BIGFOOT NEWS AND RUMOR MILL: The Bigfoot Roundup, Fish Lake Migration, Biscardi Group Busted, Vocalizations, Yeren Writing Project and More!

Well, it looks like we're heading into a big Bigfoot summer, starting things off with a BIGFOOT ROUND-UP May 15th and 16th, with BOB GIMLIN himself up in Yakima, Washington. Of course, for those of us who did not know about it on the first day, tickets are sold out. We at BIGFOOT BOOKS, however, are lobbying for some standing-room-only admissions. There is a waiting list, but JAMES BOBO FAY has told me that even Peter Byrne couldn't get bumped up to the top of the list! Bobo says: "This thing is going to go off!!! It's truly going to be a historic event. Hancock House is even doing a book about it. ...plus, the people who are calling for last minute tickets are true luminaries. We got some real VIPs coming." Well, bummer! Maybe we can convince them to hold it out in the old rodeo grounds or something?

NEWS, FROM THE RECENT PAST, in the WILLOW CREEK AREA

* It was rumored around town back in the fall that Tom Biscardi (yes, he of GEORGIA GORILLA HOAX fame) and/or his Crew has been busted by the US Forest Service for doing unauthorized "improvements" to the BLUFF CREEK ROAD and the small spur down to the PATTERSON-GIMLIN FILM SITE. Well, this isn't verified information (inquiries to the USFS produced no answers, so don't accuse me of slander, Tom), but I'd believe it. Does anyone smell... money? Word was that they planned to do regular paid guided tours down to the film site. It would be a shame to commercialize and despoil the sacred ground of Bigfooting in this way.

* Trinity County field researcher SEAN FRIES of the Bigfoot Research Project (view his interesting "blobsquatch" photo here: http://www.searchingforbigfoot.com/Sean_Fries) and some associates heard nocturnal vocalizations outside of FISH LAKE. Fries also heard similar vocalizations this last summer near his home in Weaverville. Sean's work also will appear in the new BF book, "Who's Watching You," by Linda Coil Suchy. Sean is also tentatively scheduled to speak at the upcoming WILLOW CREEK BIGFOOT DAYS event, Labor Day weekend, 2009.

* A report came in to BIGFOOT BOOKS from a seemingly quite believable (but for now anonymous) local mountain man and fisherman. He regularly does a trip in October up to the Fish Lake area. He fishes the lake and surrounding creeks. One such tributary, exact location to be withheld at his request, has been the site of repeated yearly BF signs including hoots and howls, roars, smashing and breaking of rocks and wood, broken off trees, etc. As this happens similarly every year this fellow suspects that it may be a migratory route. On his most recent trip he could clearly hear larger, male-sounding individuals coming down the creek, making what were obvious warning sounds (he knows this because they were terrifying). These were followed further back by communcating vocalizations that seemed to be coming from females and juveniles. If this is true it would seem that we have a family group living in the area up there near BLUFF CREEK.

* BIGFOOT BOOKS and myself were blogged by TOM YAMARONE, fine Bigfoot folksinger and investigator, on BIGFOOTSONGS.COM. Look for an upcoming blog entry on him here, or listen to his great, amusing and historical bigfoot songs on the YouTube bar at the side of this page. Yamarone makes this interesting statement, "Steven is in touch with Al Hodgson, Willow Creek's long-time bigfoot ambassador, as well as the folks running the museum in town. Al Hodgson has always been generous with his time and information to amateur researchers and enthusiasts and as time goes on, Steven will slowly assume this role." Is this my JOB now, Tom? To be put alongside Al, though an honor, seems daunting--that's like a seventy year commitment! Check out the Bigfoot Bard's blog at : http://www.bigfootsongs.com/. The entry about the book shop is dated Friday, March 06, 2009.
(Photo by Tom Yamarone)



COMING SOON TO THIS BLOG:

The X'ian China Bigfoot Writing Class Project! Teacher Christa Harrison used Bigfoot as a class writing project, and this blog was required research reading (the Humboldt County Bigfoot article in particular). Some interesting results have arisen, and will be posted here once final revisions and author bios have been completed. Ever heard of the YEREN? More to come, and soon!

REMINDER: Potential speakers for WILLOW CREEK BIGFOOT DAYS 2009 should contact me ASAP. So far we potentially have HSU professor RICHARD STEPP and SEAN FRIES, maybe Bobo and the gang if they can make it. See the blog entry below for details.

Image: Poster from the 2008 Bigfoot Days event.

