Bad Air Day

I had a brief bout of the flu right around Christmas and even though I recovered after a couple of days, I developed a hacking cough that I still have to this day. I assumed it was just the first stage of lung cancer from years of smoking. Turns out, it's worse than that.

I happened to just catch a special report on the local news about the poisonous air of Bakersfield. The air pollution here for the past three months has been the worst recorded in over a dozen years. Which begs the question.... it used to be worse?

The pollution here contains all the usual suspects you'd find in the air pollution of most major cities. And in a way it's unavoidable since the topography of the San Joaquin Valley traps the air and blocks any winds that could help clear it out. But the air of Bakersfield is even more noxious for the things it has that you won't find anywhere else. And you wouldn't want to.

To start, there are all the pesticides and poisons and defoliants from the ag industry. Not to mention tons and tons of ammonia from all the manure. There's God knows what spewing forth from the oil refineries. Added to the mix are deadly spores carrying Valley Fever and... Bubonic Plague. That's right... BUBONIC PLAGUE. "It's not just for the Middle Ages anymore!"

It's a fucking witch's brew of death.

The weatherman anchoring this special report them went on to cheerfully describe the affect of all this on the people.

"In a nutshell" he said "it slowly dissolves the human body."

They then went on to interview people who were moving out of Bakersfield for their very survival, people suffering such horrendous respiratory difficulties that they were interviewed through Darth Vader-like breathing apparatuses.

Holy moly, we are getting out in the nick of time.

Must. Pack. Faster.

Eau de Toilet

A lot of the horribleness of this town I could probably just come to accept. Maybe not willingly, but eventually I'd have no choice but to make my peace and come to terms with it.

Except when it comes to the smell.

Holy smokes, it stinks today.

Must be a "dead cow burn day".

You would think that perhaps over time you would adapt and it wouldn't be such an issue. But even the locals admit this place reeks. Some days more than others, but on the whole, every day in Bako is a stinker.

And it isn't just the air.

Yesterday I was doing some laundry, including a load of towels. When I got out of the shower this morning, I grabbed one of the clean "fresh" towels and held it up to my face... and nearly wretched.

It smells like it's been dragged through a septic tank.

And that's after having been washed in hot water, with bleach, and fabric softener and another fabric sheet thrown in the dryer for good luck. There are no amount of chemicals you can add to the laundry that will counteract Bakersfield tap water, which smells like it was piped in straight from the sewer. It's probably flammable too; I've never bothered to check.

Really, it's just so demoralizing. Like waking up each day and taking a shovel to the face.

Putting The “Bake” In “Bako”

Well, good news. The toxic ammonia cloud proved no match for Bakersfield's notoriously bad air.

"The cloud appears to have just disappeared" said the reporter out in the field, incredulously.

No, honey, it was absorbed. It's now part of the mix. You're soaking in it.

I swear, if NASA ever wants to do research into the possibility of life on a hostile world, they should set up shop here.

The heat is bad enough, but the humidity is killing me. I don't remember it being this bad last summer. Then again, I tend to block out most of what happens here. It's a coping mechanism. A big part of the reason this blog exists is so one day I can look back over it to remember what happened during this unfortunate time in my life.

Over the weekend we had the Twilight Zone marathon on in the background. They aired an episode I hadn't seen before called "The Midnight Sun". It takes place in the near future when the earth has been knocked slightly off it's orbit and is slowly spiraling into the sun. People were dying, thermometers burst, the power went out, water was scarce and paintings were literally melting off the walls.

That's Bakersfield on a good day.

Another Day, Another Toxic Gas Cloud

When I left today, I left the TV on for the dogs. They get lonely.

When I returned, I never bothered to turn it off and just went about my business with a couple of deadlines.

And then I went to the kitchen around 4 to get a drink and saw an ominous news crawl scrolling across the bottom of the screen...

