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
Learn More at https://100humboldt.com/
100% Humboldt
#100. From Police Logs to Community Legacy with Editor Kevin Hoover
A statue that seemed to smile on its way home. A hidden cabin that vanished overnight. A police log so human it reads like a short story. Our 100th milestone conversation with editor Kevin Hoover is a tour through Arcata’s past, present, and near future—told by someone who has walked every street, sat through the 7 a.m. meetings, and printed the town’s heartbeat onto shrinking pages week after week.
We dig into how Cal Poly Humboldt is reshaping the region, from a $5.05 million purchase of Sun Valley Floral Farms to the ripple effects on housing, small business, and a bolder 15‑minute town vision for Arcata and McKinleyville. Kevin weighs promise against pressure, naming the culture and capital a campus brings while calling for planning that keeps neighborhoods livable, walkable, and resilient. Climate change raises the stakes as sea levels press toward the bay’s edge, and a new data center and undersea cables force fresh questions about digital infrastructure, local benefit, and trust.
Along the way, Kevin shares the craft and chaos of building a paper from scratch, the ethics behind a beloved police blotter, and why profiles of “regular exceptional” people still matter more than any viral clip. We trade notes on the stages and makers that make Arcata hum—from CenterArts trios that fill a room like orchestras to Playhouse Arts’ role in knitting a district from creativity—and we get personal about best days, worst days, and the music he’s composing late at night in Logic Pro.
If you care about local news, city planning, sea level rise, university growth, or simply how a town tells its truth, this one’s for you. Press play, then tell us what story surprised you most. If you enjoy the show, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more curious neighbors can find us.
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!
Find us on You Tube, Linked In, Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok!
Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, it's Scott Hammond and the 100% Humboldt Podcast, the number 100 hundredth episode. Gotta say that quick, with my new best friend Kevin Hoover. Hi, Kevin. Hi, Scott. How's your day? So far so good. I'm still vertical. Upright and talking.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Tell tell us uh who's who is Kevin Hoover? What's your uh your day job?
SPEAKER_03:Well, my day job is serving as uh editor at large of the Mad River Union. And uh, you know, when you're an editor of a paper on our size, basically it's like being, you know, the manager at uh convenience store. It's like, yeah, you're the manager and you just do everything you can't find someone else to do. Right. So uh you just never know what's coming at you. No, no two days are the same, which I love. Um, and uh, you know, I always find something interesting new out about is that sentence work? Interesting new uh out about um my community and people in it. And so it's just uh every shape-shifting kaleidoscope.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Northern Humboldt's uh perfect grounds for all that. It really is. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys cover well, I imagine you cover the state and as needed, but Arcada McKinleyville, Blue Lake up the coast.
SPEAKER_03:No hum, as we euphemistically call it. But we'll cover, you know, well, things that happen in Manila as well. Um there's a lot going on out there. You know, there you can it's kind of a I don't know, the Mandelbrot set or something. You can pick any little tiny part of it and zoom in, and it's just as complicated as everything else. Sure. Zoom in on that, and it's still as complicated. So there's a million stories out there.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, yep. Still being told. Uh tell us about you and how you got to Humboldt and where you went to school and grew up and your uh what what's your deal?
SPEAKER_03:Right. I don't really know what my deal is. Well, I was born in a log cabin that I helped my dad build, and um wow. And I showed up here. No, um I um okay, so I grew up. Well, I was born in San Francisco and I lived on Hate Street before it was a thing. How old were you when you were in the hate? Uh you know, an infant, basically young. And um I remember the day in well, I don't know if I want to say the year, but there was a big earthquake when we lived in San Francisco. And I still remember my mother rushing me out the front door of the apartment building, and everything was shaking, which I thought was amazing. And she was wigged out. And then my dad came and found us, and uh my mom said, We're moving. That's it. We're moving to the East Bay. And uh within, I think, a year or two, we lived in uh Hayward. Okay. And proceeded to live in a few different places in the East Bay. Hayward, Castor Valley, Fremont. And um, you know, that was where I spent my childhood and back in the duck and cover era.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. When I was actually around before there were any satellites in the sky. Imagine that, yeah. So you're not about the same age.
SPEAKER_02:I'm only uh 49. Uh like you. Yeah, well, you're a young pup compared to me.
SPEAKER_03:So you did you come to Humboldt then to go to school? Nope, not at all. There's uh widespread belief that I attended Humboldt State University, never a day. Well, I did, I took a few night classes there for fun things like guitar and stuff like that. Sure. And I've certainly spent a lot of time up there, but no, never attended a single class there. Although, you know, it'd be great to be an alumni, sure, but uh I am just not that. But uh I came up here, The Origins of Story. It's kind of an oft-told tale and kind of a war horse. So if you're out there and you've heard this before, you can bear with us. One day I was reading some folks of a certain age will remember the national lampoon. Sure. Uh predecessor, in a sense, to the onion. Uh, and uh they had a true facts column in there where uh it's like real stuff that really happened that's just as weird as the made-up stuff. And one item happened to be about how in uh i i somebody was up on the statue of McKinley stuffing cheese in his nose and ears. Uh and I thought, what?
