San Diego Reader

FALLBROOK

I often feel in downtown Fallbrook that I have walked through a door into the past, the door I have been looking for all my life. It happens at Jerry’s Barber Shop most often. Jerry’s is on the corner of Main and Alvarado, and I take five-year-old Sam and three-year-old Hank there to have their bangs snipped into a straight, even line, to have the backs of their necks and the curves above their ears mown and clipped, to see their eyes once again, enormous and brown. They sit still in expectation of Dum Dums, small white-wrapped lollipops that taste of cherry, apple, grape, or lime.

Jerry’s is an ordinary place, archetypal in its particulars. The benches and chairs in the waiting area are upholstered in vinyl, and it’s old men, mostly, who sit waiting for their turn. The coffee table is strewn with fishing and golf magazines as worn as dollar bills. The plate-glass window casts the shadow of Jerry’s name on our legs. The backward clock tells time in reverse. Combs float in Barbicide. Behind us, stretching the length of the wall in an attitude of leaping, is a blue sailfish as shiny and hard as the linoleum under our feet. “Please do not pet,” a sign says.

The older customers tend to look at Sam and Hank and remember their own children, or themselves as children. Once, while Hank’s hair was falling to the floor like down and Sam was waiting his turn, a man in glasses and an ironed short-sleeved shirt looked approvingly at him. He started to tell Sam and me about his childhood summers, about growing up on a farm in the Northwest, where he climbed trees and fished. Every morning, he said, he and his brothers and sisters would sit at the table for breakfast. His mother would bring bowls of steaming oatmeal to each place. No one could start, though, until his grandfather had sat down and blessed the meal. His grandfather was a Lutheran, and he blessed everything. He prayed and prayed, and the children watched the steam rise up, each wisp thinner than the last. It had always stopped steaming before his grandfather stopped praying.

“My mother cut my hair with a bowl,” he told Sam. “The same bowl we used for that oatmeal.”

Outside the barbershop, the street is usually sunny. Cars stop for the light and move past us, windows down, arms resting on doors. As we wait I tend to think of what we’ll do after the haircuts. We could eat at the soda fountain across the street, in what used to be a drugstore but is now the Café des Artistes and a gallery. We could walk another hundred yards and ask the librarian if there are any new books about the Titanic. If the gem-and-mineral museum is open, we could step into the back room and ask the curator to turn on the black light so that all the fluorescent rocks glow green, orange, and yellow. There’s the Book Nook or Chubby Chix, which sells retro candy: Lemonheads, Neccos, and Charms. Slim pink bubble-gum cigarettes, the kind that leave powder on your fingertips.

But once Sam and Hank are both in barber’s chairs, I’m in no hurry to leave. I watch them the way the man in the ironed shirt watched the steam of his oatmeal all those years ago, willing it to keep rising.

“Look down,” Jerry says. “Now look up.” Sam holds still, and Jerry slowly, carefully cuts a straight line. “Good,” he says. “You’re doing good.”

Their blond hair mixes with the gray hair on the floor and I hold myself still between two red vinyl chairs on Main Street, willing it to go on a little longer, for the backwards clock to go forward and the forward clock to go backwards, so that we are always right here.

— Laura McNeal

CLAIREMONT

Asked where I live in San Diego, I always say “beautiful Clairemont,” because I’m a smartass and because it’s the truth. I might qualify (place, not beauty) by adding “North Clairemont,” to distinguish our geographical locale. North Clairemont is almost paradise: our home rides a large coyoted canyon where ocean breeze and coastal fog are as backyard-regular as hummingbirds and red-tailed hawks. I like its tranquillity, despite the nearby barking dog, whose owners we’ve all complained about. But that’s the only rent in the carpet; otherwise, it’s immensely democratic — to one Joe, a retirement villa; to another, a middle-class boondock.

I cross the street, get my neighbor Becky Newhouse, and we head to our local Starbucks. At 51, Newhouse is a lifelong Clairemontian, a part-time substitute teacher at Marston Middle School, and an irrepressible factotum whose cheerful voice can be heard charging Saturday driveway talk with, as my grandmother used to call it, “sunny optimism.”

How might you define Clairemont? School-savvy Newhouse surprises me: “It’s a forgotten community,” she says. Clairemont is not “rich like La Jolla,” which is “affluent enough for the school board to grant them autonomy.” Not so on the mesa: “We don’t have the money to be a charter school, Mr. Bersin.” Though test scores are up, Newhouse struggles with a school system that no longer bonds the community. She figure-skates over her girlhood, when, after class, kids lolled their way through grassy lots to rec centers. Next-door kids were always buddies. Now Amber-alerted parents chauffeur children everywhere.

We chat, sip drinks; then Newhouse treads a new track. As one of San Diego’s hubs, Clairemont is supremely accessible, lying between I-5 and I-805/163, south of San Clemente Canyon and north of Mission Valley; it’s also supremely in-between. It’s near to but not the beach; it’s near to but not the condo-bracken of the Golden Triangle, the nerd-ridden campus of UCSD, the immigrant carnival of Kearny Mesa, the heat-seeking inlands. It’s near to but not Pacific Beach, where summer trash festers in the streets and multiunit-apartment density feels earthquake-ready.

I wonder whether this in-between reality of our burb explains our relationship. After we gossip for 40 minutes about children and work and college and spouses and elderly parents (one of hers living, both of mine dead) and the block party we’ve never had, I ask, “Why is it that, despite having lived across the street from each other for 13 years, we’re still not good friends?”

“We may not be good friends,” she says, “but we’re good neighbors.” Through the nagging rasp of the coffee grinder, the phrase pings with wisdom.

“And being ‘good neighbors’ means?”

“If a neighbor needed a friend, the neighbor would be there.” I would too. It’s indisputable.

Newhouse and I are close without my knowing it, without my having thought of closeness in just this way. Up on the mesa, the pickets of our illusional fence widen once we admit we need each other, once we discover the purposeful in-between-ness of neighbors. That feels supremely Clairemont, a profound acquaintanceship we need elevate no higher than that.

— Thomas Larson

IMPERIAL BEACH

IB? My friend Mark nailed it the other night. We had fallen into conversation outside Cow-A-Bunga, the ice cream and coffee place at the entrance to IB’s pier. It was getting dark. You could just see the teeth of the waves and hear them crack as they broke. “Right now,” he said, “this could be the old IB. Empty beach, dusty streets, no sidewalks, nobody to say, ‘Why’s your dog not on a leash?’ ”

He talked about when they had a pod of killer whales coming to scratch their backs against the pier legs. Or when he and his buddies stole down into the Tijuana River sloughs in the half-light of dawn. “You’d see least terns take to wing when the tide started coming in. The whole flock’d be white one moment, then turn and they’d be all black. So beautiful. They looked like money falling out of the sky.”

He was mourning something on the way to being lost, as if IB itself were on the endangered species list. And maybe he’s right. The last rough-hewn, working-class, Midwestern beach town on the coast looks all primed to be slicked up. The harbingers are the millionaires’ houses that are starting to block off IB’s oceanfront. How long before real money falls from the sky and low-rent, workaday IB is given the eviction notice?

IB has one protector: Tijuana River pollution. Just the thought of icky stuff in the ocean water after rains gives pause to La Jolla investors.

But that’s IB. It’s on the edge.

To understand IB, you’ve got to approach it from the border. Walk up, follow the shoreline, a time-honored illegal immigrants’ route. It becomes tense, unpredictable, silent, threatening, especially around Boca Rio, the mouth of the Tijuana River. Folks wading across risk their lives, from the holes and currents and the E. coli in the water. Add to that the sudden battering of chopper rotors and Border Patrol four-wheel drives swooping in, and it can feel like a war zone.

Then, between one sand dune and the next, the beach transforms. Lovers wander past. Kids play. Families picnic. The First House in America appears, a condo thrusting toward the beach. It’s the southernmost finger of IB, reaching down between the sloughs and the ocean. This place, IB, you realize, is a frontier town.

And you find the frontier people in Ye Olde Plank. It’s been here on the beach since 1886. Sundays, the Plank crowd is a slice of real IBithans. At the horseshoe bar you’ll sit next to off-duty Customs and Border Patrol guys, nurses, teachers, actors, trailer-park retirees, long-bearded musicians, eccentrics, and even the odd millionaire. But the flavor’s set by surfers and retired enlisted Navy, here with spouses for Sunday brunch. Among them, ex-UDT/SEALs (guys who trained up the road in Coronado but wouldn’t live there for a million bucks) can spin hair-raising yarns set in Asia and Central America.

And keeping them all in order was Babs. Sunday mornings, Babs cooked out on the beach-deck barbecue. The last time I was there, she handed me an eight-ounce steak, a five-egg omelet, home fries, and a Bloody Mary, all for around six bucks. She’s just left, but the breakfast deal continues. Al, the owner, says he keeps the price low because most of his customers are friends, regulars, IB lifers. It’s a club. Their cards, pictures, plaques cover the walls. Their puffer fish and diver’s helmets dangle over the bar. And together they often do good works, like going down to Honduras and building a clinic, or helping each other out with medical bills.

Of course, there’s no point in hiding IB’s other sides. The place has had its share of vigilantes, scam artists, racists, and toughs. The pier in the old days was where deals went down. The beach was for bonfire-keg parties that could erupt into big, brawling fistfights. One zonked-out girl named Suzie appeared here and had her baby in the women’s toilets. Later, someone threw her off the pier into the water, dead, murdered. It could be a rough, tough town.

And let’s face it, planned it is not. Palm Avenue’s the worst kind of strip. Just a wide road with miles of…what? Tire shops, fast-food franchises, car-repair joints. Yet it’s also the home of two of my favorite places: the Scoreboard, a bar where people rave about the once-a-month Maine lobster dinners, and Lydia’s Mexican eatery, where Lydia Pimentel’s 6 children, 26 grandchildren, and 44 great-grandchildren get everybody up and dancing, anything from line-dancing to merengue, ranchero, quebradita, and salsa in the evenings. ¡Qué noche! My one big regret? The Pawn Shop has gone, retreated to Chula Vista. Ron Krasner helped me out of financial pickles many a time. What started as a voyage of fear and shame became a kind of social occasion. They’d get to recognize the Fender Strat I brought in. I’d even make stupid offers for the moose on their walls. But Ron kept me under a roof when no bank would look my way.

The truth is, IB’s so uncool it’s cool. Even the surfing is kind of far out. Its secret treasure is Boca Rio. The mouth of the Tijuana River has always had, by legend, two things: a wave that trips over a bump outside the river’s entrance, and a friendly killer whale, Broken Fin, who’s said to have hung around there on and off for years. There are a lot of jokes about first-timers spotting that bent-over fin and paddling like hell for shore.

That’s exactly it. IB’s on the edge, between America and no-man’s-land. For sure, it’s mellowed. Sand-castle-building contests have taken over from the boozy beach keg parties. And they’ve upgraded the pier’s entrance with cute shops and eateries like Cow-A-Bunga. But that doesn’t mean the IBithans have all been tamed.

“Want to come down to the sloughs, tonight?” said Mark to me that evening as we finished our ice creams. “Got a boat. I could take you all through. No telling what we’ll see.”

— Bill Manson

ROLANDO

A sense of humanity pervades this little community on San Diego’s eastern fringe, a sense that beauty matters to the souls of all men, not just those who can afford La Jolla. Though the name Rolando has come to include everything between College Avenue to the west, El Cajon Boulevard to the north, the city of La Mesa to the east, and University Avenue to the south, the original neighborhood is the eight to ten blocks centered around the four-way-stop intersection of Solita Avenue and Rolando Boulevard. Stamped on the sidewalk on the southwest corner is the name “G. R. Daley” and the date “8-27.”

I don’t know if Mr. Daley built just the sidewalks — the old style with a strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the street for grass or gardens — or if he built the streets and houses too. But the date seems right for this area. In 1927, the Great War had been won nine years earlier and the stock market was two years from crashing. While Europe still licked its wounds, American pride and sense of possibility soared. And I imagine that G. R. Daley and the other men who constructed Rolando wanted to build a neighborhood that reflected that new sense of national joy. If so, they succeeded.

They built ornate concrete gas lamps to illuminate the streets and sidewalks at night. They planted trees along the avenues to green up the neighborhood by day. As you enter from the north on Rolando Boulevard, towering silk oak trees 90 feet tall line both sides of the road. The men made the streets narrow for an intimate feel, with gentle curves that follow the natural contours of the landscape. They gave the streets Spanish names such as Aragon, Serrano, and Valencia. They built staircases that pedestrians could use to shortcut between streets. And they built small but picturesque houses that a veteran of the Great War would be proud to come home to.

