Mountain View, El Monte, CA

Mountain View in El Monte is the part of town that shares its streets with an airport. The San Gabriel Valley Airport runs along Santa Anita Avenue here, and Annia's Kitchen, the restaurant on the airfield, serves breakfast and lunch with a view of the runway and the small planes coming and going. Homes in Mountain View follow the city's broader pattern of mostly single-family houses, much of it built in the decades after World War II on flat, regular blocks, with some apartment buildings mixed in along the busier roads. The river side of the neighborhood is where people get outside. On Mulhall Street, the Jeff Seymour Family Center Bike Park opened in 2017 with pump tracks, elevated wooden trails and dirt rollers built for beginner and intermediate riders, and it is free to use. Lower Azusa Road is the main food strip. Farther east, a string of small plazas holds BMC Pho, Korean barbecue and tofu houses, and vegetarian and Thai kitchens, so dinner can go in several directions without leaving the road. Sam's Club on Santa Anita Avenue handles bulk shopping, and Tyler Market covers smaller runs. This is a driving neighborhood for most errands, with Downtown El Monte and the El Monte station a short drive south and Northwest El Monte just across the way to the west. The tradeoff is noise. The drone of a small plane climbing out over Santa Anita Avenue is part of the background here, the way a train horn is in other towns.