Jesse Wiedel, Bigfoot Artist and Revelator of Eureka, CA

No other artist reveals the strangeness of Eureka and Humboldt County at large better than Jesse Wiedel. His art contains strange juxtapositions of the weirdly normal, commonplace banality and festering decay surrounding bizarre characters in epic battles and confrontations with the demonic forces within themselves, the cultural and economic constraints that contain them, the horrid aberrations of degeneracy and failure. A parking lot beside a liquor store becomes the stage of warring titans missing teeth, tweaked to the extreme, wife-beater shirt-wearing degenerates, striving for perverse ends, reaching for mutant transcendence.
This would not be Humboldt if Bigfoot did not enter the picture; and so he does, here confronting a wrestler or boxer bearing a false leg in triumphant defiance. A sinister mystery lurks behind every pretty Old Town Victorian storefront. These alleys were places where the whores sang from windows above, and junkies still lurk among the ghosts of murder victims and the expelled Chinese, the dark side of the gold and lumber booms. In those thick, dark forests that humans have tried so adamantly to destroy, a living mystery still walks: the real spirit of the living Northwest. Bigfoot appears again as hippie hackeysackers, mocking the feel-good contemporary culture of the potheads. Wiedel's characters are more hardcore. His environments themselves play a character role, embodying in their tacky and rotting bad taste an externalization of the human spirit that has created such a place. A painting done of the Bigfoot Burger joint in Willow Creek, seen from the parking lot of Bigfoot Books, shows a malignant black blob that could be a tarp covering a corpse, or a projection of the terror that lurks at the heart and history of ordinary places. The absurdity of popular culture and tabloid myth are displayed in a taxidermy display including a bigfoot creature lifted right off the cover of the Weekly World News.

Mr. Wiedel contacted Bigfoot Books searching for a signed bigfoot book he had loved as a child, but then had inexplicably buried as treasure in the woods. Going back later he was unable to find it. Though the book was lost, this great art was found. Perhaps he will design the new BIGFOOT BOOKS corporate logo and bookmark?

We conducted a brief email interview with the Artist, as we could not fully recall our in-person interview in a Eureka bar from the previous night.

BF BLOG: In the context or your larger themes and the content/characters of your art, how does BIGFOOT fit in? And what does BF symbolize in the context you have used him: standing threateningly in an alleyway, fighting, two-headed and lying stuffed on the floor, or as a hippified statue? Etc.

WIEDEL: In the paintings, bigfoot represents something that metaphorically mimics the sometimes eerie landscape of Eureka. Bigfoot has only been seen in fleeting ways, like a carload of mimes. You see strange things in Eureka. I like to paint things that are strange, but could very well be for real. It's more interesting to me than purely fantastical art.

BF BLOG: What is your own personal view on the creature and what it represents? How does bigfoot relate to the human elements in your art?

WIEDEL: I think bigfoot is the representative for the wilderness. Since this town is butted right up against the wilderness, it only makes sense that bigfoot should make an appearance in the paintings now and then, as a representative. It's more fun to paint bigfoot than a bunch of trees.

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NEWS FLASH! Look for an upcoming showing of his works at THE ACCIDENT GALLERY in Eureka during June or July 2009. Also an exhibit is tentatively planned to be held at HURRICANE KATE'S restaurant in Old Town, subject to a palatable selection of the art being found. Visit them at: http://www.hurricanekates.com/
511 2nd Street, Eureka, CA 95501 (707) 444-1405
(LET'S HOPE THIS ONE IS NOT CENSORED!)
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"Jesusgarciafoot"????

Wiedel's Artistic Statement: "In my narrative streetscapes, I take a variety of visual references and create a pastiche of fictionalized tableaus that are sad, coarse and degenerate. This invented world dramatizes the spectacle of street culture, where people aimlessly wander and interact in a state of somnambulistic rebellion. The weary structures and street signs that backdrop these individuals metaphorically mimic their isolation and subtle desperation. These sordid tales of public humiliation serve as an allegory for the ever-expanding malaise of the working class, in the grand narrative tradition of Hogarth, Goya, and Dix."



View Jesse Wiedel's works on his website: http://www.jessewiedel.com/index.html, or contact him at jessewiedel@suddenlink.net

All images in this blog entry COPYRIGHT by Jesse Wiedel, used with permission, 2009.

Missing Link Records Bringing Back Vinyl and Bigfoot to Arcata!

MISSING LINK RECORDS, opening soon in Arcata, California, is featuring Bigfoot in their company logo. Word has it that another anachronistic "missing link," the vinyl record album, will be strongly featured. Adam and Matt know what they are doing, so check 'em out--they may be able to find you copies of those rare Roger Patterson 33RPM record albums! I don't know if they can find the missing 1950s-1960s Irwin Supple Fish Lake bigfoot howl and vocalization tapes. But I have put in a search request.

Preliminary company logo drawing by Lush Newton.

Missing Link Records
819 J Street, Arcata, CA 95521
missinglinkrecords@gmail.com
707.826.0590
http://missinglinkrecords.blogspot.com/