100% Humboldt
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing Northcoast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
100% Humboldt
#57. Bill Barnum's Legacy Chronicles: From Eureka's Timber Roots to Housing Hurdles and Sustainable Futures
Join us on a nostalgic journey through Humboldt County with our esteemed guest, Bill Barnum, a Eureka native whose family history is steeped in the region's robust timber legacy. Bill takes us back to the 1950s and 60s, a time marked by a post-war boom and a community driven by the lumber and fishing industries. Hear how his path from Eureka High to Humboldt State University and eventually to law school in Sacramento was shaped by the blue-collar spirit of the area. We also explore the vibrant local sports culture, from Humboldt State's football victories to the cherished memories of skiing at Horse Mountain.
Bill also provides invaluable insight into the housing crisis that has gripped Humboldt County for decades. Despite ambitious plans for development, bureaucratic hurdles and high costs have stymied progress, resulting in a severe housing shortage. We discuss how these challenges have been exacerbated by an influx of residents from high-cost areas like Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Our conversation also touches on the potential for economic growth through initiatives like wind power and the Nordic Fish Farm, highlighting the intersection of housing issues with broader community development goals.
Finally, Bill shares the fascinating history of the Barnum family, encapsulating a tale of resilience and adaptability through the generations. From his grandfather's early years as a truck farmer and prizefighter to his later ventures in the automobile and timber industries, the Barnum legacy is a testament to navigating economic shifts with strategic foresight. As we explore Humboldt's transformation from a timber stronghold to embracing sustainable practices, Bill's personal anecdotes, from favorite eateries to cherished family stories, add a rich layer to our exploration of professional legacy and community connections. Join us for this lively dialogue filled with personal insights and engaging historical narratives.
About 100% Humboldt with Scott Hammond
Humboldt County CA USA is the home of some of the most iconoclastic, genuine, and interesting folks in the world.
We are getting curious about the movers, shakers, and difference makers in Humboldt County CA-Home of the giant redwoods, 6 Rivers, and the vast Pacific Ocean.
We will discover what makes people live/evolve in the beautiful, diverse, isolated, and ever-changing North Coast of California 100%!
Listen in and learn what it is to be 100% Humboldt!
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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, and this is 100% Humboldt Podcast with your host, scott Hammond. That's me and my new best friend, bill Barnum. Hello Scott. Hi Bill, how are you doing? I'm doing fine. It's good to see you. What a magic fall day in Eureka today. Oh, my gosh man, it's just. These are the days where I wish I wasn't in the office all day. You're not, I'm not. I got out a little early, you're right, I broke loose, hey. So tell us the Bill Bortom story in brief. What's your story?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess the current joke is I was born into a in Eureka in 1954 and went to Marshall School in Zane Junior High, Eureka High, class of 72, and went to Humboldt You're 100% Humboldt. Pretty much Got my management degree there and then went to law school in Sacramento.
Speaker 1:What did you study at Humboldt State?
Speaker 2:Management, management.
Speaker 1:Business management. Yeah, good department, the business department, it was good then. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah, they're solid. And then you went to school down in Sac Sacramento Not Stockton, but Sacramento.
Speaker 2:Right, right Down on Fifth Ave, yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was part of Sac State.
Speaker 2:No, it's. Mcgeorge is affiliated with the University of the Pacific, that's Pacific in Stockholm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, good.
Speaker 2:UOP. Yeah, okay, yeah, but the law school is in Sacramento.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, my son went to UOP. Yeah, yeah, good school Tigers. Yeah, go Tigers. They used to have a lot of sports programs, didn't they all? It's expensive yeah, yeah, it is studied international studies and went on to get a doctorate at Davis.
Speaker 2:Oh proud dad. Yeah, that's a good guy.
Speaker 1:They live in Amsterdam, she works for Nike and they're buying a home. Good story yeah, they're buying a home. So tell us about what was Eureka and Humboldt like in the 50s 60s? I?
Speaker 2:mean a little different environment. Well, I love local history. I get a big kick out of it. Both sort of the ancient Humboldt history and Native American history really intrigues me. But you asked about the 1950s and 60s. It was the post-war boom. The population peaked out in 1960, 106,000 in the county then Wow, and it was a lumber boom and fishing. As a child I can tell you that going to school it was diverse, it was blue collar. I remember across the street when I grew up on Williams Street there was a lumber truck every night throughout the years of my childhood. Everybody worked. It was interesting that way. Now, obviously the loggers didn't work so much in the winter but they do other things and go fishing and have other jobs. But it was a working town. Yeah, true, blue-collar town, interesting, yeah, different world, completely different than today.
Speaker 1:What was Humboldt State like? So you would have graduated early 70s, 76., 76.
Speaker 2:Humboldt, of course, was Humboldt State when I was a kid and it ran about 4,000 to 5,000 students then in the 60s I remember 1960, I was young, but they won the Holiday Bowl in- Fresno, that's right. Our family always enjoyed football so we'd season tickets go up and see the game. Great, always a mud bowl.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Always a mud bowl. Saw Danny Walsh have a punt return for 90-plus yards. Is that right?
Speaker 1:In the mud. Was he later a supervisor? Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Is he still alive? Oh well, yeah, I saw Danny just what. Two weeks ago we had that event up at 299 at Barry's Summit. Butch Matthews and others sponsored a memorial for skiing at Horse Mountain oh, how about that? And there was an article in Lost Coast Outpost about it. Really nice article. Glad they ran it. Probably had 300 people up there for the memorial. Wow, Bunch of white-haired folks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, johnny, and I call that our tribe. Yeah, we'll go up to a concert in Oregon. Hey look, our tribe's all here. That's it. All the gray gray hair people. That was our tribe.
Speaker 2:And Danny Walsh was there, so skiing was a big fun thing up at Horse Mountain Also in the mainly the 70s and 80s. That was the thing right. There was a rope tow, three rope tows, three, oh gosh. And they had a free tow and access tow in the Ruby Creek toe, which was the longest operating rope toe in the world. Oh, how about that? About 1,400 feet long. That's a big one. And grueling to ride because you had to have leather gloves. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They would just tear your hands off. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:Well, you go to Schaefer's and buy a couple pair of thick leather gloves and you let the rope run through your right hand. You reach your left hand behind your back, grab onto the rope and up you go. Time you get to the top of the rope. You're cramping from head to toe 1,400 feet.