SPEAKER_02:This is McKinley on when he was on the Arcada Plaza.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, the statue of William McKinley that was on the Arcada Plaza until several years ago. Who's down in Ohio? It's now in Canton, Ohio, and I have yet to see it there. But I have been to um their museum, McKinley Museum, a couple of times when all that was pending. And I was doing stories on the the transfer of the the potential transfer of the statue. I just wanted to see it. And but they've done an amazing job of restoring him, as you may we're going off on a tangent, but you may recall when it left Arcata, the statue was quite battered and had some kind of caustic substance on it. It was all smeared up and everything. And there's a somewhat metaphysical aspect to this. You can look it up on our on the Madrid Reunion website. When he, of course, it's a hunk of metal, um, was being prepared for shipment out of town. They had a tire um underneath him, and he was laying there. And I, you know how he always had that kind of stern, glowering look? Yeah. Yeah. He was smiling. He was like, I'm going home. It's funny. You can see it in the photo. And I'm not a person who believes in kooky spooky superstition, but uh, there's something different about his face. And now they restored uh the patina to a deep rich thing, and it's just by the courthouse where he practiced. That wasn't his hometown, by the way. He just it was his adopted hometown, but that was where he interesting. Canton, Ohio, yeah. Back to me. Yeah. So I read this thing in the National Impoon True Facts about um about this statue in this nutty little town. And I told my friend, and he goes, Oh, my sister went to uh college up there. Oh. And I said, Well, let's go up there. And he goes, Okay. So we came up. Sure. And I wasn't doing journalism at the time. I was in retail. And I but I still, by instinct or whatever, did my little Mr. Reporter thing. I went to Tiffany's ice cream parlor, which is now a sort of antique store. And I went up to the guy and um the ice cream shop, because it was reported by Tiffany's ice cream. I said, Hey, do you know anything about the cheese and the statue? The guy goes, Yeah, I reported that, and boy, did they come down on me like a load of bricks. So um, and then I remember going up to the statue and looking for any gent remnants of cheese. I didn't see any. Forensic forensic look. Yes, yes. CSI cheese nose. And um didn't see any, but I loved Arcata. Like right then, I thought this town is of a scale I can appreciate. And um, I like its uh alternative culture and I like the the youth vibe from the college and everything. And um people, a few people warned me, you know, I just gotta tell you, Kevin, it's stuck in the 60s. And I said, tell me more. Yeah. And so uh I want to know more. Yeah. I went back and gave notice at my job, and within a month I was living up here. Wow. That's a shift. Yeah. And I loved it. You know, I just immediately just flourished in in the culture over CATA.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell, so you wound up as a journalist uh without official training?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So I was I was working at Radio Shack, which used to be in Valley West? No, at the one uh 600 F Street, which is now the uh well it was the take and bake place. I think that went out of business. It was down in Uniontown, yeah. No, it's subway sandwiches. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, um That's right. Yeah. Where were we? Tiffany's. That's uh you you took me back because remember Tiffany's had all the video games early on. That was Pac-Man and stuff. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_03:That's when Carol moved it over to the other place, which is now part of uh plaza, which is the furniture and back then.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Uh back there.
SPEAKER_02:I think um I look back at that whole time and um yeah, great town. Jody just went to a meeting and at Mi'kmaq at the planning meeting this week, perhaps you were there. And uh he talked about a 15-minute town where everything is within 15 minutes walking or riding a bike. And the the scalable town. Yeah. And they want to they want to shift McKinleyville into that. We can talk about that some.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, they do. And with the town center, they've got quite a quite a plan there for making it a walk-in community.
SPEAKER_02:So I want to I I I rarely do this, but I wanna I want to speed this up because I think you have so much to share, and I want to really kind of bring it out in full living color before we actually do the quiz. Okay. Your personal quiz, where you earn things. Okay. Um so I I wanted to kind of just real real kind of quick, I don't know, game show style. I th that wouldn't be me or you, but um the HSU uh community connection to the city. What what I'm sorry, Cal Poly. You were gonna correct me, I think.
SPEAKER_03:Uh not really. A lot of people still say that. We know it's still humble state. Yeah. Um well, that's such a big topic. I mean, the two are, I think, quite inextricably linked. Um it's been said that if we didn't have HSU slash Cal Poly there, we'd be Auric, and nothing against Auric. It's a wonderful little place on its own. But we would be, you know, uh the town with all our presumptions and our little civic narcissism that we have. Uh the you know, Cal Poly, the money that it infuses into the community and the culture and all the knowledge base and all the wonderful folks, um, is really defines the town, I think, quite heavily. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Sure. Sports, yeah. Oh, well, yeah. Sports and culture and all the businesses that exist uh that wouldn't, certainly wouldn't otherwise if it wasn't for the students. I'm really a big fan of Cal Poly Humboldt. I just think it offers so much to the community in ways obvious and not. Aaron Powell And this thing's growing, right? They're gonna have a growth effect. They have made a$458 million investment in Arcada, and we're seeing that play out now in a lot of the acquisitions that they're making. As you may know, they just purchased the 191-acre Sun Valley Floral Farms main site, and they already owned a couple of parcels nearby. And uh they're making investments in the community all the time. Uh that's your big story on the cover the other day. Yeah, yeah. It was. Yeah, we just scratched the surface of that one. But um, and we don't know what they're going to use it for. But it's they certainly they do. They wouldn't make such an acquisition if there wasn't. So it's not really public what they're going to do with it. Not yet. Okay. Um if I was more of a detective and more uh you know persistent and more of a pest, they'll come forward. Sure, I could go bother people and cultivate sources and get some whiffs of what they have in mind, but they probably have a lot of things in mind for it. It's very nicely positioned to do a lot of things. I mean, you could do agriculture there. You could even do public events. You've got those cavernous buildings you could have. Oh, yeah. Um, but you could uh there's environmental things. I mean, gosh, you could put a data center or something out there. What do they pay for that? Is that public? Uh five million, five point oh five million. Stole it. Yeah. Stole it because a couple of years ago, it was erroneously, according to Lane DeVries, former CEO of Sun Valley, although he may still be that. Um he uh suddenly this um sale thing, it appeared online for sale for 14 million. And the realtor had all the stats and maps and pictures and and everything. But Lane said, Oh, it's a mistake. It's like, really? That's just a mistake. He goes, Yeah, that guy doesn't know what he's doing. He disowned that listing entirely. Downplayed it. Uh yeah, but apparently it was still for sale and available. So they snapped it up.
SPEAKER_02:So um I want to talk about Arcata's future. And um uh what would you say about Arcata's culture? And and and I I guess I want to frame these questions. Where where are we at and where are we going generally in terms of um Arcada as a demographic, as a culture, as a as a vibe.
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Well, we're going underwater uh for one thing. Um we've got to have some kind of climate resilience plan. We do. Uh but um yeah, the encroachment of the bay is imminent. Some people don't think so. So it's c it's coming coming up toward the city. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Yeah, depending on what you know projection you believe and how fast that'll happen and so forth. Um I'm not even saying it's anthropogenic, but I mean it historically water levels come and go, and it's gonna be that'll be the next big transformative event event, potentially. You know, uh we have uh one of your previous guests, Rails and wonderful person, does uh little thing that shows up uh on our transom every so often, which is Lumberjack Flashback. Ah and uh we we have it. Shout out, Rails. Yeah, hey Ray. Um the one in this week's editions from 1980, and uh, you know, you're looking at all their little quaint concerns and things from 1980, and I just kind of wonder what they'll be in the same interval of time from now. But uh you also get the pretty clear message that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yeah. But we'll see. I don't know uh where we're going with our evolution as beings, but I think we're kind of merging with cyber in a lot of ways.
SPEAKER_02:So there's that big thing that used to be Copeland Lumber, right? The the uh underground uh fiber. Right.
