Central, National City, CA

Central takes in most of National City north of 18th Street, from the Victorian blocks along A Avenue east to Interstate 805. The city's oldest buildings stand here, a few blocks from a long run of Filipino bakeries, grills and markets on 8th Street and Plaza Boulevard. History sits right on the street. Brick Row, a set of 1887 row houses built in the East Coast style, lines one side of Heritage Square, and the Kimball House, the founder's home assembled in 1868, sits close by. Past those blocks, most homes predate 1980. Single-family houses share the side streets with larger apartment complexes, and new construction is concentrated on 8th Street, where the Parco building added apartments over shops in 2021. Eighth Street is also where much of the eating happens. Friends of Friends, at 127 E 8th, pours a ginger thyme latte under hanging plants and breezeblock walls, and some nights it turns the music up for DJ sets. Valerio's City Bakery has been selling morning pandesal on East 8th since 1979. Villa Manila is the place to book a kamayan dinner, a shared meal laid out on banana leaves and eaten by hand. Over on Highland Avenue, Cafe La Maze serves prime rib in a room of leather booths with live music most nights. Parks are thin inside Central itself. Kimball Park, across Plaza Boulevard to the southwest, has ball fields, tennis courts, a skate park and Paradise Creek running through it. El Toyon Park, just over the freeway, adds a turf field and a fenced dog run. Errands mostly run along Plaza Boulevard. Seafood City opened its very first store there in 1989, and it still draws a crowd for Filipino groceries and the grilled skewers at Grill City inside. Highland Avenue is the other spine, and on cruise nights it fills with lowriders. The Blue Line trolley stops at the 8th Street station toward the bay, and I-805 forms the eastern edge. Plaza and Highland carry heavy traffic, and much of the commercial frontage is strip centers set behind parking lots rather than storefronts at the sidewalk. Even so, a Saturday errand here can mean pandesal still warm from the oven, a stop at Seafood City, and a walk past houses older than the city itself.