Almost all of the houses in Rolando are less than 1500 square feet. Those that are larger have had additions that mar the quaint symmetry Mr. Daley and his cohorts crafted so carefully. They sit centered on modest-sized lots, evenly spaced from each other. Styles include Cape Cod, Spanish Colonial, French cottage, and a sort of Mediterranean bungalow. Smooth, hand-troweled exteriors are the rule, as opposed to rough, sprayed-on stucco. The houses are on raised foundations, not concrete slabs, and have hardwood floors and wood-framed windows. Even today, the houses look fresh and inviting.

The pride that was put into building Rolando lives on today in its residents. Though you see few gardeners’ trucks parked at the curb, you see well-maintained gardens. Some are spectacular. I can think of only one house that has fallen into serious disrepair. On a recent tour through the neighborhood I saw a single “For Sale” sign. It’s a place people don’t want to leave.

— Ernie Grimm

PACIFIC BEACH

Once or twice a year, I try to walk all of Garnet Avenue between Mission Boulevard and Ingraham. I like to do it on the Saturday in early May when the PB Block Party is in full swing. Strolling down Garnet when it’s closed to cars and swollen with throngs of young men and women dressed in skimpy clothing who’ve gone through hell to find a parking space, I feel smug. I live a mile north of Crystal Pier, so I can walk or bicycle. I never have to worry about parking.

My complacency is fleeting. I moved to Pacific Beach in 1974, a 20-year-old from Chicago. Apartment-hunting, I’d been charmed by the bejeweled street names: Diamond, Tourmaline, Sapphire, Emerald, Felspar, Opal. No neighborhood I’d ever known in the Midwest had names like that. Behind the Vons, my husband and I found a large two-bedroom unit where the rent was $185 a month. Some evenings we walked toward the beach on Diamond, returning along Garnet. Almost all the shops were closed at night back then. We passed few other pedestrians.

I don’t remember what year the changes began. At some point, a rock-and-roll club called Mom’s opened across Garnet from the New Seed. Diego’s, a huge Mexican restaurant and nightclub, started drawing crowds near the pier, and a comedy club appeared. My husband and I joked that Garnet Avenue was turning into the Boulevard Saint-Michel of San Diego. But we weren’t paying much attention to Garnet. We’d had our first baby and had moved from the apartment into a house near Bird Rock Elementary.

We still shopped at the Vons out of habit. But years passed before we walked the avenue again. We knew, of course, that the Walker Scott at Garnet and Bayard had closed, as had Susan’s Toys and the See’s candy outlet. We’d noticed that the Wherehouse and Café Crema and Zanzibar had moved in. Only on foot, however, did we realize how many sushi joints (seven) have opened. At an equal number of storefronts, you can get a tattoo or have your navel pierced. So many boutiques have opened that girls now arrive in packs to spend their afternoons trolling for fashion finds. At night, the clatter of cutlery and conversation spills out from restaurants and bars to fill the street.

My timing seems off. When I was 20, PB was filled with middle-aged people whose kids would soon be leaving home. Now I’ve turned into one of them, and PB is full of 20-somethings.

I’m not moving. When I go west on Garnet past Mission Boulevard, when I walk out onto Crystal Pier and go beyond all the cottages, I find the same men and boys who were fishing there in 1974. The ocean is still limitless. It still smells like salt and sea creatures, and it still makes PB cooler and gloomier than most of San Diego County. Thirty years from now, that part of my neighborhood won’t have changed.

— Jeannette De Wyze

NORMAL HEIGHTS

Before the newlyweds across the street went on their honeymoon, they asked me to keep an eye on their house. Yesterday, a neighbor two doors down, an elderly Mexican woman, brought me a big bowl of chicken soup. In the fall, I know that another neighbor will leave sacks of persimmons by my front door. I know that my neighbor across the street is depressed because the company he works for has filed for bankruptcy. I know that his next-door neighbor’s 15-year-old daughter has started taking insulin.

The lots in Normal Heights are small. Clearances between buildings are narrow. Our streets are narrow. This intimacy was compounded during the 1960s and 1970s when many of the single-family homes were demolished to make way for high-density apartment buildings. Sixteen people, for example, live to my immediate right. A family of five to my left. We can hear each other laugh, cough, sneeze, and weep. Without really wanting to, we share in each other’s lives.

Eighteen different languages are spoken at Adams Elementary. In the late afternoon while I water my lawn, I watch Eritrean women pass by in their long white cotton shawls. The Cambodians who live across the alley have an elaborate setup of plastic wading pools in which they grow Ipomoea aquatica, or water spinach. At North Park Produce, a store three blocks away, I shop beside veiled women, turbaned men, and people wearing national dress I can’t identify. There are a number of idle young African-American men who live on my block. They flirt with gang activity. They sell a little weed on the side. They always smile and address me with formality, “Good morning, sir.”

It’s not quite heaven. A few weeks ago, late at night, Mexican teens gathered across the street, rap blaring from their car stereos. I stood on my porch and hollered, “Excuse me, but the judgmental white people in this neighborhood are trying to get some sleep!” They looked at me. They looked at each other. They laughed. They dispersed.

We judgmental white people are growing in number here. The small house I bought two years ago has doubled in value. A block or so away on Meade Avenue, the owners of a two-bedroom, one-bath, 800-square-foot home have put it on the market for $410,000. Rents have also increased. Over at the Normal Heights Community Planning Committee, well-intentioned activists fret that housing costs are driving immigrants and other low-income minorities from the neighborhood. Most of us, I think, would like to preserve the diversity we enjoy and admire. We’re not sure if it’s possible to maintain it.

I like to walk at night and think. I know by heart almost all the streets between Adams Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard, between I-805 and 15. I know which homes have pit bulls or rottweilers. I know which homes are prone to domestic disputes. I know which homes are strangely silent. I always feel safe. On almost every block I know someone by name.

— Abe Opincar

MISSION VALLEY

It’s a difficult thing for a man to admit, but I’m going to have to come clean: I’m an unadventurous person. It’s unfashionable, non-PC, and virtually ensures the end of any social life I might have, but it’s time for me to admit it.

I’m dull.

I’m one of those people who love to eat in chain restaurants, who shop at big-box retailers, who get excited when a new outlet mall opens. I can ooh and aah over a review of a daring new Brazilian-Thai fusion restaurant while I’m eating at KFC, and I’ve been known to check out online samples of hot new goth bands right before ordering the new Celine Dion CD.

So it’s only natural that I’m drawn to Mission Valley.

If you placed all the malls and chain stores in the world end to end…but, hell, they already have, haven’t they? Restaurants, bars, clothing stores, multi-multiplexes, all of them nationally known, with convenient parking, strewn along Friars Road like hookers lined up in front of a Navy base. I spent today running from mall to mall, from Fenton Marketplace to Rio Vista Center to Park in the Valley to Mission Valley Center to Mission Valley West to Fashion Valley. I’m exhausted but high, as if I just ran the Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon.

I’m not the only one. Based on the ever-present traffic, with more and more condos being built (and what are condos but the chain-store version of home ownership?), there’s a whole population out there who not only worships at the shrine but wants to live next door.

Mission Valley during the day is for amateurs, though. Hit Bennigan’s or In Cahoots on a Friday night, say seven-thirty, and you’ll see the valley at its wildest. Both Caminos Del Rio are packed, every parking lot is full, and every restaurant and bar has a line out the door. And for what? The same restaurants and bars are duplicated all over town. Why here?

It’s the mating ritual of the urban heterosexual. Not a game I play, for assorted reasons, but certainly a popular one. You might not have to wait for a table at the T.G.I. Friday’s in Rancho San Diego, but there won’t be as many cute singles at the next table to flirt with either. There are enough happy hours in the valley to keep every man, woman, and child in San Diego County ecstatic for life.

In his 1991 book Edge City, Joel Garreau described places like Mission Valley as the cities of the future: urban/suburban hybrids where people live, work, and play, all of them designed to resemble malls (even the condos look like shopping centers), every inch connected by wide, crowded roads. Be honest — does anyone take the trolley into Mission Valley? Garreau’s vision of the future was bleak, a picture of identical urban sprawl from coast to coast. And Mission Valley fits that description.

So what? I say. Bring it on! Pave every freakin’ inch! I’m not the only one who feels this way, or else it would have failed years ago. Let the hipsters go to Hillcrest or Del Mar; Mission Valley is ours. It’s safe, predictable, and comfortable, and you know exactly what you’re going to find wherever you go. Hey, no one goes to McDonald’s for the taste of the food; we go because TV commercials tell us to.

Mission Valley is one big McDonald’s — supersized. Now excuse me while I line up for my Happy Meal.

— Patrick Brassell

SOUTHEAST SAN DIEGO

Although on any given day I don’t usually come in contact with gangs, violence, or drugs, subconsciously I am aware that they are near, and I think that most people in Southeast San Diego are conscious of that fact. I still feel safe in the neighborhood though, because I know that as long as you mind your own business, you’re fine. However, I try to avoid some places, such as the intersection of Imperial and Euclid at night, and a few streets where I know drug dealing and gang activity occur. Theft is also a moderate concern. I almost learned this the hard way when I nearly had my backpack stolen at Martin Luther King Park by a small, innocent-looking woman who was pushing a stroller and walking her young son. This made me realize that I can never be too careful.

Despite the backpack incident, Martin Luther King Park is my favorite, and that’s where the diversity of the area can be seen firsthand. It is not unusual to see Laotians, Mexicans, African-Americans, and Filipinos playing basketball in the recreation center, hitting tennis balls to each other on the tennis courts, batting on the baseball fields, or swimming with each other in the pool.

It dawned on me just how diverse the area is the other day while I was riding the trolley. I saw a mother speaking Spanish to her kids, I saw two elderly women laughing and speaking Lao (I think), and of course there were people speaking English. In fact, many of my friends from my high school are from the Philippines, Mexico, and Eritrea.

Southeast San Diego may have some common inner-city problems, but I still feel a sense of community from the majority of the law-abiding citizens in the area. I’m glad to see the area being rebuilt and restored, which started with the Malcolm X Library a few years ago and now includes the new Elementary Institute of Science. More projects like these will continue to improve and help solve the problems that plague our neighborhood.

— Brian Lawless

LA JOLLA

Which La Jolla? Old La Jolla or New La Jolla? The distinction is chronological, but also a matter of attitude. You can see the contrast along a few yards of Girard Avenue, in what used to be fondly called “the Village.” D.G. Wills’ bookstore is Old LJ, crowded, disorderly, friendly, and host to a gang of the owner’s buddies who watch Monday night football there. The Pannikin, next door, has a charming shabbiness and an atmosphere of casual amateurism, along with coffee to dwell over at the outside tables. But then comes the cold, spotless Ferrari store, often proudly empty, but occasionally visited by sleek thirtysomethings who themselves look like Ferraris. That is New LJ.

The town’s architecture shows the same division. Old LJ boasts a few beautiful buildings by Cliff May, William Templeton Johnson, and — along a glorious stretch of Prospect Street — Irving Gill. And there also remain some simple, perfectly proportioned cottages in the old-fashioned taste, although every day another one is smashed to bits by New LJ. New LJ means oversized mansions: Roman villas, medieval fortresses, Spanish haciendas, French chateaux, faux-Tudor country houses, pretentious dwellings by which the reigning plutocracy proclaims its right of descent from the ruling classes of earlier centuries. Some bloated examples of third-rate modern architecture up on the hill scream to be noticed, while everyone passes by an occasional masterpiece by Dave Lorimer. Public buildings have been blighted in the same way. The most notorious example is the La Jolla Museum of Contemptible Art. Desiring to make the building’s exterior as ridiculous as the collection inside, the museum paid postmodernist Robert Venturi to transform the once-handsome façade into a squat parody of the Gill structures across the street. New LJ rejoiced.

We can’t go without mentioning Newest La Jolla. This is the creation of real estate speculators, filling every available inch with drab, chintzy, identical townhouses and independent-dwelling stacked units (they used to be called apartment houses). The builders profit, while the community becomes more hectic and more anonymous, with traffic in and out regularly clotted to a standstill.

La Jolla is a shoreline and a mountain. Not a big mountain — only 822 feet of it, far shorter than the Empire State Building — but it is a lush beauty spot, the higher the lusher. There isn’t much solitude left, for Mount Soledad has been built over from all directions. But on the side overlooking the Pacific, the narrow, winding streets, the thick foliage, the estates hidden behind elaborate grills, and the ever more stupendous views make a trip up the mountain an inspiring experience.

At the very top, surrounded by fabulous prospects of coastline, mountains, endless suburbs, and the sweet blue California sky, stands the Cross. For the sake of this dominating object, the government of San Diego has spent a lot of taxpayers’ money to support its claim that, first, the Cross is not a Christian symbol but a war memorial, a historical monument, heritage (like the Confederate flag in Georgia), or an abstract design; and, second, that in selling a minuscule patch of city property at the foot of the historical monument to a carefully selected private group guaranteed to maintain it as a Cross, the city has wiped its hands clean of any establishment of religion. Every court has laughed these arguments to scorn.

