Marijuana.
If you know Humboldt County, California, you’ll know why.
It’s a street I used to live on.
In between Grant St and Iron St.
They’re alphabetical. And it only took me two years to figure that one out.
Good weed.
Humboldt, KS. Tiny town, but a lot of my family hails from there.
The penguins, the squid, and since nobody’s mentioned it Humboldt Fog goat cheese.
Reminds me of playing softball in Central Park in high school.
Huh, you say.
We used to meet at the SE corner of the park, near a bust of Mr. Humbolt. (The statue has since been moved to the west side of the park where (IIRC) he can gaze at the American Museum of Natural History. No doubt he’s happier there near all the stuffed antelopes and such, instead of watching that goldleafed show-off, General William Sherman.)
The current for me as well.
Haha! Hey…I resemble that remark…
Live free or die. My RedHat box is also named Honeydew, like me. It is the name of my tiny hometown in southern Humboldt County, CA. I’m pertpetually homesick 
sniff I’m hurt 
I attended HSU. It is a great school. Complete with a Redwood forest sprawling behind campus. Perfect for hiking, moutain biking, disc golf, Botany field trips (Dr. Mesler’s classes are a must), or just decompressing.
There is certainly a hippy factor. Lots of kids come up from SoCal with their parents’ cars and money, end up partying away their tuition, then start selling hemp necklaces and patchouli on the Arcata plaza. But most of the Humboldt hippies are fabulous folks.
Humboldt County has its fair share of hicks too. I pretty much identify as half hippy, half hick, half geek.
Snopes’ 420 entry is a good read. I grinned when I saw my current home of Atlanta had a nod there:
It is a tasty hemp ale (in case that wasn’t obvious).
True dat. It is a really rural county with rugged terrain that just so happens to provide perfect growing conditions for the wonderful weed.
The same conditions are shared by the surrounding counties, Mendocino, Del Notre, etc.
Basically, a couple of hours north of Napa, wine country gives way to weed and Redwood country.
In the hay-day of Humboldt’s outdoor horticulture, law enforcement just couldn’t crawl through the wilderness sufficiently to eradicate everyone’s plants on their back 40 acres.
But then C.A.M.P. arrived on the scene severely in the 80’s and the result was a migration to indoor growing. Current hydroponic marvels were developed and tweaked in Humboldt just as much as anywhere else in the Land of Mary Jane. Once anyone could grow whatever they wanted in their closet, the more famous pot producing regions started fading from the public eye. Evolving into legends and myths in the natural history of seed strains that are traded across the globe. Lookup “yumboldt” as an example.
It cracks me up the way some people react when they find out where I’m from. Some do a double-take and then say “Humboldt! Right on man. right on. so…you been home to visit lately??” Some stoners perceive it as a Tea-head Mecca. They last guy I met here in Atlanta who knew of Humboldt was so enthusiastic that I gave him my prized T-shirt that says Humboldt: The grass is always greener
Great link. The quintessential Humboldt County cottage industry. I love the concept of the Fromage à Trois product from their site.
There I go getting homesick again
High-powered cannabis. And I don’t even smoke the stuff.
Before reading the rest of the responses:
It’s the award that was given out on “Murphy Brown” every year… they had the yearly “Humboldt” episode (and the plot over who won, who lost, why, etc.)
After reading:
apparently, I’m really naive.
A river in Nevada. Named after the geographer, perhaps?
Ditto. My best freind was from there too.
I think of home. I grew up in Humboldt County, and my family is still there, so I go down there for holidays. People have mentioned the redwoods, but don’t forget that the best beaches in the world are right there in Humboldt County–Trinidad and thereabouts. Beaches with big old rocks for waves to crash against–none of the candy-a**ed smooth, featureless beaches like in Southern California.
Favorite marijuana story: in the late seventies, California law was very specific about what type of marijuana was illegal–it mention a specific genus, I believe. Someone pointed out to a Humboldt Co. judge that the stuff grown locally was a different genus. So he ruled it wasn’t illegal and therefore the cops could not conduct raids and confiscate the crops. By the time he got overruled, growing season had come and gone, and the harvest was enjoyed by all.
Actually, marijuana was a boon to the economy of So. Humboldt, an area heavily affected by the loss of logging jobs. I still remember friends from Garberville (a rather red-neck town in the '70’s) complaining about the influx of “hippie-types” until these hippies started spending very good money on farming equipment and indoor lights, and then later, (after the harvest), on clothes, jewelry, trucks and all manner of goods. Marijuana saved downtown Garberville.
Amen Kallessa. There is nowhere like the Humboldt coast. My girlfriend and I just backpacked the Lost Coast Trail for 4 days when we were home for a nice long 3 week visit with my Mom, who still lives in the Honeydew hills.
It was just this past February, a little early to do the Lost Coast without getting cold and wet, but we had a little bubble of fabulous weather the whole time. We saw maybe 3 people for a total of about 2 minutes, and the rest of the time it was just us and the waves…and the sand. Nothing like wading through sand while carrying a pack, but it is more than worth it.
My favorite way to do it is to hike south from the mouth of the Mattole River and get picked up at Black Sands Beach in Shelter Cove 3 or 4 days later. I used to do that trip every spring break while attending HSU. Of course the true die-hards are the thick-skinned surfers who hike north from Black Sands to Big Flat to catch some waves. They hike north against the wind with surfboards sticking straight up out of their external frame packs, basically making the wind resistance a limiting factor for the weak at heart. You have to be driven to want to endure that and the freaking cold ass water.
Steve Wright, seems you were wright (hah!), I was talking out my bum. Oh well, that was my first association all the same.
I’m with amarinth. The only thing it brought to mind was Murphy Brown.
Squid. Big ones with long tentacles.
Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835), Prussian linguist, philosopher and education reformer.
Humboldt was what we nowdays refer to as a classical liberal, in the spirit of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. He is much less well-known than these two, especially in the English-speaking world, despite the fact that his essay “The Limits of State Action” was published before Mill’s “On Liberty.”
Mill openly acknowledged his intellectual debt to Humboldt, and some modern thinkers who draw heavily on the classical liberal tradition, like Noam Chomsky, also cite Humboldt as a key influence.
When I was 9 or 10 years old, I read a book called IIRC, * Faith, Hope and Hilarity * by Dick Van Dyke. It was sort of a “Kids Say the Darndest Things” collections, with funny stuff he overheard during his years as a Sunday-school teacher.
How does this relate? Well, one kid said his favorite hymn was called “Jesus is Sneaking Through Humboldt Park.” (The song is actually “Jesus is Seeking a Humble Heart”.)