Cover Story
The Humboldt 35
They have been missing since 1977, or just since last November. They range in age from 1 to 94. They are men and women, and two very small girls. The sheriff’s office will not call any of them “cold cases” but many of their names and faces have long since slipped from public recognition. They…
Crisis Delayed
On Monday night, Bryan Hall, executive director of the Eureka Rescue Mission, received a call from the house manager of the men’s shelter. “There was a man dropped off in a wheelchair with one leg, no hands and a colostomy bag with nowhere to go,” Hall wrote on Facebook. “Needless to say, we brought him…
Music Tonight: Wednesday, Feb. 7
Crescent City’s Tom Boylan, aka Holus Bolus, has been spending the last decade bringing his one-man band to as many places as he can to play a wild and loopy mix of jammy acoustic groove rock. Armed with a small drum kit, a guitar and a few pedals, Holus Bolus builds songs out of loops…
Cool Ink, Hot Wings and Hot Dogs
The ninth annual Inked Hearts Tattoo Expo at the Blue Lake Casino & Hotel in Blue Lake last weekend wrapped the usual work of more than 30 talented tattoo artists around a few new features. Event organizers Ted and Amy Marks added the Hot Wings of Death Challenge and the all-bulldog Super Bully Bowl Pageant…
Coast Guard Rescues Another Boat Today (With Video)
Yet another crab fishing vessel with two onboard was escorted back to port today, the fourth Coast Guard rescue mission in as many days. The call came in around 10:30 a.m. and the Comet was back at Woodley Island by 1:30 p.m. after a prop failed. No injuries were reported. On Monday, the Coast Guard…
Coast Guard Responds to Three Rescues in Three Days
For the third time in three days, the Coast Guard was dispatched to help local fishermen in distress. In the latest rescue, a lifeboat crew was sent around 1 p.m. Monday to assist four Dungeness crab fishermen aboard the 58-foot Lori Ann, which had become disabled amid heavy fog. After putting the vessel in a…
UPDATED: Sheriff’s Office Pulls Body from Van Duzen River
UPDATE: According to a press release from the sheriff’s office, deputies recovered a male body from the Van Duzen River, near the south side of the Van Duzen River bank, located “approximately 1000 feet from the mouth of the river.” An autopsy is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 7. Previously: The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that deputies…
The Redwood Coast is Lonely Planet’s Best in the U.S. 2018
If you’re old enough to have traipsed around unfamiliar turf hauling a hefty Lonely Planet guidebook, this win will taste even sweeter: The go-to travel guide/app publisher has named California’s Redwood Coast the No. 1 domestic travel destination on its 2018 list. Lonely Planet picks its top 10 with the help of editors, contributors, researchers…
Music Tonight: Tuesday, Feb. 6
Another sort of instrumental experience awaits you tonight at Blondies as Cabbagehead plays a free show at 7 p.m. A collective of jazz punk aficionados from the Bay Area, Cabbagehead bills itself as “spazz jazz,” with a claim of equal inspiration being drawn from the likes of Frank Zappa and Duke Ellington. Having a hard…
How to Get Involved 101
“How do we get rid of the ‘old boys club?” was the first question posed at Sunday’s Run, Serve, Lead! conference hosted by North Coast People’s Alliance to educate residents about becoming involved in the political landscape. The alliance grew out of the local efforts to elect Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sander to office. The…
Crab Season Starts With Vessel Rescue, Fisherman Lost Overboard
After spending 11 hours combing 700 square miles off the coast, the U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for a crew member who fell off a crabbing boat in a tragic start to the commercial Dungeness season. “It is with a heavy heart the Coast Guard makes the decision to suspend a search-and-rescue case,”…
Music (Documentary) Tonight: Monday, Feb. 5
Bill Frisell might be my favorite modern guitar player. His 2000 album Ghost Town is certainly among my favorite albums of all time, with its blend of haunting and heart-worn cinema-scapes drifting through a tracklist full of stringed instruments that ring out more often than just pluck their plaintive and perfect notes. It’s something I…
Music Tonight: Sunday, Feb. 4