"TOXIC AMONIA CLOUD DRIFTING TO SOUTHWEST BAKERSFIELD... "TOXIC AMONIA CLOUD DRIFTING TO SOUTHWEST BAKERSFIELD... "TOXIC AMONIA CLOUD DRIFTING TO SOUTHWEST BAKERSFIELD... "

Well... how bad could it be? They didn't even interrupt "Judge Judy".

And besides, there are so many toxic businesses and industries that surround this town, it would be a Herculean job just to keep track of them. Which is why the city doesn't even bother.

Now, they've actually interrupted the TV with a warning...

OK, well.... good news.

They say unless your eyes start burning and bleeding, your OK.

So far, so good.

Would Smell As Sweet...

When I was a kid I had horrible allergies, but by the time I reached high school they had miraculously disappeared. No idea why, but for nearly thirty years they were a distant memory.

Until we moved here.

Last Spring, they were back. Of course they were - everything else in life seemed to suck, so why not bring back the allergies too. And now this year, they're back again with a vengeance. For the past month I've been so congested I can hardly breathe.

But there's an upside.

I can't smell a damn thing.

Living in Bakersfield, not being able to smell is more a blessing than a curse.

Of course, there are sacrifices to be made. I can't smell Bakersfield, but then again, I can't smell anything. Including our beautiful roses. The late, previous owner of this house, Josephine, left us some amazing rose gardens. We knew they were there, overgrown, when we bought the house. But it was Winter and they were dormant and nothing could prepare us for the explosion of color that started about a month ago. They are truly a wonder to behold. The boyfriend says they are the most fragrant roses he's ever smelled.

I'll have to take his word for it.

But yesterday, the equation changed. It was the first day of the year the temperature topped 90 degrees, and as I stepped out the door, it hit me like a knitting needle to the nose... Bakersfield. In all it's fermented glory. It's so pungent it cuts through all the congestion and is now the ONLY thing I can smell. I guess I'd better get used to it; it's going to be this way for the next five months.

They say in life you need to stop occasionally and smell the roses, but in Bakersfield, that's just not an option.

Random Good Things About Bakersfield #14

April In Bakersfield.

It's not exactly "April in Paris", but we'll take it.

April is by far the nicest time of the year here. If you're planning a trip to Bako, and I don't know why you would, now would be the time to do it.

April means the cold, clammy winter weather has passed and temperatures are lovely in the 70's and 80's. Everything is in bloom and vibrant with color. And the sky is blue... ish. Not quite really "sky blue", but it's about as close as it's ever going to get here.

You only have a matter of weeks to enjoy it, because as we roll into May the temperatures will start creeping past 100 and stay that way through September. All the greenery will start to wither in the heat and the city will become a ghost town as everyone goes into air conditioned lock-down for five months. And the once almost blue skies will turn the color of a used coffee filter. C'est la vie.

Of course, there's a downside; there always is here.

With the lovely April weather comes... the smell.

I actually had come to believe I had grown so acclimated to living here that I didn't notice the smell anymore. But it turns out the smell has been on winter hiatus. And now that the temperatures are warming up, it's back.

With a vengeance

To get a sense of what it smells like here, take a bag of fertilizer, throw it in your oven and bake at 450 degrees.

For five months.

But other than that, and that's a really big "but", it's really quite pleasant.

White Line Fever

Once again, Spring is in the air.

And so are the mysteriously creepy contrails.

Or "secret military chemtrails".

Take you pick.

I haven't seen them in months. Maybe they were there and I just didn't care enough to notice anymore. But they were certainly hard to miss yesterday.



Now I'm not saying I believe the conspiracy theory that the government is conducting secret military experiments on the local population and spraying a chemical agent that dulls the senses and makes everyone compliant and dumb. But having lived here over a year, I'm not prepared to rule it out either.

When You're Number 2, You Try Harder

Bakersfield: The Second Most Toxic City In America

Damn you, Philadelphia!

There's always next year...