We should not forget, though, that the Cross firmly belongs to Old La Jolla. It comes from the era during which there was a gentleman’s agreement among realtors and property owners not to sell to people belonging to the wrong religion (and, of course, the wrong race). Like everything in America, Old La Jolla had its profound moral defects too.

— Jonathan Saville

DEL DIOS

No one’s seen Hodgee lately. Some hoped that as Lake Hodges disappeared, the monster would have fewer places to hide. That one day they’d be watching the sunrise from their quiet porches and suddenly catch a glimpse of a dark, lizardish hump — snaky Hodgee undulating through the water. At least it would provide something fun to talk about at the next town meeting or fire-station pancake breakfast. A Hodgee sighting would be a welcome break from the stress of dealing with the county water authority, building codes, lake-draining drought, arson fires, mud slides, shortcutting commuters, cars missing curves up on Del Dios Highway and tumbling into their back yards. And the newest influx of commuters who prefer $2 million North County clone houses with a Rancho Santa Fe address on a sterile golf course to 70-year-old fishing cottages under hundred-year-old oaks. But now the lake’s little more than a puddle, and Hodgee’s still nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’s just had enough and moved on.

Every lake needs its own secretive monster, but Hodgee took his time making an appearance. About 1918, a year-round stream, a growing population, and a need for water begat the Lake Hodges Dam. The dam begat the lake, which of course attracted fishermen. The town of Del Dios (population in the mid-hundreds) began as a cluster of getaway cottages for San Diego anglers. Off the beaten path. A hamlet you wouldn’t know was there unless someone told you. Eventually weekenders became year-rounders. Poets, authors, artists, lawyers, retirees, die-hard hippies who maybe fished, maybe not.

Hodgee surfaced in the 1970s with a sighting report in a local newsletter. The community welcomed the amphibian; neighbors began recounting Hodgee sightings around the bar at the Del Dios Country Store. Disappearing cattle and hay bales were sure signs Hodgee had been around. For a TV interview, locals rigged up a compressor and air hose to create bubbles in the lake. On camera, they pointed to the bubbles and told the reporter that was where Hodgee usually slept. And if you don’t believe in Hodgee, then you need to see his website.

It’s not clear exactly who posted hodgee.com. Some outfit called the Lake Hodges Scientific Research Center, which traces Hodgee’s pedigree back to local Indian legends. Of course you’ll find the obligatory grainy photographs, unattributed quotes from highly placed sources, secret scientific investigations, and hush-hush attempts by government officials to poison the lake fish and Hodgee with them. So the monster lives on in the digital age.

Though it’s still green, shady, secluded, these days you can’t miss Del Dios. Blaring yellow signs on Del Dios Highway warn frustrated commuters that they can’t turn left, can’t roar down the hill and use dreamy, bucolic Lake Drive and Del Dios as a speedway shortcut home. Traffic backs up from Via Rancho Parkway to Rancho Santa Fe. The county water authority is about to burrow under the town with a huge pipeline from yet another new dam — because the population is growing, because we need water. It’s time for Hodgee to visit again. The community could use the encouragement.

— Linda Nevin

OCEAN BEACH

I’ll take the charming anachronism over the “in thing” any day. Just give me the Flat Earth Society, Elizabethan countesses surfing the Internet, and long-haired hippies on Wall Street. Grant me Kodachromes and unicorns, abaci and handset phones, any obsolete history reawakened and made contemporary.

I’m a fan of the enclave and a champion of the underdog; my favorite color is black sheep, and my favorite fashion’s the ugly duckling. I want my pegs squared and my jewels to shine from roughs. I like my beauty difficult, on the principle that easy pleasures are for the intolerant. And when I see where America’s headed today, I’m compelled to post some cautionary notices: “Open up, fearful country, and embrace your differences!”

Some of San Diego is undeniably slouching off into the Sad, Great Homogenization, but some of SD’s retro, some of it’s rich, and some is “alternative.” In short, we San Diegans have still got options. And option number one, the angel of my appreciation, the element that bucks convention, San Diego’s last true neighborhood and earthly connection, indeed, the soul of this good place, is Ocean Beach. If SD were the Beatles, then OB’d be George Harrison. In a garden, OB’s the flower you didn’t plant yourself, but you keep it when it pops up, the indigenous part, like a floral surprise among the vegetables.

I will tell you a parable about Ocean Beach, from an event that actually happened to me, one recent afternoon, a sunny midsummer Saturday in this summer community, when the beaches were almost full. Ocean Beach bustled, lunchtime, people going, bright sandal-traffic, motorcycle-traffic, music from the boardwalk and Newport Avenue, the smells of ocean and asphalt and Hodad’s and beer.

A late arriver, attempting to park, I found myself winding farther and farther from the choicest spots, far from the beach. It was a long time before I came upon a space big enough for me, fronting an abandoned building, but an elderly woman was standing in the lines, wearing a darkly flowered housedress and staring at the ground.

I honked once, politely, inching closer to the old woman and the spot. I smiled. But her face was furious, a map of crossing wrinkles, and her voice hissed at me suddenly. “I’m a vehicle too! I get to be here just as much as you!”

And they all get to be here; yes, in Ocean Beach, we can all belong, amassing our distinctive details (remembering that God is in the details). Because where else in San Diego can so many characteristic details discover a home? The longest pier on the West Coast, bright and tiny bungalows set side-by-side in rows, No Starbucks!, No Gold’s Gym!, Dog Beach, feral cats, cheap rent, booming jets, Sunset Cliffs, the end of the 8, men with facial hair, women with body hair, multiple piercings, VW campers, tattoos, bare feet, mom-and-pop, Deadheads, dreadlocks, activists, OBecians, transients, liberals, vegetarians, psychedelics, artists, bikers, backpackers, slackers, sunbathers, food vendors, crunchy granola, tofu, wheatgrass, grassroots, farmer’s markets, sandy picnics, tidepools, skateboarding, kite flying, meditation, volleyball, hacky-sack, freewheeling, Boogie boarding, bodysurfing, pier fishing, pickup soccer, bonfires, hemp clothes, used books, power crystals, green parks, tarot cards, jewelry beads, homespun, co-op, consignment shops, close-knit, good karma, laid back, antiques, beer bellies, coffeehouses, lazy traffic, dive bars, street fairs, pawn shops, alleyways, palm trees, curios, carefree, au naturel, whale watching, middle classes, super mellow, unpretentious, love to spare and love to give, anything goes, live and let live.

— Geoff Bouvier

LAKESIDE

It seems as if a hundred kids have been trying to sell you a program. Grudgingly, you finally buy one — not to read, but to carry around, hoping the annoyance will decrease. Now that you’ve ditched the high schoolers, your attention focuses on staying close to whomever you came with amidst the sea of bodies. As you circle the stadium, a plethora of smells approaches your nostrils, from cow dung and dirt to delicious barbecue. The bright midday sun temporarily blinds you, helping you realize you haven’t applied nearly enough sunscreen. You can hear the announcer over the intercom from three streets away: the proceedings are about to commence. The cowboys enter the arena, some to take on bulls ten times their size, some just to make the audience laugh. Saddle up your horses and tighten your belt buckles — you’re at the Lakeside Rodeo!

Huge crowds gather for this April weekend to see steers wrestled, broncs ridden, and cowboys trampled. You can’t live in Lakeside long without attending, and stories of gorings and top performances fill the streets like urban legends.

Due largely to the publicity from the rodeo, Lakeside has a reputation of being just another old-fashioned country town inhabited by a bunch of tobacco-chewing, horse-riding, “sheep-luvin’ ” hicks, not to mention being racist, perverted, and generally ignorant. But although the rodeo might be the town’s main attraction, Lakeside has more to offer.

The majority of Lakeside’s large Catholic population gathers regularly at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, two blocks from El Capitan High School. Within a 200-yard radius of the sanctuary you can find yourself at Mapleview Baptist or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Every year the men from about 15 churches, from many denominations, gather for the Steak-Out, where they can share fellowship, eat good meat, and be men. Fragments of plastic knives often go flying as overly zealous (or overly muscular) gentlemen try to cut through their steaks only to find the knives too flimsy. The plastic tablecloth and squeaky folding chairs don’t deter them. A bundle of volunteers helps to keep the food hot and tasty, the music sharp and melodious, the message sharp and inspirational. Lakeside is more than just “Cow Pie High” and the rodeo. These men, along with their families, are out to make their community a better place.

— Greg Finley

LITTLE ITALY

Date & India

Friday night

Tight-jeaned girl pays attendant, strolls sideways, spots her pal. Redhead descends from SUV, looks back to lock (beep-beep), and long-legs a diagonal to Princess Pub’s pint-swilling lads, who posture by stools and crowd under awnings. A lone drinker — he’s a regular — stares and sips. Curbside tables fill; patrons pour past wrought-iron railing. Talk climbs to tones that make tomorrow’s sore throats.

Columbia & Fir

Monday lunchtime

A bird’s-eye view from an airliner’s belly: it could be bugs. The trail of hardhats winds around scaffolding’s undoing. Plastic sheets wave in the breeze, a toss-away curtain revealing the prize: just-painted walls — faded terra-cotta, milk-whipped eggs, burnished leather — multistories of new stucco made to look Old World. Seven white T-shirts wait for passing traffic, cross on the green light toward the food truck, laugh over their shoulders, slap dust off their hands.

India at Date & Fir

Saturday afternoon

Tourists gamble on the best bet: lines at Filippi’s shout family; couples next door say “Table for two”; across the street, four-tops, two umbrellas, more strolling, much staring.

All menus speak Italian, but the real language is gesture. Waiting lists of the weary on the sidewalk’s double-width lean on cement benches, pizza box aloft, admire hues of remaining views, scoop gelato.

The bay’s sightlines compete with another condo’s construction. Four stories, five stories: “…how high the moon?” Sinatra sings from a signpost.

Columbia & Date

Sunday morning

Church bells signal and the parking lot’s full. Our Lady of the Rosary spills its contents — confections of white wedding gown and rose-petaled bridesmaid — down steps and onto street, where red-vested weekday workers sweep the asphalt clean. Children shriek. Mothers shush. Fathers shake hands.

Will the day’s brightness seem garish for that afternoon’s funeral? Or will the black suit-and-ties and dark, somber dresses just seem chic in contrast?

— Sue Greenberg

SAN MARCOS

Looking for a representative cross-section of San Marcos residents? Try the 24 Hour Fitness in the Vons center at San Marcos Boulevard and Rancho Santa Fe Road any weekday morning around 6:30. As you walk through the automatic doors, you’ll see the early-20-something Front Desk Girl hauling out the racks of spandex workout gear (20% Off!), her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. You can almost see the bubble above Front Desk Girl’s head: “Work out here and you’ll look like me.”

Just beyond the glass partition, standing beside the weight machines, Trainer Man meets his first client of the day. Trainer Man: mid-50s, receding hairline, firefighter mustache. He doesn’t look like Ahnold, but he’s toned and trim in his baggy black workout shorts and white T-shirt. Trainer Man makes small talk with Overdressed Senior Citizen Lady. The sun’s not even up, and she’s in full makeup regalia, white hair teased to within an inch of its long life. Overdressed Senior Citizen Lady wears a soft pink French terry workout suit. A matching pink bow perches in her hair. Her manicured fingernails are exactly the same shade.

Past the weight machines, in the inner sanctum, the free-weight room, you’ll find Popeye. Popeye is tall, his red hair swept up in a semi-pompadour. In his black sweatpants and sleeveless black T-shirt, Popeye grunts and sweats and trades stories with the other early-morning weightlifters. He lifts impossibly large stacks of weights. His massive biceps ripple underneath his shoulder tattoo as he says, “I woke the baby up this morning so I could play with him before I left the house.” Something tells me Olive Oyl wasn’t too pleased.

In the cardio room, rows of treadmills and elliptical machines and stair climbers face the window. In the front row, Fatty and Skinny pump their arms and legs side by side. Housewives who talk incessantly about their kids and husbands, Fatty and Skinny seem more concerned with working their jaws than their muscles. Blond and petite in powder blue capris and a white T-shirt, Skinny looks as if she might fit comfortably in a child’s windup music box. Brunette Fatty sweats away in black side-striped workout pants and a green striped V-necked shirt, probably purchased in the Plus Size department at Wal-Mart.

