Periodically over the years, Kern County Democrats have enjoyed spectacles of discord among Kern County Republicans. And Kern County Republicans have enjoyed spectacles of discord among Kern County Democrats.
Reader: Read your column in Friday's paper ("Another study, another statistical cellar," Jan. 25); thoroughly enjoyed it.
Another ranking of U.S. metros is out, and Bakersfield has assumed its usual spot — at the bottom. We're so accustomed to occupying the lowest rung in studies of health, education, prosperity and economic mobility, it's almost disappointing, in a resigned, jaded kind of way, when we're not. Almost.
The Central Valley had Sacramento’s attention in two noteworthy ways last week.
Reader: Thank you very much for spotlighting — and correcting — state Sen. Shannon Grove's absurd Facebook post about a book supposedly part of California's sex education curriculum for sixth-graders ("How do you like your sex, kids? And other fake news," Jan. 15). I guess I should not be su…
Little Suzy won't be learning about kinky sex after all. Not in her sixth-grade class, anyway. On the playground, maybe, but not from Mrs. McGillicuddy.
It was her first day as a server and Scarlett Sabin was trying to be meticulous. "Cheeseburger, no onions, light sauce," she would write in her little order pad, spelling out every letter in lilting script. The cook, accustomed to "CB w tom" and similar lunch-counter abbreviations, motioned …
Reader: Regarding the tendency of theater-goers to occupy seats set aside for disabled customers and their companions ("These movie seats are reserved — until they're not," Jan. 8): What do you expect when drivers who are not handicapped park in handicap spaces and are never ticketed? — I've…
It was Romi's last night in town before he returned to school for the spring semester and the Lara family wanted to do something together. Apparently the Laras have no aversion to sequels because they agreed on the latest installment of The Rock's action franchise, "Jumanji: The Next Level."…
I just threw away my coffee-splattered 2019 desktop calendar and pulled its 2020 replacement out of the plastic wrap. This one is special because it ends in a zero. Somehow, again, a decade has passed.
Reader: Amazing how my comment and several others disappeared from this article ("Businesses try to roll with minimum wage increase," Jan. 2). Didn't know The Californian was anti-First Amendment.
An old high school buddy of mine recently shared his two New Year's resolutions: Run 1,000 miles this year and stop following politics. The latter, he says, will be the more difficult of the two.
Twenty years ago Bakersfield started arranging seats at the table for what would be the longest, broadest, most detailed exercise in self-reflection in city history.
Reader: I'm a fan of The Bakersfield Californian and buy it every day at my local Fastrip market. And one of the things I appreciate is that if I have a question about something in an article, I can email or call the journalist. On Christmas Day, three articles on Page A2 did not have byline…
America's foremost scholar on the power-generating prowess of wind turbines has been challenged by a lesser expert from Bakersfield.
Reader: I have followed the whole ugly mess of the unsolved 1979 Dana Butler murder for many years ("Dana Butler deserves one last chance at justice," Dec. 15). I nearly fell off my chair when I first read the big article that touched on it back in 2003, "The Lords of Bakersfield." I couldn'…
The Dana Butler murder turned 40 this year. I did not remember the anniversary until a reader pointed it out last spring. A few weeks later someone else, an old Highland High School classmate of hers, asked about the bizarre, unsolved crime. Yet another email, particularly haunting, hit my i…
Reader: I’d like to hear the environmental justice groups explain how their reckless actions and baseless comments have led to countless job losses that are devastating Kern ("Environmental justice activists want seat at table in Kern, state's oil debate," Dec. 13). Please come testify and t…
Some might find it hard to believe, but Bill Mears has never had a speeding ticket. The man has been guilty of excessive speed, in one sense or another, since the days of black-and-white movies and President Roosevelt's fireside chats. But honest, he says, no citations.
He has been a Northern California guy most of his life, but Jim Mayer has a pretty good feel for the San Joaquin Valley, and Bakersfield in particular.
Reader: Bakersfield is still a fairly conservative town, but your paper’s language and tone in reporting is substantially skewed toward the progressive (socialist/communist) mindset and is something we might expect in San Francisco.
Alan Tandy accomplished a lot in his quarter-century of service as Bakersfield's city manager, and he did it in an era of out-of-control government pension obligations and city services strained by what was, for an extended period of time, one of the fastest growing urban centers in the nation.
The smart shopper, according to one commonly shared line of reasoning, hits the big-box store the day after Christmas and snatches up holiday bunting at drastically marked-down prices and then stashes it away for 11 months.
Reader: I just wanted to express my thanks for your timely coverage of Sacramento's plans to eliminate the oil industry here ("Is the end of Kern oil production really upon us? Sure sounds like it," Aug. 11, et al.). California's ever-increasing importation of oil from foreign sources contin…
Reader: In response to your column about the city's street racing problem ("Deafening street racing has southwest Bakersfield residents fed up," Nov. 20): We live in a condo community on Ming Avenue called Piñon Springs. Each Thursday night at precisely 11:30 p.m., the race is on! Some night…
Every day is Thanksgiving at the St. Vincent de Paul mission on Baker Street. Every day, that is, except the actual day the rest of us celebrate as Thanksgiving.