Mysteries Of Bako: Solved

Well, one of them at least. Potentially. It seems a pretty clear cut case of connecting the dots if you ask me.

One of the first, and lasting, impressions you get of Bakersfield is the smell. It's like nothing you've ever experienced before. People try and blame it on the Ag industry, but my grandparents used to own a farm and it smelled nothing like this. Others blame it on the two days a month the farmers and ranchers are allowed to torch their livestock. But that doesn't explain the other 28 days of the month.

So riddle me this, what could possibly be giving this poor maligned town such a bad odor?

I'm no rocket scientist, but perhaps this has something to do with it...

Back in 2008, they passed an ordinance here banning the importation of sludge. Sludge! It seems that for decades LA has been trucking their sludge up to Kern County and disposing of it. And not just LA, but just about every other county in the state. Kern County finally said "Enough!" and passed the ordinance, which LA promptly fought in court - they don't want their sludge and now what are they going to do with it? This week the case was settled in court and LA lost, so no more sludge for Bakersfield.

What exactly is "sludge"?

TREATED. HUMAN. WASTE.

i.e... shit!

Now, I'm watching this report on the local news and during most of the story they're showing footage of tractors out tilling the fields. It must be a mistake, right? The wrong footage from another story? They can't be implying that that human shit from LA has been dumped on the miles of farm land that ring the city, can they?

Yes they can! And it's no implication, it's the truth!

Every time someone takes a dump in LA, it ends up on the fields of Bakersfield!

"BAKERSFIELD, AMERICA'S TOILET©"

They went to great pains to say that it was never dumped on fields producing food for human consumption. Of course not. I'm sure all the big Ag concerns had crack staff insuring that that never happened. Just the same, I don't know that I'll ever buy bagged lettuce again.

But's that's all in the past now. No more shit for Bakersfield. In theory.

I notice that in all the articles they hedge a bit and say Bako "may" no longer be a sludge dumping ground. Obviously someone is making money off this and they certainly aren't going to give it up without a fight. And already the "sludge isn't all that bad" contrarian Wurlitzer has started.

There will probably be one of Kern County's notoriously corrupt back room deals and nothing will change. But at least for today, there's a hope that we'll all be able to breathe a little easier. Literally.

And if you live in Arizona, consider this a "heads up". Looks like LA has now cast it's gaze east...

The Truth Is Out There

So it isn't just me. I'd written back in June about the creepy jet contrails that seem to daily crosshatch the sky over Bako. Some days less, some days more, but every day you can look up and see white smoky lines over the city.

But the last two days have been out of control. So much so that it finally caught the attention of the locals and even made the local news. It didn't just bring out the concerned citizens. The "black helicopter" crowd was out in force, telling anyone who would listen that they weren't "contrails" but "chem trails"...

"I have researched this theory for several years and I realizes that some would call me a conspiracy theorist, but as far as I know, this is conspiracy fact," said Murphy.

"According to Murphy, there is a large group of people around the world who agree with the chemtrail conspiracy theory. Murphy added that they believe what most consider to be contrails are actually chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for clandestine programs directed by government officials. Other Proponents have said it is a top secret program to change weather patterns or fight global warming."

"This is absolutely not normal. If it were contrails, they would normally dissipate in about 20 minutes. This is a mess, we are being sprayed like a crop duster," said Murphy.

Could he be right?

Who knows. They certainly didn't make much of an effort to look into it or offer up any other plausible explanation.

Maybe the military is testing "stupid gas"?

If so, I have to say it appears to be working.

It would certainly go a long way towards explaining the goings-on around here.

#1 With A Bullet

The American Lung Association has named Bakersfield the "Dirtiest City in America".

I have a feeling it wasn't even close.

When You Wish Upon A Star…

"It's fog. And it isn't brown. It's fog."

Fine. Whatever.

It was Sunday afternoon and we were driving back into town. The road ahead vanished into a mocha haze. There was no horizon, only a wall of... "fog".

