Nicnac Podcast: Silicon Valley Meets Hellhole, CA

In this episode, Nicnac covers the history of Hellhole, Ca (Chico, CA) from the little they know about The Mechoopda Maidu to the days of The Bidwells, the agriculture migration, the segregation and sundown era, The Cold War and the town being discovered by Silicon Valley retirees as the nearby foothills burn and the creeks go dry. Nicnac sees what city planners and developers are doing. Namely trying to create a quaint clone of Scottsdale Arizona for the retirees. But, this planning approach ignores Chico State along with the unhappy tempest-tossed shelterless, welfare and working-class lifers stuck here for lack of an alternative.

Nicnac points out “you grew up in this hellhole too” and tries to settle for the value of simply reporting things as they are. Nicnac ends by pointing out the hypocrisy of The iPhone using Silicon Valley person. They were almost that person. They are glad that they’ve moved on but they remain unsure of how to deal with a demographic that thinks listening to NPR makes any sort of personal human crimes a nonissue. Moreover, they wonder why they keep caring so much about the fate of humanity when they clearly hate all humans.

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Credits

The opening music is Raindrop Rhapsody by Josh Eikenberry. The closing music is Catch Me If You Can by Attica Attica. Find them at atticaattica.bandcamp.com.

The Nicnac Podcast & FSRideAlong Series is © 2006-2021 by Nicnac Marsh and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License