City firefighter Jeff Heinle challenges Supervisor Mike Maggard. Will the question of regulating marijuana be enough to elevate Heinle's candidacy? And check this out: there is some good news in the fight against cancer

Friday, January 12, 2018

Welcome to Bakersfield Observed. Our mission is to celebrate life in Kern County by focusing on newsmakers and events and the local characters who make this such a special place. We value your feedback. Email your news and notes (good form, bad form, kids doing well, anniversaries, observations) to rsbeene@yahoo.com.

 * ... MAGGARD VS HEINLE: Hold onto your seats but it looks like we have a doozy of a race coming up when Supervisor Mike Maggard faces off against city firefighter Jeff Heinle in the 3rd District county supervisor's race. Maggard has already come out swinging, implying Heinle will bring "Bay Area values" to more conservative Kern County, and he also accused Heinle as being a front man for pro marijuana interests. And even worse, Maggard claims fellow Supervisor Leticia Perez and her husband, consultant Fernando Jara, may also be conspiring against him. For the record, Heinle was born in the Bay Area but moved here as a teenager and has served 27 years as a city firefighter, hardly a carpet bagger. Heinle also took issue with Maggard on two important issues: he said he would support the regulation and sale of marijuana and he would have supported the Rudnick proposal to build a concert venue off Interstate 5.

 * ... THE POT VOTE: The real question in the Maggard-Heinle race will be this: to what extent did Maggard injure himself by voting against regulating and taxing marijuana when the county faces such a huge budget deficit? I think Maggard and the other supervisors were stunned by the blowback on social media by people of all ages, incomes and races after the Supervisors chose not to regulate cannabis. This much is true: there is a huge number of people (doctors, lawyers, veterans, business people) who support the legalization of marijuana because they recognize is it a relatively benign natural drug and its taxation could greatly help our community. The backlash is real. Will it be enough to elevate Heinle's candidacy? We will see.

 * ... CANCER: Are you ready for some good news on cancer? I posed that query to Dr. Ravi Patel, chief oncologist at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center who appeared on KERN NewsTalk 96.1 FM this week. And indeed there is some good news. It turns out total deaths from cancer have dropped 25 percent since 1991, mostly because more people are giving up smoking. And if you want to reduce your chances of getting cancer, keep your weight down. Patel said it also turns out that 35 percent of all cancers are linked to obesity.

 * ... ECONOMIC WOES: Every year the Milkin Institute surveys the nation's largest metro area and rates them in terms of economic growth. The best performing large metro area? That would be Provo, Utah, which has become a technology hotbed. Following Provo were Raleigh, N.C., and Dallas. The worst performing metro area? You guessed it: Bakersfield. We fell from 59 last year to 101 this year. Said Milkin: "One of the largest oil producing counties was hit by the crude downtown a few years ago and employment still hasn't fully recovered."

 * ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "Optimistic people want to hear the bad news first, while pessimists ask for the good. Realists just start drinking."

 * ... GOOD FORM: Local combat veteran Christopher Quinones believes in karma, so when a cashier accidentally gave him an extra $10 in gas than he paid for, he reminded her of her error. "But I couldn’t let it happen so I had to go back in and tell her what she did because I believe highly in karma. Then she says 'let me find out how God is going to bless you today!'"

 * ... BAD FORM: There are few things worse than bad grammar and misspellings when you are in the communications and marketing business. One repeat offender is the Downtown Business Association whose newsletter regularly contains misspellings and bad grammar. In its latest missive, it confused "your" and "you are." The DBA needs to learn to spell or hire a copy editor.

Cal State Bakersfield athletics raises a record $2 million for scholarships, weird happenings at the historic Fox Theater and KERO-TV gets a new news director

 * ... SCHOLARSHIPS: The success of any public university eventually comes down to the support it receives from its alumni base and the community it serves. So I was heartened to hear about the

success achieved by CSUB Athletic Director Kenneth "Ziggy" Siegfried and the Roadrunner Scholarship Fund. It turns out CSUB athletics fundraising reached nearly $2 million following the end of its annual scholarship drive. The Roadrunner Scholarship Fund raised an all-time high of $800,000 of the total $1.9 million raised this year in the department. The Roadrunner Scholarship Fund has now increased over 130 percent since the 2012-2013 fiscal year when the total amount was just under $350,000. Siegfried says the growth of the Roadrunner Scholarship Fund over the last few years has played a major role in the recent success of the athletics department and future growth of the fund will be critical in the department achieving lofty goals.