SPEAKER_03:The now a data center. Yeah. That's gotta be pretty profound, right? Well, it was nice. It w it was a it was a Copeland lumber, which was a cool place. And then it was to invest lumber? Yeah. Yeah. And apparently there's a big family issue there because this wonderful state-of-the-art uh store closed. Very strange. As did Eureka store, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it became this data center that a lot of people really feel uncomfortable about. But uh it's a cable that goes all the way to Japan or Russia. Singapore isn't, I think maybe. Um yeah. And then there's Is that advantageous to Arcata or Humboldt? You know, I mean, i if you use data, yeah. Um these data centers may not be with us for long, though. They may turn into something else. Uh Lumberyard.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:That'd be coming full circle. Yeah, that'd be a full circle. Shout out to Ray Olson. You guys I I I keep seeing on uh Access TV, Access Humboldt TV, um, the cabin that vanished. It was great. I mean he he set it up as his perfect um um documentary and or at least there maybe a little tongue in cheek in there too. But it was great.
SPEAKER_03:I think you you you know, investigative reporter, Kevin Hoover on on the spot, you know, and what a great story that's that is what you would call a a traditional shoe leather type story for a journalist, because it happened at a meeting. Uh very few people go to the forest management committee meetings unless they have an interest. And a lot of people do have interests, so it is well attended. But uh generally unwa the unwashed public doesn't just show up at 7 a.m. Right on a Thursday morning to go to a meeting. I do. And, you know, I'm always trying to cover the the forest. Uh the forests are my things. For some people, it's the marsh or the bottoms, or but the forest has always been because we didn't really have that in the East Bay where I lived. Um, this wonderful rainforest red. How many acres behind Arcata Community Forest? Uh the main community forest, I think, is 600 something, but the total is like 20, almost I think it's 2,500 now with all the acquisitions, the Jacoby Creek Forest, and then some of the uh easements and acquisitions that they've added on. So I went to the forest management committee that day, and it was, I think it was just pretty much concluded. It was in staff reports, and Mark Andre, who was then the environmental services director, just happened to mention, oh, yeah, we found another cabin up there in the woods. This one was kind of weird, but anyway, we're gonna try to reach the person who put it up and have it taken down. And I thought, okay. Because there had been cabins in the woods before. Sure. And uh a lot of them are, you know, they're little settlements and they're uh unceremoniously dismantled. But this one was different. And uh Mark took me out there, and the interesting thing is it was in a little pocket of the community forest surrounded by trails. It was just the kind of place you would never really think of going. Uh-huh. And um this person was there for years because there was a little logbook of uh their home improvements interesting. I felt kind of bad about it, you know, but it was mentioned at a public meeting. It was on public land, it wasn't authorized. Um you put a notice out on it, right? Yeah. Um, I think I went out there with Officer Heidi Heidi Grossman um and uh yeah, and uh environmental services worker. And you could tell, well, first of all, you could stand a hundred feet away from it and never see it. Right. And um we went in there and it was quite meticulously wrought. Uh there was no, you know, sanitation facilities visible of any kind, and you know, there were no social trails around it like to a latrine or anything, but it was immaculate. Uh the person whoever did it, if you're out there, you know, get in touch for one thing.
SPEAKER_02:But that was your appeal at the end. Has he or she ever Never. Huh.
SPEAKER_03:This the enigma only heightens with everything you think about with regard to this place. It was obviously a very literate uh person who was living out their doctrine, their beliefs. A lot of people said unibomber or something like that, but it didn't seem, you know, malevolent in any way. But um it was very uh scrup scrupulous. Everything was very tidy in the kitchen, if you've seen the pictures. Uh there were books, there was art. Um, and you know, I we Heidi had to go in, so we knocked, and then she entered. And um I looked around and I left a note for the person. Look, I don't want to out you. I don't, you know, sure, but if you want to talk to me anonymously, I'll protect your identity. No response. And I totally respect that. There have been a few people over the years who were just rugged individualists who said, you know, and they were really interesting people. And they said, you know, I don't really want to be a part of what you do. And I said, Respect, you know, that's cool. Left a note, never heard from anybody. Um was there somebody living at the time? It was obviously it was it was occupied. It was occupied, okay. Yeah, we went back. Uh I went back with a GIS student from then HSU, and uh, we checked the place out. He wrote his term paper or something on it. And um but you could see it was in the process of being dismantled. And then the last thing we saw of it was that on a Sunday, somebody was up there jogging. It was a city official um jogging on a Sunday, and they went out there and the entire place was it was scoured, it was gone except for the wood stove, uh, which was warm. And that was Sunday at around noon. Uh huh. Monday morning, Mark Andre went out there, it was all gone. And nobody it was like it was vertically lifted out or something. No one saw any vehicles, no one saw anybody carrying anything out. So the enigma of that thing is impeccable. I mean, we just do not know who did it, but uh I got a a few people said, Oh, I think it's this guy I see in the library sometimes at night, uh, you know, reading up in the periodical section. Why do you think that? Well, they're really quiet. He's a mystical guy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I never better better to never know. It's true. Yeah. It's true. Hey, if you're just joining us, I got my new best friend Kevin Hoover, publisher. Are you publisher, editor? Yeah. Publ editor. Owner?
SPEAKER_03:Co-editor, publisher, co-editor. And janitor. And janitor. That's I I said that in my title, editor, publisher, and janitor. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Of the Mad River Union. Yeah. The only paper that we subscribe to.
SPEAKER_02:Wow. Yeah, Jenny and I. Let's talk about Arcada and crime and the culture of crime. But more than that, you're writing on it in your police blotter because it's uh always joyful to see wordsmith some of these um uh uh minor misdemeanors and and heavier crimes. So uh take it away. You got a couple books that you've written around that? Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_03:Well, yeah, they just they were compilations of things I did at the time. The I I went through a period of mild fame when people discovered the police log, but this was back before everything was anything was everything. Um that was back when there was a form to break, you know. So the traditional police log when I came on the Arcata Union was um it was just a really quick uh kind of cursory, whatever the most prominent. It was maybe four items, five items on page two, written in very dry fashion. And um, that was I went to work at the union, which is another little story, but um and I was just doing production. I was a production assistant. So one of my great talents, this was on Reddit the other day, what do you do that no one needs? And uh paste up in production. So you did cut and paste. I did with line tape and the wax machine. With Barry, Barry and uh Judy. Uh they might have been before my time. I worked with Cindy Noble and Grace Kerr and other people. Oh, Grace, sure. Oh amazing, amazing.
SPEAKER_02:Very sales, but uh Priestley.
