There are many, many things about Bakersfield that make absolutely no sense. And high on my list of head-scratchers would have to be... hockey.
This is a dustbowl ag community, built in the middle of a desert where for half the year the temperature hovers around the century mark. The nearest ice is in the distant Sierras.
This is also football country, where everyone here worships the high school teams. Local weekend sports shows are dedicated to dissecting each week's games, examining game tapes like they're the Zapruder film. Seventeen year-old quarterbacks are treated like royalty and the players like conquering warriors.
And yet the only semi-pro sports team here is hockey.
The Bakersfield Condors.
Named after the largest bird in North America, the nearly extinct California Condor. And if the city has it's way, it'll finish the job - the county (which is really just the city writ large) recently approved a massive development in the mountains south of here on what's considered one of the last nesting areas. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.
Almost all the players are Canadian, which much be a massive mindfuck for them when they arrive in Bako. And as if the whole enterprise wasn't screwy enough, there's the marketing. The still above is taken from their TV spots - poor defenseless Canucks marketed like a sides of beef. It's "Chippendales On Ice".
Who on earth is the target market for this? The twelve openly gay men in the entire city? The cougars? I've seen them in action down at Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and, trust me, they don't need the encouragement. The housewives? I doubt the husbands find these ads amusing. The whole thing flies in the face of conventional advertising.
And yet it works! The Condors are wildly popular here.
It really makes you wonder what's going on below the surface of this town. Maybe this is the first case of "on the down low" marketing. It certainly puts the high school athlete fetish in a different light.
Things that make ya go hmmm....
