Bakersfield, California

Bakersfield is central AG community so, the produce is certainly fresh! Even though it is a city, it feels smaller than it is because the rural quality is pervasive. The biggest employers are oil companies, agriculture and prisons. People tend to be religious and conservative, they like guns, all cannabis is banned and it’s very hot with poor air quality/smog. Lots of dollar stores and thrift stores.

There are nice residential neighborhoods (West Bakersfield) and a downtown revitalization effort but this is strip mall, housing development, Walmart and Target country. It’s the kind of town where the nightlife consists predominantly of bars and you’re likely to run into the same characters with the same habits. It’s very homogeneous. Even between socioeconomic classes -- there are some very wealthy people and some very poor people, yet somehow, the mentality is pretty consistent. Entertainment is largely centered around drinking.

It is road trip distance to big cities and beaches but short of a couple hours drive, it’s pretty stranded.

Check out the annual calendar of events to see what's happening in Bakersfield: https://www.visitbakersfield.com/events/

You want to save up some money while being geographically located inside the state of California.

In olden times the University of California and Calstate college systems were so good and so inexpensive families would move to the state just to get their kids into that system as residents. The costs have moved up but the UC's in particular are still excellent for low costs so we imagine families still want to be in California to put their kids through Cal, UCLA, Davis, Santa Barbara etc. If so then perhaps a WFH play in Bakersfield on that educational path still makes sense.