San Fernando, CA

Walk the length of Maclay Avenue and you pass most of what makes San Fernando work: a public library, tamale and mariscos counters, bakeries and a long run of storefronts. The city is a compact, independent Los Angeles County town, with Los Angeles pressing in on all four sides, and it has kept its own downtown and its own government for more than a century. That separateness is the local story. When the neighboring towns of the northeast Valley voted to join Los Angeles for its water, San Fernando had wells of its own and stayed out. Most housing is single-story and older, a mix of prewar bungalows and postwar houses on standard city lots, and a scattering of small apartment houses near the shopping streets. The difference across town is mostly between the quieter residential blocks and the busier streets near downtown and the rail line. Eating out stays local. Magaly's is the tamale stop on Maclay, people linger over espresso at San Fernando Coffee Company on Truman, and Shadow Grove Brewing on 2nd Street pours small-batch beer in a themed taproom with trivia and live music nights. Parks are neighborhood sized, packed with ballgames on weekends, and the mission a few blocks west in Mission Hills gives the area its name and its oldest landmark. Being fully built out is the catch. There is little room for new homes, so the choice of houses at any given time is small. What keeps people in San Fernando is the scale. You can do a week of errands without touching a freeway and still run into someone you know on Maclay.