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Paperback Writer: A Bakersfield, California literature, music and news blog

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Lords of Bakersfield found at 7-11 - by N.L. Belardes

Yes, I found the Lords of Bakersfield. I found them tucked away in a strip mall where derelicts seemed stuck to walls like mud wasp nests. It was dark; it was dingy; this was the place where kids have hung out for practically generations while sipping sugary Slurpies and wanting to know the secrets of life. This was where I could buy baseball cards as troublesome youth wanting to just get out of the house and go to the store, and where the consciousness of Rock and Roll and slut magazines were well, at your fingertips. The Lords? This was the perfect place for a pick-up. This was 7-11.

That was after I searched Barnes and Noble. I looked in every cobwebbed corner before the staff caught me poking around and said, “We’re all sold out, sir.” They didn’t even bother to tell me where to look next. There were so many folks hanging out in chairs, reading, drinking coffee; one gentleman heroically had open a book on Surviving Prostate Cancer, its red cover in full view; good for him—he didn’t seem so afraid of the Lords. I got claustrophobic.

Oh, but that’s not all. I searched Borders, Vons, Longs, two gas stations until I got lucky with my big discovery. I put two and two together just as I saw the faded sign of a 7-11 glowing at me like a ruddy moon. Yes, that was it. I found the Lords of Bakersfield in a corner plastered against four others just like itself. Slut zines smiled out at me just two racks over. Caught red-handed I’d say.

If only it were that easy to find the Lords of Bakersfield. I snatched the Weezer-covered magazine and was out the door. Oh I paid for it. Those ever-elusive Lords always make you pay, or so I’ve researched. Do you realize what kind of super sleuth you have to be to track down stories on the creepiest entities known to the greater Southern San Joaquin Valley? I’m telling you, Robert Price, journalist turned investigative reporter turned Lords hound ala Bakersfield-Gate scandal should be commended for the rock he helped expose two years ago. I remember when I got the call on the big stories from historian/writer John Arthur Maynard, “Did you read the Californian today? This is the biggest news story ever uncovered here!” The sad truth about it all is the underbelly of these stories will forever be half-hidden to the world of you and I. You and I? We’re the people who just plain want to separate reality from myth.

Of course you’re all wondering if I’ll be any help at all in the matter of modern day mythmaking as Lords: Part One hangs over the Bakersfield sunsets like a big red sun these days. I’m not going to answer that. Myths are sometimes OK, sometimes not, and always in need of weeding. And I’m not going to be shy about it either… In other words, I’m still trying to figure it all out.

I think the Lords of Bakersfield is a local sensation not because I wrote about it or Robert Price wrote about it, or the gal who wrote Valley Fire for that matter, but because of what it is by its very nature: a story of dualism in the nature of man at his most decrepit soul searching. As if you didn’t know, these stories have been haunting the people of Bakersfield for some time. And that isn’t because Bakersfield is some hick town with a dark secret like Rolling Stone freelancer/occasional Salon.com writer Kimberley Sevcik indicates. These New York reporters. Don’t think they’re any better than a Robert Price because they work in a New York office, or because they freelanced for the Rolling Stone for that matter. Haven’t you kept aware of fallen reporters/photo-journalists from the East and West coasts? They’re just people. And they’re always getting the facts wrong or not digging deep enough, or being manipulative. A good reporter simply does their homework, simple as that. Sevcik’s stereotyping is just not good reporting. Some of her writing may be, but most of it was rehash of Edward Humes book, Mean Justice. I don’t think she gave Ed Humes any credit at all. And although I read the name Californian, Robert Price received zero accolades. She discusses the end to the molestation witch hunt that we’re all quite aware of, and anyone who keeps up with the stories nation-wide are aware of. So why the write-up in the Rolling Stone? I don’t know, maybe she’s doing a friend a favor. I guess I should be the better man, but her take on Bakersfield is as bad as me saying everyone from the Bronx is a big dumb sports fan with a sister who sleeps with the mafia.

I’m guessing most towns and cities have such dark secrets. Heck, I hear Fresno has some rather creepy Lords tales of their own. I was tipped by none other than a reporter; and they weren’t even from New York… go figure.

We’re not so stereotypical and freakish here when compared to the rest of the nation. Bakersfield’s secret gay murderous past of prominent white folk gone mad with anal desires and corrupt little boy misgivings has nothing on American tales of Area 51, the Illuminati, the Skull and Crossbones club, Mormon corruption, Mafiosa murders, Presidential Affairs, Secret Senate occurrences, Olympic orgies, and so on. It’s not that Bakersfield is Okietown central anymore either. Here in the California Bible Belt where Conservatism loathes gays like it loathes a Toni Morrison coffee table book there are actual intellectuals who combat such idealism as Conservatives vs. literature.

