With an outpouring of jubilation and champagne, the City Council approved and adopted the Gateway Area Plan just prior to 10:00 p.m. on New Year's Eve, 2024. In a never-before-seen scene set at City Hall, reminiscent of an Arcata version of the warm-hearted ending of the film "It's a Wonderful Life," the entire town rallied behind the promise (or premise) of affordable housing for working people.

In what proved to be a record-setting session, at last week's Planning Commission meeting an amazing 1,825 apartment units were approved in a bit under 45 minutes. The master plan is based on seven identical 7-story barrel-shaped apartment buildings, plus an ark-shaped hotel that serves as the anchor for the project, so to speak. The 300 cubit-long ark hotel (510 feet, in contemporary terms) includes 425 guest rooms,

The latest 7-story building to be approved for Gateway construction includes a full-height climbing wall. The Planning Commission was quite pleased at the innovative interpretation of the Gateway Code's Community Benefits program. Rather than have something as mundane in Arcata as a "parklet" with outdoor seating, trees, grass, places to congregate and talk, a place to meet up with friends, and so forth, this climbing wall will satisfy the requirements of all citizens in Arcata to be outdoors in a healthy, engaging environment.

At their first meeting of 2025, on January 11th, the Planning Commission found themselves looking at what would be the largest apartment ever to be approved by the Commission in the history of Arcata. The Houston, Texas, developer Max Buildout had set his sights on little Arcata. Six stories tall, directly on the L Street Linear Park, and with 3 Texas-size parking spaces.

Cal Poly Humboldt announced last week that they had bought the Humboldt Crabs baseball team. Rumors for the rationale of the purchase run rampant. Discussion changed after a leaked memo gave clues about the fate of the Crabs. "I couldn't care less about the Crabs," this high-level university official was reputed to have written. "It's only a bargaining chip in our negotiations with the City of Arcata about us buying the ballpark."

Partial build-out of the Gateway Area Plan. The Plan was finally adopted in 2031, following nine years of discussion and community input. A minor typographical error in the final version resulted in a 70-story maximum height, rather than the previously agreed-upon 7 stories. As anticipated, many developers opted to build smaller buildings than the allowable maximum.

“I got the idea after watching ‘Being John Malkovitch’,” explained Planning Commissioner Ivegotta Nyedear. “In the movie, a developer built an office building where the 7-1/2 floor has a ceiling height of just five feet. We did a market analysis.” He continued: “With housing in such demand in Arcata, we found that 78% of renters would live in an apartment with a five-foot ceiling if the rental price was under $750 a month.” ---- Splitting existing apartments into upper and lower units was the brainstorm. “In an evolving world, the renter population must evolve as well,” said Commissioner Achingho Mowner. “This solution is perfect.”

In a stirring turn of events, Gracelessway Plan decisionmakers resolved fourteen months of stagnation in under five minutes at last Tuesday’s meeting. "We haven't even started, and we're done!" Commissioner Eyefigueroa Dittout announced with a big grin. And suddenly the Commission has nothing to do.

HUMOR: Last Tuesday’s PlanCom meeting brought direction that impacts all future-oriented Arcatans, whether they are animal, mineral, or vegetable. In a 6 to 1 vote (with Commissioner Kermit Junn dissenting as usual), the PlanCom strengthened their determination to prohibit occupancy of ants from the Gateway Area. --- “This was always the intention from the start of this process, hundreds of millions of years ago,” remarked Elated Boya, Arcata's Community Development Director. “Possibly you missed those early meetings. For Arcata to have a micro-micro-grid of bicycle lanes, ants would only get in the way.”

For Arcata's "I Drank the Kool-Aid" contest, prizes include thousands of environmentally sustainable housing units that are affordable to people in all income ranges with both rental and owner‐occupied options. Full terms are outlined in the most recent draft Gateway Plan.

Gateway Housing is here! Following five years of Planning Commission deliberations and a dozen local developers saying it couldn’t be done, Arcata’s all-female City Council has achieved the impossible in just six days of “taking care of business.” “We made it fun,” said City Manager Karing Dreamer. Vice-Mayor Merriment Usemath chimed in. “We’re vibrant, we’re ageless, we’re fabulous. We make decisions with a smile. Why be so serious? Everything takes forever when it's a drag. Or... it's a drag when it takes forever? Well, whatever."

"The Tale of Melon City" is a parable of a well-meaning king whose desire for justice becomes confused by questions of responsibility and blame. --- "The ruler of a certain city one day decided that he would like a triumphal arch built, so that he could ride under it with all pomp, for the desirable edification of the multitude. But when the great moment came, his crown was knocked off: The arch had been built too low."

"You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone." Or crossed over to -- The Gateway Zone.

In Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, concerned citizens ask the City Commissioners for $250,000 for funding a BDSM dungeon.

Idries Shah (1924-1996) was a prolific was a prolific Indian author and teacher in the Sufi tradition. Emphasizing that Sufism was not static but always adapted itself to the current time, place and people, he framed his teaching in Western psychological terms. Shah made extensive use of traditional teaching stories and parables, texts that contained multiple layers of meaning designed to trigger insight and self-reflection in the reader.

The classic Robert Crumb 12-panel masterpiece of a history of America, as seen from a single street-corner. Video 1 minute 12 seconds.

A single panel from "City of the Future" as imagined by Robert Crumb in 1967. "Everyone will be tuned in to everything that's happening all the time!" Note the captions on the buttons on the electronic devices: Economy, Politics, Science, Literature, Art, Facts, Fancies, Opinions, Ideas, Notions  -- just like a modern website news page.

Is the Gateway Plan an example of how "the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills." ****** See Arcata on a fictional map from the 1726 satirical novel "Gulliver's Travels."

Brandolini's law, also known as the B.S. Asymmetry Principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place.  It states that the amount of energy needed to refute B.S. is an order of magnitude larger (that is, ten times larger) than is needed to produce it. -------- The Gish Gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person attempts to overwhelm their opponents by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.

Siddhartha Claus is coming to town! He knows when you're trapped in duality. He knows when you're not awake. He wants you free of all desire. So be free for Nirvana's sake!

Always do your best, and don't ever give up. Right?

In a June 22023, e-mail with Arcata's Community Development Director David Loya, I quoted to him a key sentence from the very first paragraph of the Brown Act -- California's transparency "sunshine" law. I've quoted this to him before, mainly because I do not believe that Arcata's top planner (although with no planning degree) abides by the law. ***** In a surprising bit of irony, on the City's website the words that have the Brown Act quote are unreadable. *****