#68. Hank Sims' Journalistic Journey: Shaping Humboldt's Media, Navigating Digital Challenges, and Celebrating Community Narratives

This episode features a vibrant conversation with Hank Sims, editor of the Lost Coast Outpost, discussing the nuances of local journalism in Humboldt County. The discussion covers the importance of community storytelling, the challenges facing local news platforms, and the need for supportive engagement from the audience. 

• Hank's journey from Willits to Humboldt County 
• The evolution and mission of the Lost Coast Outpost 
• Challenges of sustaining local journalism amid trolls and community dissatisfaction 
• The vital role of local news in fostering community connections 
• Insights on the future of journalism and audience engagement

Transcript

Journey to Journalism in Humboldt

Speaker 1 0:30

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and neighbors, scott Hammond, with 100% Humble, with my very best new friend, the man, the myth, the legend, hank Sims. Hi Hank, hi Scott, how are you? I'm well, thank you, it's a great been magical weather for three weeks.

Speaker 2 0:44

It's been very nice. Yeah, winter is always by the end of winter. You want it to be over, right? It's too much. You know we need it, but you don't have to like it.

Speaker 1 0:53

Yeah, don't tell anybody. The weather's been magic and it just rains all the time in Humboldt. Please don't come here. No, it's supposed to rain again in about 10 days. Okay, I'll set my watch. My wife goes. Oh, you know, it's going to rain, it's got to rain. I go, it doesn't have year long. I talked to my cousin Doug in Iowa it's 12 degrees this morning.

Speaker 2 1:14

Yeah, Well, yeah, that's not good.

Speaker 1 1:16

Yeah, I'd love to tell us what's your job and the Hank Sims story. First of all, what are your name, rank, serial number, what do you do? And then I'd love to hear where you were raised and how you got to Humboldt.

Speaker 2 1:27

Sure. Well, my name's Hank Sims For Lost Coast Communications. I'm the editor of the Lost Coast Outpost, which is a popular news site in.

Speaker 1 1:36

Humboldt County Fondly known as LOCO.

Speaker 2 1:38

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and yeah, I grew up in Willits, just to the south of here, where my mom still lives, and yeah, that's it. I've got a wife and two sons.

Speaker 1 1:53

Nice. What brought you to Humboldt County from Mendo?

Speaker 2 1:55

Well, it was a place where I just ended up going to college. I actually dropped out of high school a year early because I was kind of sick of it and then went to Mendocino College and then transferred to Humboldt State in 1986.

Speaker 1 2:16

Wow yeah.

Speaker 2 2:16

Wow yeah. And then I moved away in young adulthood and back about seven times. One time I went, I moved to the East Coast. I moved to Rhode Island for just like six months. Sorry to hear that. No, it was fun. It was great Was it cool, I loved it, and then I took off traveling a bunch of times, did some more stints in Willits, moved back to Humboldt, moved down to the Bay Area a couple of times and then back and forth.

Speaker 1 2:36

It's funny how many people cycle. Yeah, they come back.

Speaker 2 2:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great place to live. The last time we moved back here was 2002. And just me and my wife? This is where we want to raise our family, buy a house and stuff. How many kids I have two sons.

Speaker 1 2:52

All right.

Speaker 2 2:52

Are they grown? House and stuff. How many kids. I have. Two sons, all right, yeah, grown. One is a senior in high school right now. The other one is all grown, yes, all right, dad jokes, here they come.

Speaker 1 3:02

I have the license. Yeah, I'm a card carrying member and don't worry about it, we may get a couple before we're done here. Okay, sounds great. My favorite dad joke since you asked. Yes, did you hear the one about the map maker, hank the cartographer? If you will, that couldn't get a job because he had no sense of Yuma, yuma.

Speaker 2 3:21

Yuma, yuma.

Speaker 1 3:24

Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 3:25

That might work better in Arizona.

Speaker 1 3:26

It's a better Arizona joke. Yeah, I see like a minor smile peeking over at Nick going yeah, he's going whatever. So you came, what did you?

Speaker 2 3:36

study at Humboldt. At Humboldt State I studied a bunch of different things. I cycled through. I was a music major for a while. I was an engineering major for a while. I had split. I was still young and, like, needed to do other things before I graduated. But I ended up getting my undergraduate degree from San Francisco State, actually in Spanish language and liberal studies. Mucho gusto.

Speaker 1 3:57

Oh yeah, yeah, liberal studies, humboldt State, uh-huh 82. Oh okay, yeah, recreation administration. Okay, that's great. Kids go majored in recess. What is that? Don't worry about it, you go get a degree and we'll talk.

Speaker 2 4:09

Yeah, and then we moved back. Then I moved here. I got a degree in political science from Humboldt and then a degree in journalism from Berkeley.

Speaker 1 4:17

Berkeley. Wow man, so you're a pretty well-educated dude.

Speaker 2 4:21

I guess, yeah, I spent a lot of my young life doing that, hanging around universities for too long, cal.

Speaker 1 4:27

Yeah, yeah. What's the French restaurant that's downtown, that's super famous.

Speaker 2 4:32

That is Chez Panisse. Yeah, delicious. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I ate there only once, upstairs in the cafe. Yeah, yeah, you don't need a reservation.

Speaker 1 4:38

Yeah, we my son lived in Alameda. They since moved to Amsterdam with Nike, uh-huh, but they took us there and it was bomb.

Speaker 2 4:46

Oh, it was great.

Speaker 1 4:47

Pretty famous, I guess. Yeah yeah, where? Plus bagels, shea bagels. So you got into journalism with the journal first.

Speaker 2 4:58

Well, I was. I had written for lots of newspapers before and I'd gone to journalism before journalism school at Berkeley before I worked for the journal. But yeah, I'd written for a lot of like local newspapers. Like where I'm from I think I was telling Nick about this when I was talking to him a couple weeks ago. But you know where I'm from, in Mendocino County there's a really vibrant and especially at the time, like a really vibrant alternative print culture and that's what really sort of like hooked me on, not the Ukiah.

Speaker 2 5:25

Daily Journal, not the Ukiah Daily Journal.

Speaker 1 5:27

Not that.

Speaker 2 5:28

But you know a lot of most papers that are dead and gone now the Mendocino memo, the lookout, the Anderson Valley advertiser.

Speaker 1 5:37

Anderson.

Speaker 2 5:37

Valley. I recall that, Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. That just stopped print publication, I think last year.

Speaker 1 5:43

Yeah yeah, that was owned by the Journal for a minute, right? Or did they buy it?

Speaker 2 5:46

No, it was always owned by this guy, bruce Anderson. Bruce, yeah, of New Brunsville.

Speaker 1 5:52

Oh, you did. We used to give Bruce ads, for he would come in once a week. He would scam all the ads out of the Tri-City. Okay and go. I want PDFs of this, this and this and this and we'd have a packet for Bruce and he was always gracious, he was a nice man.