I’ll tell you the simple truth of the appeal of the Lords myths: people just plain want to know what the Lords of Bakersfield have done. People are drawn to stories of corruption and how they intertwine with… dare I say it… the American Way?

The American Way, the American character… hard to define, though people use such terms all the time. It’s in literature, in historical writings from David Hackett Fischer, Perry Miller, Oscar Handlin, Presidential addresses galore and so on… The American character perhaps defines who we are and where we came from. Perhaps in our immigrant-nature, our East Anglian-derived folkways, or seeped in the American sense of mission to the world… and here we are at home at odds with it—because the Lords sense of mission is an example of the dualism I mentioned: to fulfill and to betray.

People get attracted to the irony. The American Way to fulfill that sense of messianic justice in a skewed mission to county and state and country, yet oddly repulses itself in the Lords disfiguring the very fruits of the American Way with their dick-smashing baseball bats in Beach Park bathrooms, murdering kids whose lives get used up fulfilling mad desires in an age of cover-up and boozing. It was an age of sickness conceived before the late 1970s but brought to fruition in the 1980s (the Lords had several ages). It was where perhaps Bakersfield folks along with the rest of the country were thrown off track by the illusory path of local law-making witch hunts launched ala a Tituba-esque crazy Salem-style witch burning called, child demon possession books gotten in too many hands: all a model for the post-modern witch hunts spawned by the Lords of Bakersfield to perhaps take attention off themselves.

“Hey, we can use these books to help infuse a greater fear in society…” they may have said in their secret meetings. Oh, and then launch a media and mean justice campaign that could throw greater society off the path of the Lords… Those of you who have read Chapter One know that my story right away goes farther back in time than that pretentious Rolling Stone reporter was willing to explore. She went as far back as the early 1980s. That’s not far enough. She claimed there were orgies and child molestation but missed the crux of it all by not suggesting that such stories became embedded in local folklore since the turn of the century before this past turn of the century. We’re talking the late 1800s…

When the gay sons of British Lords came via rickety boats to Bakersfield, to the Rosedale area to start a perfect colony… remember where the parents of these boys were educated and where these boys just may have hung out. Have you not done your history? Do you know about the age of British colonialism in the mid to late 1800s? What kind of consciousness was in Europe at that time? Are you aware of the intellectual hideouts of such homoerotic sons of true British Lords? The salons, the coffeehouses, the academic lust-filled settings, and then off to America… such infused idealism in such dark homoerotic minds, set loose on the American central valley golden hinterland with the idealism to be Lords. Do you think they had a love for Americans and an American Way just because those old Kern County brochures lured them here? Such pretentious upbringings and then tossed into the Great Central Valley at a time when these Lords already lived a dual lifestyle of understanding that colonial power was what set the world on fire, as well as other boys set something else on fire for them. It was just how things were done… for them... And the British were gods, right? And they set out as a fiery youth, ashamed, outcasts because their familes sent them away because they were gay and so forth, but with their colonial British education, strong sense of academia and power hungry mindsets still intact…

But our Rolling Stone reporter, hip to the John Stolls release, hip to some old prosecutor who wanted J. Edgar Jagels to get utterly eaten up by the Rolling Stone, hip to his drugged up and laughable ex-wife. Does anyone feel sorry for her when thousands of people in Bakersfield with less money at their disposal go through such dark times of rehab and relocation? …and seemingly just as eager to have Bakersfield just as stereotyped as any lawyer? We, the seedy, the laughable underbelly buffoonery of the West; we, the fast-talking urban rural lives on country-laden straw-covered streets; we, the beady-eyed cross-bred inhabitants of a society who all seems to ride real honest to goodness bulls, not to mention the mechanical bulls that are apparently somehow on every street corner here in Nashville West, USA. Funny how the Rolling Stone, a rock and roll magazine ignores the Bakersfield rock music scene completely, a scene that Liars and Thieves drummer Tyler pointed out to me yesterday, “has nothing to do with country music here in downtown,” because it is an Indie, metal, screamo, punk, Brit Pop, alt country music that literally ignores the country music scene and thrives, where else, but in downtown Bakersfield where the Lords wield their sirens, laws and baseball bats. Sevcik didn’t even mention that damn Rock and Roll Farm. She didn’t do her homework at all. Maybe she could have found Jagels somewhere else if she had looked. Jagels, in his appetite for putting on a good show and costume… maybe he fronts a rock band, punk rock at that and sits at Jerry’s for a hot slice. OK, now I’m just plain lying. But you get the point.

