Arcadia, CA

Arcadia spreads south from the San Gabriel Mountains on the east side of Pasadena, its Los Angeles County streets laid over Lucky Baldwin's old Rancho Santa Anita. His land became the Santa Anita racetrack and the county Arboretum, and the peafowl he brought in the 1870s still walk the lawns and rooftops of the west side. It is mostly houses on generous lots behind a few wide, busy boulevards. Peacock Village, in the west, is postwar ranches on curving streets with only a few entrances. The flats of Lower Rancho sit around the track and the gardens, and along Baldwin Avenue, West Arcadia packs condos and townhomes behind a long run of restaurant plazas. Wilderness Park at the top of Highland Oaks Drive has native plant trails, Santa Anita Avenue keeps climbing toward the Chantry Flats trailheads, and Arcadia County Park has a pool and picnic lawns under oaks. People drive in from across the San Gabriel Valley to eat. Din Tai Fung at Westfield Santa Anita still draws a crowd for soup dumplings, and the Baldwin and Duarte plazas below it are full of dim sum, noodle and tea shops. Errands run through the mall, the Baldwin corridor, 99 Ranch and Ralphs Fresh Fare on Foothill. The Metro A Line stops downtown near 1st Avenue with trains to Pasadena and Los Angeles, and the 210 crosses the north half. Traffic is the catch. Race days, Arboretum events and weekend dinner crowds jam Baldwin and Huntington, plaza lots fill fast, and nearly every errand starts in the car. Most weeks here have two speeds, a slow morning walk under oaks with a peacock calling from a roof, and a noisy wait for a table on Baldwin by evening.