Neighbors - neighbors's Blog - Bakersfield.com

Lots of new stuff in southwest Bakersfield

The river side of Stockdale Highway near Cal State Bakersfield is getting a major facelift.

New buildings will offer an upscale Chinese restaurant, a combined eatery-brewhouse, a medical plaza for cosmetic procedures and day-spa services, and a busy real estate center.

The business names are P.F. Chang's China Bistro; BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse, Casablanca Medical Aesthetics and Crisp,Cole & Associates.

Other commercial buildings are also under construction in the area.

Are these welcome additions to southwest Bakersfield? Anything else you'd like to see there?

Posted by: Jenny Shearer, southwest Bakersfield neighborhoods reporter,
jshearer@bakersfield.com

Are your kids home alone this summer?

A cell phone commercial depicts a wild party in a home, but everyone gets quiet when the teen resident answers to a call from his parents who are away on vacation.

A piece of confetti falls to a table. The mother hears it and becomes incensed that her kid is having a party. She announces she and her husband will be right home.

I suspect there is a little poetic license going on there, but the point is parents do leave their children home alone in the summer either while the parents are at work or on vacation.

What can go wrong there?

Do you leave your children alone like that? Is there an age at which you think your kids are responsible enough to be left alone?

Or do you do what my parents did — watch them like a hawk?

Posted by Steve E. Swenson

Would you want a group home in your neighborhood?

We've got a story today about a neighborhood in southwest Bakersfield where a group home for troubled teens wants to expand from six to eight teens. Some of the neighborhood isn't too hot on the idea.

Back in my reporting days I remember covering a really fiesty battle over a group home for recovering addicts (drug and alcohol) in the northeast. Neighbors argued it wasn't the right setting. Recovery advocates argued that a neighborhood is exactly the right place and that recovering addicts shouldn't be shunned to some commercial/industrial area.

I remember interviewing residents in another neighborhood where there was a recover group home and none of them cared.

What do you all think? Would you want one of these places in your neighborhood?

Potty training tips?

We've got a story ready for tomorrow's paper on potty training children and some of the ways local parents found of weening their kids off diapers.

What potty training war stories have you folks got? Any tips?

-Davin McHenry, Web Editor

What's cool about your home?

A house (or condo, or apartment) becomes a home when it reflects you in some way.

Having recently moved to Bakersfield, my carpet is still peppered with packing peanuts. The boxes I've been using as a coffee table are finally empty now, and finding a place for the contents has made the difference between thinking of it as a new address and starting to call it home.

What makes where you live a home?

I've heard of cat fanatics constructing literal catwalks near the ceilings for their felines to move about without ever touching the floor. I've seen entire rooms dedicated to a knick-knack or an action figure collection.

What do you like to show off about your home? What have you done to make it your own? Are you planning to change anything in the near future?

-Matylda Czarnecka

Welcome to the new Neighbors blog

Welcome to the new version of our Bakersfield.com blogs.

As you can tell, there are some big changes. We have moved from our original blog provider, Typepad. Now we are running our blogs on our own system, the same one we use for our user profiles and blogs.

So what does this mean for our loyal blog readers? Well, a couple things.

First off, to comment on our new blogs you need to be registered with Bakersfield.com. You don’t have to have your name attached with your posts. You can choose to post anonymously. But you have to be registered. You can sign up here. Curious about what we use the info for? Here is our privacy page.

Don’t want your real name used? No problem. You can pick an online handle. And others will be prevented from masquerading as you.

FYI, If you just want to read the blogs, you do not have to be registered.

So what does the new blog system offer? Well you can customize your comments a lot more than before. You can add links, images, even tables.

And if you want to start your own blog to share your opinions, you can do that too.

Got ideas or comments on our new blogs? Feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Davin McHenry
Web Editor
dmchenry@bakersfield.com