“Go pound the pavement” is an enduring journalist’s adage for a reason—being out and about is the best way to learn what you need to know.
When I first moved to San Diego, I rented a room in a falling-down, 1950s three-bed that edged up against the canyon in Hillcrest. A shallow white ledge ran at eye-level around the sage-green walls, and I used it to prop up paintings I didn’t know how to hang. My parents helped me set up the bed frame I’d had since childhood next to the large, east-facing window. Sunlight beamed directly into my eyes in the morning, but with my head on my pillow, I could watch birds flirt and squabble on the telephone wire outside.
I was a 23-year-old from the suburbs, which meant I arrived that summer pathologically terrified of parallel parking. I should’ve practiced. Instead, I walked anywhere I wanted to go. I wore the last bit of tread off a pair of cowboy boots trekking two-and-a-half miles to Pride in Balboa Park. Once, as I stepped out of Whole Foods, a woman asked for directions to the DMV. I wasn’t sure how to explain the route, so I strolled there with her, the pot of yogurt I’d just bought slowly curdling in the August heat. Another time, I popped into a bar on a whim and ended up gin-drunk at 2 p.m. with a crew of friends in their mid-60s. All this wandering became a kind of gonzo cartography—I got to know Hillcrest’s main roads and side streets and strange alleys, and they began to feel like home.
I kind of know how to parallel park now, but with that new skill came the loss of these everyday moments of serendipity. In a world that often feels shrunken to the size of our screens, many of us long for adventure and variety. We fulfill the desire in different ways: booking European vacations, going on dates with people we probably shouldn’t, paying to be locked in an escape room and hunt for hidden keys smudged with the hand sweat of thousands of bored office workers before us.
Don’t get me wrong—I crush at escape rooms. Yet, on my birthday last November, when a friend asked if I had any goals for my 28th year, I told her, “I want to cultivate surprise.” To me, that means making time to wander. Talking to strangers. Loosening my grip on plans and just going with what announces itself.
It was through those first summer walks that I began to feel like a San Diegan. When my now-fiancée and I settled into our first apartment together in University Heights, then our second in South Park, our first order of business was to take a long walk, poke into shops, order a latte at the nearest café, drawing the first sketches of the mental maps that make up home.
So, in the spirit of surprise, I’m committing to exploring the contours of more of San Diego on foot. I invite you to take up the challenge with me by offering a few places to start: La Jolla, Alpine, City Heights, Poway, and Imperial Beach, the locales covered in this year’s neighborhood guide. We give you each neighborhood’s origin story and pull out our crystal ball to see what’s next for the area, and expert locals offer their top places in town. Go check ’em out (but leave room to find a favorite of your own).
While you explore, keep an eye out for public art. San Diego is full of brilliant muralists, including Mr B Baby, a San Ysidro local whose colorful piñata character Chucho frolics on walls all over the city (and the world). We check in with her on page 80.
Other parts of this issue provide more ideas for wonder-seeking. Food editor Troy Johnson wanders into Fleurette, the new spot in La Jolla from restauranteur Travis Swikard (the chef who gave us Callie). There, he’s whipping up a lighter take on French cooking. Craving the drama of a home game? As three of San Diego’s biggest names in pro sports—the Padres, the Wave, and SDFC—kick off their seasons, we spend time with their coaches to talk refreshed rosters and playoff prospects.
PARTNER CONTENT
We also dive into San Diego history, looking back at the “Jackass Mail” route—something that has nothing to do with Johnny Knoxville sticking leeches to his face and everything to do with using a bunch of mules to carry mail over 1,200 miles of undeveloped terrain. On a journey from San Antonio to SD, carriers fended off attacking warriors, drank out of puddles, and tended to sick mules, all while, unbeknownst to them, a sinking ship carried their paychecks to the bottom of the sea. Proof that there is such a thing as too much serendipity.
In San Diego, though, curious minds usually find just enough.
