Trim Scene

Garberville is not the only mecca for transient trimmers.  Tomorrow’s LA Times has a piece about traveling manicurists from around the world that descend on Northern California looking for work.  This piece centers around a trim in Sebastapol but the story could have been written here.

In an old, shingled house not far from the center of town, the trim crew hunkered over trays in the living room, snipping away at the strain of the day, Blue Dream. Its pungency knifed the air, like a medley of French roasted coffee beans and roadkill skunk.

Sheets and a sleeping bag blocked the windows facing the neighbors. Panels of jury-rigged fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling. Johnny Cash sang “The Man Comes Around” from a laptop.

Jeremiah, from Oregon, presided at the head of the table, wearing plug earrings shaped like bolts, a bracelet with a beetle in resin, and a cap with an old brass lock and a keyhole he calls his third eye. He had been coming south to Northern California for the marijuana harvest for four years.

He was happy to find this particular job, making about $200 a day, with not much risk. “Much better than working with a crazy guy in the middle of the woods with an AK-47,” he said.

Not only could the piece have been written here but the writer quotes our District Attorney Paul Gallegos, “”We’re seeing a lot more of the foreign people coming in…It’s sort of the new Gold Rush.” Transients from around the world move through the the northern counties providing a service.  In a sense, as the prices drop and growers grow more and more plants and need more and more trimmers, these transients gypsy into our world will come more and more often. I wonder how we’ll treat them.