Photo Essay: The Dying Padre Hotel: A Bakersfield icon becomes a ghost tower - By N.L. Belardes
No more springtime for the Padre Hotel, Bakersfield, CA
I wandered around downtown, just taking a walk, really. There was the Padre Hotel, a once strong beacon of Bakersfield as a growing city, now a relic that says: even guilded, this relic is no more.
When will it be torn down, chopped up, fished out as construction chum for the industrial construction scavengers to eat?
It's just one building, in one small city. Drive to L.A., weave downtown among towering piles of refuse, and you'll forget the Padre Hotel even exists.
It's a dead relic of past Hollywood-Bakersfield days. Movie stars, extras, producers, directors, all hanging out and mingling after a long Kern Canyon Western Movie shoot--stagecoaches rumbling down canyon trails, the mighty Kern River in the distance--white men in brown make-up: Indians on hillsides... the Old West. Bakersfield-Hollywood dimmed. And now the gilded Padre, retrofitted on the outside, decayed on the interior. The Old West.
The retrofit diseased
Yet I'm sure people are happier now, right? Downtown has been cleaned up. The construction site headache with its flotsam of decayed Padre bits and pieces has been swept away to the city dump.
Look at the clean lot, with the gilded shadow in the background
Local music can sing songs of heyday once again now that the lot has been cleansed of its demons. Until you walk up to the building itself, and peer beneath the scabs.
A wounded, dying structure, waiting for its last gasp?
Local news washes ashore, adds to the wooden scab wounds
Peer in through dirt-covered windows to the truth
Focus in on pock-marked steps: boils burst, wounds exposed
A lone bucket makes for ghostly abandonment
Empty, torn, broken, alone... walls with echoes?
Coffee blood. Building abandoned. Construction waste gone. Guilded image hiding the darkness. Boards covering community memories. A dying Padre. Dead.
Labels: Bakersfield, commercial development, construction, home mortgage, real estate, slum, slum lords
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Thursday, March 08, 2007.
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I'm sure one of local transients has become more culturally aware with that copy of Mas Magazine.
See? It's the power of print! Distributed and re-read by niche markets, like our beloved transients of Bako!
Matt
www.bakotopia.com
Matt, did you not see the Valentine headline on that Mas? You can barely read it... you know, The Padre used to be a lovers leap... maybe that's why that particular edition made its way there...
I remember going to the top fire escape and sitting up there and watching the city below all the time. There was this weird mysterious face, that always popped up through the window in the elevator when you got to the top floor. No matter how many times I went up there it always startled me.
Did you take those pictures N.L.? You have a GREAT eye for the perfect shot! Seriously. You can take a dirty alley full of trash and turn it into something artistic and beautiful! I love it!
I may be in the minority – but – if they turn the Padre Hotel into an upwardly mobile Yuppie condo, then they should just tear it down. That building was never about propriety and respectability. It was all about individualism and character.
A related story: the Hotel Tegeler, also on “H” Street? In the 1980’s, it was the most dismal, horrible, end-of-the-world hotel imaginable. Roomers would keep motorcycles in bathtubs. Frightening signs would warn against cooking in rooms. The rug was a hideous amalgam of green and red rectangles. Shocking! It was then torched in a fire in the Nineties. They rebuilt the place, made all the structural changes. I had a friend who stayed there, and I visited her. You know what? It was back to being an end-of-the-world, end-of-the-line domicile with desperate characters! Some areas are just zoned for quirkiness and/or despair!
yeah greg, reminds me of an old Ozzy quote..."you can't polish a turd"...
Norma you're such a kiss-ass.
I heard that there was a missle or some kind of rocket or something at the top of the building that the old owner refused to take down and they didn't take it down until after his death? anyone hear about that.
I think anon is funny. Norma is a fan, so she expresses positive views of this site. She isn't afraid to put her name down. Anon is basically a negative viewer and very afraid to put his/her name probably for fear of backlash and being exposed... yet, anon can't stay away from the site. Why? Addiction! :)
Norma you're such a kiss-ass.
I know, I know! I've gone to counseling and I'm on medication right now for it so hopefully soon I'll be cured.
My ass kissing issues have already destroyed three marriages, the relationship with my father, and the lives of one hundred goldfish.
That's a great title for a book, Norma's A Kiss Ass.
those are great photos of the padre hotel... my favorite is the one of the bleeding coffe cup.
that building has so much history. . so many stories to tell. it's haunted, historical, wicked and amazing all at the same time.
as for "Anonymous," why all the name calling? norma is a fan like many of us ~and obviously you since you can't help but read this site~ but she can state her opinion, leave her name by it and has a great enough sense of humor to turn the other way when ignorant people like you can say what you say and not leave your name behind it.
**i'm sticking my tongue at you!**
this is community and we allow of disagreements and opinion - but we shouldn't allow attacks of any kind.
Great photos! I love the desolate creepiness you've captured. The Padre is dying Bakersfield history. We all have so many memories of that building. I wish whoever owns it would finish it and re-open it. It would be great to see the Padre alive again.
If not a book, at least a country song.
There's a tear
in my beer
and I'm a kiss ass
for you dearrrrr
You are on my lonely mind
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