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Which city overall is better? I always hear bad things about Bakersfield, but it can't be worse than El Paso. Bakersfield probably has more to do and is prettier, but I've never been there, so I'm not sure.
El Paso is a much, much, much better city in my personal opinion.
El Paso in my opinion is a much, much, much more vibrant city. Very vibrant for a city of it's size and stays open much longer than a majority of cities.
Bakersfield is just a city with a very, very high income disparity with about half of the population living in extremely rough, older neighborhoods and the other half residing in a sea of McMansion's with newer but not-impressive strip malls.
El Paso's downtown while not the most vibrant is extremely clean and there are alot of interesting and quaint areas adjacent to the downtown also.
Bakersfield downtown is smaller than some cities of 50,000 people and there are tourist downtowns with a thousand people that are more vibrant than Bakersfield.
Bakersfield and Kern County has a tremendously high level of violence which is interesting considering that it has a higher household income than Los Angeles and around 30% more median household income than El Paso.
El Paso has long been considered one of the safest cities in the United States.
Bakersfield has extreme levels of gang violence. Bakersfield and Kern County is very, very, very dangerous. Amazing, Kern County has 137 homicides per year which is many, many times the number of El Paso County, Texas
Interesting, how Bakersfield with a median household income higher than that of Los Angeles has such violence.
There are some nice quiet mountain areas in Kern County like Tehachapi, Pine Mountain Club, Frazier Park who like a mountain environment with snow.
The Franklin Mountains are very dry in comparison to the Mountain areas near Bakersfield.
I would not recommend either Bakersfield or El Paso for those with respiratory issues. Although, the air seemed more polluted in Bakersfield.
I have only been El Paso, and prior to going there I expected it to be not so great. However, its severely underrated IMO. Its safer then most people think, and it can be attributed to the presence of so many LE agencies in the area. I would imagine COL in El Paso is better then Bakersfield....because well its CA. However, I cannot say for sure.
I met some very friendly folks there when hiking up Monte Cristo Rey.
People mentioned hiking....well, less then 2 hours away is Cloudcroft, NM...
in the pines at about 9000 ft ...also Ruidoso, NM...Ski Apache...very good high mtn skiing.
Also White Sands National Park...Las Cruces, NM..my fave in NM.
Climate...edge to El Paso...interestingly Bakersfield and El Paso both have exact same average annual
temperature: 66.2 degrees.
El Paso.....Bakersfield
59/35 JAN 59/40
64/39 FEB 64/43
72/46 MAR 70/47
80/53 APR 76/51
89/62 MAY 84/58
97/71 JUN 92/65
96/73 JUL 98/71
94/72 AUG 97/70
88/65 SEP 91/65
80/54 OCT 80/55
67/42 NOV 67/45
58/35 DEC 59/39
El Paso has a warmer spring and early summer then Bakersfield...march, april, may, june
however, late summer is less hot in El Paso,
probably due to summer monsoon...Bakersfield rainfall pattern is exact opposite to El Paso,
it has bone dry summers. I prefer El Paso's drier winters.
I met some very friendly folks there when hiking up Monte Cristo Rey.
People mentioned hiking....well, less then 2 hours away is Cloudcroft, NM...
in the pines at about 9000 ft ...also Ruidoso, NM...Ski Apache...very good high mtn skiing.
Also White Sands National Park...Las Cruces, NM..my fave in NM.
Climate...edge to El Paso...interestingly Bakersfield and El Paso both have exact same average annual
temperature: 66.2 degrees.
El Paso.....Bakersfield
59/35 JAN 59/40
64/39 FEB 64/43
72/46 MAR 70/47
80/53 APR 76/51
89/62 MAY 84/58
97/71 JUN 92/65
96/73 JUL 98/71
94/72 AUG 97/70
88/65 SEP 91/65
80/54 OCT 80/55
67/42 NOV 67/45
58/35 DEC 59/39
El Paso has a warmer spring and early summer then Bakersfield...march, april, may, june
however, late summer is less hot in El Paso,
probably due to summer monsoon...Bakersfield rainfall pattern is exact opposite to El Paso,
it has bone dry summers. I prefer El Paso's drier winters.
Wow! That’s about as similar as you can get? I guess Bakersfield is slightly warmer in the winter with its lows so I’ll take that? Bakersfield’s location is far superior though.
Well, El Paso has a crime rate that is lower than the national average. Bakersfield’s is higher.
City-data gives the national average crime score as 280. Anything lower is safer, etc.
El Paso is 183.
Bakersfield is 368!
There he is going to the ghetto areas in both cities.
Very grimy in both areas, but I'm sure Bakersfield is more violent.
Funnily enough, he visits Fresno and bashes it throughout, but doesn't say much about Bakersfield even tho the hood in Bako looks MUCH worse.
El Paso is definitely prettier than Bakersfield, but it's not a night and day difference like some have tried to make it out. Check out the videos to compare both cities. He also visits the nice parts of El Paso, but never visits the good parts of Bakersfield. You can watch that video on his channel.
I've been to both and passed by many times, I would choose El Paso. If we consider just the cities itself and nothing like approximation to other cities like Bakersfield is to L.A.
El Paso just doesn't seem bad at all. Like yeah it looks rundown aswell but it doesn't feel like it has the ghetto population factor that Bakersfield does. The scenery is also a notch better in the Texas version. Once again though the real drawback of El Paso is how isolated it feels, it feels like one of the most isolated places in America and there's quite a number of them.
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