A vintage car show downtown clogs the streets and drives customers away, Traco Matthews leaves Aera Energy for another job and knowing when the small things can have a big impact

Monday, March 19, 2018

Welcome to Bakersfield Observed, now online only. 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 to rsbeene@yahoo.com. 

 * ... CAR SHOW: I'm not a fan of car shows, but I understand those who get into these kind of things. But the days of staging these shows in the downtown area - particularly a work day - should be long gone considering the problems they create. On this past rainy Friday, it was near impossible to navigate downtown as the Cruzin Bakersfield vintage car show wound through the downtown streets. The irony here is that shows like this actually hurt downtown businesses, not help them.

When you rope off streets you are pushing people out of downtown, not inviting them in, and the local shops and restaurants suffer. What should have been a busy night at the local eateries was turned into a retail nightmare, and one restaurant owner told me it took her a full hour to get into work. The Cruizin Bakersfield car show does a lot to help local charities, but next time they should consider Stramler Park or the Kern County Fairgrounds. Benefiting charities at the expense of local restaurants and retail shops is a bad deal.

  * ...  BOULEVARD: More big news in local food and entertainment: The Boulevard, a 45,000 square foot project over off Buck Owens Boulevard, will open next month featuring gastropub style cuisine, an outdoor beer garden, state of the art bowling, laser tag, bocce ball and a ropes course. This is yet another project by the Bynum family, this time David Bynum and Trifecta Management. His brother, Don Bynum, is part of a group that runs Temblor Brewing Co.. The BLVD, as it will be known, sits in the same spot that once housed the old Home Base. It will open April 19.

 * ... TRACO MOVES ON: A big congratulations to Traco Matthews who is leaving Area Energy to become one of the Human Resource directors for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools. Matthews announced the move on Facebook and we will no doubt hear from from this man who has thrown himself into our community. (picture of Traco with Aera's Cindy Pollard)

 * ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "Showing your love used to be buying them flowers or writing a poem. Now it’s just looking at them for 5 minutes without checking your phone."

 * ... EAST SIDE: Sometimes it's the little things that make a difference, and Ward 2 City Councilman Andrae Gonzales is the master of knowing that small things can make a big impact. Since unseating Terry Maxwell on the council, Gonzales has made his "neighborhood clean up" Saturday a fixture of his office, and he was out again this weekend with Ward 2 residents cleaning the streets. This week his monthly "Keep East Bakersfield Beautiful" cleanup covered the alley between Monterey and Lake Street from Williams to Beale.

 * ... SHAME ON THE PADRE: Meanwhile shame on the Padre Hotel and managers in its Brimstone lounge for putting this grand hotel in a bad light. I was dining with a friend when he submitted a $40 Padre gift certificate to pay for drinks. Our waiter told him that "management" said the $40 could only be used for food. Say what? Perhaps not coincidentally, former Valentien manager Jeramy Brown is one of the managers at the Padre now, and he was known for rejecting gift certificates when he worked at The Mark across the street. If a gift certificate is for "solid food only," perhaps it should stipulate that.

 * ... MEMORIES: This old picture of 19th and Chester looking west down 19th Street is compliments of the Kern County of Old Facebook page.

New Orleans may soon have all its school children in charter schools, I scored gold in two tickets to CrabFest and what is your rule on tipping in restaurants?

 * ... BETSY DEVOS: Newly minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a strong supporter of charter schools, striking fear into teacher's unions and others who fear this could spell the demise of traditional education. But the future may already be here, in no place else than post Katrina New

Orleans where the percentage of children attending charter schools has reached 92 percent. I spotted this letter in Politico Magazine: "Soon, New Orleans may become the only big city in the country without a single traditional public school run by a central office; nearly all have been turned into charter schools—there are now more than 80 in all—and the five remaining holdouts may be converted in the next few months. A few thousand families take advantage of the state’s voucher program, enrolling in local Catholic schools. And overall, test scores here have improved markedly." In a report by The New York Times, there were surprising percentages for other urban school districts: Flint, Mich., stands at 52 percent; Kansas City is at 40 percent, Philadelphia 32 percent; Detroit is at 53 percent and the District of Columbia is at 45 percent. The lesson: give parents choice and in many cases they opt out of public schools in troubled urban districts.

* ... CRABFEST: Life is full of small surprises and mine came when I scored two tickets to this year's CrabFest out at the Fairgrounds this weekend. There are a lot of terrific fund raisers about town - West Rotary's Cioppino feed comes to mind - but I put CrabFest at the top of my list. It's a huge event featuring fresh crabs and ribs and proceeds go to help the folks at St. Francis School for the purchase of band instruments, art supplies and sports equipment and fees. It has also provided funds for construction of the school chapel, renovation of the cafeteria and the formation of popular extracurricular activities such as Academic Decathalon and Homework Club.

