A mysterious anomaly located in Kern County, California and the California's central valley.
In 2013, Bakersfield topped the list of every other single city in America with a population of over 250,000 people (even Miami and Boston) as being "America's Drunkest City".
Drivers here do what they want (cutting all 4 lanes on the freeway without looking, not bothering to replace their burnt-out brake lights, NEVER touching the turn signal, etc.), and road rage is rampant here.
A few streets are named after county music artists (Merle Haggard, Buck Owens), and Bakersfield is home to the
Crystal Palace country music hall. Often called "California's country music capital," everyone here listens to country music. A subgenre of country music came about in 1950s Bakersfield called the "Bakersfield sound."
The
neighborhoods here are basically 1) Rosedale - in the northwest and, 2) the ghetto - everywhere else. The east is perhaps the most dangerous, and Oildale is very close. Southwest Bakersfield used to be the shit, but has turned to just shit. A storm of people flew into Kern County from Los Angeles in the wake of the housing market crash, and brought a lot of the ghetto culture with it.
Despite all of this,
I love it here. You will find that so many of us are weirdly prideful of the hillbilly cow town
we live in. Out of all the big cities in the central valley, Fresno, Stockton, and Sacramento are a lot worse.
