Roseville-Fleetridge, San Diego, CA

Roseville-Fleetridge joins two quite different places under one name on the bay side of Point Loma, the peninsula west of downtown San Diego. Roseville is the oldest settled part of the peninsula, laid out by Louis Rose in the 1860s around a wharf and a hotel, while Fleetridge is the hilly section above it that filled in during the early 1950s. Portuguese fishing history runs deep along this waterfront, and it is still easy to see. Every year Saint Agnes Catholic Church holds the Festa do Espirito Santo, a tradition dating to 1910, and the Portuguese Historical Center sits on Avenida de Portugal. The old Tunaville nickname, from the tuna boats, still gets used. The two halves feel different on the ground. Roseville is flatter and busier, with its east-west streets named for authors in alphabetical order and homes mixed in near the shops of Rosecrans Street and the Point Loma Village strip on Shelter Island Drive. Fleetridge is entirely residential, with large custom houses on curving streets that follow the ridge. Point Loma Seafoods on Emerson Street has been frying fish and making tacos and sushi since 1963, and it remains the obvious first stop. Jennings House Eatery on Rosecrans Street serves breakfast, salads and sandwiches inside what is considered Point Loma's oldest house, and it doubles as the place to sit with a coffee. Harbor Town Pub runs trivia, taco Tuesdays and karaoke nights. Point Loma Park and its recreation center on Catalina Boulevard give Fleetridge its main public space, and Westminster Park on Talbot Street adds another patch of green. Shelter Island Shoreline Park, just south in La Playa, is where most people go for a walk by the water. Ralphs on Rosecrans Street handles the weekly shop, and Cabrillo Elementary and Dana Middle School serve the area. Rosecrans is also the route to Midway and the freeways, and it backs up at rush hour because nearly all peninsula traffic funnels through it. The fishing history is not a museum piece in Roseville-Fleetridge. It shows up at the fish counter on Emerson Street, and in the church calendar at Saint Agnes, where the Festa still comes around every year.