Coming from the big city (Chicago), I hate to say it, but yes this is a hick town.  Please understand I don't mean that in a derogatory manner, I like it here. 

Ohh and, so what, we got a couple little cultural events.  Whoopdedoo.   

Bakersfield and vicinity has a significant agriculture economy---hick town. Bakersfield and vicinity is a setting in Grapes of Wrath---hick town. Bakersfield has produced famous country western artists---hick town. Johnny Carson's monologue often kept the image alive on the Tonight Show---Bakersfield is a hick town. The version I got from an old timer (everyone thinks she died of old age; in true hick town tradition, she drank herself to death) is Johnny entertained at Masion Jossaud's (spelling?) before the big time and got booed. He never forgave us.

As a life-long resident of Kern County, I don't mind the hick town image. It's a reflection of our character and I hope the hick town moniker stays with us. Now, if there's a hick town that lives up to the name, there's Oildale. For all the nasty things I've said about Oildale, nobody has punched my lights out yet. It's taken with a sense of humor, albeit a sick one.

My comment on Doc BLT's blog says it all regarding my feelings about a "hick town."  I'll take our "hick" traffic over Los Angeles "cosmopolitan" traffic  any day.  Just one example.

Banjo strings are a big seller here, dueling banjos in the flesh...hick town is a kind label for it... if the population with a US passport is under 25%...Hick supreme...B Village is just a putrid little cesspool of negitive denial and in a vaccum of 1950`s that has left this town in a state of total ridicule from anyone who has even a smidgin of culture and adventure..this town will suck you dry and stomp you into the lower class with not a glimmer of hope to have a life worth living... and the sad part is they do not even know it !! sad and ignorant ....yeehaw

I don't know if I'd call a place with a population of 250,000 a town. If you want to live in a real hick town, try living in Porterville for six months. The ten best-selling books are available at Target, but anything outside of that you'll have to travel 29 miles to Visalia for. The majority of doctors suck eggs while they're still in the chicken. Toothless, Bible-waving rubes are everywhere, as are toothless panhandlers. Go spend an entire day at the Bakersfield Greyhound station, and you'll get an idea what the town of Porterville is like.

After six months in Porterville, you'd run screaming back to Bako.

Bakersfield has a lot of diversity - however I think that old-world thinking has kept this diversity bottled up.

Once people in this town see each other as people and not as "Okie, Arkie, Mexican, Black" etc., at that point Bakersfield will evolve beyond the hick town.

Poor maggie. You sound like an intellectual exiled to Siberia. Perhaps you should write a book. I'll read it.

Heard on L&O rerun..Jaimie Ross was disappointed in a case involving the military and her quip was "It's like finding out Amelia Earhart flew to Bakersfield and hung out for 50 years."

Quips in movies involving Bakersfield are fun to find. 

 There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.
Don Herold

I'll opt for sense.

Fresno get the same stuff. But Fresno uses Bakersfield as their "Fresno".  We could start a great rivalry with Fresno with the best jokes.  One I heard in Fresno was, "Bakersfield isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from there."  Another was the joke about the winner of the Miss Fresno pageant. She won a week in Bakersfield. First runner-up got two weeks in Bakersfield.

When that parody on "Dallas", called "Fresno" (starring Carol Burnett) ran, there was the usual talk about "How will this enhance the image of the community and bring in more business?"  Every time something cool happens in Fresno, that's the subject that comes up. I noticed it again when the Bulldogs won national titles in softball and baseball.  I don't quite follow the logic of how sporadic positive events will "bring in more business". I'm not much of an entrepreneurial type, though. Does that same kind of thing go on in Bakersfield?

Start a great rivalry with Fresno? When did the last one end? Heh.

The thing about this town is we can have (some of) the best of both worlds~ hop ,skip and a jump to great cultural events,and  with all it's problems,it is my home. I have lived in a few spots ,by no means a world traveler,but if I define my notion of what my "home" is, not letting others do it for me,I am a happier camper. 

Sage, that reminds me of something a columnist for the Fresno Bee said one time. He was talking about how Fresno was trying to come up with a motto or slogan to use in their promotional campaigns.  His suggest was, "Fresno - we're close to everything." (implication being Fresno wasn't the "thing" but It was close to the "thing")

In Fresno it's their proximity to Yosemite National Park and the big forests that brings tourists through. And since it's almost perfectly the geographic center of California and San Francisco and L.A. are about the same distance away, Fresno uses that geography angle to market that area of the central valley.

Can we start with some long term planning? Get some manufacturers here. Finish a few freeways.  Put a moratorium on new housing for a while. Catch our breath, and plan for the future instead of having NO vision. It'd be a start.

Catpaw, you're giving away my idea:

Bakersfield, Day 27.  I have secured lodging and am managing to get by ok.  I am becoming accustomed to eating food that either comes from a can or with french fries.  Yesterday, I snapped into a Slim Jim.  While I can hold out here with NPR podcasts and mail order, the heat is coming through the cracks under the door and around the windows and I can feel it remapping my neural pathways.

In the distance, I heard a car race by my house and rather than look out to see who the idiot was, I got an urge...a blinding urge...to see more cars, whole groups of them, screaming and squealing and roaring endlessly around in a giant circle.  And then I thought the only thing that would be better would be a giant, fire-breathing robot eating those cars in a packed stadium.

I shook it off and walked into the kitchen, only to realize that somehow I had forgotten how to make quiche.  The time is coming.

Tom, next time you get that urge to see the cars screaming aorund in circles, head for the Okie Bowl.  In fact...you can do that tonight.   I can hear them from my house in the evenings.  Well, from the back rooms anyway.  They serve hot dogs and beer but I don't think they serve quiche.

In the summer I try to avoid cooking. I eat cold left overs from the fridge.

If the chili beans are growing fur, is it ok to scrape it off and eat the beans?

Catpaw, where do you get the leftovers?

As for the chili...sure, scrape it off and go for it.  It's only bad when it dries out so bad you can't scrape the furry stuff off anymore.

leave em out on the counter overnight..when they get a light brown froth going its time to dig in...gives a whole new taste to them chili beans..