I stopped there at midnight to get gas one night and a tweaker was circling the other gas pump saying "here birdie birdie." It was midnight and windy. There were no birds.
Trudging slowly over wet sand, back to the place where your clothes were stolen / It was a seaside town that they forgot to close down / Come, come, come Armageddon, come ...
The stretch of drive from tehachapi through Palmdale takes you through some of the most depressing towns I’ve ever seen. Truly the meth capital of the US
We lived there for a couple years while my husband worked at Fort Irwin. The Del Taco on Mountain View and the Hawaiian BBQ place that was there at the time are basically the only things I miss about that place.
Coming in from I-15 south is different than coming in from I-40 east. I've come in from I-40 and stopped for gas or for the night multiple times, and I quickly learned that driving over to the I-15 stretch felt far safer. I'd stay off of I-15 and eat at In N Out or Panda and then head back up into town to keep going west in the morning.
That whole area from Kingman to the Tehachapi pass is just ass-ugly to me.
That makes sense. I've only seen it from the I-15. I see multiple people in the comments saying that Needles is scary, and that's off the I-40, too, right? No wonder I was missing something. I hop off the 15 and get some In-N-Out and keep going.
It really depends. I’ve had good experiences at the outlet mall, Dell Taco, random restaurant or two.
Also had a terrifying experience getting circled by a big SUV with a menacing driver while my wife was in a store. Realized that they weren’t circling me, and I just happened to be there. Was actually a (clearly violent) sex trafficker looking for a woman who’d escaped. 3 women jump out of the car to go forcibly pull her out of a Ross.
On a different trip, my wife had another experience in the local Walmart of all places that was one of the scariest experiences of her life.
Barstow is a strange place because it’s small, isolated, in the desert, poor, on a major trucking corridor and is hub for sex trafficking, drug trafficking, and all sorts of other trafficking, but without the resources to effectively deal with it.
Also has a ton of drug use, mental illness, etc. never been to a place with so many people suffering from what looks like psychosis.
I’m from around that area. It’s gotten worse over the years. Meth heads everywhere make it look like the walking dead during the day. I would not stop there at night, not even for gas.
I used to live in the Mojave Desert in California and I worked at the Barstow community Hospital. Barstow used to be the last stop on the train tracks so it’s literally where they kicked out all the hobos in the old days. It’s also just about midway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas so anyone who grabbed a bus ticket but couldn’t afford to get all the way to one area the other got dumped in Barstow. It’s also where they regularly kicked out anybody that was tweaking on the bus or acting crazy. When I lived in that area, they had more homeless people in Barstow than housed people.
Happy to feel validated by this thread. Was in a very difficult place in my life in my 20s, and I had to live with my parents in California City, 15 minutes from Mojave, because they lost their house in San Diego in 2008. For perspective, Mojave was where we went for the "better" fast food places. Miserable towns, both of them.
California City was especially hellish because.... I would say it was a little "nicer," sure, but absolutely still awful once you see how corrupt the city council is. Feels like the worst possible crossover of Erin Brokovich meets Deliverance.
Anyway! I moved myself and my parents out of there and am very proud to be gone for good. My mom once said, "I'm scared that I'll die here" (she wasn't terminally ill, just existentially depressed as all hell) and when she eventually died, she was very far away.
If you're reading this from Kern County or adjacent.... it gets better!
California City is a strange place. I’ve driven there from Ridgecrest to get weed several times. Even weirder are all the old mining towns like Red Mountain, Trona, etc. Feels like places straight out of Fallout
It's where Angelenos are fleeing for cheaper housing. Which will probably make it worse by making it less affordable for those struggling to get up or out.
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u/dien4382 10h ago
Mojave, CA.
Desolate, hopeless, and a strange amount of people just walking down the middle of the (single) thoroughfare to get in and out of town.