The cost of living.
It's still a little shocking how much our income has dropped in the past three years, fresh in the mind having just done our taxes. Softening the blow just a bit is the cost of living here. There's just no getting around the fact that Bakersfield is a crazy cheap place to live if you want to live in California.
The mortgage on our new home is several hundred dollars less than what we were paying in rent a few months ago. And the rent then was about the same as I paid for my LA apartment... back in 1991. In fact, our mortgage now, on a three bedroom home, is about one sixth of the mortgage on our much smaller home in LA.
Obviously, if we still lived in LA, owning a home would be out of the question. We'd have to rent. But our current mortgage is still probably about a quarter the cost of a lease on an apartment in a decent part of town. So my morbid curiosity got the better of me and the other day I went to Craigslist to determine where in LA we'd currently be living for this price.
Before I even started, I took an educated guess. It seemed pretty clear we'd have to live in some of the less savory neighborhoods of Greater LA.
I guessed Watts. Or Compton.
I went to Craigslist and entered our current mortgage as our maximum rent and... I was wrong.
We couldn't afford Watts!
Out of our price range. Yikes.
So I kept looking.
I did find quite a few located in Koreatown, but something about them all seemed a little fishy. They gave no addresses and the descriptions of the units were unbelievably vague. And strangest of all, they were all managed by the same person... "Mr. Ji." Something tells me Mr. Ji is up to no good. Fill out a rental application for Mr. Ji and you'll probably find yourself imprisoned in a downtown sweatshop. Or shipped off to Korea as a mail order bride.
After looking over the listings, it would appear that the only places we could afford to live for this price are the barrio of East LA or out near the auto salvage yards in the industrial wasteland part of the Valley. As bad as Bakersfield is, I tend to believe either of those choices would be considerably worse. At least here, we don't have to deal with cockfighting. At least not in this neighborhood.
So all in all, if your choices are either living in Bakersfield, or renting a room in a crackhouse in LA, I'd have to choose Bakersfield.
Especially when you factor in the bonuses. Because when we bought a home a Bakersfield, we didn't just get a house. We also got all the Modern Marvels the 70's had to offer...
Like a trash compactor!
How is it I've lived this long never knowing the joys of a trash compactor? Let me tell you - once you compact, you never go back. A whole week's worth of trash, in one densely packed, unbelievably heavy bag! And it worked out well since we gave up on recycling. Not by choice, mind you - after four months, the city still hasn't delivered a blue bin. Not that it would matter; I've yet to ever see the recycling truck even trundle down the street.
I got the hang of it pretty quick. There are, of course, some "Do's" and "Don'ts". You shouldn't put glass in for obvious safety reasons. Nothing like trying to haul out a relatively thin plastic bag full of shards of broken glass. Although, I have to admit, if I'm in a bad mood, I sometimes do it anyway just to hear it shatter. And you have to watch what foodstuffs you put in it. I discovered leftover pasta is a bad idea. That's a mess I never want to have to clean up again.
And then there's the midrowave! Sorry - "Radar Range"!
It looks like Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine. No buttons here, it's all elaborate dials. It's so old it appears nobody knew how to work it. When we looked at the house it had a big sticker on it saying "Does Not Work", but the boyfriend quickly figured it out and it works just fine. At least I think it does. Although I suspect every time I heat up a cup of coffee I'm getting a chest X-ray. I'll be watching the news and a report will come on about radiation in Japan and I just eye the "Radar Range" suspiciously.
So all things being considered, in our current circumstances, we could do worse than Bakersfield. Never thought I'd ever say that. For once Bakersfield comes out on top.
Compared to living in a cardboard box off the 101 Freeway, it's a winner.
