After living in a tent for more than a year while going to school full-time, I found a living situation for $300 a month; and a bartending job inside the historic Eureka Inn in Eureka CA; Humboldt County. You can imagine probably imagine what kind of a living situation $300 would buy you. It was better than the tent, because I had more room to move around. In addition, I had a shower (that leaked all over the floor, flooding the bathroom and into my "closet space,") a kitchen sink (that leaked below into the storage area below the sink, and all over the floor kitchen floor), and a stove (that worked fine.) Furthermore, I felt a little safer there, depending on the night.
For some reason, most likely the same logic that was used to "build" the entire pieced-together garage-to-shack conversion, the floor was constructed by stacking countless of pieces of cardboard on top of each other, thrown directly on top of the earth, with pieces of carpet samples, (I'm guessing,) laid over that.
I managed to make it cute enough. I brought the plastic, 3-drawer craft bins that I used as dressers from the tent, along with the stand-up clothing rack; to make a closet area for myself in the shack. I was still sleeping on an air mattress, queen sized; and still going through absurd amounts of them; due to mildewing; as the shack was as air-tight as my broken ass tent. The bathroom roof was made of these wavy, plastic sheets; I don't know what they're called. During a particularly bad storm, the wind pried the nails off that were holding down the plastic siding (?) pieces; and my "roof" flew off; landing in pieces in a back alley. It ws cold as hell, but I could look up at the stars at night, or up at the sunny sky and trees waving in the breeze during the day.
I'll post a few pictures of life during my 6 months in the shack; before moving back to LA....
The Shack's Living Room
My boyfriend came to visit (Humboldt Redwoods)
A beautiful Humboldt County beach in Trinidad
I started making these air plant arrangements:
Pictures of my fellow bar crew from Palm Lounge at Eureka Inn.
All dolled-up for work, ready for tips, and takin selfies in the hotel bathroom.
2 week old baby bunny on Neighbor Dave's Farm!
A couple of my Mom's baby chicks
Some guy on acid came into the bar and gave this feather to me; so I made an earring out of it.
Feeding some baby turkeys at Neighbor Dave's.
Like I mentioned earlier, I've sinced moved back to my favorite place to live in LA, Venice Beach. I'm happy as hell to not be in Humboldt anymore. People in Humboldt are sick with depression due to the constant grey and winter temperatures the dive into the twenties. Humboldt has Portland or Seattle weather, but without the amenities to occupy oneself. The people there have very limited options for entertaining themselves in a healthy way; outside of summer. During this short window of Sunshiny goodness, you can drive an hour south or east to the hot, beautiful, uncrowded river bars, to swim and lizard out. The exception to the lack of amenities in Humboldt are the bars, and there are plenty of them.
It's difficult to make friends there. It's very clicky. A lot/most of Humboldtians (that don't grow) are happy to work at their shitty Pizza Hut job just enough to earn beer money; and the rest of their time is spent at these run down, insectrrial sespools called Bars.The only difference with growers, is that you won't find them at Pizza Hut; and they have more money to drink at said bars. People there, in general, are slackers, drunks, and obviously stoners. Everybody there has slept with everybody. Dreams are dead, and those who choose to spread their wings and try to start something new and different in Humboldt are labeled wannabes or "city people." Enough dissing on Humboldt, I'm just glad to be out. Almost everyone there is drunk and has Gonorrhea or Syphilis.For fun, here are some lovely stats on that: STD Rates in Humboldt.
I mentioned that the bar I worked, Palm Lounge, at was located in a historic hotel called the Eureka Inn. The hotel he not been updated, it's huge, magical, and creepy. Almost every part of it remains abandoned except the bar and a small handful of rooms for rent. It reminded me, and everyone else that I took on a secret tour, of the hotel in The Shining. The elevators are still to this day, hand operated. We had to use them every night to take recycling and trash down to the basement, which makes for quite the creepy and fascinating adventure. After closing the main door and making sure its latched, you them close the cross-hatched cage and lock that. Then, you switch the elevator to "On," and turn the lever to the right to go down; left to go up. You have to line the floor of the elevator up perfectly with the height of the floor; in order to cimn out safely. It took some practice, and was very cool and spooky.
When you get to the basement, you wheel the cart of recycling or trash down a very long and narrow hallway. At one part you have to stoop down, if you're 5'4 or over, to keep traveling down the hallway; because the ceiling was so low. I'd pass a laundry room on the left, where a mangy cat lived. I'd stop to pet her and put food in her bowl. I made plans to smuggle her out of their and take her of there and into a shelter for treatment of what i'm sure was Mange. I was never able to execute the mission without running in to the hotel owners; so that was a fail.
I bought this little, creepy doll from the thrift store, and began took pictures of her around the hotel.
See me rollin....to LA.
The next blog will be about catching up on life in LA since I've been back;or my illness. Or both. I'm not sure how I'm going to weave them together just yet.
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