Speaker 2:Oh, crazy and steep. And so you get off, you take a breath, you ski down to the bottom it takes about 22 seconds, yeah and you take another breath and latch back on. After four of those it was like I'm going to go back to the access toe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, great history. There was no ski lodge. There was a ski lodge, oh, there was.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was rustic.
Speaker 1:Huh, rustic, it's funny because that was going when I was at Humboldt and I never got up there and still haven't been too far up that road.
Speaker 2:The next time you go to Barry's Summit and pull into the viewpoint, they've got a beautiful permanent memorial display there. How about that? Skiing it up off Horse Mountain goes back into the 30s. How about that 1930s? What kind of elevation would you get going up? The top at Horse is 4,951.
Speaker 1:Huh. So, it had snow. It did when we had snow. Yeah, so it had snow. It did when we had snow yeah. Yeah, when it wasn't raining on it.
Speaker 2:Good times.
Speaker 1:So you become an attorney with UOP at downtown Sac. Yeah, how was what was it like going through all that? How many years is that? Is it another four?
Speaker 2:It's three for the day program, four at night. I made the mistake of being the third youngest in my class. Out of 305, I was the third youngest. That was a challenge for me because most of the students were 26, 27 on the average, and some in their 30s, even 40s. So I don't know that I was. You know, they say that a male brain doesn't mature until about age 25 or 26 or or 50 something, 67 or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I felt that challenge and I got through it. The beautiful thing was McGeorge was exceptional at the bar pass rate. So my class 93% of the graduates passed the bar the first try. So that felt good so I got that.
Speaker 1:Chances are you're going to pass.
Speaker 2:Chances are, if you don't mess it up, you're going to pass, so we were talking before the show.
Speaker 1:what three things are you passionate about? What are the say three big things in your life? Did you mention history?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my wife Monica and I are really faithful members of Sacred Heart Church.
Speaker 1:That's got to be near the top for us Down the street. Yeah, that way.
Speaker 2:The other way, a little bit southeast. So we've had a very excellent good fortune in my family for a few generations. So we get to enjoy that. And I really get a kick out of local history. I'm sure people from all over the world enjoy their local histories but this one is exceptionally colorful and dark, optimistic, resource-based. So you know, it has its ups and downs, boom and bust. A lot of really excellent stories about people and peoples, yeah. So I've enjoyed learning that my grandmother, helen, upon her passing in 1993, left her home as the headquarters of the Historical Society. Beautiful home, yeah, that's right there.
Speaker 1:On 8th and H 8th and H. Yeah, yeah, that's right there. On 8th and H 8th and H yeah. Yeah, that's quite a house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our whole family's been history-oriented.
Speaker 1:Put it that way so you were born into kind of the love of history. Yes, what's a couple of favorite quick stories. What are some good stories about her? Wow, I mean, old Town has its own personality and history and well, I, I know this fact factoid, I know.
Speaker 2:In 1875 Eureka had a bigger population than a small town called Los Angeles how about that?
Speaker 1:yeah, huh no longer that small no, no, it didn't stick.
Speaker 2:Good weather though, um so uh, you know, you, look at Humboldt County. It's half the size of New Jersey. I like statistics, history statistics and population statistics, and I was a real estate attorney for 43 years. I have a real interest in that. You know, we just don't grow much here. As I said 1960 had 106,000 people. We dropped to 93,000 in 1970. So that was a significant that's county, that's county County-wide.
Speaker 1:You mean right over here, you mean this county, that.
Speaker 2:Metzger map. You have right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what is a Mr Metzger? It's a great map, by the way. Yeah yeah, and Great map, by the way. Yeah yeah, and Eureka's right there, it still is. Yeah, that's my prop. I have to go to the prop. That's a good prop. Yeah Well, I'll go back to it in a minute.
Speaker 2:So now we're what we're 138,000 plus or minus.
Speaker 1:So we bumped a little bit county size wise.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's since what is that people in 54 years?
Speaker 2:It's pretty low growth, Pretty modest, so has Eureka proper shrunk has. I was a child of about 28,000, now about 26,000. And, as I hinted to you before we got going, one of my favorite beefs and I like talking about it. I don't get much opportunity so I'll bring my favorite beef up.
Speaker 2:You asked me what my passions are Beef it up passions are. Well, I can talk about my church and talk about my family, talk about history, but what I really want to talk about is how worthless zoning and planning has been in this county.
Speaker 1:Take us there. What do you mean when you say that the departments or the policies?
Speaker 2:The policies are just nuts. They're just really ridiculous. So now that I'm not practicing law, I just feel really free to just tell you what I really think. Tell you what.
Speaker 1:Bill, tell us what you think.
Speaker 2:Well, I remember back in 1995, the county was doing the Eureka Planning Area Project and were you here in 95?.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:See, if you remember these details. The county drew a map and they said the future growth of housing is going to be in the Dunn-Robinson or Forrester-Gill track. There's some ridgewood for 2.2 miles downa ridgeline to Lumbar Hills and that would be about 1,200 homes. Then there was the Slack and Winsler tract that would host about 300 homes and then there was the Reardon Ranch tract that would host about 200. How about that? Okay, that was 1995. Okay, so next year that's 30 years how many homes do we have on those three tracts?
Speaker 1:I'd say not very many, two homes.
Speaker 2:So the planners are trying to meet. The state of California has these things called the arena numbers, the regional housing needs allocation. So the state is as stupid as the county planning process. Because the state says we're going to require that the counties and cities plan for a certain number of homes to accommodate and keep the supply of housing adequate to the demand. And it's like any kind of planned economy Planned economies fail because market forces don't match the plan. So for 30 years we're supposed to have 1,200, 1,500, 1,700 homes in 30 years and we have two Dos that's failure, yeah. Object that's failure, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a debacle, thank you, which is a ludicrous failure. It's a boondoggle. Let's come up with some other words. That's a screw-up failure. It's a boondoggle. Let's come up with some other words that's a screw-up.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't work.
Speaker 1:So why did those not get developed?
