Cover Story
Top 10 Stories of 2017
What a year, Humboldt. In the pages of our 52 issues this year — and our daily online content — we’ve told a lot of stories, reporting on the tragedies, triumphs, laughter and tears of the North Coast. As we enter a hopefully more peaceful and prosperous 2018, we take this chance to look back…
Homicide Victim Identified
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office has identified the victim of a fatal Jan. 1 Southern Humboldt shooting as 28-year-old Saul Perez Pacheco. A passerby found Pacheco bleeding of a gunshot wound on the side of Alderpoint Road at about 5:30 a.m. and tried to rush him to Jerold Phelps Hospital in Gareberville but Pacheco died…
UPDATE: Fortuna Passes Registration Requirements for Personal Use Cannabis Grows
UPDATE: The Fortuna City Council voted unanimously last night to require residents to register their personal-use cannabis grows with the city. Residents wanting to exercise their rights under Proposition 64 to grow up to six marijuana plants for personal use will now have to pay a $100 filing fee to the city, file a “notice…
Music Tonight: Wednesday, Jan. 3
The Speak Easy has its Ultra Secret Wednesday Queer Night tonight at 8, same as last year. And like last year, the bar is invited to get down to the hybrid house-beat neo jazz sounds of LD51. Free.
Eureka Makes Its Mark on Sunset Magazine List
Here’s some good news for Eureka: While not No. 1, the city has taken the second slot on Sunset Magazine’s list of “20 Game Changing Places to Live” that is coming out in the February edition. The vignette accompanying the entry goes as follows: “This small seaport spent a decade restoring its waterfront with a…
UPDATE: Sheriff IDs Teenage Boy Who Died After Being Hit by Car
UPDATE: The minor has been identified as Elias Silva. His family has established a crowdfunding site to help pay for the teenager’s funeral expenses. That can be found here. Previously: A teenage boy has died after being hit by a car on Saturday, Dec. 30, just before 11:30 p.m., according to the California Highway Patrol.…
Music Tonight: Tuesday, Jan. 2
The Logger Bar has its Irish Music Session tonight at 8. Listen and tap your toes, bring your bodhrán and keep time, or just remove yourself from the participatory aspect of the event and drop some change on a few drinks. Have fun your own way, or as Buck Mulligan put it, “Póg mo thóin.”…
Sheriff’s Office Investigating Alderpoint Homicide
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is investigating its first homicide of 2018 after a man died of a gunshot wound this morning while being rushed to Jerold Phelps Community Hospital. According to a press release from the Sheriff’s Office, deputies were dispatched to the Southern Humboldt hospital shortly before 5:30 a.m. after a passerby found…
Humboldt Lines up For Legal Weed
Dozens lined up on Eureka’s F Street this morning, waiting to become the first people in Humboldt County to legally purchase recreational cannabis. Laura Montagna was the first in line, having shown up at about 10 a.m. — two hours before Eco, the only state licensed dispensary in Humboldt County, was slated to open its…
Music Tonight: Monday, Jan 1
It’s Jan. 1, 2018. The first day of a brand new year. Odds are most people are either hungover, still asleep, or getting an early start on their resolutions and going jogging for the first time in a decade or squashing an ancient family feud or finally getting around to reading an unreadably long masterpiece…
HumBug: Heartworm
I caught a new bug recently. Unfortunately, it was not the kind I could skewer with a pin and put in a frame, but the kind where you’re supposed to drink plenty of fluids and get some rest. So I took the opportunity to do a bit of online research to answer a question recently…
