Touring Bakersfield Online

I did a little online exploring this week to find out how Bakersfield is portrayed by the media, to “outsiders,” and among its residents. While the official coverage – by the newspaper and the Visitors Bureau – is universally positive (save for the occasional blurbs about minor scandals or assaults in the “less desirable” parts of town), there are self-deprecating blog posts written by current and former residents, as well as a scathing entry in the infamous UrbanDictionary.com. What became apparent in my search was that, despite the many jabs against the city – for its air quality, its lack of good shopping, its redneck citizenry – an entire subsection of Bakersfield’s cultural dynamic is ignored. Namely, its areas of poverty and racial segregation.

The Bakersfield Visitors Bureau paints an exciting portrait of the city as a travel destination. Here’s the video posted on their website:

Note that the restaurant portrayed in the video is considered the “fanciest” one in town, and the rest of the buildings shown are either in wealthy neighborhoods or are cropped to eliminate any traces of surrounding poverty (as in the case of the convention center downtown). Furthermore, residents are discouraged from swimming in the featured river, as people drown in its treacherous currents every summer. Though boasting that there’s always something “more to explore,” the website fails to document the major areas of the city in which poverty and crime have had the biggest impact and instead turns Bakersfield into a destination for the consumption of tourist adventure.

More to explore……

On Urban Dictionary, Bakersfield is described as a “pretty horrible place,” due to the air quality, meth, singular shopping mall, and the “Mexicans that hop the border and invade town [sic] then clog the streets protesting their ‘deserved rights’ when they are not even citizens.”  Wow.  The “definition” then goes on to describe how the city can be understood/divided according to high school:

South High (southside), East High (eastside) {don’t walk the streets at night because you WILL get stabbed by a mexican gang}, North High (north) {A.K.A. Oildale- which isn’t a city in itself, just a name for the trailer park/white trash part of town], West High (west) {if you want to get shot, eat at a taco bell}, Ridgeview High {out in the middle of fucking nowhere}. Then there are the snobby, rich schools around the Northwest/Southwest part of the city such as Centennial High, Liberty High, and Stockdale High. Liberty is home to the hottest, most shallow kids in the whole city.

While this account does address the racial issues that stratify the city, the blame is misplaced.  This anger (racism/class hatred directed at the migrant workers/poor/homeless that comprise much of Bakersfield’s population) is a constant refrain.  The man who drove the tow truck when I had a flat tire told me he refuses to give money to the homeless because he believes they refuse to work hard.  The woman in line next to me at the salon told me she thinks Donald Sterling should be left alone, since his racist comments were “made in the privacy of his own home.”  A woman business owner recently informed me that she believes people “are just lazy” and shouldn’t be given any “extra breaks.”

Then there’s this:

Yep, those lucky folks getting all the breaks.

From complete obfuscation to blame, the attempts to remove the “undesirable” population – or at least make it invisible – are similar to colonial narratives that aim to both entice tourists and blame problems on the “native” populations (e.g. India during the British Empire).

Insider/Outsider

Bakersfield is an insular community – more than once I’ve heard the phrase “it’s all about who you know,” and there are family names that are widely recognized as powerful, multi-generational.  Yet, many live on the margins – both socially and economically.  Bakersfield has a large homeless population and provides little in the way of support.  This insider/outsider dynamic – who is considered “part” of the community – is central to my question of “belonging” to Bakersfield.  As described by James Clifford, “the representational challenge . . . is the portrayal and understanding of local/global historical encounters, co-productions, dominations, and resistances” (24).  To understand (and describe) Bakersfield, I’ll need to be able to not just portray singular transactions that make up my daily experience, but explore the tensions between my role as both insider (as one who has lived in Bakersfield for 11 years) and outsider (who still views it through the lens of “visitor”).

 

In Catherine Watson’s “Where the Roads Diverged,” she describes how she’d “been looking for a home all [her] life – for the place [she] really belonged, the place where [she] should have been born” (278).  She finds this sense of home on Easter Island, a Polynesian island in the Pacific.  As she narrates her experiences, she frames this “homecoming” in terms of possession.  The island is focused on her alone (“it was as if the island had been waiting for me, all that time” (278)) and she considers the island’s famous statues “already old friends” (281).  This sort of travel narrative, in which the sense of home ignores the experiences of the “insiders” and assumes immediate ownership of the geographical/cultural space, feels off-balance to me, like walking into a stranger’s house and making breakfast.

 

I am both an insider and an outsider – I want to both honor and critically examine the social/cultural norms of Bakersfield while also learning from the other travelers (those who have always lived her and those who have just arrived).  This, I think, is the new travel narrative – one that can provide fresh insight into a community defined by its stereotypes while also exploring the writer’s own identity, bias, and effect on the community.  This type of “postmodern literacy” (Clark 1) provides an opportunity to both produce and transform the idea of self, which will allow me to transition from “observer” to “participant” in my daily travels in Bakersfield.

 

• Clark, Steve.  Introduction.  Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit. Ed. Steve Clark. London: Zed Books, 1999. 1-29.  Print.
• Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.  1-46.  Print.
• Watson, Catherine.  “Where the Roads Diverged.” The Best American Travel Writing 2008. Ed. Anthony Bourdain.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. 277-284.  Print.