Bakersfield is a good place to raise your kids
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10/25/2007
I grew up in Bakersfield. Lived in a nice suburb, went to private schools throughout my education years, played AYSO soccer, was in the Boy Scouts, etc. Bakersfield is not the cultural capital of the world. It's primarily a blue-collar town. Most of the industry revolves around Oil & Gas, Agriculture, and Service. Housing is affordable. Air quality stinks. There are a lot of parks and master planned communities. Bakersfield has a strong tie to country music (Buck Owens, Merle Haggard). There are some nearby lakes to go fishing, boating, waterskiing, etc. Mountains for hunting, hiking, mountain biking, etc. Most of the things to do revolve around outdoor life. There isn't much of a downtown scene except for some punk music and pretty decent bars. No superclubs like Giant or Spundae here. In fact, the electronica scene is almost non-existant. However, I did hear some decent trance on one of the Spanish-language stations late one weekend. Bakersfield is a good place to raise your kids. But once they reach high school and college age, it may be time for you to move to better places (unless you really fall in love with the place). I am returning to Bakersfield next year to do some business and raise my family. Once the kids are off to college or maybe high school age, we'll probably move back here to San Diego (where we can use the saved up equity from our cheap Bakersfield house to put a decent down payment on a decent San Diego house. The problem is, most new Bakersfield houses are nicer than San Diego's housing which is old, mid-century, and unattractive.)
Chris | San Diego, CA