SPEAKER_03:I maybe. Yes. Uh I came in right at the kind of the end of the thing. I was there for almost three years. Quite a paper. The Hadleys were Death Shift. Yeah. It was after the Hadleys had it. Magical. They had sold it to Kurt Tuck, and then it was uh taken over by uh Humboldt Group, Mr. Odell, who owned it at the time. Trevor Burrus, Jr. We used to call him Citizen Odell. Oh, did you? Yeah, I can see why. Okay. Rosebud. But anyway, um day, one fateful day, Rosemary Edmuson, my wonderful editor, um, another great mentor, um said to me, Kevin, I don't have time to write the police log. Could you write it? And I said, Oh, thank you. I'm gonna write the police log that drew me up here because that was the true facts thing. And Lampoon had been in the police log. Perfect. I'm like, wow, this is like meant to be. So I started writing the thing and adding little flourishes. And, you know, at that time that was outrageous. You know, you don't write a poem about um a broken window or something. Um and yet I did. And um, then it started getting a little bit more over the top, and then there was a little pushback from the company, and I made it more conservative, and then I would push the envelope back and um you know, eventually it just became Kevin's creative writing. And so, but not creative because I, you know, I'm always happy to add color and context, but I didn't, you know, put anything in there that didn't happen. Um, so um it became the police log and it got a lot of notice. It was written up in a whole lot of newspapers, Times, Chronicle, Times of London. I bet you sold a hundred of those. Uh-huh. Hundreds. Yeah, it was in the New York Times, too. The funny thing was whenever they would pick items to break out for their story, they almost picked what I thought were really dull, undistinguished items. They never picked what I thought were the ones that cracked me up. Aaron Ross Powell So you kind of cut your teeth at the union.
SPEAKER_02:I did. And then at year 100 they shut her down? 101?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Powell It was uh yeah, so I think 116 years or something. 1886 to 1994 or something like that. Aaron Ross Powell So did you start your paper.
SPEAKER_02:On the back uh uh after that was finished?
SPEAKER_03:Aaron Ross Powell Right. Yeah, I did. Well, so uh the the short version on that is that it closed, and yet uh so me and Jack went it became the Humboldt Beacon. And the fit the fiction at the time was that the union's assets were going to be folded into the beacon. You'll still have your Arcada Union, but it's just going to be called the Beacon. We were keeping it in the off keeping the office, which is now Arcata Pro Floor. Uh, and um we worked, it was it was just bizarre, Scott. It was a you'd go into this building that at one time had a big web press in the back that had gone away many years already. I remember it well, yeah. Yeah, you do? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And uh had a newsroom and an ad staff, and really it was just like me and Jack.
SPEAKER_02:And this cavernous building.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Full of ghosts and treasures, too. There was a lot of old antique newspaper stuff and files and things, which I wish I had saved because eventually all that stuff was just put out on the loading dock and disappeared. So how did Judy Hodgson play into that?
SPEAKER_02:She was the editor a time under Mr.
SPEAKER_03:Odell before I got there.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, gotcha.
SPEAKER_03:So you were at the tail end, yeah. Very tail end. And we'd go in there and work, and um, you know, eventually they sold the building and moved us into Jacoby's storehouse, my first office there of many. Um we were uh we were uh actually we were uh on the fourth floor. Oh, you played way upstairs, okay. Yeah, way upstairs. And uh so well, what happened though was Jack was um the first bureau chief, as it were, and then he didn't really enjoy working at the Beacon. Um so he he was the true, I think, leader and innovator around here. He he started the McKinleyville press. And then when he left, I became, you know, brick bureau chief, and uh, as it were, and we would both be at Board of Supervisors meetings, you know, and he'd be sitting next to me writing in his notepad, he'd go, Hey, you should start a paper. I don't want to live that dangerously. But um other people would tell me I refuse to read the beacon because they're the bad guys. I didn't necessarily find full, yeah. They were and uh but the culture was different, and it did reflect and iterate out in the coverage and so forth. Um and uh but then I would have Jag badgering me to start a paper. And then people in the community said, Hey, look, if you start a paper, I'll buy ads for a year. Hey, look, if you start a paper, I'll give you a thousand dollars, which was probably four thousand dollars now. Right. Um and finally I I I don't know, I might have suffered one or two editorial reversals working for the beacon, and finally said, you know what? Okay. I think I'll I think I'll say yes. Yeah, I think I'll say yes. So I gave notice. What year was this? This would have been 96. Wow. And I gave notice at the um at the beacon, and then I just need two weeks' notice. And the next day they let me go. They said, Well, you're gonna have mixed loyalties. We'll pay you for the two weeks that you would have worked, but you're gonna go, yeah. Yeah. So I said, okay.
SPEAKER_02:So happened to be with Media News. I was gone really within a day. Wow. Bye-bye. And we'll like your Rolodex back too. Yeah. Anyway, it's weird. It's a weird policy.
SPEAKER_03:So yeah, so I spent three weeks just I remember uh just working day from early in the morning till late at night, you know. Because you have to do everything. Oh yeah. You have to do all the business stuff, get a business license, find a space to work in. Uh I had to hire reporters, find an advertising person, a production person. Was that Terrence? Supplies. No, Terrence came later. Um I went through there were a few people. Terrence was another incredibly wonderful person who really Hey Terrence? Yeah, he defined the paper and he just did went so far above and beyond and offered so much. It was really quite a partnership. Um so yeah, I started this thing, but I remember going for three weeks. But you also have to, you know, sort of develop what's your look and feel gonna be. Uh and I uh I hired, well, sort of hired, um, a graphic designer, uh, but they were gonna be so expensive that I just said, I'll do it myself. So I had an idea. So I wanted that retro future look. I wanted to have the typewriter font, but I wanted it to look kind of modern. Um, so I remember that three weeks of early in the morning till I just am gonna drop. You know, making so many mistakes, I gotta go to bed. But I in fact, it was so hectic that there were times when I I couldn't even turn my head to talk to somebody. I come, okay, talk to me. I I can't. Uh-huh. And eating at the desk and everything. And uh, you know. But after three weeks, the first paper came out. And that was when I learned that typos, you can make what you think are perfect pages. And in those days, we had to, you know, still drive the pages to the press. Right. And where'd you print then? It was in Smith River. Oh, right. Yeah, right. At the Del Norte Triplicate. Sure. Um, and so um I developed this theory that as you drive your pages to the press, little gremlins, gremlins can crawl onto the page and rearrange things. Yes, they do. Because I could because you could look at the page and say, what am I not seeing? And you can read every cut line, you can read every thing. Ten times. It's perfect. And you can have other people do it, and three, five people read it. And then as soon as it comes back from the press, you your eye falls right on the mistake. So does the reader. Still happens. Yeah. But the readers are much more forgiving. Uh, I had um CJ Ralph told me one time, he goes, I love your typos. I think I had had a week where there was a front page headline typo, which still happens once in a while, somehow. It's those gremlins. But um, but CJ told me, he goes, I love your typos, Kevin, because I know you're making them. Yeah, it's not some guy in an office building in Atlanta or something. And I go, Well, I'm glad that they have some value to you.