Speaker 2:I'm curious Well we live in California. It's extremely expensive to develop raw forest lands into housing Extremely expensive. I'm not going to give you my sources because I'm not under cross-examination, but I can tell you that right now if you bought a tract of raw land and you wanted to build a building lot, you'd have the price of acquisition of the raw land and you're going to spend between $80,000 and $100,000 supplying utilities as required by code end, street, curb, gutter, sidewalk, all that. So let's say you paid $100,000, and you got to put $80,000 into the infrastructure. Wow, You're at $180,000. I'll tell you a little story. Monica and I were driving on E Street south of Henderson Center January two years ago. We saw a little cottage with a sale out front. The lot was substandard size. It was 5625 instead of 6,000 square feet, so it's nonconforming. The cottage is like 800 square feet, pier and post.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Built in the 20s, needs some work. Needed some work because it was mortared up in plywood. It was a drug house yeah, EPD shut it down, so I called on it. I said that'd be interesting. Maybe we just scrape that off and put new construction on it. But I want to know what they would want for it, because I've got to spend $20,000 removing the structure. So what would the lot price be? Not for a standard 6,000-foot lot, but for a substandard lot. So I called up and they said well, the listing price was $199. We've had 14 showings. We have multiple offers above asking. It's an auction. Now you wonder why housing is expensive in Humboldt and Eureka. There's no land?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's no land.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's extremely expensive to develop Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. There's a rule of thumb in the construction trades that a finished spec house sells for four times the developed lot cost $200,000 for a lot, $800,000 for the spec house, shh. So where's the market for $800,000 homes?
Speaker 1:Not there.
Speaker 2:Not there. Did you know that? The average house in Humboldt County I'm 70 years old. The average house in Humboldt County is older than I am.
Speaker 1:That's a stat actually. That's interesting.
Speaker 2:The average house 57,400 or so homes in Humboldt County. Huh, and the average house is older than Bill or so homes in Humboldt County Huh. And the average house is older than Bell Barnum.
Speaker 1:How about that? A 70-year-old house is not. It ain't the code today. How were those built?
Speaker 2:Well, they were built with beautiful full-dimension wood. Yeah, they have good structures. They go through many, many earthquakes.
Speaker 1:They have knob and tube electric, unless they've been upgraded, unless they were Many are, but there's your housing stock.
Speaker 2:So then you know you and I both know you get people that move here from LA or the Bay Area and they sold a house for 1.2 to 2.5. Come up here they can buy whatever they want to buy, but it's not a huge number, but it is a number.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is, and I think you're so on track here because we've had so many guests that have talked about the three H's health, homelessness and housing. And the housing thing maybe that's at the top of the list Went to the Economic Summit yesterday.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they're all talking about hey, wind power, they're coming here, vineyard wind or whoever they are, we'll see, we'll see, we'll, see, we'll see, we'll see. And the Nordic Fish Farm guys, are they from Denmark? I'm not sure. Anyway, scandahoovia, yep, daddy says Scandahoovia, he's a Scandahoovian. Where's that I am? I'm Norwegian, norwegian, yep.
Speaker 2:Hey Brother, olaf Skål.
Speaker 1:Skål, skål, skål. We digress. So the housing thing becomes super important, because these guys are going to come and need jobs and have housing needs and I think our britches are down. I don't know how they're going to pull it off.
Speaker 2:You know five or 10 year plan to put another 3,000 or 4,000 homes in Another Eureka planning area plan right, Another good 30-year plan for 1,700 homes that— Tell us what you think about that Turn into two?
Speaker 1:Yeah, just two. So is there a plan? Now A new plan?
Speaker 2:Oh heck, no Okay, oh no, we Heck no, oh no, we're still operating on the strength of that 1995 Eureka planning area and nobody wants to touch that kind of land.
Speaker 2:Because, too— I remember I went to a public hearing about that in 1995. And I'd just gone to a funeral of a close friend of mine before the hearing and I showed up at the hearing pretty emotional and I remember going in there and saying you know, if the county would simply stop zoning, just stop, don't zone anything and let people build homes wherever they want to build homes, you might get some housing. But if you try to control housing in the future, like you're trying to do right now, you're not going to get housing. Yeah, and 30 years later, two houses.
Speaker 1:Well, so you're, I'm inferring that we're set up for failure here. Yeah, that if we don't have healthcare, we don't deal with crime and homelessness and things of that nature, right, and we don't have housing, mostly housing, and we don't have housing, mostly housing. I mean, where will folks stay In the mountains and Riadel and Trinidad? That's prohibitive. To live there Maybe.
Speaker 2:To ask the question is to answer it in the $300 trillion offshore wind project, even if you're paying your people $100,000 a year or $150,000 a year, there's no place for them. Yeah, where do you put them? I mean, it's irresponsible to make an investment like that.
Speaker 1:Well, let's argue this so you buy the house downtown, somewhere in the middle of town, and you displace a working blue-collar family, and then where do they go? They go down the food chain, perhaps, and they sell and they're renting, or they go buy something smaller, and it's a trickle-down thing. I'm thinking that, eventually, that your lower-middle-class folks are going to be hurt. We didn't even talk about the poor yet, right, yeah? And, by the way, rents are going to go up all the time they have to. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Dark. How cynical can we get here? Well, no, it's pretty cynical.
Speaker 2:It seems to me that if you take a view of history and you look at what has been mismanagement of our county and cities even this thing obviously I get a little bit of dark humor happiness out of what's going on with Measure F the elected city council members. Respectfully, I don't think they understand what the people in the community want. They have an idea that they want. I also charge the state of California with those stupid RENA numbers, the Regional Housing Need Allocation numbers, and there are communities within communities and one of these is the middle and low-income building community and they have interest in lobby and they want opportunities. So the idea of taking these parking lots that are owned by the public and turning them into five to seven story apartment buildings is for well, we'll find out on election day but certainly a large minority, if not a majority, of local people would prefer to keep the parking available for the vitality of downtown and Old Town.
Speaker 2:History history again. My dad, bob, lived to be 95. In the 1950s he was on the Eureka Parking Place Commission, parking Place, parking Place Commission mission and they looked at dilapidated Victorian-era buildings from the 1870s and so forth. They were just failed buildings and they floated a bond. They bought them up, tore them down, filled them, paved them and made public parking lots, the purpose of which was to support parking, what they then called the North of Fourth Association. Before we had the Old Town moniker, downtown was thriving the Bistrin family, the Daly's family. There was a lot of investment, a lot of employment and adequate parking.
