So Many Hydro Shops, So Few Tomatoes To Show For It – May 13, 2010
Terrence McNally
Eye Business Editor
It was just a couple of years ago that people would joke about Arcata’s burgeoning number of taco trucks. For a while, a new one appeared to pop up every month.
With the pending arrival of Northcoast Horticulture Supply at the former Arcata Color Center location on Fifth Street, A-town will finally have more grow shops than taco trucks. The downtown location is NHS’s fifth spot and first in Arcata after branching out through Eureka, McKinleyville, Fortuna and Crescent City.
When ACC owner Jerry King pulled out of the building and moved the paints into his Hensel’s Ace Hardware store last year, landlord (and original ACC owner) Bob Johnson joked that he probably wouldn’t rent to a hydroponic shop.
But who’d blame the change of course? As the months go on without a tenant and the property taxes pile up, turning to Arcata’s still-growing industry (pun unavoidable) seems like a reasonable choice. Arcata’s 16,000-person population will soon be served by six hydroponic shops.
Please don’t read on if you are offended when we mention the number of hydroponic shops doing business within Arcata city limits. Last time we wrote about it, a woman left a message directing us to shut up and we don’t want to make her mad again.
That said, the Arcata six have now caught up with the number of full-liquor license bars – if you include the bar at Valley West’s Days Inn. And why not?
Even if they don’t pay their utility and transient occupancy taxes, the sales tax is apparently still getting sent. So, they’re in.
There are now as many hydroponic stores as pizza joints, since Round Table runs both a Uniontown and Valley West location.
Gas stations still have hydroponics beat – there are eight of those. So Arcata is still probably expending more energy driving automobiles than growing hydroponic tomatoes.
There are six times the number of hydro places as porn/adult toyshops. And there are twice as many as video rental stores.
Long associated with meandering musings and afternoons spent in coffee shops, Arcatans are about to support fewer coffee shops than hydroponic stores.
Maybe Arcatans will spend more time talking to their plants than each other.
Maybe nobody will find this shocking, but there will be six times as many hydroponic stores as Plaza-bound hot dog stands. Arcatans will frequent twice as many hydro shops as thrift stores and two times the number of head shops.
There will be two more hydroponic shops than standalone liquor stores (Liquor Still, Arcata Liquors, Fourth Street and Hutchins).
By a factor of one, Arcata will support more hydroponic shops than supermarkets (Safeway, Wildberries, Co-op, Ray’s and Murphy’s). However. supermarkets will catch up in a couple months when Westwood Market reopens.
There will be three times the number of corporate “pattern restaurant” hamburger joints as hydroponics and six times the number of\musical instrument stores.
Arcata will keep running twice as many hydroponic shops as recorded music shops and twice the number of bookstores.
Lights on!
This article is useless.
Yeah, probably, Liz. What can I write about for you!?!
Let me guess… anything except that Holiest of Holies, the cannabis industry.
Just to be clear there are more than 20 active farms that are in the immediate Arcata area, many of them organic which you did not even bother to mention at all. The hydro shops provide a discount for many local organic farmers when it comes to soil purchasing, bulk fertilizer etc. I had to go to one of the hydro shops this weekend because I needed cell trays to plant lettuce for the farm I work for. I agree that there are quite a few stores that sell mostly indoor grow gear but please take into account that some of these stores sell items that our farms require to feed the population of this county.
This is disingenuous. We have stories about organic farms every week. Are we to suppose that the hydro shops with their indoor lights and air filtration systems and other cannabis-optimized equipment are for vegetables?
That’s a good point, Jarvis. But it looks like you agree that the majority of the shops’ sales aren’t for lettuce production. I don’t think the organic food farming community is as dependent on hydro shops, though it’s nice to hear that they kick down a discount.
As a whole, there’s not another newspaper that’s as actively devoted itself to covering the local organic farm movement and CSAs, however, than the Arcata Eye. That business is buzzing, too. And we’ve provided lots of space to farmer profiles and events.
The only point to that story was… gee, there are a lot of hydroponic shops serving a town of 16,000 people.
Mr. Hoover I was merely commenting on the article which compared retail shops and other businesses to the hydro shops. Mr. McNally compared the hydro shops to many other local organizations and I wanted to point out that local farms outnumber other businesses including hydro shops. So in that way Mr. Hoover I was not deceptive or disingenuous but thanks for insulting me anyway. I am familiar with your work about local farms, I thought the piece about Mad River Hospital Farm was a good article. Mr. Hoover I know you are on a crusade and you have made some very valid points about the dangers of certain parts of the cannabis industry here. I just wish you were not such a polarizing figure, verbally bashing anything that is on the periphery of your ideology. Using the Murdochian model of journalism will sell papers to your base but not much beyond that.
Yes there are more hydro shops than grocery stores. No that is not necessary for this community. Just remember to take a more nuanced look at your articles before posting them to the public.
Arcata…the one trick pony of Northern California.
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