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Frozen Horse posted:It is seriously an rear end-haul from anywhere. Essentially, in the 1960s, an urban planning professor decided that trends in growth suggested that the state was ripe for another big city. Naturally, he was the man to plan it and start development. His plan suffered only from having the only available land be three hours and a mountain range from either Los Angeles or Bakersfield, lacking in water, and devoid of any reason for people to live there or business to set up there aside from the fact that the land was cheap. Turns out that the land was cheap because it is worthless. Yet, it is also austerely beautiful and I am glad that it was not made into some sort of storage dump for either pedophiles or suburbanites. I live in California City and it's about to get even more deserted. The biggest employer is the prison and they've finally realized it would be cheaper to shut it down and move the inmates then to continue paying staff double what they pay anywhere else. Apparently the city almost got a supermarket and a hotel but both were blocked by city council and the rumor is the council member who owns the only place in town that could be called a grocery store didn't want the competition. I cannot wait to leave Edit: I don't think there is a go cart place here anymore. I wish there was because that would be something else to do. Oh another edit, all the water lines are slowly decaying and there are new water leaks reported daily. And people don't want the increase in taxes so they vote against having them replaced. So some days there is no water pressure. And I don't know where non military people go if they want fresh produce. We can drive to the base which is about half an hour. I think the closest place other people can go is about an hour away. Queen Elizatits fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Dec 13, 2010 |
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Dec 13, 2010 01:51
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:15 |
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Ooh okay yeah, that's an off-roading club. It's near the turtle place and the weird country club. I don't know if either of those places are still open, I drove up there once and the road was all blocked off.
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Dec 13, 2010 02:04
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Robokomodo posted:Taxes = water We just moved here in the summer and will be leaving next July thankfully when the lease is over. If I actually owned a house here I would be a pretty angry person. The whole city seems like this surreal joke, we called the police about a neighbor who was trying to beat a dog to death with a bat, something the police in California are supposed to deal with. They refused to come and had us call AC who took over 3 hours to finally show up. They also seemed perfectly happy with the idea that my husband was willing to physically intervene stop the guy from killing the dog if that meant they didn't have to get involved. Speaking of dogs there are stray dogs and cats everywhere. Sometimes mountain lions come and hang out. I've never seen one but I read the police blotter and it mentions them. We've had a lot of problems with the landlord and hired the only private home inspector in the city to do an inspection. After he did it he disappeared, we can't find him, the city home inspector can't find him, in fact city guy told us where the private home guy lived so we could go look for him. Which we declined to do. Something like half the homes here are abandoned and the whole place has this really creepy empty vibe. Most of the abandoned homes have been stripped of anything valuable. The artificial lake that the article linked earlier mentioned is still here but it's all fenced off and you aren't supposed to go near it. It's now home to a huge flock of different types of ornamental ducks.
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Dec 13, 2010 04:18
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Frozen Horse posted:Oh dear goodness, why? How? To what end did you go there, of all places? I'll give you that it's not Randsburg, but the mind recoils nonetheless. Especially with the fact that it sounds like the city council saw The Road Warrior as inspirational, rather than cautionary. Military moved us across the country but wouldn't give my husband time off ahead of time because they needed him to teach his replacement. We picked a house through AHRN, military approved housing (which apparently means nothing because in our case they didn't even inspect it) and here we are. At least we learned never to rent unseen and we aren't here that much longer  and sometimes I get to see coyotes so there's thatAnd I'm really sorry since it seems like I'm derailing this thread but it really is an interesting place, I've never been anywhere like it. I didn't know places like this existed in the US.
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Dec 13, 2010 06:28
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The Scientist posted:Its cool, you are just doing a very good job of identifying a strange thing on Google Maps. Thanks  All of the streets did have signs, some of them are knocked over now but sometimes you will be out in the desert and come across a street sign. Most of the unused roads have been completely neglected and are pretty much just dirt roads now or worse. Some of the used roads have also been neglected so badly that it isn't a good idea to drive on them unless you like replacing tires. The weird thing with the roads though is that they are expanding one of them. And I can't understand why they picked this particular 1/2 mile of road to fix up. It's pretty much dirt, dirt, dirt, old road, widened brand new road, dirt, and it's not in the main part of the city either.We do get mail, there is actually a post office in town and one mailman. He's an enthusiastic driver. We have had tire tracks all over the front lawn* from him and he's hit the mailbox at least once since we got here. You can hear him screeching down the road from a bit away. He has this weird pattern too although maybe this is how mail delivery usually works, I don't know. He delivers to one house on the street, screeches off down another road, comes back five minutes or so later does another house, U-turns back down the main street, comes back later and does another one and so on. *We have a front lawn, our landlords planted grass, I have no idea why, I think if you look on googlemaps you can find this house because it's one of the very few with a front lawn. It and city hall. It's funny you ask about the power because it went out last night for a couple of hours. The only thing we could see still with power was the prison. That happens every month or so and doesn't appear to be weather related. Just one of those things. As far as heating goes most of the houses here still run off propane. About the dogs, animal control couldn't do anything because they didn't see it happen. I'm talking with someone from HSUS and they seem to think they will be able to help so that's good. I think I will do an a/t thread, that's a good idea, thanks all. I'll go out and get a bunch of pictures first though, you really have to see it to get the full effect. I'll leave you with the sheep, no one seems to know who the belong too, we see them on the main road into town sometimes. They show up on the daily police report a few times a month when someone calls because they want them off their lawn. Picture doesn't show it that well but there is at least 50 of them.  Click here for the full 900x466 image.
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Dec 13, 2010 19:40
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:15 |
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shuriken posted:California City. It took me a few days but I finally did an Ask/Tell thread about living in California City. I apologize if I missed any of the questions anyone posted in this thread about it, I tried to include everything. If nothing else there are some cute ducks http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3374270
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Dec 17, 2010 05:15
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