Azalea Park-Hollywood Park, San Diego, CA

Street signs hand-painted with flowers are the first clue that Azalea Park-Hollywood Park does things its own way. This City Heights neighborhood in San Diego sits on a plateau with Interstate 805 on the west, Fairmount Avenue on the east and Manzanita Canyon dropping away along the north edge. Homes line streets named for plants, such as Violet, Poplar, Tuberose and Columbine, many of them running out to a canyon edge. Residents have spent years turning the area into the Azalea Park Arts District, and you notice it while walking: murals, sculpture in odd corners, and mosaic tiles that neighbors made themselves. Canyons are the reason to live here. The Manzanita Gathering Place, with its mosaic canopies and columns, is the main trailhead for the City Heights Canyons Loop, about four and a half miles of paths that link Manzanita, Hollywood, Pepper and Swan canyons with short street connections. Hollywood Park runs along the south side, and Azalea Community Park holds a water conservation garden of succulents and artist-made sculpture. San Diego Canyonlands volunteers have replanted native shrubs like toyon and lemonadeberry, and towhees and acorn woodpeckers turn up along the creek beds. The recreation center on Violet Street runs summer day camp, outdoor movie nights and a fall carnival, and Hollywood Park hosts a district sports day. Those events do much of the work of a town square in a neighborhood without a commercial strip of its own. Food is close but modest. A bakery and a couple of taco counters line Poplar Street, and a small market sits on Fairmount. A few blocks east in Swan Canyon, Nate's Garden Grill serves food and live music on the grounds of City Farmers Nursery, a family-run plant yard that has been in City Heights for over half a century. For a full grocery run or a sit-down dinner, most people drive up Fairmount or over to University Avenue, and buses run along the main streets around the edge. The canyon floors are working drainages, so the trails are off limits after a storm. On a dry morning, most front doors in Azalea Park-Hollywood Park sit within an easy walk of a dirt trail.