Birdland, San Diego, CA

Birdland gets its name from its street signs. Starling Drive, Cardinal Drive and Nightingale Way wind across a small mesa in central San Diego, boxed in by State Route 163 to the west, I-805 along its eastern side and the drop into Mission Valley on the south. Serra Mesa sits across the freeway, and the planning maps fold Birdland into it, but neighbors here still use the old tract name. Most of the homes date from about 1955 to the early 1960s, built as single-family houses on curving streets, part of the same tract boom that built out the rest of the mesa. Three large apartment communities round out the housing. The north end belongs to medicine, where Sharp Memorial, Sharp Mary Birch and Rady Children's Hospital spread across a campus along Frost Street and Children's Way, and Fletcher Elementary serves the residential side. Green space mostly means crossing a freeway. Cabrillo Heights Park lies just over I-805 in Serra Mesa with ball fields, wide lawns and a playground. Civita Park, down the slope toward Friars Road, climbs the face of an old quarry with a waterfall, an amphitheater, a dog park and walking paths. On Saturday mornings a certified farmers market fills the plaza beside it. California Burritos on Starling Drive is the corner spot inside the neighborhood, a strip-mall counter that opens at six in the morning and stays open late, turning out jumbo burritos with free chips and salsa. Over on Sandrock Road in Serra Mesa, Cali Cafe pours Vietnamese iced coffee and blends acai bowls, and Thai Pepper Cuisine next door cooks from family recipes for dine-in or takeout. Groceries come from the Ralphs on Mission Center Road in Mission Valley, a few minutes downhill, and the big Mission Valley malls are close behind it. Most trips are by car, with SR-163 and I-805 at either edge and Interstate 8 just below the slope. That freeway frame also means a steady hum on the outer streets, and the hospital campus brings a daytime stream of cars to Frost Street. Inside that loop, though, the bird-named streets carry little through traffic, since nobody uses them as a shortcut to anywhere else.