SPEAKER_02:It's like video, the rough and grainy video is kind of cool and hit. Sure, yeah. Yeah. Hey, and if you're just joining us, uh Scott Hammond and 100% humble podcast with number 100, man. I did a hundred of these. Yeah. I haven't yet, but we're getting closer. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. With with my new business. Oh, thanks, Kevin, for being here. Um so talking about arcata culture uh versus uh other cultures in crime, and want to talk about um what's your what's your sense of the community? Are we had you do you have big fears? Do you have uh some things that that keep you up at night? Uh what are the opportunities? Maybe that's a better question.
SPEAKER_03:Um you know, the opportunities are infinite. Um you can come to Arcata, and if you're willing to work, uh you can get a darn good job, still to this day. Um I knew a person who came to town with nothing, and she immediately got five jobs that weren't great. You know, she might have been house cleaning or uh be she might have been a barista, nothing against those things, but they aren't necessarily what she wanted to do forever. She worked hard, she excelled, she worked her way up, got a supervisorial thing, and eventually ended up owning a business. So you can't do that. You just have to be willing to work and not make excuses. Yeah. I think of Yakima and Maremba One and Oh, yeah, Ron Samuels, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you know, Haleyashi and all the all the crew and all the all the food people at Food Works.
SPEAKER_03:Food Works is an incredible incubator for all kinds of things. Wow. Yeah. So opportunities there in Arcata, just be willing to work and suffer. Well one day I was out taking pictures out by the creamery um of and there were some young folks, and I said, Hey, can I take your picture against this? You know, it's the art and commerce district, and they have this giant cup of pencils and pens and brushes. I go, Can I take your picture? And they go, why? And I go, Well, it's I'm working, I work at the newspaper and I take pictures monthly. And God goes, How do I get your job? And I just said, You suffer. Yeah. The universe wants you to suffer. So you have to go out there and work your ass off and uh get underpaid and treated unfairly and do all kinds of things you don't want to do. And eventually you you you find the slot that you're, I don't know, meant to be in or that you function well in. Your skill set and your attitude is optimized for. Yeah. Maybe if you're lucky. If you're lucky, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, let's do the quiz. You ready? Uh sure. This is for all the money, by the way. Oh, okay. So so funny thing um is since it's the hundredth uh anniversary, the hundredth episode, uh, I have a hundred dollar bill here for uh for you. And uh you can keep it framed, you can donate it. I I don't it's that time of year, whatever you want to do. But so so this quiz is actually for the big bucks. So so I even defaced it with some some ink on it. So uh don't tell anybody. Uh hey, question number one. Kevin Hoover, for all the money. What's your best day? What was what what's been one of your best days in life?
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Uh well, uh the essential components, not essential, but some of the components of a great day for me will be to get up early, uh, drink a bracing cup of coffee. I'm eccentric, so I get up at three or four in the morning. That's my favorite time of day. Everybody's quiet. Nobody's bothering me. Um and I drink uh a little coffee with my kitty cat and uh take my news bath, as Frank Zappa would call it, and uh kind of find out what's happened since I last compulsively checked all the news. Uh and then kind of, you know, check the email, see if anything's. I've always had since doing the arcata eye this this feeling that I'm behind. You want to be up on everything and everything that I have that I can put on the page, I want to do that. So check my stuff. I might work, you know, you can work anywhere now, which is awesome. Uh I'll do a little page work and then I'll um go for a big old walk. I'll I try to walk at least two miles a day. If I'm lucky, I can get in a hike up in the uh sunny bray track of the community for us. Um, you know, come back, go into the office, talk to Jack for a while, maybe go out on a story. I like doing that sort of thing. Um, and then maybe go like tonight. I'm going to a mixer, you know. There's uh social events that occur and you get to meet people in the community and arcade chamber mixers or chamber mixers. Oh yeah. Oh, they're great. And uh there's just always something uh going on. Uh and then maybe uh dinner with my significant other would be great. And then uh back to the chair and the kitty cat. And uh but there's a million and one other things that I could do there too. So I could play my drums. I've just been playing with this little ensemble lately. Oh, cool. Uh rediscovered my musician's side. Or I could um work on some of the side projects that we do. Uh we make the recreation guide for the city, and that's always a fun diversion. I like I like I I have to get out and move around. But once I've done that, I like to sit at my computer and make do art and compose things. What I didn't mention is uh the thing that I find most absorbing, and it's almost so fun that it's hurts, which is making music uh using Logic Pro on my Mac. So digital audio workstation, you go in, you have an idea for a piece of music, and you can go in and you can spend 10 minutes on it, or 10 hours, or 10 years. And uh you can you have orchestras at your command, and you know, you do meticulous note placement. Wow. And I have an EP in mind uh that should be coming out next year of my unique eclectic blend. We used to get a lot of things at the newspaper that said, this musician's unique eclectic blend. And I would put down the needle, as it were, on each song, and they weren't that unique or eclectic. But um, my stuff is very bizarre. So it's all original, there's no AI, and um hopefully you'll be able to hear what I'm talking about. How do you find it? Through the website, through the It comes Well how do you find my music? Oh, would we find it too? I'll be on Bandcamp. So there's this I already have an account there, Bandcamp. I just haven't posted anything yet. But yeah, my EP will be out hopefully next spring.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of piggybacks into the idea of uh some of the shows we've seen at the Creamery District or theater lounge in terms of some of the music that's come in through the years. I mean, you 30, 40 years, you you've had to see a lot of really memorable people. So um uh we'll we're gonna we'll we're gonna talk about that because you're still in the quiz.
SPEAKER_01:So oh question.
SPEAKER_02:So we're I want to talk about that memorable band's memorable uh personalities, and we'll cycle to that. So does soon as you if you pass the quiz, we'll see. Number two, worst day ever. What was what was a horrible, no good, very bad day? Oh my. And by the way, I like the the Frank Zapper reference to the news bath. Yeah. Is that a phrase he used? That's a phrase he used. That's a Frank phrase. You know the Stones and everybody when they came to LA, you know where they'd go visit first?
SPEAKER_01:Where?