 * ... FOX THEATER: What in the world is happening with the historic Fox Theater and the foundation that runs it? The explosive and troubling story, first reported by Steve Mayer of The Californian, noted that $154,000 in ticket sales went missing in an apparent dispute between Bob Bender (Bender Entertainment) and the group that represented two comedians who appeared at the venue. The foundation, headed by Melanie Farmer of the Downtown Business Association, has washed its hands of responsibility but that falls far short of what is needed. Someone (hint: that would be you, Melanie) needs to go public to assure the public (many whom have given generously to save the iconic theater) that there is no danger of inflicting long term harm to the Fox. In addition, what is the foundation doing to make sure this doesn't happen again?

* ... KERO: KERO-TV has hired Nancy Bauer Gonzales as its news director and she will start at the Scripps-owned station later this month. She most recently was the news director for a Spectrum cable news channel in Palmdale. Prior to that she was the vice president of  news for the Los Angeles duopoly of KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9 for a decade and before that was news director at KNBC-TV Channel 4 also in LA. She is married to KBAK/KBFX main anchor Dave Gonzales. Meanwhile, the station has hired six recent graduates from Arizona State University who will live in Bakersfield for the next year to learn the trade, doing everything from reporting to producing.

 * ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "Happiness is using an ATM and finding a receipt left by someone with an account balance lower than yours."

 * ... CALIFORNIA: "My friend in Arizona just bought and registered a 2002 Tacoma there.
For title and two years registration cost $53. This state is screwed up worse than polio. I can't wait to leave here."

 * ... GOOD FORM: George and Agnes Plantenga celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary on June 28, accompanied by family and friends at the downtown Mexicali. "When it came time to pay to pay our bill, we found out it had been paid for," they wrote. "We want to say a big thank you to whoever paid for our dinner."

 * ... HAPPY HOUR: A few months ago I told you about the new expanded happy hour at The Padre Hotel, a full five hours from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Well, it turns out that may have been too much of a good thing and the happy hour has now been scaled back to 6 p.m. Meanwhile, the popular Firestone restaurant off California Avenue has a similar happy hour that ends at 6 p.m. but it also promotes $5 bloody Mary's and mimosas all day Sunday.

Cafe Smitten and the renovated Silver Fox Starlite Lounge open on 18th Street, Cathy Butler retires from the Downtown Business Association and remembering when Truman's whistle stop tour came to Bakersfield

* ... CAFE SMITTEN: The downtown area is getting an upscale new coffee and pastry house east of Chester on 18th Street. It is called Cafe Smitten and it is run by the daughter of Ward 4 City

Councilman Bob Smith and her husband, Stasie and Shai Bitton. Not coincidentally, Smith is a principal investor in the 17th Place Luxury Townhomes just a couple blocks away. Cafe Smitten opens on Monday. Meanwhile, down the street we are about a month away from the opening of Qwikcafe, the new venture by Sequoia Sandwich Co. that will feature a full array of "to go" sandwiches and salads.

 * ... STARLITE LOUNGE: Meanwhile a bit farther east on 18th Street the Silver Fox Starlite Lounge opens Friday after an extensive remodel and facelift by new owners Rod and Julie Crawford, who also own the popular Pyrenees Cafe in east Bakersfield. Both the Starlite and Cafe Smitten are important chapters in the renaissance of the 18th Street corridor.

 * ... CATHY BUTLER: Congratulations to Cathy Butler who recently retired as president of the Downtown Business Association after more than 40 years. Butler was a tireless advocate for downtown, but the passage of time has rendered the DBA as something of a nostalgic relic of the past. Whatever largely ceremonial work the DBA is now engaged in could likely be performed by a committee at the Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce, at a fraction of the cost.

* ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "Don't be surprised when your tax refund arrives as store credit toward the purchase of Ivanka's Spring line of fashions."

 * ... MEMORIES: How about this memory from east Kern's Bill Deaver? "About your item on president Harry Truman visiting Kern County during his 'whistle-stop' tour in 1948. My brother Mike (later deputy chief of staff under President Ronald Reagan) and I were attending Mojave Elementary School and walked to the Standard Pacific station in Mojave to see Mr. Truman. He walked onto the back platform of the heavily-armored Ferdinand Magellan, the presidential car. About that time one of the new jet fighters from Muroc Army Air Base flew over and Margaret Truman ran onto the platform to see it and almost knocked her dad down, to the great entertainment of the large crowd. Fast-forward to 1984 and guess who was riding in that car as a top aide to President Ronald Reagan during another presidential campaign? That kid from Mojave, Michael K. Deaver! One of those “only in America” moments!"

