The Many Adventures of Berdoo

So here is how they would like you to see it:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/imageviewer.asp?ean=9780738555812

But this is the reality of it and how it will be remembered:

An Excerpt by Sam Quiniones, LA Times (June 29, 2008)

www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-deadprez29-2008jun29,0,5220060,full.story

"They grew up together...Nobody ever anticipated this."The story ... is a tale of neighborhood bonds torn apart by power, betrayal and greed... 'You grow up with somebody 15 or 20 years and he
tries to kill you,...Something's wrong there.' San Bernardino's West Side is a flatland of wooden houses, small markets and vacant lots that has always been separate from the rest of the city.

The Santa Fe railroad, built in the late 1800s, divided the West Side from downtown. In the 1960s, the 215 Freeway, with offramps only heading east, 'strangled the business district here, which was
extremely active,' said Esther Estrada, a city councilwoman who grew up in the neighborhood. But the West Side hung in.Santa Fe's train repair shop employed more than 1,000 people, most of them West Siders. Men also worked at Kaiser Steel's factory in Fontana, or at Norton Air Force base.

Yet the neighborhood united against outside threats.

In 1983, the school district moved to close Pacific High School. The West Side loved the school. Barrio kids anchored its top-flight wrestling team... But the district prevailed, and the school closed.

Then in 1984, Kaiser Steel closed, laying off dozens of neighborhood men. In 1992, Norton Air Force Base also closed, taking 10,000 jobs. Then, Santa Fe Railroad took its shop and a thousand
jobs to Topeka, Kan.

New drugs arrived in the barrio.

In the early 1980s... 'the thing that really destroyed a lot of families was PCP' -- an animal tranquilizer that makes humans impervious to pain.

Crack came in the late 1980s. Kids dealing dope replaced men with union jobs.

Youths stopped dancing to form gang cliques and feud over street corners. Families fleeing the L.A. gang-and-crack nightmare brought more of it to San Bernardino.

Violence skyrocketed. Many West Side youths went to prison...

New immigrants began moving in. They took the menial jobs that neighborhood youths had counted as theirs. Old-time Mexican American families felt invaded."

So in my pursuit for something greater, I have resolved that this is not a place I would seek out FOR ANYTHING WHAT-SO-EVER.