Speaker 2 6:04

Oh yeah, smart guy, hey he didn't have to build an ad. Yeah, very courtly guy. I think he's in 90-some now and still kind of doing it online, so he's still alive, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 6:17

Yeah, yeah, that was competitive because it was kind of the more organic Tri-City Weekly where I worked, because it was just a pickup paper and its footprint was Mendocino to Crescent City, uh-huh, uh-huh, so he could go and claim a lot of territory real quick and say it wasn't home delivered.

Speaker 2 6:35

I think maybe you're thinking of something else, Like was the paper you're thinking of? Was it like the Tri-City, kind of like a classified ad it was?

Speaker 1 6:44

It was a little, and I thought his name was Bruce too. Maybe I got it wrong, Bruce.

Speaker 2 6:47

Yeah, anderson Valley adversaries are sort of like screaming radical left-wing underground newspaper.

Speaker 1 6:54

Okay, I'm confusing I like a screaming radical left-wing underground newspaper. Okay, I'm confusing that. I'm trying to think of this guy's paper's name. It doesn't matter. There was the Penny Pincher yeah, it was something like that, but this guy was more regional anyway. So a lot of little papers.

Speaker 2 7:06

Yeah, that's why I started writing for newspapers.

Speaker 1 7:09

I always thought it was really fun.

Speaker 2 7:11

And then I was studying. At one point I was thinking about going on to get a PhD in like political science, but I decided that was a boring career path. I didn't want to do that, so I went back to journalism school.

Speaker 1 7:24

My son's got a PhD a polysac from.

Speaker 2 7:26

Davis Uh-huh, oh, that's good and he's working for a Deutsche Bank.

Speaker 1 7:31

You know he's got an office way up high and he just phones it and he doesn't care. Oh no, I'm tired of caring. He goes, it's coming, it's a job, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, yeah, but he's happier that way, so whatever, anyway, so so from there, passion for journalism led you up to here in the journal.

Speaker 2 7:48

Yeah, we wanted to. Yeah, we wanted my back up to Humboldt and I had the journalism degree and, yeah, I started off like just part-time as a journal and eventually met Judy and Carolyn yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 7:58

Where's Carolyn these days?

Speaker 2 7:59

I have no idea. Is she still?

Speaker 1 8:01

around. I don't know. I see Judy at the winery once in a while at Fieldbrook. Oh yeah, Her and Bob.

Speaker 2 8:15

Yeah, yeah for a while. Yeah, for three or four of those years, I think.

Speaker 1 8:18

Yeah, who were some of your writers then?

Speaker 2 8:21

Oh man, we had classic great writers Ryan Burns and Andrew Goff, who both work with me now at the Outpost. Yeah, Heidi Walters, Helen Sanderson, J Fit Weeks we had great people come through.

Speaker 1 8:35

Where's Heidi, is she?

Speaker 2 8:35

still around. Heidi's around here. Yeah, yeah, she lives in town. They moved away. She and her husband moved to Redding for a while for his job and then they moved back and she's happy. My wife and Heidi are like in a writer's group together. They get together every week or so and write short stories and stuff.

Speaker 1 8:52

Hey speaking of which I wrote a book. Oh yeah, yeah, if I had to live on it, I'd be dead by now. Okay, and in a fit of passion, I wrote about being a better dad. Oh, nice, Geez. Well, you've had lots of practice. Yeah, thanks for catching that Just nine kids and 11 grandkids.

Speaker 1 9:08

That's nuts. Why it's a long story. It's a long story. I'll tell you it really fast. My mom raised me as an only child in San Diego and my dad was absentee. They were alcoholics and he came back sober in 73 and kind of made me part of his world and he sold insurance on life insurance to Marines. If you can imagine, oh, wow, go figure, do that math. And he was really quite good at it because he loved the military and so came to Humboldt, met Joni, met Jesus, met sobriety and met a degree at Humboldt.

Speaker 2 9:42

Now, is that how you got hooked up with the Tri-City Weekly? Did you go back to the Durkin days and that?

Speaker 1 9:48

Not directly. I was kind of a Durkin cousin so those guys were all Lighthouse Ranch out at the Table Bluff and then down at Californian Cedar, the old Gospel Outreach which is now Calvary Chapel. Eureka and I worked for guys that were part of that but they weren't directly. So the Tri-City came out of that as an organic job situation for the cult out on the bluff oh cult.

Speaker 2 10:12

Yeah, some people would call it Strong words.

Speaker 1 10:14

It's too strong. They're not a Colt, they're lovely and they actually have another permeation Cold Gospel. I reach over on by Redwood Acres, but I digress. So bottom line is 10 guys took it over, two guys bought them out and my dad always called Ron Pelleggi a prince of a man. He took knuckleheads like me and turned me into a good sales guy in Arcata. For 15 years I sold all the ads and competed with y'all and David Reed from the Times-Tenner. Hi, david and I made a living for 11 of us yes, unusual in one income. Yeah, it is, it is. I could have had nine homes or nine kids, I don't know.

Speaker 1 10:53

Just the kids. Sometimes I wonder about my choices. I don't know if you could pull that off in this day and age. That's pretty tough. And I have a shout out to Joni Hammond I have a lovely wife who, like you likely I, married up and we were quite blessed and amazingly I was going to say lucky, but I don't believe in luck so I won't use that word Anyway. So yeah, in the day Tri-City was a lot of fun. It was purely ads and classifieds and home delivered and done by the kids from H-CAR. It used to be the Humboldt County Association of the Retarded, which we don't use the R word anymore and now it stands for something else, but they were the most faithful, wonderful, loving delivery kids in the world and Ron made sure of it as the prince of a guy that my dad called him. He made sure all these guys had jobs.

Speaker 1 11:42

And the time Santa just shut that all down recently.

Speaker 2 11:45

Yes, yeah yeah, tri-city is no more. Yeah yeah, that was something else because it was always. You know the Tri-City had gone through like a couple of iterations had been a couple of different things, just throughout my Humboldt County experience.

Speaker 1 11:58

I would say arguably. The Tri-City went away in about 2016 maybe, or even earlier. When I transitioned over to you know four, it was starting to go bye-bye and the Time Standard picked it up yeah, media News and Dean Singleton for a song yeah, maybe not. It was pretty money. So bottom line is they took it and divest it, crashed it. And they used it as a wrap for Safeway.

Speaker 2 12:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 12:24

Anyway, why am I talking? All about me.

Speaker 2 12:27

I don't know, because I like these stories.

Speaker 1 12:29

There's a little background. So how did you transition over to Patrick Cleary and K-Hum and Lost Coast Outpost and how did you spawn that? Because one might argue it's kind of a brilliant early move into digital.

