Be Local Celebrity

Sara Bareilles

If we’re being real, Ferndale-grown celebrity chef Guy Fieri seemed poised to make a run here. After all, his spikey haired mug is plastered across a billboard on the Las Vegas Strip, his flagship show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives turned 15, he’d launched a new show (Guy’s Game Night) and expanded his restaurant empire to more than 85 worldwide, all while in the midst of a massively lucrative Food Network TV deal.

Eureka’s Sara Bareilles clearly had to up her game if she wanted to keep her Best Local Celebrity crown. The Eureka native was not daunted, it turns out, and sauntered past the Eel River Valley, asking Fieri to hold her proverbial Donkey Sauce, on her way to an epic homecoming, throwing a massive, free concert that drew some 15,000 people to Eureka’s Halvorsen Park, making it one of the largest events in the city’s history.

And when Bareilles took the stage, she simply wowed with a 17-song set that

DANCE CREW

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DRAG ARTIST

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FILMMAKER

Tracy Boyd linkedin.com/in/tracy-boyd-5b195069 included her biggest hits, played through a world-class sound system from a professional stage her crews had seemingly materialized out of nowhere. Perhaps more importantly, it was authentic. While her talent was on full display, so were her care, humility, kindness and strength, as she thanked everyone who’d had a hand in making the day possible, implored the crowd to be good to one another and urged everyone to fight for a woman’s right to choose.

“It’s my prayer for the world — that we not give up on each other,” she said from the stage as the sun began to set over Humboldt Bay.

What could be better?

— Thadeus Greenson

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