Bakersfield!?!

Neither flower field nor strawberry field, just oil field.

Bakersfield is left of I-5N which I have always paid extra attention not to veer the car to, on my way to San Jose.

Recent stats found it among the top cities which have pay increase for college grads (El Paso, Omaha, Des Moines are also on this list).

No boom, no bust. Although as a State, California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada suffer the most, Bakersfield and Phoenix are spare.

My memory of Bakersfield consists of pit stops over the years: fast food or sitting down, motel stay or drive through. It’s always foggy, more so this time of the year. And one Vietnamese Buddhist group did suffer a fatal accident near there. I knew of two Vietnamese residents : one is a pharmacist (whom someone tried to match me with) and the other, x-boss of my uncle. Content to be half-way between North and Southern California, Bakersfield perhaps is home to good families, Home Depot etc… It’s connected to Victorville via route 58. Victorville suffers more from the housing bust.

Hidden from Freeway 5 is perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to Bakersfield.  What is hidden is now revealed, in a better light.  It is the opposite of let’s say, having a licensed casino in town as in Las Vegas.  Had that happened, it would have brought faster ruin than Bakersfield can say “let’s run”.

Many Californians are reminiscing the Gold Rush. What they actually miss is the Frontier spirit. And this time, it’s not out there, but in the mind. The unexploited portion of our unused brain cells. If California is conducive to Yahoo, Youtube and Google, it can still see many more garage start-ups, instead of garage sales . We haven’t even touched the Dream factory aspect of the State. The whole State could become a huge movie set (it often has), and its governor the Archetype. We just need to tighten the script and budget for Hotel California to once again be a hit (Look, the Beatles kept reinventing, remastered, digitized etc…).  So can California, begins in Bakersfield.

Once thrived again, Californians can afford to joke about Bakersfield as its armpit. But not now, not yet. In this economy, nobody seems to have the last laugh.