Digital Newspaper and Local Journalism

Speaker 2 12:44

Yeah, well, the time felt right just as far as that goes. Yeah, I mean, personally too, I think I've done everything I was going to do with the journal. So, yeah, it's the time felt right, sort of nationally, to just the state of media, that it had reached a point where you could you could plausibly make from the ground up a digital only product. And when working for Lascos Communications, where they already had salespeople, you know, know they would have something else to sell like a news product. So it started off kind of small, just myself and we, yeah, we took the bet that it was the right time to strike and you know, we could shed ourselves of all the things that you used to need to be like a, you know, sort of text-based news operation, say a printing press.

Speaker 2 13:37

A printing exactly.

Speaker 1 13:38

Or kids on bikes. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2 13:41

And so yeah, because everybody has like the you know the delivery system and the you know the printing press in their pocket, yeah, Brought mine with me.

Speaker 1 13:48

Yeah, exactly yeah. So it was time and you were. I think the radio stations were on the top of their game about that time too. They were doing very well, right.

Speaker 2 13:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 14:01

Remember the Cahum was like the talk of the town and Cliff and everybody were just rocking the world and the free world yeah. And then Patrick said and Patrick's a forward thinker. And he probably said hey, who's this Hank guy?

Speaker 2 14:11

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 14:18

Well.

Speaker 2 14:18

I'd known Patrick a this who's this hang guy?

Speaker 1 14:20

oh yeah, well, I know patrick a little bit from reporting, you know, just from being around town because he'd always you know, he's always a little bit of a mover and shaker, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, lovely guy, I like pat man.

Speaker 2 14:25

Um, so he, he wrote you a really large check and said come on board yeah, no, we started off bare bones, you know, and I'm happy with that, you know because we I love it.

Speaker 2 14:32

you know we wanted we'm happy with that, you know, because we I love it. You know we wanted, we wanted to build a profitable thing from the beginning, and so it was just me and a computer and uh, you know, uh, some space on the server farm in Fremont and uh, you know, we just saw what we could build and uh, yeah, we, we, we grew from there, always trying to stay something close to to break even, you know.

Speaker 1 14:54

So the server was in Fremont or you were.

Speaker 2 14:57

No, just the machine that when you go to lostcoastapplescom on your phone. It's a machine in Fremont that gets that request yeah and answers. Oh, that's funny.

Speaker 1 15:08

Yeah, so was this. By the time we had what's it called when you have a second internet line out, we had a dual internet to Reading. Oh yeah, the redundant fiber.

Speaker 2 15:22

It would have been about that time, right? I mean yeah, yeah, it was actually. It was about the time.

Speaker 1 15:29

And fiber got quicker and Settling kind of. I don't know if you're on a Settling server, probably not.

Speaker 2 15:34

Yeah, no, no, the server is. Yeah, it's just like in a server farm that you just rent space from. Gotcha, yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 1 15:42

And then you sort of built on this local idea.

Speaker 2 15:46

Yeah, and you know, we added new people, added new things, added new features, and it's still constantly sort of changing. It's going to be. You know, it's changing a lot now because we're we. You know, for a while our office was in Eureka and the radio stations Las Cosas Communications, the radio stations were in Ferndale and now we're all moved in together.

Speaker 1 16:04

One big happy family yeah.

Speaker 2 16:05

And we're figuring out like cool things to do.

Speaker 1 16:08

Has anybody been in any fights yet or throwing things? Not yet.

Speaker 2 16:12

The siblings.

Speaker 1 16:20

If I were to ask you in a couple of minutes I'm just a dumb guy that's coming tuning in. What is a loco? I mean, what is a digital newspaper? What's your business prop? What's your theory Slogan? What's your campaign statement here?

Speaker 2 16:35

Yeah, what is it? I've got a couple of slogans. You know, we've always had been Humboldt County's homepage for a long time. That was the theory. That's cool. And when challenged a while ago to make up a you know, to make up a little bit more of a mission statement, I think I sort of came up with, like the mission of the Las Costas post, is is to, is by, for and about Humboldt County. We chronicle its days, we interrogate its flaws and we celebrate its something, its victories, its beauty.

Speaker 1 17:09

I like that. Yeah, that's strong. So you're kind of an archivist in a way. That's yeah, you're archival by nature.

Speaker 2 17:16

For sure. Yeah, I mean journalism, newspapers and news has always been about that. You know, just getting on record and telling people about what's going on, preserving it.

Speaker 1 17:27

Yeah, yeah, and finding the good stories. Yeah, for sure and not recycling the other guys.

Speaker 2 17:31

That's, we try not to yeah, we try to do. Yeah, we try to do original work for sure.

Speaker 1 17:36

Sure. Well, you know, and when you think of it, time Standard, debatably or not, has content, journal still creates content, and Y'all yeah, so pretty soon that's a lot of content for a small market.

Speaker 2 17:51

Oh, and there's lots more than that too. Yeah, it's a really rich media space.

Speaker 1 17:56

Yeah, and so the concern that I've read about is that all these guys co-opt Zuckerberg or whomever will co-opt that content and use it on a more regional or national or international basis.

Speaker 2 18:09

Yeah, I mean that happens to some extent. I mean that's the deal today, right? Yeah, a little bit. I mean you know we have so like, we have a Facebook page, you know, just to address that, and you know we have 106,000 Facebook fans or something like that. You know people who follow us on Facebook. So in some sense, you know we are, we are providing Zuckerberg, facebook, google with, you know, with stuff. You know where, one small drop in a very, very large ocean, but all of us together and people posting pics of their kids are, you know, making this business model for Zuckerberg. On the other hand, I mean we work within that ecosystem. You know we get a lot out of it too. You know we get people coming to our website from that, from Google News, from new hits and new followers.

Speaker 2 19:00

Yeah, I mean, I think that we're lucky in that we you know the Lost Coast Outpost itself has been able to sort of like transcend what a lot of people, you know, a lot of people, depend on, like social, our website. You know, whether or not they see something in their Facebook, people wake up in the morning and type in their URL, our URL, into their web browsers and we get, you know, a great deal of traffic that way which is the ideal. Yeah.

Speaker 1 19:36

Well, it was the whole idea from from the get go for sure.

Speaker 2 19:39

And we have lots of other things too. You know, we we can send push notifications to people's phones when a new story is posted, or we just reach out in lots of ways.

Speaker 1 19:48

Yeah, I mean you're on my screen now, but it took Patrick to do it for me.

Speaker 2 19:51

Again, hello.

Speaker 1 19:52

Patrick, is there a reason? There's not. Is there an app? Now, there's no app. Is there a?

Speaker 2 19:58

reason for that. The reason is, I mean, and maybe you know, this is something we'll pursue at some point, but it's no one's ever asked that right yeah, no, they have. Uh, it's costly, uh, and then you are sort of dependent on the google and apple like distributing it and and they're working within their ecosystem rather than the open web, which is is just much. It's. It's easier to do what you want to do, I guess, and it's much cheaper too, but everything that you want, you know. Patrick got you the app on your phone.

