Jamacha-Lomita, San Diego, CA

Jamacha-Lomita pairs two San Diego neighborhoods that run together along the eastern edge of the city's Skyline-Paradise Hills area, and it sits where the city limit meets Lemon Grove on one side and unincorporated La Presa on the other. Jamacha's name traces back to the old Rancho Jamacha and the valley it sat in, a word that likely began as Kumeyaay. Lomita has a good share of the area's earliest houses, much of it built in the early 1950s as low, single-family homes spread over hilly ground. Jamacha adds a few townhome rows and a pair of apartment complexes to the mix. Condition varies from street to street, and plenty of houses are ready for a refresh while others have clearly had one. Keiller Park on Woodrow Avenue and the small Lomita park beside Audubon Elementary are the local green spaces. The Skyline Recreation Center, at 8285 Skyline Drive, is where the Lomita Village Town Council meets each month. The Jamacha open space system follows the valley where Chollas Creek begins its run west toward the bay. The Lomita Village shopping center at Jamacha Road and Cardiff Street was remodeled and repaved, and it covers the basics with Foodland Supermarket, a gas station and a row of taco shops and juice counters along Cardiff. Vaqueros Carne Asada, on Lisbon Street in the Jamacha half, does exactly what the name promises and shows up in San Diego Magazine's guide to eating around Encanto. Errands mostly happen by car. Jamacha Road heads east toward Spring Valley, and Meadowbrook Drive and Skyline Drive connect back to Paradise Valley Road, where the Skyline Hills Branch Library sits just across the street from the southern edge. Imperial Avenue's small shops line the northern side. The housing is older and the hills are real, so expect to put work into a house here and to drive for anything beyond the Lomita Village center. Jamacha-Lomita feels like the quiet back edge of the city, where the last San Diego blocks give way to canyon and county land within a few streets.