There's something decidedly shady about this town, and I'm not talking about the rampant corruption that's just part of everyday life here.
Talk to any Bako booster and they'll tell you this city is built firmly on the twin pillars of oil and agriculture. That was certainly once true, and a cursory look around town would seem to bear it out. I mean, you have to drive through miles of farmland and oil fields to get here. But if you live here any length of time, both claims start looking a little dubious.
The oil claim seems obvious - this city is dotted with oil wells, many springing up in unlikely places. Every park and parking lot seems to have one smack dab in the middle of it. Parts of the city resemble a bumper pool table with office buildings and restaurants awkwardly configured to avoid them.
But few of them are working.
Most appear rusted solid.
Even more telling is the massive oil refinery that sits idle out of the Rosedale Highway (across from the Home Depot... everything here is across from a Home Depot. I think there's one Home Depot for every three residents). It was shut down years ago. The reason? Not enough oil to bother refining.
I think Bako's "peak oil" years happened sometime in the Truman administration.
But what about agriculture? Good question. Unless dirt is now considered a cash crop. We've lived here almost a year (yikes!), so I'm pretty sure we've experienced almost all the growing seasons. And yet much of the farmland around town hasn't seen so much as a tumbleweed. Must be those evil Socialist Farm Subsidies at work. There are economies that are supported by ag, but it would appear they're all in Mexico and Chile. That's where all the produce in the local stores comes from.
So what's keeping this whole city afloat?
As near as I can figure out, the only keeping this place going for the past 30 years was the housing bubble. The population has doubled in that time, yet there isn't any industry her to attract anyone. There isn't anything here to attract anyone. Most of it can be chalked up to inbreeding I suppose. But the rest was probably luring people in from the sticks with the bait of a cheap home.
Really cheap homes.
Thanks to Liar's Loans and lot of looking the other way, people on minimum wage here could live like Carringtons. Who cares if you couldn't really afford the house? In a year you'd just sell in for more than you "paid", and use the "profit" to buy a bigger home in the newer subdivision just a little further out in the hinterlands.
Well, so much for that.
People always refer to the bubble "bursting", but that isn't the case here. It's an avalanche. And it seems to be picking up steam.
The reason I mention all this is a call I received yesterday. One of my occasional, sporadic clients is a local home builder. There's precious little building going on anymore. It's all about burning off the excess inventory that built up like cordwood in the years leading up to the bust. Trying to unload it all before it rots into the dust.
The very first assignment I had from them, before we'd actually even moved here in September, was an ad for one of their premier subdivisions...
"HOMES FROM THE LOW 300's..."
Around the holidays a call came in. Just a minor revision...
"HOMES FROM THE MID 200's..."
Didn't hear from them for months, but at the start of June they were back with a change...
"HOMES FROM THE MID 100's..."
And then yesterday's call, short but sweet...
"Take out 'MID'..."
These are the same homes! They've dropped 67% in less than a year! Down $50,00 in two weeks!
I don't know about you, but if the house next door sold for A THIRD what I paid nine months ago, I'd be on suicide watch.
I have no idea what their plan is to get out of this mess. It's Bakersfield, so I doubt there is a plan. People are walking away from their homes in droves, so in a few years this place is going to look like Calico Ghost Town. Maybe that's the ticket - claim it's a theme park and charge admission.
It worked for Knott's Berry Farm.