Speaker 1 20:33

Wasn't that hard.

Speaker 2 20:34

Yeah, it's not that hard, and maybe we should highlight instructions for that again. We do that from time to time.

Speaker 1 20:39

I'm old, I don't know why I couldn't get it. I'm pretty good on a computer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 20:42

So I don't know why I couldn't get it. I'm pretty good on a computer, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, and you know, once you get it saved to your phone, it should be easy for most people, just like save to phone, sure, and it's fast, and it's fast and it's, you know, you can get notifications like you would on any other kind of app. But yeah, I don't know, it is nice to be in the app store, I suppose, but it's a big investment and the payoff is not exactly clear, except that much easier for people.

Speaker 1 21:08

So what are you talk metrics for a minute. How many unique users? And I mean far and away the biggest website in the county, right, I think. So, yeah, certainly. I can't think of another media outlet. Who else would have a bigger traffic count?

Speaker 2 21:24

Probably no one, I I mean probably we're the biggest. Yeah, maybe in the north state?

Speaker 1 21:27

I would think I would. I don't know if there's the reading searchlight. Has any?

Speaker 2 21:31

well, see the problem with that, the time standard and the, you know, the searchlight and those kind of things. They're behind paywalls, so, uh, so that's gonna hurt your traffic, you know, big time um yeah, people get frustrated.

Speaker 1 21:42

I have 80 ads to read a half an article. Yeah, yeah. And we try to keep that stuff simple too, but yeah, so we have usually like 300, 350,000 what they call unique visitors a month, and that's pretty good metrics, right? I mean by anybody's standard.

Speaker 2 21:58

I think so yeah.

Speaker 1 21:59

Nationally or regionally.

Speaker 2 22:00

Yeah, it's pretty good, yeah, definitely. And yeah, regionally, yeah, it's pretty good, yeah, definitely. And uh, yeah, and yeah, and about you know three and a half million, uh paid what they call page views. You know, so people look at a page on the website that's a page view. So, you know, with that kind of, we're able to build, uh, you know, advertising can be real cheap. You know, um, because you can buy, just, you know, a small portion of that audience because, and because the audience is so huge. You know a small portion of that audience because, and because the audience is so huge, you're reaching a huge number of people as an advertiser. This isn't my business, scott, but uh but you know, you should know this.

Speaker 2 22:34

I kind of have to know it.

Speaker 1 22:35

You got to pitch it every once in a while yeah, so it's good to know.

Speaker 2 22:37

No, yeah, I'm not. I'm not pitching advertisers out there.

Speaker 1 22:40

No, I love it, though I got to call Patrick Cesar yeah, or my guy yeah.

Speaker 2 22:45

Yeah, you can reach out. You can reach a lot of people really, you know, pretty inexpensively and we think it's a good value.

Speaker 1 22:52

Yeah, no, I agree, I should agree so much. I should put my money where my mouth.

Navigating Journalism and Online Trolls

Speaker 2 22:56

Hey, yeah.

Speaker 1 22:57

I'm threatening Bobby Olson forever. Oh yeah, and certainly Shane and others Cool. So tell me more about your competitive position. It's driven by money. Well, I mean, it has to pay for itself.

Speaker 2 23:15

Well, sure, it has to pay for itself, yeah, but you know we're not, you know our editorial, we are. I really think it's still, you know, bifurcated. Like the news industry is a hard thing for some people to get their heads around because, like people have different goals, like our my job as editor and you know, as all our writers' jobs, our job is to talk to the audience. We work for the readers, sure, you know. And then the salespeople say like hey, look, they got this big audience. You want to get in front of them, like you can buy an advertisement. So it is kind of like a bifurcated, like a double mission, you know.

Speaker 1 23:57

Unlike CNN or Fox News, which is creating talking heads to create audience, to create revenue.

Speaker 2 24:03

Yeah, I guess. So I mean I guess. So, I mean we could do. You know, we know that we could do things differently and get a lot more page views, you know, but there are just things that we don't want to do because we don't think that they're good for anybody, for the county, they're not good for the county and they're not good for our. You know, like I say, we work for the readers and you know it would be, it would be an easy thing to like, hype up our readers and to make them afraid of every single thing.

Speaker 1 24:28

Oh, my god, going on in the world is it okay if we talk about your troll readers real quick? Sure, I mean, it's like, it's like the nasty people that live in the back, uh-huh, it's so. So some of the trolls have have been uh, uh, um, lack decorum oh sure, let me be really nice.

Speaker 1 24:45

Well, yeah, no, they're a-holes. So Lactecorum. Oh sure, let me be really nice. Well, yeah, no, they're a-holes, so maybe that's better. How do you view that as the editor? I mean, they're part of the community and the cowards that they are, and some of them put their names on it. I get it.

Speaker 2 24:59

So you can find them. Well, I mean on our page, like again, I was talking about this with Nick a few weeks ago but like on our page itself, we don't really get a lot of nasty comments anymore because we made the decision that you know we had to. We just had to stop. It was getting too much for people, it was blowing their brains out.

Speaker 1 25:22

You're writing your own articles. That's what.

Speaker 2 25:24

Yeah, I mean, and we like to hear feedback from people too.

Speaker 1 25:29

you know, and we want I want intelligent like a thought challenge, a thoughtful letter to the editor yeah, yeah, I want, I want all that stuff.

Speaker 2 25:34

I want insightful, like cool insights into my work. But the problem is too, if you like, is that people will, you know, people will hijack that sort of mechanism and get vicious. Yeah, to get vicious, sure, I mean, I don't mind the viciousness so much, but so where that happens now is on social media, like that's where people are really nasty, oh geez, and it's usually associated with their names, like you're right, yeah, people are unleashed, so would Pastor Bethany get vicious feedback.

Speaker 1 26:01

Sometimes, I mean, if you ever met her, she's like the most non-vicious, of course. Yeah, recipient Earned it, yeah.

Speaker 2 26:08

Never.

Speaker 1 26:08

Yeah, so interesting. Yeah, they're part of the big happy family. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 26:16

Yeah, I guess. So I mean, you know they kind of they kind of you know we used to be much, we used to be much closer to our readership. Um, just, you know be, it was more of a conversation and yeah, now it just can't. It kind of can't be um and whether that's. I think that's a function of two things, like us growing up and becoming bigger, um and and uh and um, and just the way that the country and the way the internet itself has evolved the division of America and the world.

Speaker 2 26:44

I think so. Yeah, I think that, yeah, that it drives people to distraction. I think.

Speaker 1 26:49

It's. It's like driving a car. I can be a real vicious mofo and give everybody the number one signal when I'm behind the wheel and be the nicest guy in the podcast, or get behind a computer and become a real troll.