The first thing that strikes you are the guard towers, then the razor wire-topped fencing with metal signs mounted along every 30 feet of chain link. The signs depict a black lightning bolt knocking down a lone silhouetted figure. Peligro. Fatal voltage.
Reader: I don’t mean to seem like a dick, but you’re a joke — I tell it how it is ("Deafening street racing has southwest Bakersfield residents fed up," Nov. 20). You are in the media so you are supposed to report fairly, is that not right? Well, I didn’t see any (quoted) opinion from any of…
Talk about incongruence.
In the two decades since Californians first started debating a high-speed rail system along the state's long spine, one stubborn but ever-growing camp of voters has always considered the undertaking too pie-in-the-sky, too remotely distant and, especially, too expensive to be anything more t…
A rare convocation of statewide leaders in higher education assembled Friday in a city that needs their guidance and commitment perhaps more than any in California: Bakersfield.
Reader: There would be less homelessness if people were taught that they are responsible for the choices they make ("It's cold, they're homeless and we'll study it," Nov. 10). Now, people who become homeless rely on other people to help them and rely on compassion and the willingness of othe…
Weatherby's almost made it to 100 years.
It might be instructive, amid all this discussion about homelessness and emergency shelters, to get the perspective of the world's best-known homeless advocate, a man who was briefly a transient himself. He was not available for an interview, but a spokesman, Matthew son of Alphaeus, did pro…
Reader: It's a shame that true nonpartisan and independent news is a thing of the past. This article about suicides and isolation cells at the Kern County jail ("A sane and innocent woman went on suicide watch at Kern County jail. It nearly broke her," posted online Nov. 5) was clearly produ…
Louis Gill recognized that the occasion was auspicious enough to demand precisely the right words, and those words weren't coming. "You mind if I walk? It helps," he said, and he spun out of his chair to pace and compose. Except his office was so jammed with furniture and files, he couldn't …
Russ Nightengale doesn't look to me like the type of guy who would drive an electric vehicle. He is young, a bit grizzled, wears his ball cap in the flat-brim "bro" style and professes no love for intrusive government.
Reader: I am so pleased with your front-page piece on the potential of Bakersfield to be a music center ("How we can untap Bakersfield's tourism potential," Oct. 20). For years I have resisted the all-too-easy tendency of people here to wax snarky on the subject of our community, and have fe…
This week The Rev. Phil Neighbors brought a celebrity to the Sunday school class he teaches for retirement-age adults. He didn't quite know what to expect. Would anyone even know this tall, slender man with the salt-and-pepper hair and Arkansas twang?
Reader: Thank you for highlighting the beginning of what appears to be an innovative and thoughtful way to promote higher education in our community ("It's an emergency, but BC and CSUB are responding," Oct. 23). I do take exception with your characterization of what is being done to the Cen…
Mr. Bubba paused to consider the question.
Reader: Congressman Kevin McCarthy voted Oct. 16 to oppose President Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops from northern Syria, exposing the Kurdish population there to Turkish advances. Your column on McCarthy ("McCarthy needs to catch a different train while he can," Oct. 6) may have helped here.
They call it Cafe 1600 because that's the number on the outside of the county government building where it resides. But, considering all that goes on there, a better name might be the Second Chance Cafe.
Reader: Well, Robert, you may be an expert on the Bakersfield Sound, but as a political pundit you basically suck. Your article on Kevin McCarthy ("McCarthy needs to catch a different train while he can," Oct. 6) was an indication of your total hatred of President Trump. It began the day tha…
In August 1996, Kevin McCarthy invited me to accompany him on an Amtrak ride from Los Angeles to San Diego. It was a party train, in more ways than one: Thirty people from Kern County, happily sequestered in the far-rear car, were heading south for the Republican National Convention. McCarth…
Reader: I think you missed or didn’t know a very important incident that happened during the selection of the Cal State Bakersfield location mentioned in your Sunday column about Rio Bravo and the 1966 decision to reject it as a possible site for the new Kern County college campus ("Where We…
Several things impress about Scott B. Bomar's exhaustive history in word and song of Bakersfield's (mostly) post-war music legacy, but two stand out.
Tom Richardson was dressed to the nines Sunday morning, resplendent in his biker best. As a cancer survivor, he was taking this Distinguished Gentleman's Ride seriously.
Young Arun had been targeted and targeted again. White teens were beating him because his skin was too dark. Black teens were assaulting him because his skin was too light. Finally, Arun decided the only solution was physical superiority: He would pump iron until his muscles bulged. Then he …
Raphael Avenue just might have the best view in all of Bakersfield and, by extension, the entire San Joaquin Valley.
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