Where To Surf
With winter waves rolling in, here’s the where and how
Cover Story
Where To Surf
“News is something someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.” — Lord Northcliffe Our county is home to countless subcultures. They range the full spectrum, from straight to strange, and rare is the person who doesn’t belong to at least three or four of them. Each has its own particular set of rules and…
Busking, Valley West
Traveler Alessa Bakkum busks for some room money in the Valley West shopping center. She’s also featured in our cover this week on Arcata’s proposed panhandling ordinance … although busking per se is not the target of the ordinance.
Marina Center Live Blog
OK, we’ll be getting this party started as soon as the Marina Center item on today’s Coastal Commission agenda goes live. All the action is in the flashy box below, assuming it works. Go ahead and type words in there. Here’s the link to the Coastal Commission live webcast. Here’s Ryan Burns’ story in this…
Rest Easy, Aggrowers
Our economic engine won’t be dismantled any time soon.
Big Plea in Quigley Case
Press release just issued by the District Attorney Office: Today, jury selection in the People versus Whitmill and Flores trial was interrupted when the two defendants entered guilty pleas to the criminal charges related to the death of Nicole Quigley on October 6, 2008. Jason Whitmill, who was 32 years old at the time, and…
Re-Misunderstood
A fine letter in the Nov. 19 issue told of one person’s concern with the Politically Correct dogma being taught, with little room for disagreement, at the local university. The writer referred to a professor’s admission that his aim was to “deconstruct” Western Civilization. I enjoyed the thought behind the writer’s letter, and felt it…
Scotia Days
Editor: I was moved by Ryan Burns’ article, “Reinventing Scotia” (Nov. 26). I worked for the Pacific Lumber Company for 19 years and lived in Scotia for 12 of them. It brought back some mixed memories. I didn’t have much of a feeling that it was my town. One reason was that it took years…
Arts Alive!
1 . F ST. CAFÉ 1630 F St. Bill Pierson, Italian Landscape. 1a. WORLD CUP 1626 F St. Chris Dubois, ceramic portraits, b&w photos; Music by DJ Kissyface. 2. THE INK PEOPLE CENTER FOR THE ARTS 411 12th St. 6th Annual Artists’ Challenge Exhibition and Sale. 3. SHIP’S INN BED & BREAKFAST 821 D St.…
“Victim”-ized
Editor: I’m grateful to the Arcata Theatre Lounge for canceling Bounty Killer’s concert as soon as they discovered that he sings songs encouraging the murder of gay people. Bob Doran, on the other hand, seems determined to offend. In “The Hum,” he describes Rodney Basil Price (aka Bounty Killer), as “the victim (if that’s the…
Foods With a Name and a Home
Eating is our most fundamental link to the natural world, and by looking to local sources we become attuned to the abundance and the limits of the soil under our feet and the climate we dwell in. – Eddie Tanner (quoted in Locally Delicious) I grew up in a city in Italy, living in an…
The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution
November 24 marked the 150th anniversary of the publishing of Charles Darwin’s defining work, The Origin of Species, and for commemoration Richard Dawkins has written his most accessible book to date, The Greatest Show on Earth. With a 2008 Gallop poll showing that 44 percent of Americans believe God created man in his present form…
Prince of Truth
Performer, musician, vocalist and composer Carla Bozulich frequently challenges her audiences, her listeners and musical boundaries/definitions. Bozulich’s art is often unsettling. Her reputation as a provocateur goes back to the mid-’80s with the Los Angeles experimental noise band Ethyl Meatplow, and later with The Geraldine Fibbers, which featured guitarist Nels Cline (with whom Bozulich would…
Gifts of the Garden
I almost didn’t write a garden gift column this year. This is my seventh year to write for the Journal, and I continue to wonder why they haven’t fired me yet, what with my narrow horticultural interests and my general lack of expertise. If I turned in yet another round-up of holiday gift ideas that…
Returning
We can go back to that place,let’s believe…
The View from Europe
The fish is the last to see the water. I was recently reminded of this aphorism (from anthropologist Ruth Benedict) on receiving an e-mail from our Dutch friend Pieter in response to our question, Why do you keep vacationing in the U.S.? His reply reminded me that after 40 years living on the West Coast,…
Scrooge Groove
What did Christmas mean to Charles Dickens? Singing, dancing, feasting, games, good works and, for some reason, ghosts. He wrote at least 10 ghost stories involving Christmastime, the most famous being A Christmas Carol. Given commedia’s attraction to the grotesque, these Christmas ghosts would seem a natural focus for this year’s holiday show from Dell’Arte,…
Anger Your Readers
As a teenager I worked in a small deli my dad owned with my uncle. We served great food at good prices. That was all it took to make our customers happy. If someone complained that the potato salad had turned, dad gave him a fresh container or his money back. It is more difficult…
Outfoxed
Previews Opening Friday, Dec. 4, is Brothers, which is based on the 2004 Danish film Brodre. The film stars Tobey Maguire as Sam, who is reported missing in Afghanistan, Natalie Portman as his wife Grace and Jake Gyllenhaal as Sam’s brother Tommy, just out of jail, who helps Grace and her children. Based on the…
No Rules
I’ll probably always think of him as young Bernie Steinberg, leader of RBS Syndrome, Fortuna High’s hottest punk pop band, but these days he’s calling himself Berel Alexander. "Berel is the name on my birth certificate: Berel Alexander Steinberg. Bernie was my grandfather; Alexander was my great great uncle. I went by Bernie my whole…
I Have A Tax Lien?
The woman on the phone at first was certain it was a mistake. "I have one of those? I have a tax lien?" said Denise Goforth, owner of the Petrolia General Store, Tuesday morning. "Yep. It was recorded at the county clerk’s office last week." And she wasn’t the only one, I told her. Seven…
Officers and Gentlemen
The County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday took another listing step toward the formation of a Citizens’ Law Enforcement Liaison Committee (CLELC), with three of the five supes working to fine-tune language outlining the group’s makeup and responsibilities while the other two joined several skeptical members of the public in calling the proposed committee pointless…