Speaker 2 27:00

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 27:01

It's, it's. It's kind of a weird permission, but talk about bifurcation.

Speaker 2 27:12

Yeah, well it's. I often think that, like, um, it's just that people are so. People get so wrapped up like sort of in national politics, like, uh, in, you know, right versus left, democrat versus Republican, sure, we see it today, and, and, and they, they get there, that it, it captures their imagination so much that they, you know much, that they are just constantly have to be at war and they expect me to take a side in that war. They expect that war to consume all media. You're just on the ground. I just don't want any part of that war.

Speaker 1 27:39

Oh, you can't yeah.

Speaker 2 27:41

It's just boring to me. I don't know. I just want to write about, like the, you know, the people I just want to be for, humboldt, you know, and Humboldt.

Speaker 1 27:51

Right and our culture?

Speaker 2 27:52

Yeah, I think it's bigger.

Speaker 1 27:53

So it's kind of a Switzerland role to be kind of maintain a neutrality of sorts.

Speaker 2 27:58

I guess, except, yeah, I just don't want. I don't want to participate in it. I don't care about national politics in a professional sense. I want to tell the stories of people living in Humboldt County. That's your mission, yeah Back to the mission statement yeah, yeah, yeah. But people I think that, like trolls from either side, are usually people who are wrapped up in this goal of like winning something winning an election, you know, winning your side being victorious. I just don't care about that.

Speaker 1 28:30

I've had my mind changed so many times by really good writing trolls. Oh yeah, no, they really persuaded me with their rhetoric Like trolling can sometimes be fun.

Speaker 2 28:42

You know, it's just the oh, yeah, yeah, the provokers, the prov just the oh, yeah, yeah, the provokers yeah there's.

Speaker 1 28:46

Provocateurs that are out there.

Speaker 2 28:48

Sure, there's wit and there's irony, and there's stuff you can. So there's, an artwork, an art to trolling.

Speaker 1 28:53

Sure, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 28:55

No, there is, I thought of that, but it's just. Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting Trolling is strictly defined. Maybe, scott, like, yeah, you know, yeah, using wit and irony and stuff to make a point, you know?

Local Journalism Evolution and Innovation

Speaker 1 29:11

I think back to your division theory, which is a real thread in this podcast. We've been divided now for 200 years, but a lot for the last, you know, 25 months or longer. It's really interesting to me. I think Jason Bethany's husband last night he was in her home and we were in a group and he said you know, a lot of people are just feeling chaotic. Yeah, I thought that's good, that's a good word. They're divided up inside on every side, just like it's a time of change and some heavy chaos after the change of leadership.

Speaker 2 29:46

And I thought and I wonder if that somehow reflects sometimes in the commentary- we've kind of set it our mission, you know, to, to you know, or we've talked about like sort of like really being good about ignoring, taking the bait on any of this we want to write about. We want to write about things happening here, and sometimes things happening here are going to be affected by things happening out there. But you know, but, but it would be so easy and you know, and so sad to just to, like, you know, to take up arms in. You know, I just don't want to do that.

Speaker 1 30:28

I just think that that would be a devaluation of the product.

Speaker 2 30:31

Yeah, for sure, yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1 30:33

Yeah, so we got some good stories about some of your writing and some of the adventures of loco and anything come to mind in terms of something like that. Really, this one guy came in the studio with no clothes or any sort of like one-off outlier. Uh, stories that maybe I don't know award-winning stuff. Oh yeah, we have a prize.

Speaker 2 30:53

We've done well not a pulitzer prize yet, but yeah, no, we've done lots of great work. You know, my colleague, brian burns, um, you know, has has been just a really longtime investigative reporter in Humboldt County and has, you know, done it for 12 years or 15 years of the journal and for us and I think he still produces the best, most impactful work on the North Coast. Yeah, and he's been recognized for that and I, for a couple of years ago I won an award for for for the stuff I did on redistricting in Humboldt County. Okay, because I'm good with like numbers and stuff and maps.

Speaker 1 31:29

You have to be connected too to get all the. I mean as a reporter I can only imagine you got to have and sources Sure and relationships. Yeah, for sure, yeah, and pretty important.

Speaker 2 31:40

Yeah, and I'm proud of that too, like our reporting staff. And so Izzy Vander Heiden, who writes for us, has worked for the Time Standard and KMUD and has been up here for 10 years. Our people are, you know, we have one guy, a really good writer, desmond Remington, who just came out of Humboldt State Journalism School and he's starting Cal Poly Humboldt Journalism School Cal Poly, humboldt. Thank you, scott. But you know, I think that that you know, that's just real important to me too, that we pay people well and we do important work.

Speaker 2 32:13

Yeah, and all of our writers, like you know, try to do important work.

Speaker 1 32:19

Well-informed community is a good thing.

Speaker 2 32:21

I think so. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, people, you know people are reading less and less, and so we have to find other ways to reach people as well. Some things you can't do. But in words, what do they call that? Death scrolling? Yeah, death scrolling of pictures. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, exactly yeah so weird, I just wow.

Speaker 1 32:39

So Patrick mentioned that you became really adroit. I've been waiting all day to use that word. Oh yeah, got that at Cal Poly $2 word. You've become really good at pulling in sources and electronically pulling in other feeds like the elsewhere section Sure, I'd like to hear about that. Feeds like the elsewhere section sure, um, I'd like to hear about that. But I also like to hear about how you kind of based the foundation of, of of the of the product. So you started with a home page, started with uh, booked all the cop stuff, uh-huh, uh, how did. And the obit page is unparalleled oh, thank you um, what?

Speaker 1 33:16

how did it all build? How did you build it out and what was your process and what came first? Yeah, news, right.

Speaker 2 33:22

Yeah, yeah News, or yeah News. And you know, yeah, it was much more blog like in the beginning, you know, because it was just me and there's only, you know, and the radio people. So it was much, it was much simpler and this has grown piece by piece and person by person over time. So you know, I can remember when I made the case, like oh, we should, we should publish obituaries, because it always it's. One of the things that always made me so angry is that the newspapers would charge grieving families so much, or really a lot of money to have their obituary run in the newspaper, when at the same time people picked up bought the newspaper just for that, and it seemed to me it was like a sort of double dipping. People picked up, bought the newspaper just for that, and it seemed to me it was like a sort of double dipping.

Speaker 1 34:01

Yeah, yeah, take advantage.

Speaker 2 34:02

Yeah, it's taking advantage of people in grief, you know, and I know that people want to read those things, so we just said, oh, we'll do them for free for people who are living in Humboldt County, but you have to live here.

Speaker 1 34:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 34:20

Yeah, yeah, we got to sort of somehow. Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 1 34:24

Yeah, rule, that you had to live here for you kind of did you have to die here.

Speaker 2 34:27

I say no, I say that you have to have been living here at the time of your passing or that you will be interred with some sort of public services here. So you have some discretion. You're going to have you know services, then I figure that's humbled enough that people will want to know about it, that local people will want to know about it.