Speaker 2:But North of Fourth needed that support. Now, in the 70s, beginning of 72, 73, we did the redevelopment for Old Town and there's many, many millions of dollars invested in retail and office space in Old Town and downtown and those parking spaces are for them. We have most of our social gatherings in Old Town Sure, we do, and you don't want to park up on 10th, 11th and 12th Street to go down to the C Street music on a Thursday night in the summer. Who wants to walk a mile to do a deal? Yeah, it's Eureka.
Speaker 1:We're not talking about that. I usually park across the street and cross the street.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you go down. If I go downtown to buy a mocha at Old Town Coffee, if I got to go around the block three times, I'm going to go to Jitterbean. Hear that, rick? Well, I'm going to Jitterbean anyway. Chris, that's right, I just was before I came to see you. They're great, they're great it just strikes me that the idea of building the apartments on those nine parking lots is not a great idea.
Speaker 1:That's, you know. Many people agree, many people disagree. We'll see what happens. It seems like you know Humboldt's played it right with the new dorms. They're going up. What are they? Nine stories, they're pretty big.
Speaker 2:No, no, those are—. Are they 12? Five to seven, but they're big. Do you want a war story on that? There's two of them. Do you want a war? A good one? So for years I represented Russell Kirkpatrick and he owned Cal Kirk, landscaping, trevor Burrus, there's that land that they're on?
Speaker 1:John Pletka, he owned the 10 acres there. Trevor Burrus yeah.
Speaker 2:John Pletka and he married another client of mine and she was good for him and he passed, so she inherited it. So she and her daughter came to me and we agreed that it was timely for them to find a buyer. So we got an appraisal and started to reach out. We had an unsolicited offer from a gentleman from Monterey, a man named David Moon, and David began investing in student housing and so he approached and he said you know, I'd like to buy the 10 acres and we agreed on price. He said but I can't close, of course, until I get my entitlements, so I need to go to the city of Arcata and get approval for what I want to do. We said that's great. I told him this. I said David, you need to understand that Arcata is the Berkeley of Humboldt County. You're going to have real difficulty getting the project shaped up the way you want to shape it up.
Speaker 1:He couldn't see that he's out of town. He's from Monterey, where they probably get stuff done.
Speaker 2:They turnkey purchased to opening the dorms in 24 months. I said, in 24 months. They won't even know your name yet, right? But my client can sell this property immediately to somebody else who will take it with the existing zoning. Sure. So I said, if you want to buy this, you're going to have to pay option consideration every month that you make us wait. Huh, basically, you rent the property.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he said well, I'll do that and I said I just want you to have your eyes wide open. This will take you years. He says it's the only 10 acres close to Humboldt. I'm going to do it. Wow. Five years later. Five years later.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He's before the council and Brett Watson.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:At the public hearing to approve the final project. This is the Brett Watson that's no longer on the council for all kinds of reasons, so Mr Watson, before a microphone, says I will not approve this project if you don't allow three-bedroom units and allow the members of the community to live there. I want two-bedroom and three-bedroom units in the student housing. So one guy and David Moon says that's not my model and I don't think it's good planning to put mom and three children in an environment with 18 to 22-year-olds.
Speaker 1:Fair.
Speaker 2:So I'm not willing to make that investment. So you let me do my student housing or I'm gone. And Brett Watson said you don't get it without the community in residence. And David walked.
Speaker 1:That's where a local councilman might have a little power. Well, that's what I'm talking about, and David walked, and that's where a local councilman might have a little power.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:And willpower With Old.
Speaker 2:Town as well. Old Town, downtown, City councils are powerful, but they don't necessarily get it right. So it was only a couple of months later we got together with the HSU Foundation. They saw the need and the genius of and here's what's funny, this is the punchline, Because the foundation is a state agency and there's a doctrine in the law called preemption. So we have state, county, city. When the state acquires real property, it's not subject to local zoning, nor does a state pay property tax. So the city lost $700,000 a year in property tax control of the project and the state built what they're building now.
Speaker 1:And a little bit of egg on their face.
Speaker 2:I would say an omelet yeah.
Speaker 1:I would. I was talking to Alex Stillman here and she said she's great. I was talking to Alex Stillman here and she said— she's great. Yeah, she said did Arcata not have the okay to say yes to some part of that project and reap some benefit from it? But they cut their nose off, despite their face. What'd she say? Well, I'm asking you whether there was something that they could have opted for in that process with the state.
Speaker 2:They could have approved David Moon's project.
Speaker 1:Maybe that was where she was going.
Speaker 2:And it would be privately owned and he'd pay $700,000 a year in property tax.
Speaker 1:Instead it went to Humboldt and bye-bye. Huh, I thought there was something else they could have said yes to with Humboldt, with the state, and gotten some some reap, some reward, and they said, no, no, thank you, I don't know that. I kind of lost some revenue Anyway, yeah. So same idea for Old Town. So if F passes they build apartments. Is it conceivable that somebody would do an underground parking structure or some sort of a high-rise parking like most?
Speaker 2:little downtowns.
Speaker 1:Yeah, chico, or Ukiah or whatever. Oh, I've been to.
Speaker 2:Sonora. Sonora on the foothills has a beautiful parking garage downtown. It's brick and concrete with hanging curtains.
Speaker 1:Is that unheard of? I mean, what would-.
Speaker 2:No, it's just we don't have that kind of thoughtful planning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, who would fund it? Is that a city-funded deal?
Speaker 2:Well, gosh, darn it. You're going to make me tell you another story. Please do, by all means. When I was 30 years old, I was introduced to a company in the city, san Francisco, called Pan Cow Builders and we put together a proposal. I went to the county and I said you own the health building on the corner of what is that 6th? And I Correct yeah, the rest of the block is parking A lot of parking. So, is that 6th? And I Correct yeah, the rest of the block is parking A lot of parking. So I said here's my proposal Pan Cow and I will do a joint venture.
