Yeah combat and all that shit at home depot doesn't do jack. Bengal is the only thing available from mainstream ecommerce retailers that actually works. Not sure if the best version of it can be shipped to california though.

Is that "the chalk"? When I lived in NYC that was legendary -- you could watch a roach touch it and almost immediately fall over dead.

The only thing that worked for me was sealing up holes, and that wasn't 100%. I tried the genetic-warfare gel that others here are talking about, and it didn't seem to work -- it could've been working, but being in a 6-floor walk-up meant there were probably millions of roaches to take the place of the dead ones.

The other thing I noticed is that whether you have roaches in NYC is a complete crapshoot -- I lived directly above a bar/restaurant and had zero bugs of any kind, and I lived with no bar/restaurant in sight and had a roach problem. Go figure.