Quote: (01-29-2017 01:52 PM)debeguiled Wrote:
Quote: (01-29-2017 12:56 PM)kerouac Wrote:
There is no secret. Everyone who's ever taken the 5 up to San Francisco has probably made a stop at Bakersfield.
It is a shit hole.
This could be said about most desert cities in California.
The whole point of living in a desert is to be a desert rat, and the whole point of being a desert rat is that either you have been run out of the beautiful towns on the coast, you are hiding out, you want to do things you aren't supposed to be doing, or you were moving to Arizona and ran out of gas or lost your will before you got to the border.
People who live in desert towns have often run out of options, and they have personalities that are either spiky, just like desert plants, or venomous, just like desert spiders and reptiles. When you think of desert people, you should see in your head a tumble weed that got stopped by a bone dry storm drain.
Leather skin and an appetite for discomfort and conflict and long bouts of solitude are the prerequisites for living in the desert, and it isn't for everyone. There are some pretty tough homeless dudes there too, tough as in don't mind dehydration and sweat soaked clothes, not necessarily tough as in street fight tough, since there is plenty of room out there, no need to fight for a place to sleep, just drag your stuff for a hundred yards from the edge of town, and you are master of your own domain, unless the fire ants get you.
The only exceptions are places like Palm Springs where, not coincidentally, rich people have done their damnest to remove any aspect of true desert living from the equation, so the desert means that brief moment of discomfort when you leave your air conditioned house, to go to your air conditioned car, and then again those few seconds between your air conditioned car and the air conditioned mall where you plan to spend the afternoon ice skating.
The only time the rich go outside, they winter there, don't you know, is when it is in the 70's, to play golf or tennis, and I once heard that the sheer number of golf courses in and around Palm Springs, Palm Desert, La Quinta has actually lowered outside temperature by a few degrees. At the hotel pools in Palm Springs, on staff, they have buff young Hispanic guys with spray bottles of water walking around poolside spritzing down the scary old women baking in the sun whose husbands have died and left them all the money.
So, desert life is not so bad if you are really really rich. Sinatra, Bob Hope, guys like that had cool houses in the desert and streets named after them, and what the hell is a flash flood to you if it happens off season? Private playgrounds they could helicopter to when they got a red hair up their silky assholes.
For everyone else, well, if you like hopelessness, swamp coolers, biker gangs, meth chicks, and near unanimous homicidal rage when the summer desert winds kick up and the dust sand blasts your face and then collects in your ears, have at it, a nice little desert town might just be for you.
And if you are really really pissed off at someone, it takes very little effort to hide a body out there.
This is what I was looking for. Thank you.
Growth Over Everything Else.