Speaker 1 35:04

Greenwood Cemetery, right here on my prop map right over there in.

Speaker 1 35:08

Arcata. Do you see where Arcata sits? Uh-huh, yeah, it's at my. I just wanted you to notice the map. Yeah, what a cool map this Metzger's map, by the way. Yeah, it's cool, I'm selling these. No, I'm kidding, I don't sell maps. Uh, alice Art does, though, and this is the best deal they have in the whole store, and it's cool. If you're a local and you got one of these maps, you could sit there and stand and stare at that stuff and go oh, ham and lumber, I knew her that, oh that's my great, great grandpa.

Speaker 1 35:35

Yeah, just kidding, no relation. So, uh, no, I, I uh, I appreciate. So so the build out happened. News is the foundation.

Speaker 2 35:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1 35:44

And then and then it got more localized and Well.

Speaker 2 35:48

So yeah, it's always been localized. But you know we just, you know new features, we try new things. You know we do like. You know, nowadays we usually do like a daily poll, you know, to end the day. My theory is you always start the day smart and end the day dumb, so you end on the poll, which is just easy. But yeah, we've been there.

Speaker 1 36:05

Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 2 36:12

I'm experiencing that right now. Yeah, no, you know, so we've, we've done a bunch of different things, some things we used to do and stop doing.

Speaker 2 36:15

You know we just keep trying to do new interesting things. As far as just like the editorial product, sure, what you're talking about with the bringing in other sources, I mean basically, yeah, what you know, in the old days newspapers, people had a tip sheet, right. They'd go down to the courthouse in the morning and see who's been arrested, or they'd, you know, keep the scanner on in their ears and listen for a car crash or something. Watch the fax machine there.

Speaker 1 36:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah, stories are coming in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 36:44

My whole idea really was to just set open source all of that so that everybody, basically all the stuff that's feeding into us, is also just fed out to the public, and that's usually government sources of information. So we scrape lots of websites, lots of government websites, to bring in, you know, something like so a power outage. You know, when there's a power outage, it goes up on our site a big power outage. If there's a big earthquake, it goes up on our site.

Speaker 1 37:13

You guys are kind of an emergency sort of go to something, yeah, we try to be.

Speaker 2 37:17

Yeah, we try to be Sure to go to something. Yeah, we try to be. Yeah, we try to be.

Speaker 1 37:19

It has a name, right? No, I don't know. Like, if there's a disaster, there's some reporting, there's some current data on the website.

Speaker 2 37:27

Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean we always, yeah, we try to do that.

Speaker 1 37:30

Ferndale's flooding.

Speaker 2 37:31

It's really getting wherever it's getting up there, uh-huh uh, or if there's like a big sewage spill or lots of different kinds of things, government information coming into the website at all times or the agenda for next week's supervisor's meeting or something, so yeah, we just bring in that automatically and then it makes this easier for us and then we can take that as sort of like raw material that is still available to everybody we can like use. You know, it's a tip where maybe we will write a story on this. Or maybe you know, if we see there's a bad car crash on 101 in the safety corridor, maybe we want to follow that and see if it's. You know, if they close the road down, you know we can write on top of that sort of information that's coming in yeah, yeah, yeah, it creates well, not content for content's sake, but yeah, yeah, it might be a whole long story.

Speaker 2 38:21

It might yeah.

Speaker 1 38:22

Yeah, 16 days of flooding, yeah. Yeah, or whatever, we had Giant earthquake or something, another windstorm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why this weather's been so magical, it's like we got a little break from all that fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crazy. So you got Elsewhere, which is guys like Nick and I on our podcast and a variety of other sources, right Times Standard, even Times Standard. Sure, I love that. I love the fact that?

Speaker 2 38:44

hey, bring it in. Yeah, that's what I said. We want to be the hub. We want to be Humboldt County's homepage If something's happening in Humboldt or if you're just bored and wondering what's going on in Humboldt County today, because a lot of people like to know about Humboldt County who live here who went to jail in Arcata.

Speaker 1 39:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that's booked, and so what is?

Speaker 2 39:03

Gizmos. That's just basically just sort of like automated features like looking at the California Highway Patrol feed or like Eureka, Fortuna, Arcata, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, their police departments all feed their incidents into this. You know, basically unusable section of a website somewhere, so we take that and bring it in and make sense of it, a little bit of sense of it, and so you can follow that as it happens.

Speaker 1 39:30

So some people have a lot of time to read Uh-huh Sure, more than others.

Speaker 2 39:34

Or they want to know, or they want to know. Like you know, they see something going on and they wonder what it was, and they know that they'll get you know some information, at least on the las costas post, right you can do a search, is this search engine pretty robust? No, it's pretty bad is it? Really, yeah, the search engine, yeah, certainly you would admit that yeah search on this part.

Speaker 2 39:54

Search engines are are a tricky problem for a lot of reasons, but you can. If you know where to click, then you can find it. Probably find it.

Speaker 1 40:02

Yeah, what other sections am I missing? News booked obits.

Speaker 2 40:06

There's the lowdown, there's the calendar of events. So it's like stuff going on in town that you can go to.

Speaker 1 40:13

Is that pretty robust? Is that fed like, voluntarily, like by Mad River Brewery?

Speaker 2 40:17

Yeah, people put their own events up there Do they have to do it themselves, or do you? Scrape it. We ask them to do it themselves. Yeah, and they do Free advertising. Sometimes we fill in yeah, exactly, you know. So there's that. There's other sections, like you know, the Humble Handy that we launched with the director of like contractors.

Speaker 1 40:37

Oh right, I like contractors.

Speaker 2 40:38

That's kind of an advertising feature, but it's powered by the same kind of like you know data that you find elsewhere.

Speaker 1 40:46

Right? Is that a paid for section?

Speaker 2 40:49

Well, it's a complete list, but you can. A contractor can pay to have their business promoted the drywaller guy yeah, exactly, or yeah, and post some pictures of their work or something like that. They can do that. We have a classified ad section. We have. I'm trying to think, oh the classified's pretty affordable. Oh, it's very affordable Dollar a day, yeah, buck a day.

Speaker 1 41:08

Yeah, dollar, a haul or what, dan yeah. So hey, part of our show where we start to have some fun and you can earn, oh, oh, no, Probably give you one anyway. Oh no, a black fig. Whoa, let me tip everything over.

Speaker 2 41:20

Hey, I got this together.

Speaker 1 41:21

The black fig, Dick Taylor.

Speaker 2 41:23

Okay, he had a gas car. Let's see what I can do Are you a chocolate guy?

Speaker 1 41:25

Do you like chocolate? Hell yeah, sure, probably married to somebody that likes chocolate. All of the above, hell yeah, okay, good deal. Question number one Hank Sims for $5 and a Dick Taylor bar. What do you like about Humboldt County? Well, I like that.

