Palo Verde, Long Beach, CA

Palo Verde sits in the east end of Long Beach beside El Dorado Park, a small, flat grid of single-story homes where the city's biggest regional park is the natural backyard. It borders Los Altos to the west and the El Dorado South blocks to the east, and it feels calmer than the busier retail corridors around it. Homes here are mainly postwar single-story ranch houses on regular lots, with attached garages, front lawns and backyards sized for a patio and a few fruit trees. The streets are flat and quiet, with most traffic kept to Stearns Street, Spring Street and Palo Verde Avenue. El Dorado Park is the draw. Its Area I section runs along Spring Street and Studebaker Road, and farther east across the 605 the El Dorado Nature Center, the lakes and a four-mile bikeway linking to the San Gabriel River Bike Trail give a real walking, running and cycling network. For food, Marri's Pizza and Pasta on Stearns Street is the neighborhood's sit-down Italian, and Poor Richard's Cocktails next door is an unfussy local bar. Along Spring Street in the El Dorado Park area, La Cocina serves Mexican plates and Grocery Outlet handles bargain groceries. Sushi Kinoya, known for omakase, is a few minutes west on Stearns. Bigger errands head to the Los Altos Center on Bellflower Boulevard, with Target, Trader Joe's and Lazy Acres in one lot. Cal State Long Beach is a short drive south and the 405 and 605 are both close. Almost everything beyond the corner pizza place means getting in the car, and Palo Verde has no walkable main street of its own. What it has instead is quiet streets that empty straight toward the park, where evening walkers head for the bike path at dusk.