Speaker 2:Here's the joint venture you give us the property for a dollar. We'll tear down your health building. We will build a 476-car parking garage Wow Atop of which we will build a floor for your sheriff Wow. We'll then build two floors for your jail. We'll have 400 cells and every cell will have a concrete wall with a metal plate in it. We can bolt a bunk into the wall and you can have a person say have 400 beds, but we'll design it so that it's large enough to have two beds. So you have 800 beds. And then we can make a deal with the sheriff and the state of California Department of Corrections to take their least dangerous people and house them here. This is 40 years ago, for $38 a night per person, and the revenue stream from that housing making it a hotel would run the entire sheriff's budget completely. Atop that, we would have a floor for the DA, a floor for the public defender and 12 courtrooms 12?
Speaker 1:12 courtrooms. How many do we have now?
Speaker 2:I don't have the number. It's pretty low, maybe six or seven, half a dozen, yeah, and then the top floor I would own and rent out to lawyers.
Speaker 1:Because they should be on top.
Speaker 2:So well, look at the best view. Yeah, so here's the dealio. This deal was 100% financeable with a life insurance company 100% financeable, and so they would simply pay rent for 20 years, pay off the purchase. It's a rent to own. 20 years later they'd own the building, except the top floor. You know what they did instead.
Speaker 1:Dump the jail. D Built the jail.
Speaker 2:You knew the punchline of the story.
Speaker 1:For a jillion dollars.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:And it looks like a sore, you know what?
Speaker 2:And they never paved the parking lot.
Speaker 1:Huh, go by there, today it's still dirt.
Speaker 2:The parking lot's still not paved. After how many years Close?
Speaker 1:to 40. Dang and the things that I saw. Oh my God, what do they call it? The Pink Hilton? I've heard worse. Yeah, funny story. My state farm office, the Panacchi building, was located over there.
Speaker 2:It was in J.
Speaker 1:You're a historian.
Speaker 2:I was in that building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, you were.
Speaker 2:There was a law firm in it.
Speaker 1:I did not know that. Yeah, huh, where it is now, where I am, 7th and G, no, no Over on J Street Before it got moved. Yeah, they shut 101 down on a Sunday and hauled that thing over. Yeah Cool building Goldan and whoever else, Joe Frazier maybe.
Speaker 2:Joe.
Speaker 1:Frazier yeah, nice guy, like both those guys. Well, that's a great. Uh, three big things Didn't happen, so we caught at least one big thing in your life. That's history. Two you mentioned, uh, family and church. I think that came through. Um, what are you passionate about there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Whoa Well, I met Monica at Mass, and so you're asking about my heart Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, is that?
Speaker 2:okay, oh, it's fabulous.
Speaker 1:It's where you live, it's everything, yeah, and your wife seems super nice. I barely know her.
Speaker 2:Well, she's long-suffering, but she's very nice. Yeah, she tolerates you. So there's everything. Yeah, and your wife seems super nice. I barely know her.
Speaker 1:Well, she's long-suffering but she's very nice. Yeah, she tolerates you. So there's something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's the 12th of 13 children. Is that right? Yeah, are they. Catholic you think the Cruz family Love the family.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, the local Cruz family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Great family, small world, isn't it? Yeah, really small, and that's Portuguese. Yeah, yeah For Azores.
Speaker 2:No mainland. Oh, how about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because most everybody in Ferndale Arcade is Azores. Right, that's right, azorian, azorian. Yeah, that one. Are you a Jorian Nick?
Speaker 2:I don't know. We come from out there to Somewhere.
Speaker 1:Out there Somewhere out there, you know he's right the islands. Let me show you my map.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Your prop. The islands are 500 miles offshore from Portugal. It's a boat ride. It's a big boat ride. I had no idea the. I thought they'd just be Catalina. They're like way out there I haven't been there yet.
Speaker 2:Been to the mainland.
Speaker 1:Oh, I bet it's gorgeous.
Speaker 2:We went to the little village of Aurelio R-A-R-E-H-L-O, aurelio and it's fascinating. It was on a little knoll, sort of like Humboldt Hill, not quite as steep over a bay, they a humble hill, not quite as steep over a bay, they called it a lagoa. And then the Atlantic Ocean, with the waves breaking on a spit like Samoa. I mean, it was eerie how similar the view was. And so the great-grandfather came over first, which was common, and then, while he was gone, the great pandemic of 1918 hit. He lost a child during that, oh geez. So his wife had to stay, bury the child and eventually came and joined here and made more babies.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, yeah, Like. The joke in my family is we have nine kids and I say I'm Mormon and she's Catholic.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. Neither are true, but it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2:Opposite's tract I guess.
Speaker 1:I guess that would be true. Want to talk about Barnum and the Barnum family and lumber, and can we go there?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, a little bit. I like telling my grandfather's story because he was born well, even better than that. He was born well, even better than that. My great-grandmother, who I knew, was born in San Francisco and left in an orphanage, and a local judge here back in those days in 1880, they had a superior court judge and they had a justice court judge and then he was a police judge. So a police judge dealt with the bums and the petty thieves and so forth.
Speaker 1:Like you see on TV, the guy the night court.
Speaker 2:It was busy for Judge Dixon, but anyway we have a manifest that he and a friend male friend took the Pomona, the steamer Pomona, to San Francisco, picked up an infant female. My great-grandmother brought her back around Cape Mendocino. No mention of a wet nurse. Don't know how you take a month's old baby back around Cape Mendocino. Raised her to age 17. So things were different in 1897. I'll say A little different.
Speaker 1:This is your grandmother, now Great-grandmother, great-grandmother. Okay.
Speaker 2:So she was courted very briefly by a young man from Astoria. They married and my grandfather was born. Unfortunately, my biological great-grandfather had some character flaws, including the wet one, so he got a little abusive and she said goodbye, came back to Eureka and married Fred Barnum how about that? So my grandfather was born Charles Robert Brown and he became Charles Robert Barnum. He had an exciting childhood. She had two other children with Fred, three actually. One passed away and Charlie was ambitious. So at the age of 12, right after school, let out the first week of June, he hopped the freight and went to Fort Seward.
Speaker 1:Which is Soham.
Speaker 2:Soham on the main stem of the eel. Okay, this is before 1914. We don't have that Right over there on the map.
Speaker 1:Yes, right down there, you can see it from there.
Speaker 2:Right there on the map. So he wrote his mother a letter and we have the letter and it's in perfect cursive.
Speaker 1:Dearest Mother, how about that?