The Year in Photos, by Mark Larson
As we count down the last hours before 2017 is relegated to the dustbins of history, take a few minutes to look back. Local photographer Mark Larson put together the following slideshow of pictures he took throughout the year. Together, they paint a picture of a community that celebrated, protested, grieved, laughed and triumphed its…
Music Tonight: Sunday (New Year’s Eve), Dec. 31
Well, it’s here. The terminal point of a long and needlessly exhausting year of trials, travails and — hopefully — a few triumphs. Here’s hoping that 2017 will be remembered as America’s Empire Strikes Back year and that 2018 will bring a much-needed balance to the tailspin we are in now. I have tried to…
Music Tonight: Saturday, Dec. 30
New Year’s Eve shows tend to have a fairly above nominal entrance fee which can get a little pricey so for New Year’s Eve’s eve, allow me to suggest three free shows that will allow you to save your ducats and doubloons (I just listened to a podcast about pirates, sorry) for the main attraction…
Take it Outside
Start 2018 off on the right foot, followed by the left, and a healthy lungful of fresh Humboldt air. You’ve got those resolutions and, whether it’s less Netflix and chill and more Nike and thrill or just taking in more of our beautiful local scenery, there are plenty of outdoor activities available. Here are two…
Crab Health Advisory Lifted
If you have a boat and some pots, you can get to cracking shells without worry. The California Department of Public Health has lifted its advisory for Dungeness crab consumption. Recent tests show domoic acid levels have dropped low enough that eating sport-caught crustaceans, if prepared properly, should be safe. Make sure to boil or…
Make 2018 Great Again
2017, come on. You were supposed to be better than 2016. Sure, we had an inkling right around November that you were going to be a handful but, really, did you have to be so bad? We’re sending you on your way and setting the tone for an awesome 2018. Here are a few fine…
Music Tonight: Friday, Dec. 29
The Jam hosts a New Year’s Eve warm-up local metal show at 9 p.m. Instrumental down-tuners Ultramafic open and hard rock while metal maestros War Möth headline the night. And DJ Red of Soul Party née Soul Night fame will spin heavy tracks from his vinyl collection before and between the bands. $5.
Fast Food Giant Launches ‘Munchie Meals’ Targeting Recreational Stoner Cash
Not to be left off the multi-billion-dollar cannabis bandwagon, fast food giant Jack in the Box announced earlier this week that it’s launching a line of stoner-targeted snacks. “Jack’s Munchie Meals” will come with two tacos, five mini churros, three crispy chicken strips, a small drink and a serving of half curly fries and half…
Protesters Try to Block Lighthouse Move
A handful of protesters scaled the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse before daybreak this morning in an effort to block its scheduled move next week. The historic lighthouse, which is on unsteady ground in the midst of an active landslide and in danger of tumbling to the rocky shoreline below, has long been a point of contention…
Spaceballs at the Arcata Theatre Lounge
For all the fanboys and girls who take their love of Luke, Leia and Lando a little too seriously, there’s the irreverent antidote: Mel Brooks’ Star Wars/Sci Fi parody Spaceballs (1987). Treat yourself and your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate to a showing of the cult classic Friday, Dec. 29 at 8 p.m. at…
Music Tonight: Thursday, Dec. 28
There’s a storm brewing at the Alibi at 11 p.m. in the form of San Francisco’s sludge and stoner flavored metal trio Hornss. Blue Lake’s loud and crunchy honky tonkin’ group Barnfire opens this rare Thursday night Alibi show with a set of, well, barn burners. $5.