Behind Fatty and Skinny, Heart Attack Man flails away on a treadmill. Clutching the front of the machine with a deathlike grip, Heart Attack Man chews gum or talks to himself while running. His chest heaves. Sweat flies off his body. He seems ready at any moment to collapse in a heap and be hurled backward off the machine. When Heart Attack Man’s breathing grows especially labored, Fatty turns to Skinny. “Call 911,” she whispers.

— Leslie Ryland

SOUTH MISSION HILLS

First the guy was dead, and then he was not, a significant detail that changed during the telling of the story. But dead or alive, said my neighbor Matt, there was a body in the vacant lot by the crack house down the street. The police were already there. The trash-strewn lot was Matt’s dog’s toilet, hence the reason he was in the weeds at first light. Blame it on the dog. “The cops said it was like a gang thing or something,” Matt said, none too happy about his discovery. “They said the dude got stabbed, like, by a rival gang or some shit, and left to die.”

Reynard Way starts out as Goldfinch. It cuts down through a white clay canyon in South Mission Hills and eventually succumbs to the gravity of downtown and changes names again to State Street. Reynard Way is a speedway five days a week, a shortcut to the office or the airport or the freeway. Certain of the neighborhood’s walls may be owned by gangs — taggers remind us of this with spray paint — but the canyon belongs to the birds. The racket of sparrows, scrub jays, hawks, and crows outside my window can hold its own against the city noise. Once, when I was on the phone with my boss, the line went dead for a tick, and then she yelled, “Where the fuck are you? The San Diego Zoo?”

But the subculture of South Mission Hills is not all that obvious. Most of my neighbors are Hispanic. Central-Mexico Hispanic, as my Mexican-American friends are quick to point out. Somehow, they’ve gotten a toehold on Reynard Way, a cheap-rent zone below the luxe homes on the hill. For a few blocks, multiple families live crammed into single apartments. For rent money, they work car washes, stock drugstore shelves, hang Sheetrock, and wash dishes. A guy named Pedro sells them groceries out of his van. At night, they blast norteño music and drink beer and gather around the dead or dying carcasses of cars kept alive well past their prime with liberal use of Armor All.

We might as well be from different planets. Oblivious to white culture, my Hispanic apartment mates won’t even make eye contact unless I get things going first with my hatchet Spanish. “¿Qué pasa?” I say to my neighbor who is putting out her trash. I am wrestling my infant grandson into the car seat. “Este es mi, uh, ¿como se dice in español, uh, grandson?” I ask.

“Gran-son,” she mouths, tasting the word. “Abuelo.” She smiles. Abuelo is grandfather — that’s me.

“Sí — para esto” — I point to the baby — “el niño de, uh, de mi hija, ¿sí?” He is the little boy of my daughter, right? I think I say this.

“Sí,” she says, smiling a smile so huge the gold fillings are showing. “De su hijo. Sí.” She walks back up to her porch. Then she turns and says, with emphasis, “He beautiful. He berry beautiful.”

Yes, I say. The baby, he is beautiful.

— Dave Good

MISSION HILLS

As State Street crosses Laurel heading north, its name changes suddenly to Reynard, and a little blue street sign welcomes you to Mission Hills. Don’t be fooled. This is Baja Mission Hills, like Kensington too far south of Adams. Reynard winds its way along a canyon floor, carrying you past close-set single-story homes that share space with small businesses and big apartment buildings, and there is the tendency to look up, to gaze upon the funksome, enviable cliffside houses above, often with decks jutting improbably into space.

This is where I lived for a little over a year, in a fabulous two-bedroom Spanish guest house just down the corrugated, bare cliff from the house proper. (Every newlywed couple should have such a love nest: oodles of style, worn around the edges, reasonable rent.) There have been improvements of late — vinyl windows and remodels in the apartments, the arrival of the Frame Maker shop (featuring the frames of Jerry Solomon) across from the 7-Eleven — but Reynard still has the slightly worn, oddly developed look I (fondly) remember.

A little beyond where I lived, the street climbs out of the canyon, levels off at a respectable elevation, and changes its name again (this time to Goldfinch), as if it needed a new identity at this altitude. Bigger lots, newer paint jobs, better-tended gardens. A few blocks more, and you pass the Mission Hills Shopping Center (now home to a real estate office, a salon, a café, and an astonishing antiques shop) and the tastefully small business district before turning left on Fort Stockton and plunging into the moneyed heart of the neighborhood.

If La Jolla is our Beverly Hills, where ever-grander dreams inspire ever-glassier homes (“I need more view! Dammit, Scotty, you’ve got to give me more view!”), then Mission Hills is our Pasadena. Peter Mayle, in his book French Lessons, writes that France owes its “army of outstanding chefs” to the Revolution. When members of the aristocracy were beheaded, they lost interest in food, and their private chefs were forced to open restaurants for the masses. This may explain why there are relatively few restaurants in Mission Hills compared to, say, Hillcrest, just down Washington. Driving along Fort Stockton, gazing at majestic manse after majestic manse, it’s easy to believe that here, the aristocracy never fell. (I used to imagine dinner table conversations before the airport went in: “Oh, Walter, it will be such an eyesore. And so noisy. Can’t you put a call through to somebody and get something done about that?”) And even if it’s not true, even if the only real difference between the rich and us is money, it is easy to see that Mission Hills is our best neighborhood for housepeeking. That is, looking at houses simply for the pleasure of looking at houses.

Here, the $1 million-plus ($2 million, $3 million…) homes are not hidden along hillsides or behind gates or hedges. Here, they stand forth proudly in resplendent, ungaudy grandeur, many two or more stories, one after the other, a model community for the age of the renovated home and the personal castle. Which is not to accuse the neighborhood of homogeneity; the streets offer a fine mix of Craftsmen, American stucco giants, midcentury designer ranches, and outright Moderns. To see what I mean, drive to the corner of Sunset and Couts, site of the Italianate mansion that gets my vote for the finest home in America’s finest city, and check out the surrounding built environment.

— Matthew Lickona

MISSION HILLS

The wheels of my red, slightly rusted Radio Flyer wagon rattled as they fought the pebbles for a place on the pathway. I sighed, exhaling anxiety with every bump, the bumps blending into a low hum that would grow deeper as I loaded my wagon with basil, thyme, sage, succulents, lion’s tail, and whatever else caught my eye and captured my attention.

Anytime I’m near Mission Hills, instinct and habit combine to steer me toward the Mission Hills Nursery — San Diego’s oldest, says the sign; established in 1910. When I shop there, I feel more as if I’m out for a stroll; I never feel the tug of commerce, just the pull of overflowing beauty. The nursery is a little like a favorite and worthwhile book, offering the pleasure of the familiar and the delight of discovering something new every time. It is my garden away from my garden, with the added bonus that I may pick the flowers and then plant them at home.

During my time living in Mission Hills (and beyond) I began to think of the surrounding neighborhood sort of like a garden, or an exceptionally well-decorated yard. For a front lawn, the pretty space that makes a good first impression as you come up from Mission Valley, there was Presidio Park and the brick-fashioned Serra Cross. For the back lawn, where kids can run and play, I used Mission Hills Park, with its noble stands of eucalyptus and its curious row of gravestones in the back corner. Houses were my judiciously mixed flower beds. Craftsman homes were my African daisies, all grand and brilliant and up-front about it but also full of quiet details: purple veins in an orange petal on a daisy, a clever alcove or overhang on a house. Little Spanish gems lounged in more rounded, starker state, like succulents or cacti. And the modern homes were my exotics — fancy neutral grasses and outrageous blooms echoed by bleached woods and angular glass fronts.

Certain businesses became my useful garden — lively vegetables and herbs to make life more delicious. Maison en Provence remains my favorite home store, bold Provençal colors jumping from the linens and heady aromas wafting from the soaps — orange, lavender, sage, rosemary. Cut flowers I bought across the street at Monet’s Garden (since departed); next door, I munched croissants and strawberry crepes at A La Française. I left the neighborhood before Phil’s Barbecue arrived, but now that it’s there, my husband brings me back on gustatory pilgrimages.

Every garden has its weeds — a few overgrown ’70s-awful apartment boxes, one or two prickly office complexes, a curiously unglorious church. But such errant growths are easy to overlook, especially as the houses sprout new coats of paint in ever more alluring combinations: gold-green with rust trim — amazing, it works. Another discovery, another delight, and perhaps another item I’ll take home with me.

— Deirdre Lickona

EL CAJON

Innocence of the 1950s variety still draws me once in a while to the Grinder sandwich shop on the corner of Second and Greenfield in El Cajon. Afterward, to conjure up memories of my father’s sudden and unpredictable treats, I can drive across town for soft ice cream at one of the few Fosters Freezes remaining in San Diego County. And not long ago, after learning of the city’s downtown car shows on summer Wednesday evenings, I revisited the hot rods I chased as a teenager while cruising a small-town main drag.

But several blocks west of the Fosters Freeze on El Cajon Boulevard stands the regional headquarters of the Hells Angels, whose name for one of the hottest cities in the county is Hell Cajon. To the east, illusions of an idyllic time are further dispelled by the long stretch of Main Street, where the homeless and drug-addicted can be seen hanging out at most any time of day or night.

I learn that some good-willed business people have formed an association to rejuvenate the downtown area eastward from Main and Magnolia Avenue, El Cajon’s historic ground zero, which has begun to feature sidewalk-café-style dining. Its brand-new restaurants, however, have to share storefront space with an old hanger-on, F Street Books.

As squatters suddenly began appearing on ranches in Cajon Valley in the 1860s, so tent communities of homeless people are likely to pop up in various places in El Cajon today. One did recently behind the Gold Coast Apartments on Ballantyne Street. “I could look out the back door right now,” says its manager, “and see tents and sleeping bags and coffeepots on a grassy spot between my building and the courthouse.”

There seem to be 10,000 apartments in El Cajon; more than houses, anyway, says a resident who has lived in the community since the early ’50s. In the 1980s, city hall put a moratorium, still in effect, on building new apartment buildings. But low rents, relative to those in San Diego, have always been a magnet to the poor. Then some renters can’t pay their bills and end up on the streets.

What to do about the homeless is the dominant civic issue that divides Cajonians (well, it beats Cajones) these days. East County Republicanism seems torn between Christian values and property values. So some citizens favor a proposal to build a transitional-housing facility for the homeless at the Fabulous 7 Motel on East Main. But opponents have filed a lawsuit against it. One of their arguments is that the project will bring convicted felons into close proximity to the area’s children.

In front of the Grand Bar, back toward downtown El Cajon, a righteous drunk fumes to me about the transitional-housing project. Especially exercised about the hookers who may go there, he blurts out, “Why don’t they build them a whorehouse and get ’em off the street that way?”

— Joe Deegan

POWAY

Poway: “The City in the Country.” I was born and raised in Poway, and I can tell you that the slogan has never been accurate. At the time of Poway’s incorporation in 1980, any passer-by could spend all day searching for a city. By now, the country is the elusive part.

Due to its split personality of both city and country, Poway exhibits interesting contradictions. Rusty pickup trucks share the road with BMWs and the resident Ferrari. Hicks and yuppies pick through fresh produce together. In addition to a Target and a Wal-Mart, there is a feed store, a stable, and random chickens. Housing ranges from mansions to mobile homes to the token homeless man.

The best way to describe Poway is in moments — both Kodak and daguerreotype. Five Christian churches share a short stretch of road, their signs declaring the righteousness of each over the others. The nostalgic apparition of the old Applebee farmhouse stands alone in a barren field, a fading memory of Poway as it once was. I remember wading through Rattlesnake Creek in red rubber boots, collecting rocks and planks to build rickety bridges, enjoying the squelching mud, forests of reeds, and darting tadpoles.

Near the creek is the Poway Valley Riders Association arena and stables. Poway horseback riders create demand for a snaking network of horse trails, and their horses supply the perpetual peppering of droppings that adorn so many east Poway sidewalks. Due to rural residential zoning, people can keep horses in their back yards while leading an otherwise suburban lifestyle within stuccoed walls. East Poway is dominated by such people.

On the flip side, a nearly unchecked onslaught of tract houses provides the support necessary to maintain Poway’s three Starbucks. These houses would be pleasant enough, were it not for their chillingly identical design. My friend Courtney remembers a man who stayed three minutes in her house before realizing that he actually lived two doors down.

Overlooking everyone is the land of the very rich, consisting of million-dollar dream houses, tennis courts, and automated gates. The gates are successful in keeping out alien vehicles, non-fence-climbers, and the mentally impaired.

Perhaps the best illustration of the contradictory nature of Poway is its treatment of the city mascot, the Poway Oak. Once a venerable living landmark, it was suffocated and killed by nearby road expansion, a most ironic demise. Other strange occurrences take place as well — a strangled duck made it into the crime log, a skateboarder jumped a flight of stairs and hit a horse.