The air here has been horrible for days, but the boyfriend has been in denial about it. He has a vested interest in believing we don't live in a toxic sinkhole and I wasn't in the mood to argue about it.

He even stuck to his theory later in the evening when the local weather report labeled the air "hazardous". Days like this are designated "no burn days", meaning you're prohibited from burning wood.

Or books.

Or witches.

They also helpfully reminded us that we couldn't burn trash.

Really? Burning trash? Who does that anymore? Listen - I'm no Nancy Drew, but I think we may have stumbled on an important clue in "The Case of the Oxygen Depleted Dead Zone".

At any rate, later that evening I stepped out in to the backyard for a smoke, Mary be damned. I was gazing up at the stars - both of them - when suddenly the sky was slashed by a falling star!

At least I think it was a falling star. It might have been flaming space debris. Everyone else dumps their garbage here, so why not NASA? Although they clearly didn't get the memo about burning trash.

Whatever it was, it was pretty, and it occurred to me I should make a wish. And then I...

Just. Went. Blank.

Couldn't think of a thing.

It was several moments before I even thought of the standard fallback "to win the lottery", but by then I think the statute of limitations on wishes had passed.

So it's come to this. I no longer even have any wishes anymore.

How sad is that?

Hot Shit

"So everybody just stay inside and do nothing."

THAT was this morning's weather report. Today is predicted to be the hottest day of the year.

So far... I don't doubt things will still get worse before they get better.

They were uncharacteristically vague about the temperature, somewhere between 107 and 110. Not that it matters. Once you pass 103 you're really just splitting hairs. The end result is the same - you just want to slit your wrists. I have nothing against the heat; I LOVE Palm Springs. But here the heat comes with a festering stench that triggers your gag reflex.

And speaking of the air, or what passes for it here, today they also predict the air quality to be "HAZARDOUS". We've moved past "red" on the color coded air chart into the "violet burgundy" range, the color of oxygen depleted blood. Whatever that means was left unsaid.

Will we be gasping for air like fish out of water?

Will the air just spontaneously combust?

Having lived here almost a year, I wouldn't rule either of those scenarios out.

Baku #9: Dog Days

Stagnant leaden air.
Blistering blast furnace heat.
Dog days in Dogpatch.

Pretty. Creepy.

Back in December I wrote a post about the air traffic over Bako, or lack thereof. But that doesn't apply to the military. To the east lie Edwards Air Force Base and the Super Secret China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station. To the west, Super Secret Vandenberg Air Force Base. And threading them all together is a constant stream of military jets, day and night, 24/7. They fly at such a high altitude you never hear them. But you can't avoid them. Not a moment goes by in this town where there isn't at least one contrail slicing the sky. It's like living in a spider web.

All Cows Go To Heaven

The other day I met up with a bunch of the locals I've been working with for a lovely lunch at a charming outdoor cafe in a quaint part of town...

Oh who am I kidding - it was a chain restaurant at the prison-like mall. But the lunch was, in fact, lovely. Nice people. Good conversation. The only Bako-ish moment came when one of the women was recounting her recent trip to upstate New York:

"Everything was so lush and green everywhere it really became monotonous. I really couldn't take it anymore..."

Yeah, who would want that when you can be surrounded by endless miles of parched wasteland?

At any rate, the conversation soon turned to the subject of the air we breathe and I was relieved to hear that even the locals think this place smells like shit. And then the woman to my right piped up...

"And it's really bad on the days they burn the cows..."

???????

Exsqueeze me?? "Burn the cows?"

Yup. It turns out that twice a month, Kern County allows the locals farmers to burn all their deceased livestock. Deceased livestock that's been sitting around rotting for two weeks, as the case may be. Funny - they apparently left that part out of the "Happy California Cows" commercials that run on TV. To be honest, the thought of dead livestock never really crossed my mind. I guess I just assumed they all when to the Great Golden Arches in the Sky.