Exploring Local Culture and Dining

Speaker 2 41:45

Top three things. Top three things. Oh well, I mean, I like the culture, the people, I like the architecture and I like the natural environment. I like the rain, wow. So you're a rain guy? Well, not, I mean, I won't say that now. Now, I'm sick of it to be dumb but I like living in a wet place rather than a dry place, you're a polysci guy, my son's the same way he goes.

Speaker 1 42:08

It's raining in Amsterdam, I love it. It's 32 degrees it's.

Speaker 2 42:15

I don't know if I like the rain, but I like it being wet and foresty rather than clean. Yeah.

Speaker 1 42:22

Okay, question number two Top three things you don't like about Humboldt.

Speaker 2 42:28

What do you not care for Sometimes? I mean I say the people and the culture, which is a very insular, like inward-looking culture. But the downside of that is maybe the same, just like sort of insularity like small-mindedness, maybe some sort of lack of awareness of what's going on in the outside world.

Speaker 1 42:46

Not in my backyard, baby. Yeah, yeah, wind power.

Speaker 2 42:50

Forget it, that's too clean. Well, yeah, those kind of things. Let's see what else Fish farm?

Speaker 1 42:55

No way, come on. That's got to be. It's got to have a carbon footprint.

Speaker 2 43:01

I think the things I like are the same as the things I don't like.

Speaker 1 43:03

Isn't that strange? Okay, so what's the?

Speaker 2 43:04

weather the rain man of paradox. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true, I think, yeah uh and yeah uh. What else don't I like? Uh, the the, the lack of uh natural resources. Affordable lunches in downtown Eureka oh well, or cheap.

Speaker 1 43:23

I want it cheaper. I got the hack for you. Can I give?

Speaker 2 43:25

you the tip off here.

Speaker 1 43:26

Please Don't tell anybody. If we told you, we'll have to kill you. Okay, so the salad at Lost Bagels.

Speaker 2 43:33

Yeah, oh dude, yes, no, I've been there.

Speaker 1 43:35

It's a big salad and it feeds like four people yeah, it's huge, and you get a whole thing of larapin which is worth $10.

Speaker 2 43:41

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 43:42

And ranch and there are tofu, whatever you want. Tahini, yeah, $5. Yeah, no, I've done this. It's crazy. Yes, I did it. Yesterday I had a huge meal. It was delicious.

Speaker 2 43:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1 43:56

Yeah, yeah, and if you're really okay, that's making it weird, man, okay. So third question you get a full paid day, patrick's going to give you the day off with pay, and what's your itinerary? Who do you do it with and where do you go Starting at 9 am? Where do you go Starting at 9 am?

Speaker 2 44:14

I mean I probably stay at home and read a book. Nice, I probably stay at home and read a book.

Speaker 1 44:20

Nice.

Speaker 2 44:20

Otherwise, maybe, if I have to, if you make me go outside somewhere. I like Mal-El Dunes, I like hiking Mal-El Dunes, yeah.

Speaker 1 44:29

Yeah, try that with the mosquitoes sometime in the summer. Oh, I mean, it's such a cool place. My wife is a hiker, yeah, and so she's got all the secret spots, malal and a hundred others. And somehow I got hijacked on Mother's Day as being a nice husband. She's not. My mother Mothered by nine kids. That's fair, but skaters were awful.

Speaker 2 44:56

Oh yeah, oh my God, I've not come across this.

Speaker 1 44:59

But it's like you're on another planet and then you're looking back at the bay and the mountains and you're going where. This is five minutes from home. No, no, no, ten minutes. It's a weird landscape too. It's a really pretty landscape, yeah.

Speaker 2 45:12

The dune environment is super cool.

Speaker 1 45:14

Yeah, we like to go up to up by Larapin. We like to go up by Larapin, up to Camel Rock on Scenic Drive, there, mm-hmm, and park there and picnic. It's gorgeous, it's nice, it's a magical experience. Okay, bonus question number four for all the marbles.

Speaker 2 45:30

Okay, I know what this is going to be.

Speaker 1 45:36

This is going to be a tough. I'm trying to come up with the toughest question. I'll throw you a lobbyist softball when do you go for dinner?

Speaker 2 45:43

Dinner yeah, my favorite places for dinner. Yeah, top three, top three. I like Larapin, of course. I like Annie's Cambodian. Oh, I haven't ate there for a while. Oh, that's good, and let's see To go out to a nice dinner. I like the Sea Girl.

Speaker 1 46:02

I haven't been there in a while but I like it. Sea Girl is still apparently it's killer. I haven't eaten there in years.

Speaker 2 46:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1 46:05

They used to have the best salad bar maybe in the world. Yeah, the world's done away with salad bars, though they don't like them. I know COVID killed a lot of things, including salad bars. Yeah, yeah, doggone it. Where's Annie's now? Are they still up on? Are they up on 5th, like where they were up by?

Speaker 2 46:22

No, they, they're in Henderson Center. They moved.

Speaker 1 46:24

Yeah, okay, yeah Okay. Nice spot in Henderson Center. There's a lot of good places in Henderson.

Speaker 2 46:29

Center.

Speaker 1 46:29

Yeah, diver, yeah, we ate there. It's decent.

Speaker 2 46:32

Yeah.

Speaker 1 46:32

I haven't been there in a while but, yeah, well, hey, congratulations. You have the recipient of a Dick Taylor. I'll take it. Chocolate bar.

Speaker 2 46:56

Thank you thing that I learned about dick taylor. Besides, I always get a nice chocolate buzz when I drink their chocolate or eat it. Um, is it's low calorie? Oh yeah, I mean, the whole bar is like 100 calories. Well, and I remember when 20, I remember when, like, like, nice chocolate came into fashion and people say like, oh, you only eat like a tiny little corner of it and I thought that's insane.

Speaker 1 47:05

But then I realized, no, that's all you need you don't want to sit there and chew it like a Hershey's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it pairs a lot with a lot of different drinks and other foods and fruits. It's pretty diverse and, yeah, lucky to have those guys down there.

Speaker 2 47:18

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 47:18

Yeah, they may have food, they do.

Speaker 2 47:22

They what? Oh, you're going to have them here.

Speaker 1 47:25

No Well, I interviewed Adam Dick early on, but they may be having some sort of food associated with their. It's a point. Hey, hot Flash, you didn't hear it here. Don't tell anybody, or they'd have to kill you. So Nice. Yeah, it's always fun going there. So any I don't know Parting shots it says you're a journalist, editor, mentor. You've inspired a new generation of reporters to pursue truth and integrity in their work.

Speaker 2 47:49

This is what you got the AI to generate about me.

Speaker 1 47:53

AI loves you AI loves everybody, it loves AI. He's amazing. I kind of get that sense that you mentored a few of these guys and gals, sort of maybe they mentor me as much as I mentor them.

