advance). Caravan of Glam emcee Ecstacy Inferno hosts this male revue with strip that’s heavy on the tease. The brains behind all this brawn…
Help a Mother Out
Sure, you could sit back and watch the slow march of global warming turn our home into a wasteland, or you could step up and help keep it viable for a few more years. On Saturday, April 25, there are ample opportunities to do your part, as local environmental organizations host several Earth Day cleanups…
An Epic Week (!!!)
Guys! This week is nuts! I feel like I’m 15! So many exclamation points!!! Forget about sleep or saving money or anything other than getting yourself out to at least one of these excellent shows! Friday: A Thing! It’s not just any ol’ thing, The Stringthing. It’s a very special type of thing. With strings!…
‘Not a Police Problem’
Trish stood in front of her tent petting her medium-sized, black and brown dog as gusts of wind rustled the nearby brush and dozens of police officers scoured the area, rousing homeless people from their tents to check their identifications and search for outstanding warrants. The multi-agency sweep of the encampments behind the Bayshore Mall…
Boys to Man-boys
Reviews WHILE WE’RE YOUNG. Noah Baumbach can run a little hot and cold. His collaboration with Wes Anderson yielded The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), a near-perfect adventure comedy suffused with the sadness of missed opportunities and existential angst. The two re-teamed on Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) but my feelings about that one aren’t…
Impostors and Bloodsuckers
A Bee or Not a Bee? Recently out in the yard, a glimpse of the insect world’s most popular warning colors of black and yellow hinted that the buzzing around me might be a bumblebee. I was eager to get a good picture to send into the Bumblebee Watch Project. Noting declining bumblebee populations, it requests anyone…
Party On
This is lame,” murmured one of Arcata’s few hardcore stoners around 4:23 p.m. A couple of young men had stepped off the concrete slab at Redwood Park, the small piece of public property that the Humboldt Center for Constitutional Rights had wrested from the control of a zealous city staff over the course of the…
Paul of the Wild
Editor: Just when I’d thought I’d lost almost all (if not some) hope in humanity and its role it should be playing on this planet, a superhero appears. Thank you, Paul Sever, Keeper of the Wilderness, on behalf of the earth, the wild things that roam and grow there and for future generations to come…
Grass Again
Editor: At first I laughed at the cartoon showing our supervisors with a beach grass hairdo (“Mailbox,” April 16). Then I recalled when Heidi Walters did such a good job bringing the beach grass issue to the North Coast Journal four years ago (“Bad Weed,” April 21, 2011). We continue to report dying native trees,…
Time to Re-Humanize
Editor: I appreciate the heartfelt insight of Joshua Kinch’s letter of April 16 (“And Another Thing…”). In Humboldt County, we have a homeless population larger than the size of many towns, but priority for relief of their suffering is not on the official agenda. I agree with Joshua, that reactive measures we use now in…
Finding Unity
Editor: Many thanks to the North Coast Journal and reporter Linda Stansberry for the moving, in-depth article “Ready/Preparados” (April 9) on the work of the grassroots activist network True North. Mentioned briefly in the article was the fact that, in addition to the Latino communities in Fortuna and Eureka, other cultural and faith-based groups from…
Surviving
Editor: I am very aware of the Domestic Violence Coordinating Council’s Safety and Accountability Assessment, and the work of all of our heroic (underfunded) advocacy organizations. But all I could say to Csilla Adam about her attacker not being held accountable sooner was, “It’s wrong.” I am sending her — and all survivors — healing…
No Shame in Cans
Has cooking always been so complicated? When I look at recipes in magazines like Cooking Light and Bon Appetit, the pages themselves seem weighed down with all the ingredients to be prepared in intricate separated stages, then elegantly choreographed for assembly, like a culinary ballet. If I weren’t comfortable with my keep-it-simple-stupid style of cooking,…
Ouch.
What does it mean when sex hurts? I’m not talking about consensual power-exchange here — that’s a topic for another day. I’m talking about pain that happens when it shouldn’t, like when you’d like to be fully immersed in the joys of deeply satisfying and pleasurable sensations, and find yourself wincing instead. It’s a common…
Play it Again
Drinking and watching Casablanca over and over at home alone in your pajamas is a little sad. Especially when you could be drinking and watching Casablanca out with people in fancy clothes. That’s not sad. It’s cultured and social. On Friday, April 24, the Eureka Theater becomes Rick’s Café Americain for a big-screen showing of…
