Gaslamp Quarter, San Diego, CA

Fifth Avenue is the spine of the Gaslamp Quarter, the 38-acre historic district in downtown San Diego that runs between Fourth and Sixth avenues from Broadway down toward the waterfront. More than 90 historic buildings, most of them Victorian with some Art Deco in the mix, now hold restaurants, nightclubs, hotels and shops, and the district has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1980. The history is rougher than the brick facades suggest. Alonzo Horton made Fifth Avenue the main street of his new town in 1867, and from the 1880s until 1916 the area was the Stingaree, a district of saloons and gambling halls that also held the city's first Chinatown. The Gaslamp name and the arch over Fifth Avenue came with redevelopment in the 1980s and 1990s. Relatively few people live in the Gaslamp Quarter itself. The main residential buildings are Gaslamp City Square on J Street, a seven-story condo complex from 2004, the 11-story Trellis on K Street, and the Samuel Fox Lofts on Sixth Avenue, a 1929 building with about two dozen lofts. Studios and one- and two-bedroom units are the norm. Dinner is the reason most people come. Cafe Sevilla on Fifth Avenue serves tapas and paella with flamenco shows, and Lou & Mickey's down the street is a steakhouse with a patio and seafood towers. Osteria Panevino, said to be the longest-running Italian kitchen in the Gaslamp, is known for ossobuco, while Operacaffe on Fourth Avenue cooks Florentine dishes like tagliatelle with porcini. The Gaslamp Museum on Island Avenue covers the district's past. Day to day, the district is easy to live in without a car. Ralphs on G Street, just across the line in the Marina, handles groceries, and Horton Plaza Park on Broadway is the nearest green space. The Gaslamp Quarter trolley station on the Green and Silver lines and the Fifth Avenue stop on the Blue and Orange lines both serve the area, and Petco Park is one block away. Noise comes with the address. Weekend crowds, Mardi Gras in the Gaslamp, ShamROCK and convention traffic fill the sidewalks late into the night, and street-level windows get the full effect. Upstairs, home is a lobby door away from Victorian storefronts that have been serving the public for well over a century.