Speaker 2 48:05

I like that. Yeah, so it should be. Maybe they mentor me as much as I mentor them.

Speaker 1 48:07

I like that, yeah, so it should be Maybe yeah. Yeah, it's mutual. It's a mutual mentor-mentee. Sure, the question is who's doing what at when?

Speaker 2 48:17

Uh-huh. No, it's all the time.

Speaker 1 48:22

No, I don't believe any of that stuff that the EIA said about me. It's kind of flattering. Yeah, I like this vital role of local journalism fostering an informed and engaged community. I mean that's important to me. It's pretty generic but it's true. Yeah, I mean AI's got generic truth. It knows how to butter you up. He's amazing, he's a hero and he's that guy.

Promoting Humboldt and Gas Price Discussion

Speaker 1 48:44

No, I really appreciate you being here. Any other parting shots, questions, comments. Any other comments on where we're going? Where would you like to see Humboldt go in the next five, ten years?

Speaker 2 48:52

I mean, I don't know, I would like yeah, I don't know, I guess I don't have that much of an opinion I mean I would like to see it be vibrant and continue to flourish. What?

Speaker 1 49:03

does that mean for you? Yeah, well exactly.

Speaker 2 49:05

That's going to mean different things for different people, but I mean I guess I would like to see there seems to be there's. For a long time there's been, I don't know. There's always been a Paul hanging over Humboldt a little bit. There's something, something. Yeah, people, there's. Somebody in the board of supervisors meeting said the other day that, like you know, what does Humboldt have to do to promote itself? It has Humble have to do to promote itself is get over its sort of like insecurity problems, and I think that that's true. I like that. People always like to. I mean, people always like to bitch about every place they live, anybody anywhere. But it seems like people here take it a little bit more seriously the bitching and they're really bummed out.

Speaker 1 49:42

It's a little bit more personal and I think they have to and there's lots of real challenges in life, for lots of, for everybody, and for you know anywhere you live most, yeah, but but you, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta take. I like that easy. That's a hard truth, but I really like your comment because it's like, oh, it's us and we're er and it just sucks. Yeah, I mean, you know my parents and and my cousin, and it's like, dude, get get over it and let's move forward. Yeah, sure You're going to have challenges, san Diego or LA fires or New York. For sure I don't know Wherever you're living you're going to have some crap in your life.

Speaker 2 50:19

Yeah, and this is a hard place to you know, this is an expensive place for a lot of people to live. There are way more expensive places for a lot of people to live. There are way more expensive places for people to live, you know, and there's cheaper places where you wouldn't want to live maybe. Great point, yeah.

Speaker 1 50:32

Cost of living is high and wages are markedly, we could probably say not the highest in the nation or the state for sure. So there's that, yeah, kind of begs gas pricing in terms of discussion. Do you have any theories on like what gas might be five bucks and three in Medford?

Speaker 2 50:50

Yeah, People have gone up and down through this all over. I mean Medford is a thing, I mean taxes and like also. I think the gasoline formulation in different states. You know there's rules about that. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 51:03

That's funny.

Speaker 2 51:05

I mean, it has been something of a monopoly in the past, sure, and you know it's not as much of a monopoly now as far as, like, the supply of gasoline. We still barge it in a lot we still barge it in, and I don't know why we have to do that exactly.

Speaker 1 51:20

Yeah, but Get a lot of it in the bay at one fell swoop. It is crazy. Fell swoop, it's crazy you get down to like.

Speaker 1 51:32

You know, when I go visit my mom and willits and seeing it's a dollar cheaper and willits than it is in here, it doesn't make. Before you, let's talk about willits, okay, yeah, what's up? Willis, hey, um question, has the bypass hurt downtown? I don't think so. I haven't been there once since the bypass came in and I I really love the bypass, yeah, yeah, don't get me wrong. I don't want to. Really, I want to get to Fresno.

Speaker 2 51:47

I mean the thing is, yeah, yeah, the thing is the bypass came in probably about the same time as the sort of crash of the weed industry, Correct, so it's a little bit hard to distinguish one from the other, but there's still like Willits is a pretty lively place still and if you stop there's really great restaurants to stop at.

Speaker 1 52:07

There's a good place to eat, Got a lot of shops, Got a lot of shops. Is that bakery? Landmark Bakery? Is that still there? I don't know. Is that the name of it?

Speaker 2 52:12

There's something yeah, it was. That's a good memory, but that's been gone for a while. I think there's something else there now, like the North Coast, I think. Yeah, like driving up, yeah, and a little bit of history there. It's like a Garberville, but a little bit bigger.

Speaker 1 52:28

Yeah, and you went to Willits High. Yeah, with the pool in the front.

Speaker 2 52:31

Yes, I was a Willits otter, myself An otter. They're the otters, the swim team. Yeah, oh, that's oh, did you swim?

Speaker 1 52:43

Yes, you.

Speaker 2 52:45

Yeah, I did. I was for a while. I float a lot Swim team yeah.

Speaker 1 52:49

I played water polo. Oh really, oh man, I was the most improved player. I had long hair and all that and a bag of chips. And then later, what happened?

Speaker 2 52:57

Uh-huh, you know, I don't know it happens to us all.

Speaker 1 53:01

Yeah, life Hank, really honored to have you and appreciate your kindness to be here and I'm going to do my sign up Before I do that. Parting shots how do we find LOCO? Just generally speaking, Lostcoastoutpostcom, baby.

Speaker 2 53:17

Okay, just type it right into your search. Go to Google, go to your browser, pull up googlecom. Okay, Type in Lost Coast Outpost, hit enter and then click on the first thing that comes up. That's going to be it. Okay, and it'll get you. And then just favorite that thing, favorite it Bookmark it yeah. And read it once in a while. Follow it, read it, yes, utilize the advertisers. Utilize it for sure. Sure, spend lots of money.

Speaker 1 53:38

Why not? Would Loco be findable? In loco you'd probably come up with. There's probably a billion things there Another thing?

Speaker 2 53:47

Yes, probably.

Speaker 1 53:47

Yeah, I got you Well. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you. It's a pleasure. Thank you, scott. Thank you, hey, I'm closing the show. Thanks everybody for being here and Scott Hammond 100% Humboldt Super easy to find us and subscribe to us in a kind of similar way.

Speaker 1 54:00

Yeah, and we're going to optimize a little bit, because this 100%, the number with a percent sign and Humboldt a little tough to search, but we're getting better it is. You can do it, it's on YouTube, it's on all the podcast platforms and repost, share, subscribe, make some nice comments, you trolls, and thanks to everybody that backs our play here. Scott, hammond State Farm oops, 100%, humboldt. I've never said that. Wow, can you edit that Signing off? Have a great day. Thanks again, hank. You too, scott, thank you.