 * ... TYLER WILLIAMS: Congratulations to Tyler Williams, a 22-year-old Bakersfield lad who is living the dream as a professional cyclist in Europe. Williams, who attended Centennial High before being home school so he could compete, is riding for the Israeli-sponsored Cycling Academy team on the Pro Continental circuit. The team is currently based in Girona, Spain, and when back stateside he calls Santa Rosa home. Williams and his high school sweetheart, Brea Wanner, wed a few months ago.

* ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "I know you're supposed to eat three meals during the day, but how many do you eat at night?"

 * ... TIPPING: What is your policy on tipping? My standard is 15 percent but if the service is really good, and the waiter not too overbearing but at the same time attentive, I go 20 percent or higher. Jeramy Brown, general manager of The Mark Restaurant on 19th Street, appeared on my radio show on KERN NewsTalk 96.1 FM and approved my system, but also said some restaurants in bigger cities are now doing away with tipping altogether, choosing instead to simply raise the price of the meals. My take: allow me to retain the decision on how good (or bad) the service was.

 * ... TOWNHOMES: Some good news for downtown: the first tenants have moved into the 17th Place Luxury Townhomes, a major step in the further development of residential facilities east of Chester Avenue. Coming soon: a new downtown coffee shop and bakery called Cafe Smitten on 18th Street.

 * ... PUMPKIN CENTER: I am a sucker for almost anything that connects us to our past, and that's why I spend far too much time on a Facebook page called "Kern County of Old." This is a treasure trove of information on the history of Kern County, thanks to folks who post family pictures and memories. This is one that jumped out at me, posted by a woman who accompanied this post with a picture of her relatives early on in Pumpkin Center. "Thought it would be cool to share a little family history today......This is Taft Highway in 1932. My grandfather Mike Giminiani started the little town of Pumpkin Center with a fruit stand and grocery store. It was the last stop to Taft during the big oil boom. He also had a jitney service that drove loggers to and from Johnsondale up above Kernville with that car you see pictured here. He also bootlegged and made his own wine... To this day, the large wine barrels are still in the cellar of the house my mother grew up in. I have such fond memories there."

It looks like we will be skiing on Mammoth Mountain through July thanks to a heavy snowpack, The Mark to roll out a new menu and clearing up the story of Vincent Clerou and the land speed record on a bicycle

* ... MAMMOTH: I heard some good news the other day from a friend who attended an economic summit in Reno, Nevada. During a breakout session on the effects of the seasonal snowfall, there was this good

news from a climatologist:  "They are predicting we will be skiing at Mammoth through July Fourth." And, the same may be true for the closer to home Alta Sierra resort, where friends told me the snow is plentiful and the skiing spectacular. What a change from just a few years ago.

 * ... SPOTTED ON TWITTER: "How many boxes of these Thin Mints do I have to eat before I start to see results?"

 * ... THE MARK: Expect some big changes at The Mark downtown which will be rolling out a new menu over the next several weeks. Jeramy Brown, who proved his flair for the culinary dramatic over at Valentien's, is now running The Mark and will be putting his own personal touch on both the bar and more formal dining room.

 * ... PET LAND: Michael McGlasson wrote to weigh in on the old Thompsonss Pet Land, which he says was located on 19th and N street. Prior to the 1952 earthquake, he said that building was the Greyhound bus depot. "The buses had a covered drive through on the west side from the alley to 19th Street. One building to the east was Tourist Garage and they did maintenance on those buses.
After the earthquake many bricks were salvaged from Tourist garage by anyone who wanted to haul them off. I helped my father doing this and still have some in use."

 * ... VINCE CLEROU: Let's finally set the record straight about the time Vincent Clerou sponsored the land speed record on a bicycle in town. This note from his daughter Romaine Catherine Clerou says it all: "Just for the record, my father, Vincent Clerou, would want the facts given about the land speed record of Alfred Letourneur. My father organized the event. In a pictorial advertisement for Santa Barbara Savings, he tells about the event. According to my father, 'Then in 1941, under the sponsorship of Schwinn, I arranged an attempt at the bicycle land speed record. We built a windscreen on the back of Ronney Householder's midget racer and brought over French 6-day
marathon cyclist Alfred Letourneur. On a long stretch of Highway 99, south of town
we broke the record at 108.92 miles per hour." My father told many times he arranged with the California Highway Patrol to shut down that section of Highway 99 for that race record."

 * ... MORE CLEROU: Henry DeSimas worked at Vincent's Cyclery during the 1980s and fondly recalled those days when "I was fortunate to work in a place alongside of people like bike mechanic and former six day racer Charlie Morton, who also by the way was the captain of the US cycling team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics! Not to mention his amazing collection of antique bicycles going back to the big high wheelers that I tried and failed to handle, I guess that's why they call the modern double diamond style the 'safety bike.' As Paul Harvey would say, 'now you know the rest of the story.'"

 * ... MEMORIES: Nancy Bryant wrote to recall the days when she was a child and "there were photographers on the corner of 19th and Chester who would take random pictures of people, and then ask if you wanted to buy them. If so, you would pay a small fee, and the pictures would be mailed to you. I have half a dozen or so great pictures of members of my family, me included, walking on 19th Street in the late 1940s and early 1950s."