For more than a century, Minnesota’s world-renowned St. Olaf Choir has been performing deftly arranged versions of spirituals and songs of worship as well as some of the heavy-hitters from the secular classical canon like “Lacrimosa” from Mozart’s Requiem. Expect a night of exactly that sort of thing when conductor Anton Armstrong and his cohort…
Music Tonight: Saturday, Feb. 3
For more than five decades Canadian national treasure Bruce Cockburn has been writing and performing music marked by complex and sometimes percussive acoustic guitar, intricate and tender arrangements, and lyrics that harken to themes of ecological threats, social justice and the good sort of Christian spirituality. A favorite rainy-day song of mine is the instrumental…
Bigfoot on the Big Screen
If you saw a film crew, a hairy suit and a lot of bare abs in the woods between 2015 and 2016, it may have been the cast and crew of Primal Rage, a Hollywood feature film about our local cryptozoological hero, Bigfoot. The movie, directed by Patrick Magee and starring Casey Gagliardi and Andrew…
Sheriff, Bachelor Contestant Respond to Media Frenzy
When our story broke yesterday that one of the “Humboldt 35” – people on the California Attorney General’s database listed as missing from Humboldt County – was not only safe and sound, but vying for a rose on national television, it was greeted by a variety of responses, and a lot of questions. The most pressing question: How did Martinez’s…
Celebrate the Waterfront Trail
Make your own tracks on the Eureka Waterfront Trail. Newly completed, enjoy over six miles of developed trail showing some of Eureka’s best sides. Join other outdoor enthusiasts at the Ribbon Cutting for Eureka Waterfront Trail on Tuesday, Feb. 6 from 12:30 to 1 p.m. at Blue Ox Millworks (free), then get to stepping. Related…
Music Tonight: Friday, Feb. 2
Fieldbrook Market and Eatery presents a free show tonight at 7:30 p.m. with country artist Bradley Dean. Local reggae artists get together at Humbrews tonight under the moniker of The Marley Project to play the music of — wait for it — Bob Marley and the Wailers. The show gets cracking at 9:30 p.m. and…
Bruce Cockburn at JVD
“The whole point of writing songs is to share experiences with people,” says Bruce Cockburn, Canadian singer/songwriter/guitarist extraordinaire, who’ll be sharing experiences Saturday, Feb. 3 at 8 p.m. at the Van Duzer Theatre ($49). Cockburn appears with a full band for his Humboldt performance, bringing some of the best folk and jazz-influenced rock you’ve heard.
Not Missing in Humboldt: Bachelor Contestant Bekah Martinez
It turns out Rebekah Martinez is not missing at all. Quite the contrary, actually, she’s on a popular nationally televised show: The Bachelor, which you might have heard of. When posting this week’s cover story to Facebook, we asked if any of our readers recognized any of the 35 people currently listed as missing from…
Get Trackin’
Ever wonder about those footprints on the trail and whether they mean you need to high tail it out of there or just relax and enjoy the company? Learn how the ancient art of tracking can reveal information about the secret life of wildlife at HSU Natural History Museum’s lecture Wildlife Tracking: An Ancient Art…
The Arte of Comedy
See one of the best and earliest forms of improv comedy when the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater’s first-year students present Viva Commedia! Feb. 1-3 at 8 p.m. at Dell’Arte’s Carlo Theatre (pay what you can). Commedia dell’arte, going back centuries, is marked by bold physical play, over-the-top exaggerated performances with actors in masks…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Feb. 1
Olympia’s DIY-born and bred K Records is one of those phenomena in the history of American music that make the most sense looking backward through the trajectory of pop culture. The early home of indie groups like Built To Spill and Bikini Kill began at a time when punk rock was undergoing an identity crises…
Get Inked
If the sound of tattoo guns buzzing gets your blood pumping, grit your teeth for the adrenaline rush of the Inked Hearts Tattoo Expo, four days of tattoos, contests, vendors and shows happening Feb. 1-4 at Blue Lake Casino from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Feb. 1-3 and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. on Feb. 4 ($10 daily entry,…
Clarification
In our weekly cartoon feature in the Jan. 25, 2018, edition of the North Coast Journal, we ran a photo collage submitted by cartoonist Terry Torgerson showing signs from the Jan. 20 Women’s March on Eureka. It has since come to our attention that Torgerson used photos he found on Facebook, including some taken by…
