East Bakersfield is bad.
Now every town and city has areas that are considered "bad", little pockets of mayhem that you can usually avoid. But not here. They've written off half the entire city.
With that new information, we cast our gaze west and soon found three listings that we thought would make a good start. Rents are so cheap here that we thought we might splurge and rent a house with a pool. It was mid-August and 106 and the heat may have clouded our judgement.
They're very trusting here, a luxury I guess you can afford when everyone is armed. You check out the keys to the various listings and have a couple of hours in which to return them. If they tried that in LA, every rental home would be stripped of it's fixtures and copper wire in a matter of days. So armed with three sets of keys, we headed out.
Contestant Number 1 was a smallish house, but it had a beautiful backyard and pool. When we showed up we were surprised to find the homeowner inside waiting for a handyman to replace the shattered window from the previous night's break-in. Hmmmm. Clearly we were still too far east. Check please!
Contestant Number 2 was a real contender. It was a duplex, not a house. And it had no pool and a smallish backyard. But it was HUGE. Two thousand square feet of the best 1978 had to offer. Dark wood, cottage cheese ceilings, tile counters and a wet bar. A wet bar! Screw the pool. To survive Bako I think the bar would prove to be a bigger asset. It was so "Mad Men". If "Mad Men" took place in Bakersfield. In the 70's. All the appliances were "vintage", meaning the microwave probably leaked more radiation than Chernobyl. But we loved it. We're a little strange that way.
Contestant Number 3 was in the middle of nowhere. And that's saying something here. We drove west until the housing developments gave way to abandoned oil fields and weed patches. And kept driving. Finally after several miles it appeared on the horizon like a mirage... Bella Terra. Or was it Terra Bella? Bella Vista? Vista Terra? Who the fuck knows. Anyhow, there it was. Fate had not been kind to little Vista Whatever. The recession had caught it mid-development and many of the lots were vacant. Of the houses that had been built, half looked like they were in foreclosure. There was no landscaping to speak of, except for the occasional tumbleweed. On the sales brochures, that's probably listed as "drought tolerant landscaping". The house we looked at was even bigger than the last, but with the oddest of layouts. All kinds of strange nooks and alcoves. In the model homes, these were probably filled with stylish writing tables and fainting couches. In reality, they were more likely stacked high with boxes from the Home Shopping Network. It did have a pool, surrounded by a security fence. That looked relaxing. Floating on a raft in a minimum security prison. No trees or greenery of any kind, just the pool, the fence and concrete. The whole thing creeped us out and we quickly left.
We decided to cut our losses. We chose Curtain Number 2.