Speaker 2:I will be spending the summer at the so-and-so family truck farm here in Fort Seward. I arrive by train. I'll return the Monday, Labor Day, to return to school in the fall.
Speaker 1:Have a great day 12 years old, 12 years old.
Speaker 2:What was he?
Speaker 1:doing? Was he working lumber? He worked the truck farm. What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Well, corn, radishes, carrots, a truck farm. What does?
Speaker 1:that mean Well, corn, radishes, carrots, a truck farm. You've heard the expression Barely. I'm from Iowa. I should know that.
Speaker 2:Well, you guys had ginormous farms. Here we're in truck farms.
Speaker 1:Combine farms yeah.
Speaker 2:Here you think about the tradition at Redcrest and Shively and Pepperwood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are truck farms, the folks that come down here for the farmer's market. Were you telling me that at CR, that you go to CR and you score at the farmer's market on Tuesday, somebody was telling me about that. Wasn't me. I said it was amazing. Oh, it is amazing. They go down there and they have boxes of beautiful tomatoes and corn.
Speaker 2:How do they? Do that Tuesday in Old Town, thursday Henderson Center and it's really part of the culture.
Speaker 1:There's that one. Yeah, this is actually specific to CR. Ah, I don't know. We'll have to look that up.
Speaker 2:So Charlie, 12 years old, did that. He came back and of course he finished Eureka High and went off to the Navy in peacetime peacetime and this is in the 20s, after World War I, before World War II and he was a prizefighter how about that? So he got so good that the admiral in the South Pacific would arrange his fights so he would go from island to island in peacetime in the South Pacific and just knock people out. So I asked my dad about this. He's good at it. What was his technique? And he said well, your grandfather, he would just jab, jab, jab, jab, jab a guy 30, 40 times. Pretty soon, all the guy's looking for is the jab and he gives him a right cross and knocks him out.
Speaker 2:He's finished One shot. So that's a good story, scrapper. So he comes back in the late 20s and starts his family. Back in the late 20s and starts his family. My dad was born in 1927. My grandfather was the Oldsmobile Willie's Night dealer Willie's Night.
Speaker 1:Is Willie's Night a brand or is it two brands?
Speaker 2:It was Willie's Night hyphenated, and then later Willie's Jeep right here in Eureka. Here in Eureka. It was an Oldsmobile Willys night dealer. What was the dealership called? I don't know that, I just knew it.
Speaker 1:That's the history, I've heard. But Oldsmobile, you don't think of that car anymore. No, willys, I barely know what that is. Yeah, world War II.
Speaker 2:So he was in the business until 1932. How about that Went broke Huh, depression. Had a family of four children. Broke Huh, scary times, oh yeah. So he went into Old Town. There used to be a print shop there, lambert McKeon Print Shop. Sure, he made up 500 business cards. Charles R Barnum, timber broker. But was Of course he, was Of course he was, of course he was.
Speaker 1:It's on the card.
Speaker 2:It's right there.
Speaker 1:Look at my card, see, it proves it.
Speaker 2:There you go, yeah, so we had no Department of Real Estate. There wasn't licensure in 1932. Timber broker, timber broker, and he had been raised by Fred Barnum to understand the ins and outs of the timber industry. He had learned how to survey, land survey, he learned how to cruise timber forest mensuration walking through a forest, how many board feet are in this stand per acre? All of that so he— Whole science. All of that so he had an open car. You know the expression.
Speaker 1:Meaning his office was in his car.
Speaker 2:He had a car, but it had no roof. Oh, okay, it wasn't a convertible, it was just an open car. Huh, not a convertible, just an open car and humble. Yeah, I guess you had to look at how big the trees were.
Speaker 2:Remember he was broke. Yeah, he was broke. So my dad was five years old and he went with his father all through Southern Humboldt, stopping at every homestead. Walk up. Hi, I'm Charlie Barnum. Here's my card. You need any help brokering your timber? Call me in Eureka. Three-digit phone number. Right, yeah, and that's how he got into the business.
Speaker 1:What did they call that? An extension? They called it. The old phone number had a name. Anyway, yeah, so that's how he got into timber. That's funny. So people would want to cash in on their land and say or sell their timber, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's get this out of here. So he got into that business and he was really excellent at it. He picked up a large track. He represented a large track between Garberville and Whitethorn and it belonged to a company in Pennsylvania Warren. Pennsylvania, warren Land and Timber. And it's interesting, there's a whole curious history about the turn of that last century. You heard of the Manhattan Club in Manhattan, mm-hmm, rockefellers Sure, the Mellons, carnegie's Sure, and these folks, the Warren, timber people, they all socialized, yeah, yeah. And they agreed we're going to go by Redwood, timberland. Huh, that's how we get the Rockefeller Forest.
Speaker 2:All happened at the turn of the century, huh, so they had this large tract, about 20,000 acres, but it was sort of late Depression era, 30 to 36 to 40 before World War II. And so they paid Charlie commissions when he would sell 40 acres, 80 acres, 120, whatever it was. And they developed a relationship all by mail, huh, all by mail. Phone calls were expensive, so everything was done. All by mail. Huh, all by mail. Phone calls are expensive, so everything was done by business mail. Wow, we have all those records. It's fascinating. So they finally said you know, we're doing this piecemeal, we'd be happy to sell you the whole truck, charlie. He says, well, I'll come see you. So he did a planes, trains and automobiles trip. He flew back yeah, to Warren, pennsylvania, how about that? Got his contract and acquired, and then, of course, world War II ended and then we had our timber boom, right, right. And so that's how Charlie got into that.
Speaker 1:Built a lot of homes after World War II.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've been in the timber business since the 30s. How about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, grandfather my father Did it start with that tract and then he bought others from there, yeah, so, as he's profitable. So this guy was a hustler, he was a worker bee. Yeah, yeah, huh, wow, and just expanded the estate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my dad did a lot of that. My dad was very active beginning in 66 with Ronald Reagan. He was campaign chairman up here. Reagan had an informal group of business people in 65 and 66 called his kitchen cabinet. You heard that expression. Sure, yeah, bob, my dad was in that group and we had Reagan at our home twice for fundraisers up here.
Speaker 1:How about that yeah?
Speaker 2:it was a neat part of my teen years and parents got to go to three conventions. That's cool. Yeah, they really enjoyed that time.
