Stocton= most miserable city in US!

And Modesto comes in 5th!
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=6845277&page=1

I work there and I have to agree although Vallejo is pretty miserable. Most beautiful weather in California but the absolute rudest people I've ever come in contact with.

and if I weren't blissfully happily married, he could put his boots under my bed anytime. :swoon:

If we hadn't moved out of town in 1967, so would have I.

of times. He didn't really party but he hung out with my friends a bit.

I think part of Stockton's probs have to do with all the foreclosures
and so much of the home properties being under water.

Lodi though just 15 miles North and very nice.

It was consistently the leader in California's unemployment statistics, except for the odd years that Modesto took the honors. It had one of the largest skid rows for a town its size in the nation. Among my earliest memories is of the winos stretched out on the lawn in front of the old court house (the one that was torn down to make way for the one that was built around 1960 and was torn down just a few years ago).

Up until the mid 1900's it was a huge manufacturing city with a booming inland port. The city grew rapidly and was one of the wealthiest in California. Then everything changed. Rail lines, where Stockton was a major hub, became less important. Freeways replaced ferryboats. Jobs moved to areas where cheaper labor could be had. The reduction in jobs de-emphasized the importance of the port, and eventually cheaper ground transportation shifted the port of preference to Oakland. The introduction of the huge cargo containers, and the inability of those ships to navigate to Stockton, sealed the deal.

So today Stockton is a large city in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no economic base. You can't keep the economy for 300k people vibrant through farming, and that's about all the area has left.

IIRC, he was the official school jester, nerdy not sexy then, nice guy and class clown.

I'm not in the city, but have a Stockton address.

True, our culture isn't much but I like my little house on a levee top on a one-third acre, behind an automatic gate, at the end of a long driveway, with a dock and seabirds and quiet.

And I can get to SF in 90 minutes and to yosemite in a couple hours.

It's not all bad.

:patriot:

Cool, baseball is just around the corner. I understand pitchers and catchers have already reported to training camps.