Throughout the contradictions is a basic understanding that Poway will always have trees, numerous parks, and bare ridgelines. Of course, the parks range from simple baseball diamonds to campgrounds, and some hilltops have begun sprouting tracts.

Eventually, the “country” part of the Poway slogan will seem like a joke. You can no longer scoff, “It’s Poway” and leave your car unlocked, and many of the creeks are now paved over. Perhaps the slogan will become “the City in the Suburb,” with a hardier mascot — a Starbucks or an SUV.

— Alana Firl

BORREGO SPRINGS

Ten Reasons Why You’d Have to Be Crazy to Live in Borrego Springs:

1. The average temperature in July is 107.

2. To paraphrase what Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland, there is no there there — no people (population: about 3000), no movie theater, no stoplight, no convenience store, no hospital, no home mail delivery, no McDonald’s. And not only are these things not there, but it’s a 50-mile ride over rough roads (to Brawley or Ramona) before you can get to them. This distance can prove daunting if you, for example, run out of cigarettes late at night.

3. Flood insurance is mandatory. Borrego Springs is built on top of several drainage systems running out of the San Ysidro Mountains to the west of town, notably the one that drains Hellhole Canyon. My house, like most of the others in Borrego Springs, is built in the 50-year floodplain. People visiting the area usually laugh when they hear that I’m required to own flood insurance, but they wouldn’t have been chuckling if they had been here during the ’70s, when Borrego experienced two 50-year floods within a single 3-year period, one of which nearly wiped out the De Anza Country Club.

4. Earthquake insurance isn’t mandatory (because insurance companies don’t want to issue policies), but it should be because Borrego Springs is located smack-dab in the middle of one of the most active and violent fault systems in the world. Thirty miles east of town, the San Andreas Fault and its relatives have down-dropped the structural depression around the Salton Sea some 20,000 feet (that’s four times deeper than the Grand Canyon, to put this in perspective); 30 miles north of town, the San Jacinto Fault system (California’s most active and violent) has raised the awesome, mind-boggling Santa Rosa Mountains over a mile above sea level. That’s a 5H-mile total displacement in less than 50 miles. You figure it out.

5. Temperatures in Borrego Springs peaked this year over a two-day period in July at 119 and 118 — slightly above normal for summer highs, but high enough to render the “Yes, but it’s a dry heat” phrase irrelevant.

6. To get to Borrego Springs from San Diego normally requires a drive along S-22, which abruptly drops farther (nearly a vertical mile) faster (in less than 10 miles) than any other major roadway in America.

7. The average temperature in July is 107.

8. Cats, small dogs, and toddlers don’t last long here (the howl of coyotes can be heard almost every night from my deck). However, my wife and I have discovered that the enormous scorpions who regularly show up in our house make wonderful pets (you can keep them inside an aquarium). Did you know that scorpions are from the same family as spiders? That mother scorpions bear their young live? That they can live up to 20 years? That they glow in the dark?

9. My house has actually declined in value since I bought it a decade ago.

10. The average temperature in July is 107.

Fifteen years after moving to San Diego County, my wife and I first drove down over the San Ysidro Mountains into the Borrego Valley in July 1990. We have been full-time residents of Borrego Springs ever since.

— Larry McCaffery

BARRIO LOGAN

Just inside the entrance to El Mercadito Market, a dreamcatcher the size of a large gong dangles feathery tentacles toward the floor. In other neighborhoods, this yarn-threaded novelty might seem out of place in such a store, but here in Barrio Logan, it fits in with the lipsticks sold sans packaging, with the bin of red beans swallowing their clear scoop, with the modular piles of TVs waiting for repair at the back of the store. Across the aisle, brooms with neon plastic bristles spike out of a canister, lighting a fuse of color that snakes through the surrounding blocks. It touches the art gallery across the street, circles a red umbrella used as a parasol, runs through the Dulceria Peninsular, where piñatas in the form of fish and monsters and misshapen cartoon characters hang from the ceiling like so many bright potted plants.

Across the trolley tracks, the color fuse tangles in great coils inside the warehouse that houses the farmer’s market, where innumerable vendors peddle mangos and sweetbreads, Coke in glass bottles and shiny little girls’ dresses, DVDs and hundreds of glittering gold crosses.

The spark reaches its end in Chicano Park. Color explodes across the cement underbelly of the Coronado Bay Bridge, murals of Quetzalcoatl and the Mexican Revolution seeping into every empty space. San Diego muralist Victor Ochoa painted many of the murals; some were done by students. Chicano Park is a striking manifestation of a historically Mexican art form, a political and recreational space in one. Miguel Hidalgo and Pancho Villa smile out over Logan Avenue from the Mural Histórico.

Yet the paint on Barrio Logan’s historic clapboard houses is fading. The community is almost entirely Hispanic, and incomes are low. César Chávez Elementary School feeds nearly half of its students free or reduced-price lunches. Political battles abound: from combating corporate environmental abuses to protesting tighter security at the United States–Mexico border. As a result, in part, of ballpark construction, many residents are being forced out of the area; rents increased 41 percent in the first half of this year.

But Barrio Logan is a united community. Organizations like the Barrio Logan College Institute and Calaca Press foster group identity and political strength. Crime rates are much lower in Barrio Logan than in nearby Gaslamp or Lincoln Park. Still, wrought-iron bars curl over the windows of Chepina’s Bridal Gowns.

They’re pink.

— Dorothy Kronick

BARRIO LOGAN

When I stand in the middle of Chicano Park and close my eyes, my mind becomes engulfed with the memories of the Chicano movement. When I open my eyes and look into the eyes of the people of Barrio Logan, I still see the fighting spirit, the determination that still burns. Life in Barrio Logan has never, ever been easy. Nothing has been given to these people, and what little they have they had to fight for. What future they hope for will be what they, again, fight for.

Barrio Logan is not big. From the kiosk in Chicano Park you can see the ever-present cranes of NASSCO cutting into the sky. Just west is the 32nd Street Naval Station that frames one end of Barrio Logan. To the south along the bayfront are various businesses, mostly in support of NASSCO, an oil-storage facility and trains, all effectively blocking any view of the bay. To the north, I-5 divides and isolates the community. The new Petco Park brackets the west side. And at the heart is Chicano Park.

When the tuna industry came into the area in 1932, Barrio Logan became a distinct ethnic/Mexican-American neighborhood. In 1963, with the construction of I-5, the community became even further isolated. In 1969 when the pillars of the Coronado Bay Bridge were sunk into the heart of the barrio, it was again divided and the community begrudgingly accepted this. But in 1970, when a highway patrol station was about to be built, the people of Barrio Logan, such as Mike Amador and Salvador Torres, stood up and said ya basta (that is enough).

With the construction of the bridge, the community had been promised a small park, but when construction of a California Highway Patrol station was about to begin, the community rose up and created a human chain to stop the bulldozers. A park was promised, and a park was delivered. Barrio Logan became the symbolic center of the Chicano movement in San Diego.

The community of Barrio Logan fought for a health clinic, which is here today in part because of activists such as Laura Rodriquez, who started hosting tamale luncheons to raise funds. The Chicano Free Clinic is now called the Logan Heights Family Health Center.

The cry was “All the way to the bay.” The community wanted access to a waterfront park. It took ten years, but finally a bayside park was created, hidden behind trains and industry buildings, and wedged in between old tuna piers and the Tenth Avenue Marina.

Barrio Logan is a mixture of homes, markets, Mexican restaurants, and a lot of small businesses that are not exactly environmentally friendly. It is registered as one of the ten most polluted communities in California. And Perkins Elementary is probably the only elementary school that has monitors on its rooftops to collect and gauge pollution.

But the people love their community and continue to fight for it; they fight for their children, they fight to be recognized as a people. And just about every weekend you can see them in Chicano Park, celebrating their life and culture and looking toward the future.

— Daniel Muñoz Jr.

HILLCREST

I’ve been living in Hillcrest more or less continuously for the past 16 years. I say “more or less” because in 1998 a friend asked if I wanted to move into his house in Del Mar, and since I had always wanted to live near the coast, I packed my belongings and moved. I lasted four months. While driving through Hillcrest one afternoon, I saw that the apartment I had vacated had been renovated and was up for rent again. I called my old landlord and moved back in. So much for change. I couldn’t take the Del Mar suburban yuppie lifestyle, especially the endless bumper-to-bumper excursions along the I-5/805 merge.

I originally moved to Hillcrest in 1986, shortly after going through a divorce. While Hillcrest is well known as San Diego’s gay community, two of its lesser-known distinctions are that it is a mecca for the divorced and a haven for ex–New Yorkers. Since I was both, it seemed perfect for me. New Yorkers like it because it is San Diego’s only real walking community; from my house on First Avenue I can walk to bookstores, movies, restaurants, supermarkets, boutiques, and San Diego’s greatest concentration of coffee shops. Divorcées like it because they are happy to leave the suburbs behind and start life anew in a more urban setting.

I’ve watched a great many changes take place in Hillcrest over the years. At this point in my life it’s a neighborhood of ghosts. I’ve been through a few relationships there, and each had certain specific associations. One girlfriend and I used to love to eat at the Chicken Pie Shop on the corner of Robinson and Fifth, now a Starbucks. Every time I sip a latte there I recall the distinctive smell of chicken pies and the classic ’40s-style waitresses who served three-buck dinners. Across the street, in the middle of the block, is the ghost of Hammonds, one of San Diego’s strangest stores. They sold things like shaving brushes, thimbles, fuses, ladies’ compacts, and puzzles of all kinds. There’s the ghost of Quel Fromage, San Diego’s original coffeehouse, on University between Fifth and Sixth, and the ghost of the Guild Theater, now one of the area’s ubiquitous trendy furniture stores.

One by one, the mom-and-pop businesses have given way to chains and high-rent retail outlets. Rite Aid, Starbucks, and the Gap have crowded out some of Hillcrest’s unique charm. But some of the ghosts remain, like Pernicano’s Casa di Baffi, the mysterious empty restaurant that occupies nearly a full city block between Fifth and Sixth. And the wonderful Hillcrest Stationers on Fourth and Robinson, which apparently survived the onslaughts of Office Depot and Staples by proudly proclaiming on its front sign: “A Pencil’s a Pencil; the Difference Is Service.”

Of course, Hillcrest has its downside. Rents and home prices have spiraled out of control. Parking is always a hassle, the streets are usually littered and dirty, and homelessness persists. When you live here for a while, the homeless become your neighbors, and I recognized these unfortunate souls, many of whom used to hang out in the stairwell of the old Thackeray Gallery on Third and Robinson but who have since been driven from that oasis since Ace Hardware turned it into the strangest apartment complex in the city. Let me introduce some of these homeless folks; they’re a part of Hillcrest — and many other San Diego neighborhoods — we don’t much talk about:

Neighbors

Each day on the way to work

I pass the same homeless crowd —

the young man with a large crucifix

around his neck, pushing a shopping cart

packed with everything he has. Today he

points to a plastic Batman in the cart

and shows off his new haircut.

Near him, a hairy, ragged beast of a man

sits cross-legged on the sidewalk,

wrapped in the shards of a filthy blanket.

Most of the time he sits on the edge

of the bus-stop bench, head bowed in his hands,

body hunched like a weeping Buddha, but today

he’s sitting on the sidewalk, staring at the sky.

Around the corner, though I haven’t seen her yet,

will be the old woman, who sleeps sitting up

in a potted plant. She comes prepared each night

with a clean blanket and several bags of clothes, to find the

only patch of dirt for blocks,

a large half-barrel that holds a small tree

between the stationery shop and the pharmacy.

When she sleeps late, the young who buy office supplies

and the old who buy medications pass her on their daily rounds.

Then there’s the skinny woman with skin like a saddle

who sips 7-Eleven coffee against a brick wall.

She’s mostly wrapped in plastic, and sometimes she talks

to passersby, but never asks for money, unlike the woman

with scabs on her face who sleeps in the doorway of an

abandoned restaurant and looks at you head-on with her

hand outstretched, palm filled with pennies and nickels.

Meet my neighbors; they’re probably yours as well.

— Fred Moramarco

DOWNTOWN

A tarnished little plaque is embedded in the sidewalk at the corner of Fifth Avenue and J Street. It bears a small legend: “Shirley Bernard, Gaslamp Pioneer.” Thousands of extravagantly attired feet heading for bars, cafés, and various basement disco dens tromp across her name, not realizing it is there. She died in October 1992 at the age of 69, well before the explosive development that has overwhelmed her old neighborhood, transforming it from a once-charming historic district into something more resembling Canal Street in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. The formerly sleepy old harborside quarter has lost its harbor, which has been walled off by the sprawling convention center, blocking the once-sweeping nighttime view of the bridge to Coronado and the twinkling hills of Tijuana beyond. The new Omni Hotel at the Park towers ominously nearby, limiting the neighborhood’s sunlight.