Bench Clearing
Twenty years ago in these very pages, the North Coast Journal ran a story about an unprecedented turnover in the Humboldt County judiciary. Over the span of just 24 months in the late 1990s, Humboldt saw five of its seven judgeships change hands amid a youth movement. Well, history repeats. In the last week, Humboldt…
Lost in the Darkness
Reviews HOSTILES. I’ve been perhaps misguidedly attempting to sort out my feelings about writer/director Scott Cooper’s work — generally but also in this column — since Crazyheart (2009), his feature debut. That movie got all kinds of press, most of it for Jeff Bridges’ lead performance and most of that well deserved. Even then I…
On the Rocks
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? looms large in the collective mind. Born as a Tony Award-winning play from the pen of the great Edward Albee in 1962, it was adapted for the screen four years later. And this is how many people, myself included, were first introduced to this story — with Elizabeth Taylor and…
Bowled Over
January has come and gone, and now midwinter has truly set in. With it comes the shortest month and, for many, the biggest sports event of the year as well: the Super Bowl. I used to enjoy watching football but the commercialization and hyper-militarized nationalism of the culture coupled with the extreme reactionary response from…
Hum Plate Round-up
It’s hard to order before you’ve had your coffee. Here’s what’s getting us out of bed this month. Is brunch dead? A few weeks ago, iconic pop star and holder of Champagne flutes Mariah Carey declared brunch over. On some level, she may be right. We may be done waiting in line (Mimi would never) to…
Oldylocks and the 3,000 Stairs
If anything was to dispel my notion of being a young person who deserved some kudos for “adulting,” it was going back to Humboldt State University at 37. Compared to my classmates, I wasn’t just “adulting,” I was a full-ass adult on the parent-age spectrum. Among the underclassmen who use “retro” and “’90s” in the…
Dig Those Razor Clams
The other day my imaginary friend said, “Your little stories there in the back pages of the local weekly … They’re OK.” “Just OK?” I asked. “Yeah. They’re too much like beachcomber pornography. You strut onto the beach, instantly presented with fantastic big squids. And your threesome with the lancetfish and spiny dogfish was hot…
Cultivation Cap Heads to Court
The California Grower’s Association, the largest cannabis trade group in the state, has filed a lawsuit challenging emergency state regulations that went into effect late last year and allow a single person or business to cultivate an unlimited amount of marijuana. A pledge to protect California’s small cannabis farmers from an influx of large corporations…
Crab Season
Huge waves Lift our horizons, Crab pots set Close to shore Wafting death, Baiting others In the dark Unaware of The harvest… Related Stories
I Marched
Editor: Today I marched with my daughter, granddaughter and sister (NCJ Daily, Jan. 25). We were proud to join women and men from my small county who share my horror at this presidency. I’ve felt helpless and depressed; marching was something I could do. Feeling finally empowered, I walked up F street toward my car…
A Monumental Suggestion
Editor: May I suggest a statue for the Plaza that is far removed from President McKinley (“A Monumental Decision,” Dec. 7). Consider Mary, the Jewish mother to Jesus of Nazareth. She stands as a tribute to women’s empowerment and a statement against anti-Semitism. Carman Gentile, Arcata Related Stories
Let’s Talk About Jobs!
Editor: A glaring omission in Representative Huffman’s interview (“Congressional Chat,” Jan. 18) was “jobs or full employment.” We should be proposing: federal job retraining programs for jobs lost during industry disruptions, vocational training in high school/community college and federal start-up funding for mini manufacturing. Instead of discussing “decorum,” Huffman and Wear could have analyzed the…
Contents Under Pressure: Graffiti at Piante
Everyone who knows about it is very excited to see what craziness I have agreed to this time,” gallerist Sue Natzler said with a laugh about the graffiti art exhibition opening this month at Piante Gallery. The installation was in the final stages of completion when I saw it and indeed, the place looked changed.…
Arts Alive!
