I was talking to Doug about interviewing roommates…your best bet is to be naked when they show up. That’s when he laid that clever line down. Is it necessary to have historical context to these kinds of things?
My new friend Sonja came over tonight and we turned my bedroom into a film studio. This will shortly be the backdrop for some very inspirational videos.
p.s. i try to publish everyday, and here it is 3:15 in the morning, which to me is the same day but for everyone else it means I skipped a day. I didn’t skip a day. You all just don’t stay up late enough.
This is Point Fermin in San Pedro. It’s a spot some people come to kill themselves. Every morning I look out at the Golden Gate Bridge, another popular jumping spot. The Golden Gate has a cult of suicide around it; about 25 people a year kill themselves here. Eric Steel’s 2004 documentary “The Bridge” has footage of almost two dozen jumpers and interviews with their surviving friends and family. Does every town have a spot locals go to contemplate a final leap?
One of the few to survive said something to the effect of “As soon as i jumped, I realized my only problem in life was that I just jumped off this bridge.”
At a humble little bar in Bakersfield called The Mint there is a separate bathroom for men and women. In the name of social science, I attended both. Take a look first at the women’s room:
It is clean, nothing too graphic, and perhaps when James Brown sang about a sex machine, this is what he was referring to.
Now let’s take a peek at the men’s room:
everything the women’s room is not: dirty, graphic, unsexy. And there’s a homo standing there watching you.
Doug and I in one of many liquor stores on the Southern California World Tour ’07 ’08. The tour is over and I’ve sampled a wide variety of Bloody Mary’s from Bakersfield to Long Beach and bought 18 packs of Tecate at retailers as varied as Rite Aid of San Pedro to Drink Liquor in scenic Burbank. I can recommend The Mint and The Silver Fox for evening entertainment in Bakersfield and if you’re in Long Beach, put a beer in a bag and take a walk down that long beach. Watch the tankers. Stay out of the water. A lot of people wouldn’t eat the fish, but those men fishing off the pier with their children at their sides aren’t doing it as a hobby. It’s dinner.
I’d like to take this time to thank everyone in Bakersfield and Long Beach who put us up and showed us around. The Southern California World Tour ’07 ’08 was actually a serious matter as it was Doug’s girlfriend Jenny’s (from now on she will be called “Jenny”) grandmother’s funeral that brought us that way. Having just lost my own sweet Gram I know how bad that feels, so I hope having me along provided some entertaining distractions.
A barroom favorite, Savage, showing off some tattoos.
Probably not much better than billy showing her stuff.
A frank interview with Douglas Freedman about Bakersfield while driving south on the 5.
my robot is pregnant: what does Bakersfield conjure up in your mind?
Doug: oil and meth.
mrip: you’ve been there?
Doug: Jenny (Doug’s girlfriend) grew up there, and I’ve been there a couple times with her, kind of introduced around. it seems like everyone’s life is marked by a sadness from being trapped there, yet nobody wants to leave…
mrip: you know how big trucks have those stickers on the back that say ‘if you can’t see my mirrors, i can’t see you’?
Doug: no, but I’ll look for them.
mrip: no? oh. it’s a safety thing. anyway, i want to make one that says, “if you can’t see my mirrors, it’s because i broke them off and i’m doing coke in my cab right now’.
Doug: ha ha.
**
We kept driving, it took about five hours. Once we got there, I asked locals what they thought people thought of Bakersfield. Here’s Joel Johnson:
mrip: What do you think other people think of when they hear “Bakersfield”?
Joel: i don’t think they think about Bakersfield.
mrip: Why not?
Joel: There’s nothing coming out of here. When you’re 17 there’s this incredible lack of…anything…i don’t know…when i first left here, i’ve come and gone a lot, been around a lot of places, i went to Memphis first. everyone i met there said, ‘I wanna go out west and surf and smoke pot’…people have a concept that’s so deviant from the majority of California. there’re two places where it’s like that, but everywhere in between it’s as conservative as the midwest…
***
The local high school nickname is “the drillers” – picture an oil derrick gushing oil. The high school mascot always helps you understand where you are. Bakersfield, thanks to Chevron’s technological breakthrough of forcing steam underground to flush out the oil, has been producing 85,000 barrels a day from the old Kern River oil fields that were languishing in mild 10,000 gallon a day output until then. (I read that in the New York Times)
***
Doug: Isn’t this town kinda shitty?
mrip: that’s what they say. but that’s how we like it, right Doug?
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