Years ago, on hot summer nights, Shirley would climb onto the roof of her four-story Grand Pacific, the old fleabag hotel she had restored with her boyfriend Glen. She would pour herself her drink of choice — rum and Coke — light up a Marlboro, and breathe in the view. The only voices to be heard would filter up from broken-down drunks coming out of the cramped dive bars farther up Fifth Avenue toward Market. That tranquillity is long gone, replaced by raw commerce.

The insides of historic buildings have been gutted and their legacies shredded, replaced by high-priced designer versions of history. Tourists and conventioneers crowd the sidewalks, marching into trendy “theme” restaurants with names like Gaslamp Strip Club and Acqua. Within a year, the lights of the new Padres baseball stadium will be turned up, flooding the neighborhood with garish illumination and unchecked traffic congestion. Rum-and-Cokes have been replaced by flavored martinis favored by patrons who were born well after 1975, the year Shirley arrived from Rancho Santa Fe. Today’s drunks are under 30 and drive Hummers. Their voices are much louder and they stay out later than the inebriates of old.

It’s hard to know if Shirley would approve of what has become of the Gaslamp. Maybe she’d like it. After all, she was in the real estate business, a true capitalist, and she bought the hotel — for an outrageously low six figures — to make a buck off the eventual rehabilitation of the neighborhood. She never contemplated moving in. That came later, in the late ’70s, as then-mayor Pete Wilson and Ernest Hahn, the shopping-mall magnate from Hawthorne, sought to gain control of the quarter, with the expectation of leveling all but a few token historic structures.

Hahn, the developer of Horton Plaza, was stalling on his promised construction of the shopping center, declaring that he could not interest mall tenants while “bums were pissing in their shoes” just across the street in the Gaslamp Quarter. The solution, he said, was to use the city’s power of condemnation to seize the old buildings, quickly demolish them, and turn the land over to big developers at prices to be subsidized by city taxpayers, just as Wilson had done for him and the Horton Plaza project.

But when his redevelopment czar, Gerald Trimble, declared war on the quarter in 1977, Shirley and her fellow Gaslamp property owners, mostly upper-middle-class small investor types from the suburbs — not your typical radicals by any means — surprised Wilson by fighting back. They formed the city’s first “Project Area Committee” and invoked a state law requiring a “super majority” of the city council to approve a redevelopment project that the committee had rejected. Wilson lost the narrow vote, one of the rare defeats he encountered during his iron-fisted, decade-long domination of city hall. The wrecking ball of Trimble and Hahn was stayed.

After the battle was over, Shirley declared, “Let’s get the bricks in the street,” and a compliant city council obliged, initially dumping more than $6 million of federal funds into installation of new brick sidewalks and wrought-iron light fixtures. More money followed, as did favorable media attention. The Tribune’s Neil Morgan adopted Shirley as one of his regulars and spent months hanging around the Grand Pacific, showering her with glowing mentions in his column.

The battle with Wilson turned out to be the high point of Shirley’s relationship with the Gaslamp. She stayed for a while but eventually seemed to tire of the politics that were an ever-present part of the rehabilitation effort. She sold the Grand Pacific and moved to a house in Golden Hill, which she restored. A chain smoker, she died of lung cancer. After she had passed from the scene, the city made another grab for power and this time succeeded in putting the area under its redevelopment authority. By then, though, existing property owners were powerful enough to bar any future condemnation actions, forcing the city to deal fairly with them.

But that wasn’t enough to save the Gaslamp from drowning in its own success. The once-strict sign ordinances and design controls were ultimately abandoned, encouraging a honky-tonk culture to flourish. As the city packed more and more development into the area, it neglected issues such as parking and traffic control. The neighborhood’s burgeoning popularity led to the construction of condominium projects affordable to only a slim slice of well-to-do residents, many of whom came from out of town to buy second homes they saw written up in the “Escapes” section of the New York Times. The middle-class property owners of yore took their profits and departed the scene. What had started as a grassroots historic preservation effort led by live-in owners morphed into a corporate free-for-all, aided and abetted by a city council dependent on the campaign largesse of well-connected donors such as Padres owner John Moores.

Perhaps fittingly, an overbearing bust of Ernie Hahn commemorates his contribution to downtown development. A similar monument to his friend and beneficiary Pete Wilson is promised. Thanks to Shirley, at least the shell of San Diego’s lost history remains in the Gaslamp. Her obscure little plaque at the bottom of Fifth Avenue is the least she deserves.

— Matt Potter

BONITA

Bucolic Bonita first bloomed in my experience during a 1965 visit to the shallow valley scooped out across millennia by the Sweetwater River on its run to the Pacific. Even in the mid-’60s the lemon groves, lima bean fields, and dairy farms east of Chula Vista were fading memories. Subdivisions of homes on half-acre lots had been built where migrant workers had picked fruit and vegetables while farmers tended herds of Guernsey and Holstein. Still, the heart of the valley remained largely untouched, stretching eastward from the future route of I-805 to the Sweetwater Dam — a six-mile expanse of mini-wilderness broken by two golf courses.

Even with the rough beast of development slouching ever east and south to be born, Bonita retained at least a semirural aspect: the half-acre lots had been zoned for two horses each; wide bridle paths coursed for miles between homes and through the brush, bamboo, palms, and weeping willows of the Sweetwater floodplain. Trails climbed high hills on both sides of the valley, untouched by bulldozer or backhoe.

The southern hills were first to go: Corky McMillin built large houses on lots decidedly not zoned for horses. Corky did retain bridle paths, but now where the paths crossed roadways, vehicles of a swelling population menaced horse and rider.

Except for a huge water tank, the northern hills were still unsullied when I finally found myself in San Diego long enough to buy a house and settle down with my family. I’ve gotten to know Bonita much better since I moved in 17 years ago.

Million-dollar homes now clutter the water-tank hill. The valley center remains undeveloped, however, despoiled only by the county’s misguided replacement of an enormous stand of tall bamboo with thin, runty bushes and trees “native to the area.” This ecologically correct move destroyed a lot of habitat. No more do I hear the high yapping of foxes at midnight or see them scrambling over my back-yard fence in the glow of a ghost moon to feast on the fallen fruit of a mulberry tree. But as luck would have it, I still endure — as we all do who live in the valley — the god-awful stench of skunk, which is especially distressing for those of us with dogs.

A more pleasant Bonita odor is the light camphor smell of rainwashed eucalyptus along Sweetwater Road as it passes Rohr Park, where families congregate most weekends to grill carne asada, celebrate birthdays with piñatas, and just generally have one hell of a good time. The families often come from National City, Chula Vista, and points south.

Sweetwater Road also skirts the northern boundary of a three-mile jogging path that loops around the Chula Vista Golf Course to link up with the southern boundary along Bonita Road. Men and women, boys and girls, babies in strollers, Chicanos, gringos white and black, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Vietnamese, and Lord knows what other ethnicities ply the route, some faster than others. Dogs and horses join the mix to add excitement.

Less appealing images sometimes intrude: a shrieking horse, its forelegs shattered by an inattentive or perhaps malicious driver; an occasional jogger struck down by an inattentive or perhaps malicious driver; a corpse dumped in a woodsy patch after a drug deal gone bad; stables and paddocks in the lee of Mount Miguel soon to be buried beneath tons of concrete as SR-125 moves inexorably toward the border; the chilling chatter (especially for a Vietnam vet) of a Border Patrol helo beating its midnight way over the valley with searchlight blazing.

But what the hell? Where else can you live with at least the illusion of leafy open space just 25 minutes from Horton Plaza? And you could be living in a Coronado Billy Box.

— Bill Salisbury

CORONADO

A well-known fact about Coronado is that it tends to sink a few inches each summer. The weight of tourists from inland cities, of college students returned home, of Navy families back for the Fourth of July — Orange Avenue becomes awash in beach cruisers and sunburned shoulders every year when the summer season arrives. But somehow, even with the throngs of vacationers, Coronado holds on to its small-town feel. It’s a place where neighbors bump into each other on Sundays at the park or at the Ferry Landing’s farmer’s market. You can’t go to the grocery store without running into someone you know, whether it’s the pharmacist, neighbor, or landscaper. This is what keeps Coronado quaint, what keeps real estate prices high, and why Navy families return here to retire. It’s a beautiful gated community surrounded on nearly all sides by water.

But summer isn’t Coronado’s only season. Each Halloween Margarita Avenue dresses itself in cobwebs and jack-o’-lanterns for costumed children. And Christmas pours down Orange Avenue with holiday floats iced with garlands and candy canes. This is when Coronado emerges from its pure patriotic summers as a small town full of families.

As a teenager full of angst, I loathed the town’s conservative mentality and traditional values. Being the West Coast’s largest naval port brings a huge influx of military personnel, both enlisted and civilian. I always thought of Coronado as the town of white picket fences and American flags, of BMWs and Lexuses. Everyone here keeps up appearances, and with the Joneses. If you’re a punk rocker there’s plenty to rail against. I suppose that’s why I’m always pleased to see spiky-haired teenagers dressed in studded black rags and sagging pants hanging out in front of Starbucks on the main street. Back in my day it was the Kensington Coffee Company on First Street. The funny thing is that these frustrated kids are Coronado’s golden children, the truly privileged. Believe it or not, some of them graduate with honors and head off soon after to upper-crust schools like Stanford. The shock value of their dyed hair and piercings goes only so far. Once you meet their proud parents or see the cars they drive, you get an honest glimpse, if not into the nature of Coronado, at least into human nature in general.

A little older now, and after nearly seven years away, I’m able to see Coronado differently. There’s something to be said about neighbors who still borrow sugar and bookstores whose clerks know your name. Like La Jolla and Del Mar, Coronado is the land of plenty, where presidents vacation and celebrities live. But beyond all that, beyond the consumerism and conservatism that once drove me mad as a teenager, Coronado is still just a sleepy town.

— Daniel Ridge

CHULA VISTA

Have you ever focused your camera so that you captured the beautiful and cut out the ugly? Seated at a wooden table, at sunset, with your glass of crisp chardonnay beaded with condensation and your Bob’s by the Bay shrimp and cheese quesadilla melting before you, you might be inclined to forget that Chula Vista has garnered the unfortunate description of “the fifth-fastest-growing city in the United States.” When a light wind simultaneously lifts your hair and romantically clangs the halyards against the masts, you might decide to live in the moment, let the pyrotechnics in the sky and in the wine have their way with you — because Chula Vista’s bayfront is an insular gem.

The bayfront is bounded by three separate parks and encompasses two marinas. According to Dockmaster Ashe, it is the quietest and cleanest harbor and marina in San Diego. The only thing that might be better than sitting here with your food and your drinks and the fuzzy mallard babies milling around your feet would be to toast the sunset from your own yacht. About 10 percent of the boats moored in the two marinas have a live-aboard population. Although Mike Norton’s wife tells him living aboard “feels like camping,” he says,” It’s a great life.” Norton says live-aboards go out to sea only about once a month because it’s work to transform your home into a ship, to put away your TV, to tend to your cats, and, if the trip is long, to stock up on water and food. Normally, he says his wife and he take shorter trips, out around the bay or to Catalina Island, but last year they sailed for a leisurely 21 days to La Paz. Norton also says that the community of live-aboards is diverse, comprising doctors, lawyers, even the president of a turtle society. However, he warned me, don’t get them talking about anchors — it’s as if you’re a Chevy person or a Ford person — strong feelings abound about anchors.

The bayfront is replete with mythical creatures: green turtles, which everyone has heard of but few have seen, and the occasional sea horse, which Dockmaster Ashe swears to have seen. Mythical creatures also exist on the northern fringe of the bayfront at the Chula Vista Nature Center. In one aquarium, rainbow trout swim in their upstream disguise. According to the director of the center, Dan Beintema, these rainbow trout, which were collected above the Sweetwater Dam, are genetically endowed to become steelhead trout but, like Clark Kent without a telephone booth, lacking saltwater they can never transform themselves. Another indigenous and magical creature displayed at the center is the ghostly moon jellyfish, which floats like an iridescent bloom against a purple backlight.

But what is the angle of the camera cutting out? Swing south, just beyond the children’s play structures, and you will see the South Bay Power Plant, which the Environmental Health Coalition claims “emits an average of more than a quarter ton of air pollutants into the community daily.” And don’t forget to snap the vacant lots behind the bayfront while they’re still vacant. Approximately 300 acres owned by the Port Authority, 100 owned by out-of-town investors, and 30 owned by the City of Chula Vista are being studied now — convention centers, hotels, restaurants, office buildings, high-density, high-rise housing have been bandied about. What’s to become of Chula Vista’s insular gem?