No, there is nothing new on the Lords of Bakersfield in the recent Rolling Stone article. And not much explanation as to why this scathing story was written. If you keep up with the local news, you should be quickly aware that the story is all rehash, with not enough credit to sources. Sevcik is going to get national attention because she can read an Edward Humes masterpiece in journalistic jingoism, a timely Robert Price series, and interview a few folks already interviewed. If you got this far in my article then you learned a lot more than what Sevcik had to say, and a little more than you may have known otherwise, which is certainly more than Sevcik’s crying about hick town witch hunts. Tell us some of the allegations, Sevcik. Tell us the dark stories, the tales. It’s more interesting than just saying a witch hunt went bad so folks were let out of prison. Now I could tell more, but then like I said, I’m not really going to answer that... You’ll have to wait for part one.

  1. Blogger starwire | 10:03 AM |  

    I was let down too. Where's the truth? Where are all the stories the people want to hear about the Bakersfield Lords? At least people are standing up and speaking out against viewpoints that Bakersfield is a country-bumpkin mythmaking town...

  2. Anonymous Anonymous | 10:26 AM |  

    I don't like any of it. I don't trust the lawmen, and I don't even trust teachers. I am home schooling my children. There are too many news stories of teachers preying on kids. And what about the Southwest rapist? Why aren't we hearing about him?

  3. Anonymous Anonymous | 12:03 PM |  

    I thought the article was well written and articulate in the Rolling Stone. I don't really want to know what the so-called Lords have done. I doubt if they really existed anyway. But I do want to know what Jagels has done to our community. He seems like a bad apple, but you don't know it's a bad apple because all you see is the shiny skin and not all that rotten stuff underneath...

  4. Blogger Matildakay | 1:27 PM |  

    A well written article that defends Bakersfield against stereotyping and confronts the writer of the Rolling Stone article, while giving us a sneak peak at what we'll find about the Lords in your book. Can't wait for your Lords Part One book to come out!

  5. Anonymous Anonymous | 2:06 PM |  

    Sorry, but I have to respond to "anonymous" who said the Rolling Stone article was well written and he didn't believe the Lords existed. Obviously you weren't paying attention. IT WAS ALL A REHASH! And just as obviously you need to stick your head back in the sand. Keep calling it like you see it, Belardes! It's about time someone did.

  6. Anonymous Anonymous | 2:27 PM |  

    I would like to have a job writing for Rolling Stone where all I had to do was read old newspapers and watch Carson reruns to get my material. My compliments to Mr. Belardes on having the courage to say what we're all thinking. Question...when is the Californian going to do a more indepth series on the Lords, or for that matter Mr. Jagels? Isn't it about time?

  7. Anonymous Anonymous | 2:54 PM |  

    I agree that we should be seeing more from the Californian on things that affect our community. I notice that they did extensive coverage of rich, spoiled children going to the prom but nothing on the "Mean Justice" of Jagels. I was surprised by Bob Price's articles on the "Lords" but haven't seen much since. How come? Is it because they are still a "family" owned paper?

  8. Blogger n.l. | 3:03 PM |  

    That's a good question, one I haven't asked the Californian, but could have to do with it's just really difficult to find information on the Lords during the 1980s era. One can't just throw allegations into the wind without substantiating them. The last thing we want is for Mr. Price to end up in jail for nipping on the heels of those dastardly Lords... This is one reason why my novels focus on the Lords' criminal behavior during the first three murders: 1977-1981.

  9. Blogger n.l. | 3:12 PM |  

    But then, Mr. Price is certainly welcome to come on here and open the can of worms about the Lords of Bakersfield in the 1980s, or to just answer questions and make comments... He is the man whose work inspired me to write a novel on a Lords-related topic... Come on Mr. Price... talk to us...

  10. Blogger n.l. | 3:18 PM |  

    ...and dear people of the community... won't you write us a few stories so we don't just pick on the Californian. This is your forum... you're the people the Californian has to dig its stories out of anyway...

  11. Anonymous Anonymous | 4:11 PM |  

    It's good to see our town folk reaching out and feeling safe talking about The Lords of Bakersfield. With all the rehash from Rolling Stone and the writing Nl Belardes is doing, I think it's about time these stories unfold. But, you people are forgetting exactly what you are dealing with. I'm sure Mr. Price never walks out to his car without looking over his shoulder and prays every time he starts his car. You are rattling the cage and if you don't think your important enough to be gotten rid of, you're living in a pipe dream. Lawyers, Doctors, Judges, Police, Farmers, your neighbor and even a family member could be one of them. People vanish, houses catch on fire, cars explode, bodies turn up in canals and orchards all the time. If you don't think they exist, then continue saying whatever you feel like and have a nice early afterlife.

  12. Blogger n.l. | 5:06 PM |  

    If you would like to do more to help Lords: Part One hit the bookshelves throughout the San Joaquin Valley, then contact www.noveltown.net to make a donation...