SPEAKER_02:They'd go see Frank. Yeah. Yeah. I I find that very interesting. It's like the Beatles would go see Frank, what?
SPEAKER_03:He knew every all kinds of people clapped into Hendrix, Bob Dylan. They all came to his house. Um go hang out at Frank's. Yeah, and um they sure did. So uh worst day, uh, when someone dies or gets hurt, yeah, you know, I mean, you you have to cover that. And oftentimes it's someone you love, uh, because you love a lot of people who are fixtures around there, or maybe they were just nobody.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And they died alone in a little hole in a tree in the wood. That was one of the people who uh died who deeply affected me. There was this little eccentric fella who had a bicycle and he had some kind of mechanical aptitude. So he had this bike and he could turn it upside down and turn it into a drum set. And he had all these attachments for percussion instruments. He would play in the pause. And I said, Yeah, can I do a little story about this? He goes, No, I don't want to be part of your thing. And cool. He died unfortunately alone. And so that would be a bad day. I I think of all the guys, John the Ragman. Oh, uh Pete. Pete, sorry, Pete. Johnny Antonioli. And Antonioli would sh hitchhike. I just ran across the phone. Scream at people. I ran across a uh a person on the street thing. We called it Viewfinder, I did for the Arcade Union. And I asked people, why do you smoke cigarettes when you know how bad they are for you? And I asked Johnny, and he goes, Because I like to smoke. Get away from me. I don't like that. That's a stupid question.
SPEAKER_02:Get away from me. He was great. He was amazing. We'd pick him up pitchhiking.
SPEAKER_03:He was just That's how I got to know him. John go back to Oric. He needed a ride to Oric, and I very unauthorizedly took the Arcada Union van and gave him a ride and turned on the tape. He had to sit in back because of that. And um, but he told me his story, and he was I was doing him a favor, and he told me his version of his story. But then I talked to all the relatives and others who gave me some context. But I was very proud to have been able to profile Johnny. And I'll always remember, you know, he lived to be about 190 years old, but I would see him on the plaza, he would be drinking a half pint of half and half with a McTell's lemon uh pie. And that's that's gonna be the secret to legitimate right there. Yeah. What a great guy. What a memorable guy. He was great. But yeah, uh Pete, uh the ragman. Pete the Ragman? Yeah. He's another amazing person. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02:Who's the other guy that died in the last five years or so with COVID? He was at North Tunnel out with the big the big dread. Uh he walked around in North Tonne.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Um God forget his name. Nice guy. You asked me his name, so I can't remember. He would hang out at Las Vegas a lot, too. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:There have been so many very memorable, eccentric people who and some of whom pre predate my arrival, but um Madavi Riley, a wonderful woman, the first Bohemian, a woman who lived in Sunny Bray, she was amazing. I you that's the trouble with lists is you always leave somebody out. So I don't want to elevate. I mean, Monica Hadley, she was a monster. She's a sweetheart. There are people, and the great thing to know is that the truly great people are still there. Jan Carr, there is a this person defies words, defies logic, defies she's supernaturally amazing with what she does. Um Heidi Grossman, Officer Grossman, is another one of my just most uh respected people.
SPEAKER_02:There's a guy you did an OBIT for that used to come to the bagel stop shop. Um he's from back east. He wasn't all that old, he's maybe in his fifties or sixties, Brian. Used to swim in the bay.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02:He would come and just chat it up with us. And uh the I'd take my kids to Bagels and he was he was that guy. What I like about you, maybe I love about you, is that your objectivity. I I I believe that's to be true of you, and and it kind of comes with the person in the job is curious. You're curious. Yeah, curiosity. To interview Johnny and to to log Johnny's life, archive Johnny.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, he was amazing. I think when you said Brian, I thought maybe you meant Brian Sprout, the the bizarre sculptor who passed away. He was great. Um Yeah, I mean you just turn the corner and there's some amazing person who just would like to know or who may or may not want to know you. Right. Or the guys with the yaks that came through town. The yaksmen. Oh, geez.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting guys. They have some rude mofos, man. They harassed a woman right in front of me, man.
SPEAKER_03:I didn't like that. They were they were a mixed bag, but I did, you know, get to know them as best I could. And I think I got a semblance of grudging respect from them. Um The Yakmen. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It's like a superhero. All right. Hey, number question number three. We're almost through these. What's fulfilling to you?
SPEAKER_03:What what fills your cup? Uh well, uh saying when we when Jack and I go through the pages and we find all the mistakes we think we found, and till except for the ones we didn't, and we say, Well, okay. And we always say the same thing every week. Okay, well, we'll do it again. And somehow we always do it again. Uh so that's a moment of fulfillment. That's when I enter my state of what I call equipoise. I'm done with the paper. You know, it's Monday. I can do anything, and there's I have no obligations. You know, I could go out for a long walk or I could go make music or something, but everything that is pulling on me, snort, uh, is pulling equally. There's no one thing that I have to go do or not. But um, yeah, I I'd say that's fulfilling. Or, you know, when um I'm with creative people doing something interesting, or I'm interviewing somebody who's doing something completely awesome. Um, I just really get into their world and uh I'm just thinking, oh, they're living the dream. That's great. Real empathy, yeah. So those are fulfilling things. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, last question. Maybe the top I gotta get it to ring here. Hey, Kevin Hoover, who are you and what do you what do you want?
SPEAKER_03:You know, uh who am I? That's a question beyond my pay grade. What I want is for everyone to get along, realize that they breathe the same air and they want the same things mostly. Um, and but a lot of the things that divide us are purely elective and superficial. Um, I want us all to realize what's real and what's not real. Um so if I get preachy as a crabby old guy, um, I would like folks to use critical thinking. What is that? Um I've heard people say, well, everybody wants critical thinking, but they don't know what it is. I know what it is. Yeah. It's two things understanding what logical fallacies are and uh making evidence-based decisions. It's as simple as that. So look up logical fallacies, realize that popularity isn't truth. Something may be overwhelmingly popular, and it still isn't true. Right. Um, and uh that's just one of the many. There are so some people are really dialed into logical fallacies. There's so many different things. Wait, there's not a flat Earth. Wait a minute. You know, that's not an evidence-based conclusion, um, unless you want to skew the evidence. So, what I want is just for all the all of us to get along and find the humanity in each other uh without regard for race, creed, color, you know, age, any of that stuff. Beautiful. I love it. And celebrate your the fact that that other person's way different than you. Yeah. You know, because that's great. Let's get curious. Right, right. And chill out enough to get curious. And everyone to have a full stomach and be warm, and that's the kind of it.