— Susan Luzzaro

SOLANA BEACH

I discovered Solana Beach because of a pig — well, two pigs, actually — Sporky and Frances Bacon.

Frances (name variation because she was female) lived on the middle Barbara in Solana Beach. Before I met Frances, I didn’t know that there are three Barbara Avenues in this town and that none of them connect.

Frances Bacon belonged to Linnea Dayton and her family. Sporky was my pig.

We (the pigs, Linnea, and I) went on a walk back in 1989 that started at North Rios, wound east through the San Elijo Lagoon Preserve, and eventually headed south, up through Holmwood Canyon. It was so beautiful, this piece of undeveloped land. We walked by a bench with a plaque thanking Gemma Parks for saving Holmwood Canyon from developers. I thank her every time I walk past.

When we went on this hike, Linnea and I were hoping we could pigsit for each other. I met Linnea because I wrote a how-to article for a computer graphics publication she edited. Eight years later, I ended up moving to Solana Beach, coincidentally within a block of her house (and perhaps more importantly, within walking distance of the Belly Up Tavern).

Twenty-five years ago, Linnea, along with Linda La Grange and Bobbie Hilton, started the alternative class that has become the Global Education program at the Skyline public school in Solana Beach. My seven- and ten-year-old children attend this program and have since kindergarten. I even ran for the school board (and lost) because I feel so beholden to these teachers. It is a breath of fresh air for people with inquisitive children — kids who want to participate in their own education and not have it force-fed to them. And for parents who want to participate as well. My daughter learned her geometric solids in kindergarten. At the same time, she learned about the domestication of wheat and the rise of Egypt, and the domestication of corn and the rise of the Aztecs — cultures that share the pyramid as a focal point. Bobbie and Linda still teach at the school. My children live within blocks of their teachers. We regularly stop by their houses to say hi. That kind of stability, of localness, is very rare in growing urban communities. This is exactly why I moved here six years ago, after living ten years in La Costa (a community that’s being raped by Carlsbad).

I always used to say that no house in Solana Beach is completely up to code. That endears me to a city. But with the recent gentrification driven by high housing prices, I’ve had to stop. Admittedly, Solana Beach is a town with a schism. Besides the wealthy influx, there’s the artistic community (some members have lived in Solana Beach for over 20 years), who helped install the big, voluptuous woman named Star (created by the late Niki de Saint Phalle and on loan for only a while longer) on the corner of Lomas Santa Fe and Cedros Avenue.

There’s the developer posse, which can be seen throwing its weight around with the Gateway Hotel (and muchos condos!), which is being foisted upon the Solana Beach public. The developer is having private meetings with important locals to try to subdue the community. (If it were so good for the community, why would the meetings be private?)

But what makes Solana Beach interesting for me is not only the Hispanic history, which infuses the area with words of Spanish origin: Rios, Cedros, and Granados (rivers, cedars, and pomegranate trees), but that the town, because of these roots, has adopted the feeling of a zócalo — where people walk just to walk and to talk to friends and neighbors, and they don’t rush to get anywhere in particular.

I moved here because the town has a beautiful view and was unpretentious. I worry about it becoming more affected as it goes upscale, but Linnea assures me a pig could still go on a walk in Solana Beach these days.

— Jennifer Ball

POINT LOMA

Point Loma’s essence is found in a blur of military installations, dilapidated restaurants that have been around so long they are considered classy, million-dollar ocean-view homes, and lampposts placed directly in the middle of streets that virtually all dead-end in canyons or gullies.

The main arteries of Point Loma — Rosecrans, Nimitz, Chatsworth, Catalina — are well-traveled by Lexuses, BMWs, and Mercedes-Benzes. The neighborhood is home to judges, attorneys, and doctors, among other high rollers who have found their piece of heaven in the coastal suburb. Until the last decade, many elderly people inhabited the neighborhood. As they passed away, their houses were either left to family or purchased by other Point Loma residents. Portuguese immigrants used to call Point Loma home. After the collapse of the tuna industry in the ’80s, many left, although some succeeding generations remain in the area beyond Nimitz dubbed “Tunaville.”

From the mansions dotting Rosecrans to the secluded residences near Point Loma Nazarene University to the homes above Chatsworth in what realtors call the “affordable zone,” most residents are standoffish, to say the least. There are no block parties or street fairs, nor many community events. Most community spirit lies within the activities of select groups, such as the Point Loma Optimists, who erect flags along Rosecrans each Sunday, and the Portuguese community, which hosts the annual Portuguese Festa Parade. The Point Loma philosophy is “you do your thing, and I’ll do mine,” an impersonal attitude among neighbors. The people of Point Loma will unite for certain causes, for they do not adjust well to change. Presently, the concern plaguing the community is the expected overcrowding and traffic congestion resulting from the development of the Naval Training Center for civilian use. If not for apprehensions over the NTC construction, the concern would be over airplane noise from Lindbergh Field. Without their various causes, it’s doubtful that most Point Loma residents would have anything to say to each other.

— Mary Montgomery

OCEANSIDE

Eight years ago at 6:30 in the morning, if you surfed the beach breaks closest to downtown Oceanside, you’d see the underworld scurrying home like cockroaches getting back to the rocks. The crystal meth/prostitute element has been largely squeezed out for two reasons. For one, prices of homes west of I-5 have exploded. My house has tripled in value in the past decade. Brand-new townhomes near Coast Highway start at $719,000, a startling change from two years ago. The other reason may have to do with Oceanside cops and their overzealous activity: in September homeless kids testified before the city council that police arrested and beat them just for being homeless.

I was born and raised in Oceanside and have had an office on Coast Highway for three years. My parents went to Oceanside High with children of Japanese-American farmers from the San Luis Rey Valley who were interned during World War II. Some of those families now sell produce at the downtown farmer’s market Thursday mornings.

While housing values have skyrocketed, Oceanside’s economy seems mired in a swamp of small-minded politics and semper fi inertia. Some businesses complain that the chamber of commerce is more interested in local politics and collecting handouts from the city than in promoting business. Downtown Oceanside is still dominated by check-cashing joints, used-car lots, and military dry cleaners. The ubiquity of the Alberto’s and Robertito’s is underscored by the taco shop named ’To’s. Four months ago a city council majority agreed to pay developer Doug Manchester $2.2 million not to build an oceanfront hotel complex that had been nixed by the California Coastal Commission. Our city council also paid $1 million-plus for an all-nude, 18-and-up Playgirl club, with hopes that the building would be leased by a high-end restaurant. One year later the building still sits vacant.

But resourceful businesspeople have popped up to bring in their own concept of a new Oceanside. Two doors from me, an out-of-business hubcap store is being replaced by a surfboard shop. A recording studio has moved in. A Cuban restaurant has opened one block away, and six blocks down an attorney/businessman is attempting to bring live music to his Hill Street Café (Coast Highway was called Hill Street until ten years ago). A shop with hip-hop gear thrives, as do two stores with secondhand clothing for the hip.

At 60 years old, the Coronet full-service newsstand was one of the oldest businesses in Oceanside when it closed last August. (It opened three months after Camp Pendleton.) Longtime Oceanside businessman and native Jamaican Ras Charles, who bought the shop, already ran two reggae-oriented stores next to it: a Caribbean food store and a clothing/gift shop. His third Coast Highway business will be called Yard Records, dedicated to reggae, world beat, and gospel music. Its opening runs counter to the closing of music retail stores countywide.

The two largest downtown movie theaters tell two different stories. The Star is used occasionally for talent shows and plays. The Crest Theater, a couple of blocks away (and which my grandfather helped build), has been occupied by a populist religious group that has also taken over adjacent offices and storefronts.

But many of my neighbors know that Oceanside is about contrast. As the city council swears it wants upscale nightlife attractions, the bowling alley prospers. And as housing prices boom, Coast Highway remains home to two RV-trailer parks and three mobile-home parks. The joke is that one of those — Miramar, at the north end of Tremont — offers its renters a better ocean view than any new multimillion-dollar high-rise ever will.

— Ken Leighton

COLLEGE AREA

As soon as you leave the SDSU district, where College Avenue collides with El Cajon Boulevard, libraries and frat houses give way to liquor stores, check-cashing places, 99-cent emporiums, and plenty more clear signposts that you’ve entered an urban, merchant-driven neighborhood. The Campus Drive-In Theater occupied that intersection from 1947 until it was torn down in 1983. You can still see its four-story-tall neon sign, a miniskirted majorette spinning her baton and wearing a full Indian headdress, behind the College Grove Shopping Center off Highway 94. The old drive-in lot currently houses yet another nondescript modular shopping center, where few stores outlive their first year’s lease.

One rare longstanding retail landmark is the Subway sandwich shop near 63rd, which opened back in 1982, the East Coast company’s first franchise in San Diego. Today, our city has more Subways than Roberto’s/Alberto’s/fill-in-the-blank-Berto’s, but in a neighborhood where everything around it has changed, this original location maintains its mom-and-pop-hangout atmosphere, despite the newfangled bread machines and a Tolstoy-dense menu that now takes up the entire back wall.

One shouldn’t pull over or park in the proximity of women who stand around the bus stop in front of the AM/PM or who stroll up and down El Cajon Boulevard between the 92175 post office and 70th Street. It doesn’t matter how you look or what you drive; you don’t even have to make eye contact for the more aggressive entrepreneurs to walk right up to your passenger door and try to climb in. It’s easy to fend off unwanted contact with a lady of the night (or of the morning, afternoon, or lunchtime). Simply point a little disposable camera at her, flash, and you’ll hear the clippity-clopping of her high heels fading into the distance.

The huge Ralphs supermarket is open all night, and you’ll often see furtive, undernourished-looking people there buying lighters, steel wool pads, and tire-pressure gauges they use to make crack pipes. Ralphs is the only place you can get such smoking necessities at night in this neighborhood, since 7-Eleven stopped selling Brillo pads and liquor stores quit carrying single-rose stems sealed in versatile glass tubes. The Laundromat on El Cajon near 70th has a public restroom that costs a quarter to use. At night, it’s usually occupied by homeless or far-from-home people “renting” the bathroom and, most importantly, its lockable door, rare in this part of the city, often to make use of those Brillo pads, tire gauges, and butane lighters they just bought down the street at Ralphs.

— Jay Allen Sanford

ENCINITAS

While some towns form inland and grow toward the coast, the roots of Encinitas are coastal and its heart is beachside. This is where the core of the town is, where people and their families have lived for decades and grown up with their neighbors. These are the people who remember the days of bicycling to work, when there were no stop signs on Highway 101 and when newcomers were immediately noticed, none of which are in the too-distant past. Things are not nearly the same, but needless to say they are still agreeable.

In spite of this laid-back atmosphere, there exists a strong sense of localism that is tied to a tightly knit surf community. Outsiders are viewed with misgivings and are not always welcome, often for reasons like traffic, both in and out of the water. Locals sometimes take some warming up to, as they become frustrated in dealing with the effects of an unstoppable tourist industry. Community events and street fairs are common west of the 5, and aside from the localism there is a calm, friendly, live-and-let-live vibe.

The greater La Costa area, however, is a different story. Businesses like Target Greatland and a dominant LA Fitness center, as well as the all-too-familiar four-minute stoplights, are signs of recent growth. With seemingly every square acre of land either under construction or host to a tract home, La Costa has undoubtedly lost some of its unique appeal. Newer citizens enjoy the convenience of the shopping centers, with a gas station and a Starbucks on every corner, but many established locals miss the simpler hum of a town.

With this recent spurt of housing development in the rolling hills of back-yard Encinitas come the daily appearances of overly aggressive soccer moms in minivans and their Beemer-driving, cell-phone-fiend husbands. There are neighborhoods in which people can live across the street from one another for years and never know each other’s names, but there are also communities of closely bound, brownie-baking friends and families. Along the coast, off Vulcan and Neptune, you can find a variety of residents, including struggling artists, retired locals, wealthy singles, and comfortable surfer families.

Over the hill and just a few miles away, streets like these give way to the surprisingly busy thoroughfares of El Camino Real, Encinitas Boulevard, and Rancho Santa Fe Road. The latter winds into the back portion of Encinitas that borders Olivenhain and consists of well-spaced, large homes and a fair share of multimillion-dollar estates. Much more reserved than the colorful, often eccentric coastal profile, the estates mingle with respectable homes and working-class people who can contribute to an uptight atmosphere.

It is the typical small-town story: the world discovered Encinitas, and things will never go back to what they were before this place was washed, starched, and pressed by developers and suburbanites. The changes that have taken place in La Costa are undeniable proof that Encinitas has evolved from a little surf town. However, even with all of its stop signs and sightseers, beachside Encinitas retains its soulful charm.