  13. Anonymous Anonymous | 9:50 PM |  

    I'm reading through these comments and I came to the last one and I can't believe my eyes. Is that a threat? It sounded like a threat to me. What's worse, it sounded like a threat from a bully. I hate bullies! The only way to disarm a bully is to fight back. Way to go Robert Price. Way to go NL Belardes. You must be hitting close to home to make "them" start threatening you. I say let's name names. Where do I sign up to help get the "Lords" book published?

  14. Anonymous Anonymous | 10:10 PM |  

    There's an old saying that "the pen is mightier than the sword." I would certainly like to hear more from Mr. Price. Surely between Mr. Price and Mr. Belardes together you could wield a mighty powerful weapon and uncloak these people who seem to feel that they are above the rules the rest of us are bound by. Mr. Price...are you under any pressure to print certain things or more importantly, not print certain things?

  15. Anonymous Anonymous | 9:14 AM |  

    I was a victim of the Lords. Many of you won't believe this, but I was one of those kids who used to hang out with artists at the park. There was a time when all the punks and artists and gay kids didn't have anywhere to hang out. So we hung out at Beach park. And I'm sorry, but there was a time many kids were abused, and down and out, and had terrible home lives. So we turned to the Lords and hoped for a better life that never came. I admit I made wrong choices, but as a kid you tend to buy in to the big picture, to the promises being made to you... But it was just a cover-up. Kids like me were used as pawns to get other kids. Kids like me were left unattended with these people at big jacuzzi parties. There was a cop mafia too, and Fritts, he even felt cornered by his own people that he set loose. I'm one of the lucky ones though. I ended up making the right choices. Some of my friends didn't.

  16. Anonymous Anonymous | 9:30 AM |  

    My friend just called me about this. Mr. Price and Mr. Belardes, you need to leave the Lords of the 1980s alone. You will find out too many things and get yourselves in trouble and then those jerks in the Rolling Stone will be writing about two hicks who in Bakersfield who died for trying to write about mean justice. There was a cop mafia and I don't know if there is one anymore. But why risk it? Just to sell newspapers and books? Go write about candyland... it's safer and I won't feel guilty. Talk about the lords of the late 1970s all day long and leave it at that.

  17. Anonymous Karmahitlist | 9:45 AM |  

    only through accpetance will true art reach its destined potential to the consumers of bakersfield, good luck, we support your endeavors....karmahitlist

  18. Blogger Bakersfield Gay Parade | 10:31 AM |  

    Have I congratulated Nickyboy recently for writing a book about those big mean men whose chile peppers were out of control for so many years? Well mama needs to tell you about his article too. Let me just rant for one moment. Nicky is a writer extraordinaire. He taught me about active verbs and I taught him about denim summer fashion. Let me just spin off… It’s ok, I’ll hold you and kiss you later. I have just traveled back from the land of denim. Do you know where that is? Not your little Target wonderland, but garment central in Los Angeles… and let me tell you that I don’t want you or you or you to have a saggy bottom! Did I say me? Well let me be Sandra Bullock in Force of Nature and go crazy for just one rapturous second! Oh! Oh! Oh! Well a little less on the pocket frills means more tush for you to show off! Go denim! I give three cheers for summer fashion, because every summer I go crazy with nouveau! Now, back to that little tough boy writer who wrote about Rolling Stone’s hoochie freelance queen of dirty secrets, Kimberley Sevcik. Her sunken monument to the Lords of Bakersfield Hoochie was simply disastrous. Nicky said he didn’t like it. I read it and instantly my face was as red as a sun-soaked jalapeno tamale! Mama tried to hide it with make up this morning nad it’s all wrong. You know those kinds of days, ladies? I wanted to tell this little bimbo hateful bitch that mama is no little country girl with braids and neither is Nicky or Robbie Price. Mama is Puerto Rican sunshine on any parade and so are these writers whose stones don’t roll but are built on a foundation of truth! She’s a jealous bitch and wants to write about J. Edgar Bagels and his moldy cream cheese ex-wife who takes pills like their Krispy Kreme donut sprinkles on her soufflé. Oh, so boring. I was falling asleep with every word. No wonder it’s in the back of the magazine. I’m going to post this entire message on-line for the world to read. Why? Because I love you all! Now run to me and shout because I’m mad!

  19. Anonymous Anonymous | 11:29 AM |  

    some of these reporters cant seem to find anything that wasn't already stated or have the idea of whats it like to grow up around an old boy system. where the next generation of lords are getting anything they want, getting away with murder. i've seen the kids of cops and judges and big lawyers get away with things that would have put me away for years. there are a lot of things still unheard of or unexplainable. it good to see someone confronting a reporter that doesn't have a f'ing clue about what she's talking about, and getting all of this out of the dark. looking forward to the book.

  20. Anonymous Anonymous | 2:16 PM |  

    NL, you better watch your back.

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