Normal Heights, San Diego, CA

Normal Heights sits on the mesa between North Park and the bluffs above Mission Valley in San Diego, and its name is a leftover from the State Normal School, the teachers college that later became San Diego State. A land syndicate filed the subdivision map in 1906, and a streetcar line down Adams Avenue turned it into one of the city's first trolley suburbs. Adams Avenue is still the spine. The Blind Lady Ale House opened in 2009, brews its own beer in back and built its name on farm-to-table pizza. Lestat's on Adams is a long-established coffeehouse with a big patio and long hours where people settle in to read or work. Mariposa Ice Cream, a longtime San Diego scoop shop, is down the block, and Cabeto's Pops sells ice cream on a stick. Vintage clothing, record and gift shops fill the storefronts between, and the neon Normal Heights sign hangs over the avenue at Felton Street. Homes in Normal Heights are mostly Craftsman cottages and modest bungalows, many dating to the neighborhood's early years, with low apartment blocks scattered between them. Along the northern rim, houses look out over Mission Valley toward Mission Bay. A 1985 brush fire swept up from that slope and destroyed 69 homes, so some rim lots hold houses built after it. Ward Canyon Park, near where Adams meets 40th Street, covers about five and a half acres and has a dog park off 40th Street. Smaller green pockets include Adams Avenue Park and a mini park on North Mountain View Drive, and a volunteer group looks after the canyons that cut into the mesa. Daily life works on foot for many people. Vons on Adams Avenue covers groceries, and El Cajon Boulevard at the south edge has more markets and the Rapid 215 bus. Interstates 805, 8 and 15 frame three sides of the neighborhood, so freeway access is quick in every direction. Adams Avenue's popularity has a price. The late September street fair, a free weekend music festival that dates to 1986, closes the avenue to cars and packs it with visitors, and the spring Unplugged festival brings another crowd. For people who live a block off Adams, those weekends mean traffic and noise, and also several stages of live music they can walk to.