— Gabrielle Clifford

LA MESA

The doctor says, “You’re a few pounds overweight, your cholesterol’s a bit scary, and your blood pressure…”

“Yeah, okay,” I grumble. “So what’s your prescription?”

“You could change your diet.”

“Not for the better, I couldn’t. My wife already suckered me into eating like a bird.”

“Then…” He pauses so long, I imagine he’ll say, “Get ready to die.” But he says, “Exercise.”

Before I have a chance to complain about my overbooked schedule or to argue that I already play golf and softball and take our baby for a walk most every day, he says, “Whatever you do, double it.”

“Cool,” I say, thinking that if Pam suggests I play too much golf I can give her a shocked look and say, “Doctor’s orders.”

But she could argue that golf costs money and walking doesn’t, and we live in La Mesa, arguably the best walking neighborhood east of I-5.

For serious hiking, Cowles Mountain is maybe ten minutes by car from our home, and for strolling, Lake Murray’s even closer. But why drive at all when our part of La Mesa, which newcomers call “the Village,” is surrounded by three pretty hills?

Suppose we start from the trolley stop at Spring Street and La Mesa Boulevard. Rather than take the boulevard with its countless antiques shops, we go east on Allison, make a left on Pine, the greenest and homiest of the cross streets that take us to University Avenue. After crossing University, we’ll turn right and perhaps look down upon a game of Little League baseball or old-timers’ softball before we make a left on Memorial Drive, into MacArthur Park. If we’re lucky, as we pass Porter Hall, an AA meeting will be happening and we’ll overhear a confession or testimonial. Then, using the second stairs on the right, we’ll cut through the Community Center, pausing to glance at the seniors doing yoga or the tiny girls dancing, and pass the playground where moms chat while their kids hang precariously from the jungle gym. With an eye out for errant golf balls, we make a left and continue upward to the crest of the hill that overlooks the Sun Valley Golf Course clubhouse and the community swimming pool, and before the descent, we turn onto a paved path that leads us to a cul-de-sac and a modest but gracious neighborhood.

A few hundred yards along Porter Hill Terrace, we make a left and climb again on Tia Maria, go right on Tio Diego, and proceed to the top of Porter Hill, to peer southeast between houses across pleasant old La Mesa or to gaze north into the present and future, the megastores of Fletcher Parkway.

Back down the hill, we’ll follow Randlett to La Mesa Boulevard. On our way back to the trolley, we’d better stop and strengthen ourselves with a chile relleno at Mario’s or albóndigas at Por Favor. But then, remembering that pesky doctor, we need to walk off those calories.

We go one block east of Spring to Palm Avenue and stride south to Pasadena Avenue, the road that meanders around Collier Park, and as we leave the park behind, we start wandering, our compass set to northeast and upward, until we reach the crest of Boulder Heights and perhaps find ourselves wondering why people even want houses big as cathedrals, or how many hundreds of gallons of gas a week a family with two Explorers, a Navigator, and a Hummer must use.

By the time we find our way back to the boulevard, we crave beer. We rationalize the indulgence by reminding ourselves that we’ve got one more hill to climb, and it’s the toughest. The most aerobic. The fat burner.

So we stride west on the boulevard to Date Avenue, make a left, then a right on Lemon Avenue, plod up a short hill, and make another left onto Alta, where we continue ever upward to the intersection of Alta and Fairview, where we look for the steps, a walker’s trail between yards.

Olga, a fiery Russian prophet who lives here on Mount Nebo, tells of a route of steps like these that would take us to the mountaintop and down the other side, if the previous two hills, albóndigas, and beer hadn’t sapped our will to explore.

Atop the steps on Pasadena Avenue, we admire old houses and a mansion or two — Mount Nebo was an early haunt of La Mesa’s prosperous. It’s a good place to catch our breath and ponder some mysteries. Why is it, we wonder, that old mansions appear graceful, while new ones look obscene, or at least pretentious?

And why doesn’t someone appear and offer us lemonade on one of the decks that overlook La Mesa, from Lake Murray to Mount Helix?

At Vista Drive, we go left, then make a right on Prospect and march on. The road has flattened out. We’ve climbed all we’re going to. The road ends in a circle around some grand eucalyptus trees. We gaze west, from south to north, through sparkling air or smoggy haze, at the Pacific, from below the border to Del Mar, and congratulate ourselves for following doctor’s orders.

— Ken Kuhlken

MIRA MESA

I’ve lived in Mira Mesa all but 6 of my 34 years. I watched it grow from a community with one gas station, one grocery store, and the main street, Mira Mesa Boulevard, ending at Parkdale. The boulevard now goes from the I-15, past Parkdale, through Sorrento Valley to the 805. I remember the ribbon-cutting ceremony, which we walked to, since we lived around the corner. The ten-year-olds I hung out with were mad that we would no longer be able to ride our bikes down the dirt road to the old abandoned ranch or the olive grove where we shot BB guns. Sometimes we’d get adventurous at night and ride through the fields up to the cemetery and tell ghost stories. We’d always leave with security chasing us.

When Challenger Junior High School was built across the street from my house, I was bummed to be losing my favorite canyon. It was a canyon where my friends and I played cowboys and Indians, caught lizards and king snakes, and watched fires rage. My older brother caught rattlesnakes by pressing a tree branch against their heads and pushing them into a box. He’d ride his Huffy bike home, laughing as it rattled. Eat your heart out, Crocodile Hunter!

When they started developing the land leading to Sorrento Valley, they found Indian artifacts. As when the school was built, development stopped while the area was excavated. My brother and I went out there hoping to get rich finding arrowheads, but all we found was a teenagers’ fort with empty beer bottles, cigarettes, and a porno magazine (which our parents eventually discovered after we brought it back to our fort — which was, unfortunately, in our own back yard).

Mira Mesa High School was built in 1977. I graduated from it ten years later. We had close to a thousand kids in our graduating class because Scripps Ranch had yet to build its own high school. We had a lot of Asians, and Mira Mesa was often called Manila Mesa. I played basketball with the Filipino guys and dated Filipinas. And I loved the smell of lumpia and pansit, which their elders cooked at our recreation center on weekends.

I read in the paper that there are Asian gangs in this area, although I don’t see them. I do see their cars some nights, in a long caravan down the boulevard. They meet at In-N-Out Burger before heading off for illegal street races on Kearny Villa Road or in Sorrento Valley. Although I don’t see gang activity, I’ve been close to my share of violence. A guy I played basketball with, Tony Giles, was shot and killed at our rec center. At the same place 20 years later, my girlfriend’s daughter had an underage friend who died there because of drugs. The library next to the rec center has become the Epicentre, which is a teen center and an all-age music venue. A new library was built next door.

But there are so many things I love about Mira Mesa, like the House of Ice, which was fun in the summer, before we were old enough to drive to the rink at UTC. We have Lake Miramar, which we always fished at, although we never caught anything. Apparently somebody does, because the largest bass in San Diego was caught there in the late ’70s. We are one of the few places left that has a Farrell’s — the old-fashioned ice cream parlor, with old-fashioned candies and a player piano.

We didn’t have many celebrities in Mira Mesa. All through high school, I worked at the McDonald’s, and it was a big thrill when sportscaster Ted Leitner or Padre Tony Gwynn came in for a Big Mac. Both lived in Scripps Ranch. On the subject of baseball players, 1989 MVP Kevin Mitchell was often in Mira Mesa, playing pickup basketball and baseball games. We’ve had a few Mira Mesa High alumni make it into professional sports, including my high school teammate Ray Rowe — who had success at SDSU also. But the most famous athlete we had was Michael Pittman, who is now a running back for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

My stepdad delivered mail here for over 20 years (and it’s how he met my mom, just like in the mailman jokes). On Halloween, we walked his route with him and racked up lots of candy. It’s a middle-class neighborhood, with modest three-bedroom houses. My parents paid $21,000 for their place on New Salem Street. My mom and stepdad paid $46,000 for the three-bedroom, two-bath on Parkdale in 1977.

While I sit in an apartment in Mira Mesa, I long for the good ol’ days. Especially for those house prices.

And some of that Halloween candy.

“Cool,” I say, thinking that if Pam suggests I play too much golf I can give her a shocked look and say, “Doctor’s orders.”

But she could argue that golf costs money and walking doesn’t, and we live in La Mesa, arguably the best walking neighborhood east of I-5.

For serious hiking, Cowles Mountain is maybe ten minutes by car from our home, and for strolling, Lake Murray’s even closer. But why drive at all when our part of La Mesa, which newcomers call “the Village,” is surrounded by three pretty hills?

Suppose we start from the trolley stop at Spring Street and La Mesa Boulevard. Rather than take the boulevard with its countless antiques shops, we go east on Allison, make a left on Pine, the greenest and homiest of the cross streets that take us to University Avenue. After crossing University, we’ll turn right and perhaps look down upon a game of Little League baseball or old-timers’ softball before we make a left on Memorial Drive, into MacArthur Park. If we’re lucky, as we pass Porter Hall, an AA meeting will be happening and we’ll overhear a confession or testimonial. Then, using the second stairs on the right, we’ll cut through the Community Center, pausing to glance at the seniors doing yoga or the tiny girls dancing, and pass the playground where moms chat while their kids hang precariously from the jungle gym. With an eye out for errant golf balls, we make a left and continue upward to the crest of the hill that overlooks the Sun Valley Golf Course clubhouse and the community swimming pool, and before the descent, we turn onto a paved path that leads us to a cul-de-sac and a modest but gracious neighborhood.

A few hundred yards along Porter Hill Terrace, we make a left and climb again on Tia Maria, go right on Tio Diego, and proceed to the top of Porter Hill, to peer southeast between houses across pleasant old La Mesa or to gaze north into the present and future, the megastores of Fletcher Parkway.

Back down the hill, we’ll follow Randlett to La Mesa Boulevard. On our way back to the trolley, we’d better stop and strengthen ourselves with a chile relleno at Mario’s or albóndigas at Por Favor. But then, remembering that pesky doctor, we need to walk off those calories.

We go one block east of Spring to Palm Avenue and stride south to Pasadena Avenue, the road that meanders around Collier Park, and as we leave the park behind, we start wandering, our compass set to northeast and upward, until we reach the crest of Boulder Heights and perhaps find ourselves wondering why people even want houses big as cathedrals, or how many hundreds of gallons of gas a week a family with two Explorers, a Navigator, and a Hummer must use.

By the time we find our way back to the boulevard, we crave beer. We rationalize the indulgence by reminding ourselves that we’ve got one more hill to climb, and it’s the toughest. The most aerobic. The fat burner.

So we stride west on the boulevard to Date Avenue, make a left, then a right on Lemon Avenue, plod up a short hill, and make another left onto Alta, where we continue ever upward to the intersection of Alta and Fairview, where we look for the steps, a walker’s trail between yards.

Olga, a fiery Russian prophet who lives here on Mount Nebo, tells of a route of steps like these that would take us to the mountaintop and down the other side, if the previous two hills, albóndigas, and beer hadn’t sapped our will to explore.

Atop the steps on Pasadena Avenue, we admire old houses and a mansion or two — Mount Nebo was an early haunt of La Mesa’s prosperous. It’s a good place to catch our breath and ponder some mysteries. Why is it, we wonder, that old mansions appear graceful, while new ones look obscene, or at least pretentious?

And why doesn’t someone appear and offer us lemonade on one of the decks that overlook La Mesa, from Lake Murray to Mount Helix?

At Vista Drive, we go left, then make a right on Prospect and march on. The road has flattened out. We’ve climbed all we’re going to. The road ends in a circle around some grand eucalyptus trees. We gaze west, from south to north, through sparkling air or smoggy haze, at the Pacific, from below the border to Del Mar, and congratulate ourselves for following doctor’s orders.

— Ken Kuhlken

MIRA MESA

I’ve lived in Mira Mesa all but 6 of my 34 years. I watched it grow from a community with one gas station, one grocery store, and the main street, Mira Mesa Boulevard, ending at Parkdale. The boulevard now goes from the I-15, past Parkdale, through Sorrento Valley to the 805. I remember the ribbon-cutting ceremony, which we walked to, since we lived around the corner. The ten-year-olds I hung out with were mad that we would no longer be able to ride our bikes down the dirt road to the old abandoned ranch or the olive grove where we shot BB guns. Sometimes we’d get adventurous at night and ride through the fields up to the cemetery and tell ghost stories. We’d always leave with security chasing us.

When Challenger Junior High School was built across the street from my house, I was bummed to be losing my favorite canyon. It was a canyon where my friends and I played cowboys and Indians, caught lizards and king snakes, and watched fires rage. My older brother caught rattlesnakes by pressing a tree branch against their heads and pushing them into a box. He’d ride his Huffy bike home, laughing as it rattled. Eat your heart out, Crocodile Hunter!

When they started developing the land leading to Sorrento Va