Bakersfield, California

Bakersfield is the county seat of Kern County, California, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 247,057. The city's economy thrives on agriculture, petroleum extraction, and refining. It is one of the fastest growing of the larger cities of the United States. As of 2005 the population is estimated at 307,471 according to local municipal sources. It is California's third largest inland city after Fresno and Sacramento.

Trivia

• The Rolling Stones sing of Bakersfield in "Far Away Eyes," and John Hiatt mentions the town in "Tennessee Plates." The rock artist Henry Rollins mentions Bakersfield in one of his spoken word pieces, titled The Virtues of Black Sabbath. Martina McBride's song Cry on the Shoulder of the Road opens with the line I'm rolling out of Bakersfield. Buck Owen's famous "Streets of Bakersfield", later performed with Dwight Yoakam, is naturally about Bakersfield.
• In 1949 George Bush and George W. Bush lived Bakersfield, on Monterrey Street just west of Mount Vernon,
• The Fox Network broadcast "Bakersfield P.D." (1993), a sitcom about police officers in Bakersfield (one an African-American transplant from Los Angeles, the other a local white officer) which was critically acclaimed but only lasted 17 episodes.
• The movie The Running Man opens with the Bakersfield Food Riots, where Arnold Schwarzenegger's character is framed as "The Butcher of Bakersfield."
• One film shot in Bakersfield is The Cell. This blockbuster is about a serial killer that videotapes his victims before drowning them. The equipment used in the victims' demise has a plate stamped "Made in Bakersfield".
• Other films shot in and around Bakersfield are: The ""(1998), "K-PAX"(2001), "North by Northwest"(1959), "Thelma & Louise" (1991), "Wag the Dog" (1997), "The Break Up" (1998), "Prime Target"{?year} and "Psycho" (1960).
• Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks, has a porta-potty outhouse wall that says Bakersfield on the side.
• In the movie Where the Heart Is, the characters in the beginning are en route to Bakersfield before stopping at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma.
• Any reference to Bakersfield by the writer Stephen King usually does not end up in a positive light.
• Bakersfield is notorious for some of the worst fog throughout the entire West Coast region, with visibility sometimes dropping to ten feet.
• Bakersfield has the second worst air quality in the nation, third in North America.
• NASCAR Driver Kevin Harvick hails from Bakersfield.
• Quarterback David Carr, #1 draft pick of the Houston Texansin the 2002 NFL Draft, played football at Stockdale High School in Bakersfield.
• In the CRPG , the ruins of Bakersfield are called Necropolis and are inhabited with ghouls, human beings mutated horribly by radiation.