Carson, CA

Carson fills the flat ground between Torrance, Compton and Long Beach, a Los Angeles County city laced by the 405, the 110, the 91 and the 710. Postwar tracts later filled in among rail yards and warehouses. Food is what sets the city apart, and two long boulevards carry most of it. Keystone, where Carson Street begins on the west side, gathers around the Seafood City plaza and a long run of Filipino bakeries and restaurants. Up Avalon, Colony Cove and Carson Harbor are built around large manufactured home communities with their own pools and clubhouses. Most homes are single-story tract houses built in the two decades after the war, set on level blocks with a garage attached and a fenced yard out back. Years of additions and new facades have loosened the matching look, and apartments and mobile home parks line the big boulevards. Victoria Park and Victoria Golf Course give the middle of the city its largest open space, with a public pool and a long flat loop around the fairways. Dominguez Park has a public pool with waterslides, and Veterans Park has a big skate park and an amphitheater. Back Home in Lahaina has turned out Hawaiian plates since the late 1990s, with a haupia cheesecake as its signature. The Honest Abe Cider House and Meadery on Main Street shares its room with a taproom running more than 40 lines. Teofilo Coffee Company, a Filipino specialty roaster, pours Barako and Excelsa coffees grown in the Philippines. Industry is the tradeoff. Warehouses and trucking yards ring many neighborhoods, and trucks are part of the traffic on the edges. Step off the boulevards, though, and the blocks go quiet, and most of Carson sits a short drive from a Filipino bakery or a pupuseria.