Speaker 1:I had lunch with a fellow that persuaded Reagan to run. He was a guy up here, he's on. I forget his name and how he was associated with Ron and Nancy, but he was in their home in Santa Barbara. Wherever they lived. And he was active in saying you got this, you can make a run. And he tipped him over and he ran and won, Cool yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, of course he ran for governor in 66 against.
Speaker 1:Pat.
Speaker 2:Brown. Edmund Pat Brown Beat him by a million votes. Did he win or not? Oh, he beat him.
Speaker 1:Edmund Pat Brown Beat him by a million votes. Did he win a?
Speaker 2:lot. Oh, he beat him, that's right. Beat him by a million votes and then won again in 70. Right, he almost got the presidential nomination in 76. At that convention it was the Kansas delegation that caucused late because they were going to be the break-even Yep and they gave it to Ford. Oh okay, who ran against Jimmy Carter Right Loser?
Speaker 1:And Jimmy turned out to be an okay guy. So tell me this what do you see as our challenges and opportunities for the county going forward In your mind? What are the top things that come to mind?
Speaker 2:Well, the beautiful thing is that we are still living behind the Redwood Curtain. We still have this amazing gift of forest lands. You know we're 3,600 square miles temperate rainforest. It's an amazing gift to the community that we have this available. We don't have the economic diversity that we used to have. We used to have. Well, when I was a youngster we had 300 sawmills. Now we're down to about five or six, so it's pretty marginal. Our market forces are not real market forces. You want to have 10 to 15 bidders if you're selling logs. We don't really have that. But we have families like the Schmidbauer family making significant tens of million dollars investments. There's a new investor from Seattle coming down who's going to be investing tens of millions of dollars. So the resources here my dad liked to share. My dad was on the State Board of Forestry in the 70s. He was very knowledgeable about this industry. He likes to say that there's more standing timber in Humboldt County today than there was in 1900.
Speaker 1:Wow, huh, in terms of board feet Exactly.
Speaker 2:There are more stems per acre, because when you cut a redwood tree you get stump sprouts. Sure, so you get more stems, but the total volume of standing timber, especially in the commercial forest lands, is more than it was in 1900. How about that? Yeah, huh.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 2:So it's an amazing resource. That's you know, and we need to utilize it Well we just have to manage it for sustained yield, which has been what we've done.
Speaker 1:Pelco did a pretty good job of that right.
Speaker 2:Pelco did a good job. Hurwitz did not. Hurwitz was a looter and you know that's part of the risk in this business you get people coming in and loot. Yeah, the folks at HRC MRC, I think, do a better job of managing their lands, and Green Diamond does a fabulous job.
Speaker 1:They're stellar, are they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my family's been investing in some of our Douglas fir forest lands. We've been. When we cut the Douglas fir, we're planting redwood and the redwood is outperforming the fir. How about that? Huh, so that's part of what we hope to leave as a legacy is we're expanding the realm of the redwood. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like it. What was fun about practicing law, by the way, you got any good stories there. Well, yeah, how many years? 40?, 43. He's there. Well, how many years 40 43, 43 well it was.
Speaker 2:It was. It was fun because, like in your business, uh, every day is different. You don't know who's going to call, you don't know who's going to walk in. Um, you have to make judgments about what cases you take and which ones you turn down. I wasn't a great judge of some of my early cases, so I had some spectacular losses at jury trials because I led with my heart and not with my brain. But you sort of learn by failure that maybe I shouldn't take that case.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's how we learn.
Speaker 2:But I really enjoyed it when I focused on real estate and litigation and real estate. I just really enjoyed the work every day.
Speaker 1:Nice, probably you've helped a lot of people. It was tremendous. Yeah yeah, I just really enjoyed the work every day. Nice, you helped a lot of people.
Speaker 2:It was tremendous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love it. So let's talk about legacy and what you want to be remembered for. And you know before we do that we almost forgot to do the quiz show, so here we go. Okay, All right, Bill Barnum for $100,000 and a candy bar, you get to take Monica out to anywhere you want to go in the county. Where do you go to dinner?
Speaker 2:Well, we go to several places. Let's see, we used to love Oberon. Oberon, yeah, we do Campground, we do 511. We do Moonstone Grill. Yep, we do Larapin. Sure, don't get to Larapin as often as we'd like because it's a bit of a trip Journey, journey Bembo Inn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah Bembo's terrific.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have wonderful choices here, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. Okay, question two you get to go out for coffee and you get anything you want to drink. Where do you go?
Speaker 2:Well, I am a mocha fetishist. I just have to have my coconut milk mocha.
Speaker 1:Coconut milk. That's the first I heard of that.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you why I like a coconut mocha.
Speaker 2:So I've been married with Monica 19 years and years and you go through your health studies and your blood test stuff and she goes you know you've got some lipid problems here. Maybe you should change from cow's milk on your mochas and get coconut milk. And she's very bright and I said I'll give it a try and it's good. So I did it for a year and took my blood test and my HDL, the high-density lipoproteins tripled. It tripled, tripled. Are those the good ones? That's the good ones, that's the hard density stuff. So I go to the internist and get my exam. He goes. What happened here? I said coconut milk, mochas, dark chocolate, coconut milk, little caffeine. He goes with that ratio you can't have heart disease. So I said let's keep it going. The next year, tripled HDL kept that good number. So there you go.
Speaker 1:That's the hint of the day there's coconut milk folks Brought to you by the coconut milk association.
Speaker 2:Get rid of the cow's milk. We're not calves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good tip there, you go so jitterbean OTCNC. Ask this one. Here we go, where do you go for a cocktail, and what do you have?
Speaker 2:Well golly, a drink of any sort any of the places I mentioned where I can get a cocktail. For a long time I liked Bombay gin martinis. I sort of got away from that. Last year I got into Manhattans. I got tired of the cherries. I get Manhattans without cherries. You know, this time of year I sort of like a gin and tonic or something. Yeah, something light. Yeah, I enjoy a drink, but I don't. I'm not doing many.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, men of our age, yeah, advanced maturity man, yeah Well, good job so you asked about this question.
