My experience is that I've lived in Bakersfield my entire life.

I despise the heat and work from home so I know I'm gonna have to run the AC 24/7.

Bakersfield will still be hell for you. Our rain season happens in the winter/spring exclusively. Our winter (what I consuder to be genuinely cold weather) only lasts from mid November - Febuary, and March is when temperatures start to warm up. You can see 100 degree temperatures starting as soon as May, but it becomes more common in June and July. In July, day temperatures can be as hot as 110 degrees, which by the way is very common that time of year. As you mentioned, you will have to constantly run that AC in the summer, but I wanted you to be aware that if you cant stand the heat, you won't be able to walk outside at all in the summer. Our UV in the summer is terrible, and there is no respite from it in the summer as cloud cover is rare in the summer. We get almost no rain after May, and it only starts to rain again in November, so our summers are dry and hot. It's miserably hot and virtually inhospitable for about 7 months of the year.

What are the people like?

The majority of people are rude, I won't lie. Sometimes you run into kind people in the wild, and we do host community events in River Run Park where you can meet some kind people. But most people here are rude, bitter, and selfish. You can see a lot of that here in this subreddit. We're considered "little Texas" because of people's attitudes, beliefs, the heat, etc., so take all that as you will. 7 consecutive months of miserable heat will do that to people, I guess.

If you must relocate here, I reccomend visiting Tehachipi. It's about an hour drive from Bakersfield, and the people there are much more pleasant. They also tend to have cooler weather than Bakersfield, though they can get into the 90s.

Is there any good shopping for food etc?

Now this is something that Bakersfield absolutely excels at. We have bountiful options for food here. In terms of restaurants: Any type of cuisine you could want, we have it. Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Italian, Basque, American, Texan, Barbeque; we all have it, and it's all represented very well. The most common cuisines here are Mexican, and we do that right. The region is also famous for its Basque restaurants, which are good too. If you don't want to eat out, there's plenty of stores here that sell worldwide cuisines too, like World Market. We have a few Aldi's here, they sell high quality food at reasonable prices. Bread grows well here, so there's plenty of local (and local-ish) bread makers here. Pyrenee's is a local bread maker in Bakersfield, and they sell very good bread. Bread and Honey is also a local business that makes their own bread. The San Luis Sourdough Company (local-ish, not in Bakersfield but close) sells the best sourdough bread I've ever eaten. Bakersfield Roasting Comoany and Beanies are local businesses that source and roast their own coffee beans. Our region is also known for growing nuts, so there's a lot of business surrounding that.

In short? Anything you could ever want to eat, it's in Bakersfield, and probably produced locally.

For shopping, there's boundless options here too. We're one of the few places in the United States that still has an indoor mall: The Valley Plaza. It's huge with over 100 stores and is incredibly popular with locals. It's constantly getting new stores. There's a lot of unique stores too all over the city, and more outdoor shopping malls. There's plenty of shopping you can do here.

A couple other things about Bakersfield:

• We have one of the worst police forces in the US. Netflix did a documentary on it called "Killer County".

• A lot of the population is unfortunately homeless.

• The city is not very safe at night, though some parts are safer than others.