HAVING AN 'EYE' FOR HISTORY

Arcata Newspaper Editor Compiles Book on City History

As publisher and editor of The Arcata Eye, Kevin Hoover is used to
collecting random bits and pieces of knowledge about the city of Arcata.

"Point to any corner and I can probably tell you something about it,"
he said. Hoover's office, located in the historic Jacoby's
Storehouse, is a homage to Arcata's eclectic present and history,
something Hoover has documented in his new historical book called "On
This Day In Arcata," a compilation of photographs and text taken from
the archives of the now defunct The Arcata Union newspaper and Hoover's Eye.

The book is being released Sept. 1, just in time for Arcata's 150th
anniversary main celebration on Sept. 13. Hoover is on the
celebration's planning committee.

Surrounded by eyeball diagrams, a jar of cow eyeballs, old campaign
posters, a hitchhiking sign (an Arcata staple, according to Hoover),
a bowling pin from the now closed Arcata Bowl and various eyeball
figurines, Hoover talks about Arcata's very familiar history.

"You can just reach out a hand and there's history," he said, adding
that Arcata has been going against the grain for a long time. He
compared modern illegal growhouses to the basements set up for
wine-making during Prohibition.

"We like to think we're cutting edge," Hoover said, adding that
Arcatans have always done things progressively and in a splashy way.
The town has been documented by several news outlets over the years,
most Advertisement recently by national media over illegal grow
houses in the area, a subject that Hoover was interviewed on several
times. His book mentions when TIME Magazine did a photo shoot on the
Plaza in for an article about Arcata's medical marijuana licensing
system, the first in the nation.

"It's kind of in our DNA to go out and make a big fuss," Hoover said.

Along one of the Eye's walls is a set of clocks, each labeled for a
section of Arcata or the surrounding areas. The clocks include ones
for Manila, The Plaza, Sunny Brae, and Alliance and Spear streets,
with some set to very different times, an appropriate homage to the
different ideals held by residents of different areas.

Hoover's book, with events and stories in chronological order
starting with the birth of the Union, captures many iconic moments in
history such as the opening of the Minor movie theater, or the
installation of the President William McKinley statue in the middle
of The Plaza, as well as slices of life entries like the creation of
the Humboldt Honey poster.

Hoover said he especially enjoyed highlighting the people of the town
from Orick Johnny, a hitch-hiking regular, and well-known homeless
man Pete the Ragman, to Lois and Robin Arkley, featured in the book
with anti-Green Party posters, or the Spinsters' Matrimonial Club and
their disappointing search for potential husbands in 1898.

To research the book, Hoover would arm himself with a backpack, his
ibook and a small portable scanner, and then make his way from his
home in Sunny Brae to the Eye's office, walk up K Street past Shay
Park and up to the Humboldt State University Library's Humboldt Room.
It was like walking through Arcata's history, he said.

"If you love a town, everything is interesting about it," he said.

At the Humboldt Room, which has a large collection of historic
photographs, Hoover would select interesting photos and then scan
them before scouring through the microfilm to find the blurb that
matched it. He said he was very happy to be able to show the
continuity of the work done by the Union, where Hoover worked before
it stopped publishing in the mid-1990s, and then the more recent Eye,
which Hoover started in 1996.

"I could have made a couple books," he said of the vast amount of
interesting stories he found. One particular entry Hoover enjoyed was
the story about Sandy Giuntoli's bird sanctuary.

When he first arrived in Arcata in 1985, Hoover lived with his
brother, an HSU student at the time, next door to Giuntoli and his wife May.

Hoover's entry tells a story about Giuntoli's efforts to turn some
blacktop discarded outside his kitchen window into a small garden for
the birds to enjoy. When the property owner, Tom Perrett, was having
a new manufacturing facility built near it, Giuntoli convinced
Perrett not to tear it down to make way for construction traffic
since it reminded him of how much his wife enjoyed the birds. Perrett
conceded, Hoover said, displaying the neighborly spirit of the town.

"There was no government intervention, no city, no protests," Hoover
said. Just the right thing was done in a quiet way."

As Hoover chatted with Giuntoli, now 90, about Giuntoli's family
history, the two stood near the bird sanctuary, which has grown from
a mound with a few plants and signs into a thick brush towering
nearly 10 feet tall.

Giuntoli said he moved to the house in 1936 and worked for 21 years
at the barrel factory, the remnant of which can be seen from his
house. Giuntoli said his family has been in the area since the late
1900s. His family's first business was the Star Hotel in Blue Lake.
They also ended up working in the California Barrel Company's cookhouse.

Giuntoli's historical wealth made Hoover a little giddy.

"See what I mean? Living history," Hoover said.

In conjunction with the city's celebration, Hoover will do a book
signing on Sept. 12 in the lobby of the Jacoby's Storehouse during
Arts Arcata!, from 6 to 9 p.m.