Norovirus
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Rockin’ in the New Year
Have you ever skipped a rock across a frozen pond? It sounds like tension cables snapping or an industrial spring being tuned. It sounds like Star Wars blasters, particularly if the ice is thin or there are holes in it. It’s a perfectly natural sound but it doesn’t seem like one at all. It seems…
Honey, I Shrunk Downsizing and Jumanji Can’t Fill the Screen
DOWNSIZING. A sprawling sci-fi satire, ironically, Downsizing can’t seem to shrink its ambition into a manageable story. Alexander Payne’s (Election, Sideways) take on American ambition, class inequity, climate change, consumerism, predatory dream capitalism and the end of the world might’ve fit if its ostensible hero Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) wasn’t such a milquetoast. His struggle…
Top 10 Dick Moves
What makes something a dick move? Oxford English Dictionaries defines it as “vulgar slang” (fair enough) for “a contemptibly cruel or selfish action.” It could be as small an action as stealing a parking space or as big as killing Net Neutrality (I see you, Ajit). Ultimately, it’s when someone ignores or dramatically flips off…
Who Said What
This was a memorable year for rants, gaffes and wit from all arenas. Can you match the quotes to a speaker featured in the Journal? Click to the next page for answers. What They Said Who Said It A) “Insert fart smell here.” B) “All these little things, like, we’re not going to have…
A Brief Consumer’s Guide to Legal Weed
The day is almost here, after months of planning and speculation and decades of anticipation. On Jan. 1, Californians over the age of 21 who just want to get high will be able to walk into a storefront and buy some weed. But while Humboldt County has been awash in headlines of permit applications and…
Your Parasites’ Parasites
If you are presently trying to wake yourself up in a coffee shop, for example, go ahead and fold this paper up and take it home. Wait until you are ready to enjoy a comfortable and worry-free sleep to read this. Okay, now take a deep breath, close your eyes and imagine yourself kicking back…
Setting the Record Straight
There is a small and very vocal group who continue to criticize and mischaracterize my position on Senate Bill 562, The Healthy California Act, which advocates for a single-payer healthcare system (“Healthcare for All,” Nov. 30, “Mailbox,” Dec. 7 and 14). They have used a technique of boiling this very significant and complex issue into…
What a Year
On Nov. 26 President Trump tweeted that he had turned down the “offer” to be Time magazine’s Person of the Year for the second year in a row. Long-term readers of this publication may recall that Time was one of its prototypes. What this community needed in 1990, we thought, was a regional newspaper that…
Life With No Egrets
The mud is in and Clouds are stalking, With no legs up Taunting winds Offshore. No white lines On blue skies, Nor shallow footprints Painting geometrics Onshore. Nobody is Home…
Civility Matters
A few weeks back, we posted a guest opinion piece on our website from the chair of the local Republican Party, John Schutt Jr., weighing in on the special U.S. Senate race in Alabama. We didn’t know what to expect from Schutt when we solicited the piece but we were interested to hear what he…
Pumpkin Lamb Stew
It’s uncanny how smells bring you back. I hadn’t planned on making my mom’s pumpkin stew but it had been on my mind. For reasons I can’t exactly remember, it had come up in the kitchen of the Journal’s office a week or two earlier as I chatted with a couple of my favorite people…
‘The Marcus Affair’
Editor: Your Dec. 14 editorial “Don’t Screw This up Again” expresses the sentiments felt by many Humboldt residents. The Board of Supervisors clearly deserves to be publicly taken to task for their role in the Marcus affair. A fast food joint follows a more rigorous hiring process than Marcus’, but making matters worse, the board…
Barking up the Wrong Tree
Editor: I want to thank Kimberly Wear for her article (“Something to Crow About,” Dec. 21). It was nice to read about Art Rush and his animals and how he “feeds them, pets them, cleans out their coop, lays out hay and gives the ducks a garden hose shower before refilling the blue kiddie pool…
‘Wonderfully’ Told
Editor: My, my. How wonderfully you tell of Eric’s lost months in another war (“In the Interest of Justice,” Dec. 14). I’m generally not a reader of your mostly liberal rag, but for upcoming events. Your photo of Eric on the porch riveted the page. I love Blue Ox. Stunning news that Army sewing up…
2017 End of Year Local Comedy Showcase
Take a break from family tensions this holiday and slip down to the Palm Lounge at the Eureka Inn for a few drinks and a round of laughs at the 2017 End of Year Local Comedy Showcase, Thursday, Dec. 28 from 8:30-11:30 p.m. Humboldt has a lot of great comedians. Some of them might be…
Music Tonight: Wednesday, Dec. 27
It’s Salsa Wednesdays at the Griffin. Dance off those gingerbread men and sugarplum fairies (I am actually never too sure where to land when it comes to sugarplum fairies. Are they an edible sweet treat or a mystical being sacred to the general Christmas Canon of Enchanted Beings? Either way, I’d likely eat one). Staring…