Presented by Eureka Main Street. Opening receptions for artists, exhibits and performances are held the first Saturday of each month. For more information, call 442-9054 or go to eurekamainstreet.org. ADORNI CENTER 1011 Waterfront St. Paul Rickard, water colors; Barbara Saul, pastels; Mark Lazzarotto, oil paintings. AMERICAN INDIAN ART AND GIFT SHOP 245 F St. Music…
Time to Pay Up, Mateel
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Music Tonight: Wednesday, Jan. 31
The last two decades saw a bit of a renaissance for loud and heavy Japanese psyche bands. From the melodic ecstatic glory of Boredoms to the mind-melting shatter of DMBQ, the island nation has a knack for creating bands which recycle tired rock clichés into a new sound that might be unlistenably pretentious and obtuse…
Music Tonight: Tuesday, Jan. 30
Saxophonist Arrington de Dionyso and drummer Ben Bennett have been touring under the moniker This Saxophone Kills Fascists and are noted for their ability to merge the vitriolic protest of punk music with the supreme love sonic cavalcade of free jazz in a fascinating way. They will be supported tonight at The Outer Space by…
Music Tonight: Monday, Jan. 29
Redwood Curtain is hosting a free and open bluegrass jam from 7 to 9 p.m. so grab your dobro, banjo, guitar, fiddle, washboard, upright bass, tub bass, jaw harp, mandolin, banjolin, mandola or harmonica and come join in!
Music This Morning: Sunday, Jan. 28
Maybe you are one of those staid and collared types who is in bed by nine and has a nice morning every morning because you understand the importance of rest and self-care. Or perhaps you are more like me and the odds are even that you spent Saturday night chasing the kind of fun that…
Music Tonight: Saturday, Jan. 27
Imagine the up-tempo, chugging drone of a Krautrock-inspired rhythm section with a wild and jagged lead guitar in a mix lanced through the center by vocals that sound like an improbable blend of Gary Numan and the Go-Go’s. That’s a bit of what Los Angeles’ Flying Hair sounds like and if you don’t believe me…
Lounging Around
Arcata nightlife is about to get a whole heap more fun. The Arcata Playhouse hosts a new comedy and music show, evoking the setting of a seedy cabaret nightclub with music, comedy and theater from local performers and out-of-town guests showing a whole lotta bawdy. The Papaya Lounge opens its doors for business Saturday, Jan.…
LGBTQ Benefit Pancake Breakfast
Join your LGBTQ+ friends and family for a Pancake Breakfast on Sunday, Jan. 28 from 9 to 11 a.m. at the Eel River Valley Multigenerational Center ($6, $3 kids). Serving looks and all-you-can-eat pancakes, sausage, eggs and tofu scramble, along with veggie, vegan and gluten-free options. The feast benefits future LGBTQ+ events. Gay. As. Brunch,…
Music Tonight: Friday, Jan. 26
The Palm Lounge in the Eureka Inn has a shapeshifting ambience. On an early or an off night, it has an eerie Bardo-esque waiting room of the dead feel; a comforting dreamland where neither the void nor human existence can touch you — low ceilings and a snazzy bar! On a busy night or with…
Nic vs. Nic
People have strong feelings about Nicolas Cage. He’s a versatile actor with an impressive filmography. See? Feelings already. From his early films (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Valley Girl and Rumble Fish), to action hits (Con-Air, The Rock and Gone in Sixty Seconds) and a smattering of artful endeavors (Adaptation, Wild at Heart and Bringing…
Trinidad to Clam Beach Run
Run, walk and splash through a breathtaking course at the Trinidad to Clam Beach Run on Saturday, Jan. 27 from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Trinidad. After the run (walk or splash), celebrate with a bowl of hot chili while the HSU Marching Lumberjacks play in the light of a crackling bonfire. Register online…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Jan. 25
Tonight is a good night for hearing the human voice in its most spectacular setting: the live stage. Up the hill at the Van Duzer Theater Ladysmith Black Mambazo brings its South African gospel finesse and Zulu footwork to crack the boards at 7 p.m. ($49). Although many in the industry of sound refer to…
Big Chili Cookoff at Mad River Brewery
Spend a spicy afternoon at Big Brothers Big Sisters of the North Coast’s Big Chili Cookoff at Mad River Brewery on Saturday, Jan. 27 from 1 to 4 p.m. ($12). Your ticket gets you chili, salad, cornbread and a cookie, plus great music by Doug Fir and the 2X4s and the satisfaction of helping out…