SPEAKER_02:Good word. So before we talk about your legacy, uh let's talk about some of those color. By the way, winter winner chicken dinner. Uh I'd like to present you with a real Benjamin Franklin$100 bill framed. And you feel free to do whatever you whatever you need to do with that. Thanks. Yeah. Usually I just give away like a dick Dick Taylor bar, but gosh. We're really uh we're stepping it up. There's really something. Number 100. Yeah, that's that's that's Ben. What a now he was iconic. What a great guy he was. We won't even Ben. Oh.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I would love to have made it.
SPEAKER_02:My favorite historical figure.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. He he was Complexity. He saved an amazing guy. He and he was another one who was curious, you know. Yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, with the key and the Oh, and he saved he saved he won the Revolutionary War as far as Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:He he was uh he he had a broad array of interests. Yeah. And uh he just tried to do a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting dude. So uh as we bring it in here, so uh let's talk about some colorful personalities in in town, um maybe of influencers, and then maybe uh dovetail that into some music. Um not that we'll sing or play, but people that have come to town, we've we saw Billy Billy Bob Thornton and the box cutters. We thought they were rockabilly, they were grunge and super loud at the theater lounge. So a lot of people have come through over the years, Bruce Coburn, of course, and and Cal Poly's had, you know, staggering amounts of amazing talent, right? Yeah, yeah. Any anybody come to mind?
SPEAKER_03:And well, I saw the first thing uh I one of the first things that I wrote for the Arcada Union was a review of a Chick Korea show up at um Center Arts, it was then. And it was just a trio, but the amount of music that those guys made just filled the room as much as a six or eight piece band. It was amazing. And I wrote a a review of it, and I got to interview Chick. And it was right after Mr. Zappa had died. Uh and I asked Chick if he had any thoughts about that. And he said something so profound. He goes, Well, I loved Frank. And uh, but you know, um let's talk about life. Life is for the living, and so celebrate the living. Wow. That was what Chick Korea said. Good word, yeah. And um, it's meant a lot to me.
SPEAKER_02:So Roy brought a lot of shows up. You probably knew Roy. I know Roy, yeah. What a sweetheart. Yeah, he was great. Nice guy.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So a lot of shows, and then you got Jackie at the Arcada Playhouse.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, Jackie. Hey Jackie, what's up? Yeah. J the what they're doing at the playhouse, that another is another thing. The the Jackie and the folks playhouse arts really spearheaded the whole which I the whole uh art and commerce neighborhood. They stuck up for their neighborhood. And they, you know, I I love it when neighborhoods and commute small communities uh coalesce. They might do so for emergency preparedness or, you know, neighborhood watch, or they might, you know, um, they might kind of get to know each other because there's some new development as like this gigantic um cell phone tower. Uh was a 184 feet monopole tower that's gonna go into residential sunny bree. Um and the friends of Grossman Creek are now organizing. So some so I love it when neighborhoods organize and they get to know each other and they they find each other. It's so easy for us to be isolated and to only uh commiserate in virtual communities with our belief tribes, as it were. Um said. But uh yeah, I love I love it when uh because you had that with the Sunny Bay Arcade Neighborhood Association when uh they were uh they were gonna harvest the what's now the Sunny, the Arcade Community Forest, Sunny Bay Track. That was gonna be all harvested. And uh Mark Lovelace and other folks uh organized to stop it and uh and did in a very ethical, orderly, principled way. And it shows that it can work. And uh so that really I get a large charge out of that when neighborhoods uh get together, when folks get together and do good things. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_02:And I think you're right. The pub and that whole district has uh that whole nice vibe. And we call it the troubadours that come through. It's always amazing to see some of the talent.
SPEAKER_03:Uh oh my god. Tony Levin, the stick man with Tony Levin and all those guys come through. I mean, they give us a major talent out there. Yeah. Uh they had George Harab and uh Joey Fabian, my skeptical friends.
SPEAKER_02:Saw Ruby Folkes and uh Jenny Scheiman. Wow. She's she's amazing. I had never seen her. She'd quite quite the quite the violinist, quite the musician.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, Arcada's a cultural hub. There's I mean, Captain Beefheart, Don van Vliet, he used to hang out at People's Records. Is that right? Yeah. He used to come down and just hang out in the doorway.
SPEAKER_02:SNL did their 50-year uh kind of tri I was gonna call it a triage arc of their story. And and Beefheart was on SNL. Yeah. And and he was absolutely horrif at New York they'd say horrible. He he they they they critiqued it, and they the guy that got him on the show got in trouble. Oh, yeah. Because he really blew it up. But he was lived up in Trinidad?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, he did. As Frank, Mr. Zappa remembers it, he wanted to go live in a place where he could see whales. Nice. And a lot of people would tell me, Oh, I see him all the time walking uh to the post office. And I sent him a couple letters and I said, Look, Don, I mean, I respect you. I I'm just uh a Frank fan, I'm a you fan. I I love your shiny beast, Bat Chain Polar, is one of my favorite albums. Wow. Um, you know, Beef Heart, when you listen to him, he's not different. And a different deal. I always think that I always feel different after I l like reading a Kurt Vonnegut book or something. He's just like it kind of retrained my neural pathways. But he never responded. And there again, I totally respect that. It's cool. I like that. Foolish little um my foolish little uh popsicle stand or no resentment. That's good. That's fine. Uh but I do regret, but he uh, you know, when he passed away, he went to uh Mandover Community Hospital ER, and on the subreddit for uh Captain Beefheart, I told him that. I go, Yeah, he died in my hometown. So yeah. But I remember seeing him on stage with Frank, and he had a big paper bag he'd pull his mouth harp out of and stuff. So he was an amazing cat.
SPEAKER_02:Iconic, yeah. So uh most amazing stories, two or three that that stand out over the 30 plus 40-ish years. Well, gosh, I'm kind of on the spot.
