Greetings from the rural village of Bakersfield
| Sunday, Jan 17 2010 11:42 AM
Last Updated Sunday, Jan 17 2010 11:42 AM
Bakersfield has been in the nonsports national news three times in the past two weeks. Nothing remarkable about that, except this: All three references provided new evidence that ignorance about this city is rampant.
If this city were Baker, the single off-ramp fueling stop near the California-Nevada border that features the giant thermometer, or Field, the remote and picturesque hamlet in southeastern British Columbia, a bit of Google map-scanning might be understandable. But municipal population rankings put Bakersfield (pop. 333,000) smack dab between Cincinnati (334,000) and New Orleans (312,000), and just a couple of annexations shy of Pittsburgh and Tampa. Of course, unlike those cities, there's not much outside the city limit signs besides orchards and oil pumps. But, reading between the lines, you'd think Bakersfield was still waiting for its first traffic signal.
Consider these recent news items, starting with the odd and amusing Jan. 5 false alarm at the city's airport. A passenger from Milwaukee innocently stuffed five bottles of home-packaged honey into his luggage, and jumpy TSA officials shut down the whole airport, fearing the stuff was some sort of explosive.
Dr. Murali Bogavalli of New York City, in town for a job interview at Kern Medical Center, was one of the many stranded passengers at Meadows Field. "I didn't expect this would happen in Bakersfield," Bogavalli told The Californian. "It's kind of a small village."
Well, next to New York, N.Y. (pop. 8.4 million), it is, doctor. Next to Rochester, N.Y., not so much.
Speaking of Rochester (pop. 207,000), WHEC-TV claims to have broken the mistaken-identity story of Lance Cpl. Mark A. Juarez of Bakersfield, who was killed in Afghanistan last week and then suddenly wasn't, owing to a clerical error by the Department of Defense. (Lance Cpl. Mark D. Juarez, a marine from San Antonio, Texas, was the one killed.) Rochester's Channel 17 says it contacted the Pentagon after a Facebook search revealed the Bakersfield Juarez had been online just hours before the DOD press release went out. The mix-up, WHEC reported in classic TV parlance, "left a Northern California family searching for answers." Northern California? WHEC gets points for spotting Juarez's online activity but demerits for map skills.
The New York Times' coverage of the Proposition 8 trial in federal district court revealed that plaintiff Kristin Perry had grown up "in rural Bakersfield, Calif.," where she dated boys if only for a chance to "have a date for the prom." In 1980, when Perry was in high school, Bakersfield's population was about 115,000 -- not exactly a metropolis, but not wholly rural, either.
Gross errors of geographic misplacement are one thing, but designations like "rural" vs. "urban" and "village" vs. "city" invite interpretation. Maybe "urban" is a state of mind, or a statement more about social conditions than population count. There's no question Bakersfield moves at a rural pace, values rural culture, and has long operated on rural standards of behavior. For those who identify as "rural," that's a good thing.
But for a city that stakes its economic health primarily on two industries, agriculture and oil, aspiring to some degree of urban-ness has merit. Agriculture management often pays well, but field work does not; the same might be said for oil. The city's relatively low median household income of $50,409 -- almost 20 percent below the 2008 statewide figure -- does not tempt certain desirable retailers. But median household income jumped 20 percent between 2000 and 2008 -- the same period that saw a 20 percent jump in population. That suggests at least a cursory correlation between urbanity and standard of living.
But how does Bakersfield attract the sort of employers who can raise that standard closer to the California median if we're perceived (and characterized) as a "small village"? If outside media can't even place us on a map? The smirky abuse of late-night comics is one thing, but invisibility may be worse. Maybe we ought to be encouraging Jay Leno, not grumbling. Hey, Jay, we're within two hours of everything!
rprice@bakersfield.com