Speaker 2:You love to ask people about your legacy and all this stuff. Yeah, tell us, I've got. We remember Scott, nobody cares, nobody cares. That's a good answer, actually. No, really, just so I looked it up, I was born in 1954. I'm already, on borrowed time, born in 54, 66.7 years. I'm 3.3 in. I'm in the lightning round, I'm getting extra years. When you say 3.3,.
Speaker 1:What does that?
Speaker 2:mean 66.7 plus 3.3 is 70.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm on overtime already.
Speaker 1:Well, your average lifespan, according to the life tables, is probably 82 or 3.
Speaker 2:Now yeah, yeah, I check that I'd be 85, 86. So I've got 15, 16 years. If I take care of myself, keep that coconut milk going.
Speaker 1:Put a milk on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So really honestly, buy those bocas. I love history, love family history. My mom's dad great stories Didn't really get to know him much. He lived in New Jersey, had other family members. Dr Ruben Gross built the Gross Building at 5th and F Sure sure Wonderful guy Obviously never knew him. People in this county you know the famous Isaac Minor and Hans Boone. We know them as historic figures and we can read about them in books but we don't know who they were. Really we don't know anything about these people. Hans Boone, hans Boone, not Booner. Not Booner, b-double-o-n-e-r. No, booner, it's not.
Speaker 1:G-N-T-O-L-E. Or is it Gwentoli? In Arcata it's Gintoli, gintoli, gintoli. I like that. Yeah, isaac Minor, I know where he's buried.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's behind the.
Speaker 1:Catholic church up there in Arcata.
Speaker 2:Greenwood yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, he had a granite quarry on West End Road. Yes, he did the only coastal granite how about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he used it on the mausoleum. He spent $10,000 on his own mausoleum.
Speaker 1:In those dollars in those days. Think about it. That's real dough. Yeah, it's kind of cool. I like going through graveyards looking at this, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have too A lot of history, but no, I think that I don't want to be a person who is living my life to leave a legacy. Yeah, that's not what I'm about. Sure, I hope I know where I'm going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure, looking forward, not backward, that's good, that's good, and by doing so you'll probably leave a great legacy, whatever that looks like.
Speaker 2:Who's the judge of it right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been over-talked about so much. You know my legacy, so you will have a legacy of a maybe not a mausoleum, but so what would you like the phrase to be on the?
Speaker 2:tombstone Epitaphs yeah, never thought of it.
Speaker 1:Maybe my name. We want to identify the great that's Bill. Here lies Bill, yeah.
Speaker 2:No longer lying. I don't know. Leave it up to others.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, hey, what a pleasure. I'm really glad you're here. Yeah, any parting shots, anything you want to leave, what you'd like to see happen for the county, for Eureka, for—.
Speaker 2:Well, you've got an idea from this visit. I'm an old-school conservative in this sense. I really believe, especially at the local level, that that government which governs least governs best. That government which governs least governs best. The planned economy that we have in California and the planning for regional housing needs allocation is just stupidity in my opinion. It doesn't work. And if after 30 years it doesn't work, the solution isn't more planning.
Speaker 1:More of the same, it produces nothing.
Speaker 2:The definition of insanity Eureka was 28,000 when I was a child. It's 26,000 today. So somebody is not figuring it out. Yeah, and frankly it's also market forces and the freedom we have to live where we want to live. Yeah, people have they filled up some of the rural areas in the county. You know McKinleyville was up to 17,000 now. Yeah, we were full. It was probably 5,000 in 1960. There's 12,000 more sold Maybe. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So Good point, riadell's bigger. Fortuna must be bigger.
Speaker 2:Fortuna must be bigger Fortuna's. What is it about 15 rather than 10?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so A little bit. But it really hasn't changed the character. I mean, it's still. The drive to McKinleyville is still 25 minutes. The drive to Fortuna is 18 minutes, so people can pick and choose where they want to live, but they're not. We don't have an influx, yeah want to live, but they're not.
Speaker 1:We don't have an influx.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Without the influx, we don't have the means to build the infrastructure and the lots, and thus we can't find places to build.
Speaker 1:So no one's ever addressed this, just real quick parting shot there. So where does that leave us? If we're going backwards, what is backward?
Speaker 2:You covered it. You covered it.
Speaker 1:What does that look like? It looks like depleted services, absolutely Poverty More crime, healthcare problems, providence.
Speaker 2:St Joe's has that new residency program that we all ought to be supporting. They had hoped to put together three graduates in the first class. That came up with seven or eight.
Speaker 1:Destination Humboldt yeah, we want to keep these people.
Speaker 2:We want to encourage them to come learn and stay. At least if we keep half of them over time, that'd be a real boost.
Speaker 1:It's a great program Wonderful. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We're losing labor and delivery. It's too expensive.
Speaker 1:Mad River's done yeah.
Speaker 2:Redwood Memorial. Yeah, these are very scary things, yeah, and there just aren't a lot of us.
Speaker 1:So there's markers of toxicity, if you will, or retraction, if you will.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Scary thoughts. Yeah, On that note. It's been a pleasure. Hey, before you go on that note, you are the winner because your answers were so spot on. Has anybody?
Speaker 2:ever lost, and we all get candy.
Speaker 1:Well, you're the first to actually A Dick Taylor Belize bar made here in Old Town, eureka Handmade yeah.
Speaker 2:Adam Dick and Justin Taylor. Yeah, great people, entrepreneurs. Dustin, dustin, not Justin. Oh they're great guys.
Speaker 1:They just won an award for their Tanzania chocolate. Wow, tanzania bar somewhere. I think it was Seattle, I don't know where. Where were you guys? Seattle somewhere. 72% dark. Yeah, you like chocolate? Oh, dark chocolate. I got to try that coconut mocha. Man, I'm going to do that. Hey, before you go, I want to remind people this is the first time I've ever reminded anyone of anything. Listen next week, because I got so many amazing comments, and also subscribe to my podcast on any of the podcast platforms YouTube, we're on YouTube. Just look under Google me, scott Hammond, 100% Humboldt, and you can find us there. We'd love you to subscribe to our channel, of course. And, by the way, major awards for those that subscribe between now and the end of the year gift cards, dancers, the whole nine. You're going to get an award, so we'll put you in a bucket for that In the meantime, 100%.
Speaker 1:Humboldt, bill Barnum, that was fun. You are an amazing dude. Thank you for being here, glad to do it, appreciate it.