It certainly puts a grim pall over your day when you head out the door and get hit with the smell. Now instead of thinking it's just cow shit and fertilizer, I'll be thinking of Auschwitz.

The Way The Wind Blows

Needless to say, that's not the only thing in this town that blows.

I've written more than enough about the unique smell of Bakersfield. Suffice it to say it's not good. There are days when it smells less bad, but there's never a day where it's actually, you know, pleasant.

And there are days like today, when the wind shifts direction, and you open the front door and...

BLAM!

Like getting clocked in the nose by a 2x4.

Good Lordy Damn, as my dad used to say.

It is just rank out there today. I was having a hard time trying to find words to describe it.

My partner had no such problem.

"This town smells like a cow's ass."

Name That Smell

I love the smell of rain.

Or at least I used to.

Before I moved here.

Bako's relentless assault on the senses continues unabated. They've now ruined the smell of rain.

Bako smells bad even on a "good"day, "good" being a relative word.

But throw in a little rain and it goes from bad to worse pretty damn quick.

It's hard to describe, other than to say it's just awful.

The boyfriend probably pegged it best - it smells like wet dog shit.

With an industrial solvent aftertaste. A "finish" I believe they call it in the perfume business.

At any rate, it's just unbelievably rank.

It's a good thing it rains here as little as it does.

Stink Different

"Well, time to head back to Shitsville..."

I laughed out loud and it punctured the gloom that had descended on us as the hours ticked down to the end of our weekend furlough. I guess we wouldn't be running off to Mexico after all.

There was a certain relief though. Not with returning to Bakersfield. God no. But with that one sentence all fears that the boyfriend had crossed over and Gone Bako on me were laid to rest. We were on the same page.

And headed back to Shitsville.

Shitsville! What an awesome name. I wish I had thought of it. It has the benefit of being both figuratively and literally spot on.

Figuratively in the sense of, well, just read this blog. A worse place you'd be hard pressed to find.

But also literally, in the sense that... Bakersfield smells.

You smell Bakersfield before you ever catch sight of it. At Thanksgiving, as we descended down the Grapevine, I had half-dozed off in the passenger seat with the dogs in my lap. Twenty miles later, with the windows rolled up, and my eyes shut, I knew we were nearly there. Eau de Bako.

I can't really quantify the scent. A mixture of toxic air, manure and pesticides, but I'm just guessing. You know it when you smell it.

So off we go. As I type this post they're playing "Road to Nowhere" by the Talking Heads in the background.

Sounds about right.

Home Sweet... Whatever

Aaaaand... I'm back. Just got home from LA awhile ago. And heralding my arrival was the creepy ice cream truck. Like clockwork! Even with Daylights Savings! Seriously, someone needs to check the back of that thing. Probably piled high with bones.

They say misery loves company, and on these trips back to LA, my company is my iPod. I usually just throw it on shuffle.

And the shuffle knows.

It's uncanny. I've made four trips back to civilization since the move, and this has happened EVERY SINGLE TIME. Headed out of town, about the time I hit Mettler, the shuffle shifts to happy music - mostly dance music from my decadent past and Madonna. Coming back from LA, once I pass Ft. Tejon and head down the Grapevine, the shuffle switches to mostly "Les Miserables" and classical dirges. (I mentioned I was gay, right?) The shuffle knows my pain.

Anyway, the trip was mostly painless. It wasn't technically to LA, but rather Burbank, which has it's own charm issues. Could be a Bako sister city. The "sophisticated" sister.

And as I made the decent down the Grapevine I was shocked to see Bako, and in fact the whole San Joaquin Valley, had been wiped off the map! Oh happy day! But who's kidding who - I knew it had just been swallowed up by the bad air. The air is grey, the sky, such as it is, is grey, it all just blends together and gives you the impression you're just descending into a void. And sure enough, the outlines of Hooterville appeared through the haze soon enough.