This sucks.

Humboldt County’s now least favorite paint company Benjamin Moore released the list of towns whose Main streets will be revitalized with a new, colorful paint jobs as part of their social media-savvy Paint What Matters ad campaign. Missing from the list? Eureka, California.

Which is us. Damn.

As you’ll recall, for about a month Eurekans were begged to visit paintwhatmatters.com everyday to vote for their town in the hopes that their downtown would receive a free, colorful facelift. Now, we could applaud the 20 communities (out of 100 finalists) that won, sure. But since I spent 10 seconds going to that website every day in June (mostly) to click for my hometown — when there were absolutely other things on the internet I wanted to click on — I’m reserving the right to be, at the very least, humorously bitter about all this. For example, Sherwin Williams, you’ve got my limited paint loyalty from here on out.

Also stemming from said bitterness, I’m trying to construct the conspiracy as to why we didn’t win. So far, this is the best I’ve come up. First let’s look at the sizes of the towns that won:

  • Attleboro, Massachusetts (pop. 43,645)
  • Ellicott City, Maryland (pop. 65,834)
  • Flint, Michigan (pop. 101,558)
  • Greeley, Colorado (pop. 92,889)
  • Halifax, Nova Scotia (pop. 390,096)
  • Hawley, Pennsylvania (pop. 1,211)
  • Hilo, Hawaii (pop. 43,283)
  • Joplin, Missouri (pop. 50,150)
  • Macon, Georgia (pop. 155,547)
  • Martinez, California (pop. 35,824)
  • Nyack, New York (pop. 6,785)
  • Penticton, British Columbia (pop. 42,361)
  • Placerville, California (pop. 10,389)
  • Sanford, North Carolina (pop. 28,518)
  • Sea Bright, New Jersey (pop. 1,412)
  • Sheboygan, Wisconsin (pop. 49,288)
  • Stouffville, Ontario (pop. 37,628)
  • Texarkana, USA (pop. 143,486)
  • Westerly, Rhode Island (pop. 22,787)
  • Xenia, Ohio (pop. 25,719)

OK. So 14 of the towns that beat Eureka had the unfair advantage of containing more click-capable fingers to vote for their dumb Main streets. (Eureka has an official population of 27,191.) So those places get no credit for this win from me. As for the others, maybe they have more community spirit than us. But hold up. Did you see those two towns that have just over a thousand people in them? Really, Sea Bright, New Jersey and Hawley, Pensylvania? You clicked more than Eureka? I’m calling shenanigans on that.

So let’s launch this conspiracy theory! Uh. Oh, here we go! Benjamin Moore and Co. headquarters are located in Montvale, New Jersey. You know what’s within about an hour drive from Montvale? Right. Both Sea Bright and Hawley. You know what’s within two hours? Other smaller-than-Eureka winners Westerly, Nyack. While, I feel OK about giving props to Placerville, California and Xenia, Ohio, these other places could just be benefitting from being less of a gas burden to ol’ B. Moore. 

Yes! That is exactly what happened!

Do I have any proof for this? No. But, by golly, Eureka really could’ve used that paint. And that’s worth a rant. Oh well. Back to our peeling, chipped, less-colorful lives, Eureka. Maybe it’s an honor just to be nominated.