City of Vallejo, Bankrupt

I lived across the river from Vallejo for a few years in the '70s. It was a city grown fat from sucking the teat of the Navy for more than a hundred and fifty years. When the Navy abandoned the shipyard at Mare Island, the oldest American military facility on the West coast, the city lost it's way, like a lamprey after the last salmon dies, beneath its toothy grip.

Couldn't happen to a nicer place. You have to hang around a large military establishment to understand what the towns that form outside of them are like. They aren't friendly or glad to see you when you exit the base. They take your money, grudgingly and give back as little as possible. We worked side by side with the shipyard workers from town. We worked harder and longer hours and made a tenth as much, if that. They stole everything that wasn't nailed down. You meet them out in town, most of them wouldn't say hello, much less buy you a beer. No sailors ever dated their daughters. If you drank at the wrong bar or picked up a not local whore on Tennessee Street, you got thrown in jail by the city police. The XO always loved that.

There are old houses downtown that feature foundations and basements built with massive granite ballast blocks, timbered with oaken beams and strait pine spars, all stolen from Mare Island. They'll probably last a thousand years. No materials are too good to use when they are free.

So, anyway. Vallejo can't pay it's bills. Tough luck.