SPEAKER_03:Most of the stories that I've covered. Yeah, are just uh that that influenced you or impacted you people. Sure. Well, the cabin in the woods was one. Sure. Um that was certainly the most recent. That was the most, I would say, ripped off or the most popular story. Uh there were a lot of people who would take that story and take my byline off of it. They'd even rewrite it because they would come at it from one of the reasons it was so popular is because if you're uh a homesteader, you know, you're interested. If you're uh a total iconoclast, you were an unplug or survivalist. Survivalist and prepper, yeah, then you're interested. If you're a civil rights person, you or if you're a uh forest person. I mean So they'd snag it and take your byline? All kinds. And uh it would pop up everywhere. And they would do that, they would do that classic thing. They thought it was just uh uh, you know, a copse of trees, but then there's the the picture with the red circle, you know, and um sensationalizing it. And disappointingly, a lot of people who call themselves journalists would take my story and change it around and put their name on it and stuff. I wrote a few letters, but I mean trying to do abuse on the internet is futility. Um were there any other stories? I'd say probably, like I say, some of the uh uh profiles that I did of just regular people who are exceptional. I I could go talk to, I could just pick somebody out on the street, and I promise you they would have incredibly interesting things to tell me. So a lot of the people profiles. Uh we did a lot of stories about, you know, toxic waste sites. Um I did some journalism, everyone's forgotten it. Uh but uh we we uncovered some really serious um situations out there at, you know, uh out on the Arcata bottom, and also uh in Blue Lake by the water aquifers up there with Sierra Pacific. Was it I mean, I don't want to say the wrong company, but uh anyway, um yeah. So there's there's bad stuff going on here and there. But um Brian Sproul, there was another one. Um various people who have come and gone and left an imprint on the town. Jim Test, there was another one. See, I'm doing a list. Is he bug press? He was a great guy. He was another wonderful person. What a nice man. Oh, he was just ridiculous. He was just so uh insightful and uh he brought about so many changes, but then so did Victor Schaub, you know. And so right now is Alex Stillman, another just ridiculously amazing. Yep. Let's go James Washington. James, everyone's favorite arcada person. Yeah, James is just ridiculous. I love some of the people.
SPEAKER_02:Let's let's keep going. What other uh people have influenced you or I wish I had something it's hard because you're gonna leave somebody off. Yeah. But I I get it.
SPEAKER_03:I am, but I mean um I I just I meet them all the time. And um and I just go, wow, here's a and business people Victoria from Bubbles and Yeah. Yeah, she's great.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'd great. I I might have heard of Julie.
SPEAKER_03:She's she's still around. I remember being in uh what wasn't uh a back room of the Arcata Union building on the plaza, which I now I think is now just open. Um it was demolished. Uh but I was in there in 1996 and I said, Hey, I'm starting a paper. It was actually at a uh campaign thing for Connie Stewart, who was running for counsel for the first time. And I said, Julia, I'm starting a paper. She goes, What are you gonna call it? And I said, The Arcata Eye. And she goes, Oh my God. Because it sounds so tabloid-y, like, you know, look at here's looking at you. But that was why I called it that was because, well, it it kind of rolled trippingly off the tongue. Um, but um also because the slogan for it was see yourself. Okay, look in the eye. You'll see yourself in it's your eye. Uh, but that was one of the things in life that I don't think very many people get to do. Name a newspaper. Right. And when I started looking into names of newspapers, I found some really there's the telephone and the it just they have all kinds of you can just call it anything, really. You could. I was just thinking how the new version of AI uh Gemini is nano banana.
SPEAKER_00:Uh nice.
SPEAKER_03:And it's I asked nano banana, I was taking a picture the other day of a couple people through a shop window, and there was all these reflections. And I just I'm gonna ask AI to take the reflections out of the window. And it it did so impeccably. Wow. But even though AI now gives the right number of fingers and things on your hands, right? Um, it still couldn't repeat that because the picture that I asked it to do wasn't the best picture. Yeah. So then I sent the best picture through it, and it couldn't do it. I could not get it to do it right again. So yeah. AI is gonna take us over, but not anytime soon.
SPEAKER_02:Let's just let's just cover AI real quick to your point. Okay. Kevin Hoover studied huh at Humboldt State University and developed a passion for community journalism. Come on, AI, you could do better than that. Yeah. That's not a common mistake. That's not an uncommon mistake when I'm gonna use an assumption.
SPEAKER_03:And I find that when I need to run corrections, it's always because of an assumption that I made.
SPEAKER_02:I like this one, if I may. Hoover's known for his engaging and often humorous writing style, blending thorough local reporting with a deep understanding of community dynamics. I think it's a high compliment. It's a little general, but it's it's kind of nice.
SPEAKER_03:Trevor Burrus, Jr. And it's higher than I probably deserve. Yeah. You know, newspapers have physically downsized quite a bit for press reasons. And uh the paper that we have now is so much physically smaller than even what we had 10 years ago. And then we're gonna do that. Oh, my time standard came. Yeah. And so the space that we had to reduce our point size from 10, 10 point type, body type, to 9.5, and even go down to nine sometimes, which gets tough for the older folks. Um, but you got to do it to cram everything in. So one thing that people don't necessarily uh understand about what we do is that we're a newspaper. We're not a website. We we do a website, but it's only mostly stuff that's in the paper. Sure. So we're constrained. So if a story, this the length of the story is basically dictated by how much space I have physically putting ink on wood fiber to um to make a newspaper. So if we're not as thorough, that's probably one reason.
SPEAKER_02:That's a good reason. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I appreciate you being here. Um any parting shots? How do we get a hold of you? Alex told me the other day, she I said, I'm gonna be on Scott's show. And she goes, it goes fast. Um It goes fast. Parting shots. Um, you know, be nice. Don't assume the worst about the other person. Good work. Um, especially if there's a cute name for them, you know, if there's a term that objectives them. Uh try to go beyond that and just kind of look in their eyes and see where they're coming from and assuming their halatosis isn't too bad like mine. Um you know, get to know them. Yeah. Amen to that. I like that. How do we get a hold of you at the uh the paper?
SPEAKER_02:What's the website?
SPEAKER_03:Uh news at madriverunion.com. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:I'm there all the time. You're easy to find, get online, you can find you, call you, sure. Carry your paper. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. And cool.
SPEAKER_02:I want to thank you for do both doing this and having me on. I appreciate you being here. So our our parting shot for the hundredth episode with my new best friend Kevin Hoover. Um, what's your legacy? What's your tombstone saying? Uh what are we going to say when we get up at the community center and read read the eulogy? Um, let's say it that way. You know, he meant well and did what he could. Like it. Love it. Well, thanks, Kevin. Appreciate you being here. Um hey, and thank you for listening and watching and uh joining us. And uh would love you to subscribe and like stuff and share it and do all the things on the podcast platforms. We're on um, as you know, uh uh uh on cable 12 usually and uh certainly YouTube. So uh like us, love us, uh contribute. Oh, and before I forget, uh Quality Body, huge sponsor, Dick Taylor, even amazing. Yeah, I mean and don't forget uh Dutch Brothers. So I would be remiss to not mention those folks because they are they make this uh world go round and at least part of this one. Kevin, thank you. Thanks, Scott. All right, have a great day. You too.
