Highway 99 - The NY Times has a piece on the highway that cuts through the farming towns of California's Central Valley, Highway 99. Since Interstate 5, the main north-south route that between LA and SF actually bypasses the cities of the Central Valley for an even more desolate stretch of land, many wanna-be snobby urban hipsters such as myself have never even visited them. Looking at the vast Bed, Bath and Beyond suburbia that is spreading through the "fly-over" cities of Modesto, Fresno and Bakersfield, is a reminder that the philosophical splits in California are more accurately divided between east and west, not north and south.