  * ... MORE TRUMAN: Jim D. Smith also remembers the whistle stop tour of Harry Truman. "As an 11-year-old I was on the Beardsley School playground as the train slowly rolled into Bakersfield, powered by a steam engine and pulling a caboose. Teachers had us all outside, knowing the train was due to pass by. "    

 * .... BAKERSFIELDISM: According to Ronal Reynier, you may be a Bakersfield old-timer if you remember two of Bakersfield's auto thrill rides: "the 'Seven Sisters' outside of Oildale and when the road down the Bluff's was two-lane. I think almost everyone when they got a car had to try the Seven Sisters. There were other places outside the city were you could 'fly' with four wheels up but they were a lot further out then the Sisters. A trip in the spring on Round Mountain Road to South Granite Road can be quite interesting at times. At times you can still see pieces of cars at the bottom of 100 foot gullies who did not make the complete trip. It gets interesting when oil trucks are coming at you 50 mph and you think your 25 mph is too fast."

Teagarden in as president at Karpe and what to do about all those scofflaws with expired tags on the road

 * ... TEAGARDEN IN AT KARPE: It looks like Tom Teagarden is the new president over at Karpe Real Estate Center, succeeding Ray Karpe who abruptly resigned last week. Teagarden is a longtime Karpe employee and local product who has worked with the family company for years. He told me that he had been out of town and wasn't even aware that Ray Karpe had resigned, and when he returned Bob Karpe (Ray's father) offered him the job. (In an earlier post I erred in saying Bob Karpe founded the firm. It was actually his father, Elmer) Nobody is going public on the rift between Ray and his father. Ray says only there was a difference of opinion on the company's strategic direction. Teagarden was born in Bakersfield, graduated from Garces Memorial High and later UC Santa Barbara. He moved to Virginia where he worked, moved back and began working at Karpe in 1989. He's been married for 35 years to Susan and they have three grown boys, Thomas, Adan and Matthew. Here's wishing him and the company success.

 * ... THE SCOFFLAWS WITH EXPIRED TAGS: I hit a nerve with an earlier post on all the cars driving around town with expired license tags. My email inbox was filled with responses, including one from Bakersfield resident Gary Denny who said this had been a pet peeve of his for years. His words:

 "At times, I have seen three or four vehicles at one location with expired tags. A couple of years ago I tried to find an agency to call or report this information to: CHP, city police, sheriff's department, Department of Motor Vehicles... none of these agencies were responsible... an individual has no way to report these vehicles. How many millions of dollars is the state missing from expired tags?"

 Yet another correspondent (who asked me not to use her name) speculated those driving around with expired tags are the same people who regularly fail to pay library fines or their student loans, and then are shocked when it negatively impacts their credit. "This is a blase attitude that I have noticed for all the years we have been living here," she said.

 * ... A DOWNTOWN RENAISSANCE? I had a nice chat the other day with Cathy Butler, head of the Downtown Business Association (DBA), who was absolutely giddy over what is happening downtown. She was raving about the new restaurant Victor Victoria's over on 19th Street, located in the same spot that once hosted Kosmo's and Goose Loonies. She also mentioned the new "O" sushi restaurant (owned by the same folks who run Toro sushi over at the marketplace; read the previous post here) and of course she's excited about the opening of the newly renovated Padre Hotel in six weeks or so. Bringing downtown Bakersfield back to life is a block by block project. The old central business district has come a long way and has an equally long way to go, but these developments are worth celebrating..

 * ... PCL MAKES A DONATION: I mentioned earlier the generosity of industrial services company PCL donating $10,000 to the Golden Empire Gleaners. Here's a picture of the check presentation, never a real compelling picture but these folks deserve some recognition. From left to right are Jim Blom, Todd Yepez, John Kerchinski (PCL president locally), Pam Fiorini, Pam Lindaman, Renee Massey and Ronald Eaves.

Investing during a recession: signs of spring?

It's always a good sign when small businesses - certainly the backbone of our economy here in Bakersfield - choose to expend scarce capital during a deepening recession. So I was heartened to read in the Downtown Business Assn. newsletter about the number of businesses honored for major renovations or new construction. Among the honorees were The Dream Center and Coffee Shop, Elaine's Cafe and Market, Goose Loonies, Larry McAbee Construction, American Sound Recording Studio and the Marriott Hotel. Alexander and Associates, Memorial Hospital and Little White Dress (owner Jennifer Cantelmi shown in picture) were cited for new construction. The DBA also talked about the possibility of 20th Street becoming a "great street," providing an east-west walkable connection from the new Mill Creek Linear Park (Central Park) to the historic Fox Theater.