Author’s note: This is the first post of my new weekly SDFP column City Heights Up Close & Personal. It is the distillation of my experiences and observations of the confounding, sometimes dazzling and always changing urban landscape that I call home.
“We are children of our landscape; it dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.” Lawrence Durrell, Justine
“We’re not in Kansas anymore Toto.” Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz
For the past twenty five years My Beloved and I have lived in a postage stamp size home that we own in City Heights. Our street is in constant motion with pedestrians and cars moving between the wide thoroughfares of University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard. Two of the most common sounds are the trash trucks in the alley and moms calling out apúrate (hurry up!) to their kids lingering on the sidewalk. There is very little that is unified or uniform about the physical landscape or the people who live here. That is what I love about City Heights. That is what I also hate about City Heights.
My block is a mish mash of single detached homes that date back to the 1920’s interspersed with the godawful 1970’s era Huffman six-packs which callous and venal zoning laws encouraged throughout the mid-city communities. Renters, who tend to be young and have families, come and go. Those of us who own homes, the minority, are older and have stayed.
While the surrounding architecture can be described as charming, interesting or modest at its best, and unlovely, unmaintained and substandard at its worst, the people who live here deserve a much broader and more nuanced attention. My neighbors in the apartments next door are ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. They speak seven languages among them. My neighbors in the house on the other side are Mexican. Their children are effortlessly bi-lingual.
Two African-American sisters own the well maintained and well managed apartment down the block as well as another one in the area. A lesbian couple has owned a home here for decades where they provide for an unending stream of abandoned cats. They do not fly a rainbow flag. Kip is in his 70’s and has filled his front yard with rose bushes. He spends time honing the lost art of sitting on the front porch when he is not out fishing or fixing things. He is one of the few Anglos on the block.
Hans, who is German, has his car repair business at the end of the block and gives us bags of tangerines from his garden in Alpine. Roger Hedgecock is often on the radio when I walk by. Over the course of a quarter century we have lived among Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Guatemalans and Africans as well as Mexicans and African-Americans and white people from all over the country. Today we pretty much all get along with each other or simply ignore each other. It has not always been that way.
When we moved here in 1987 it hadn’t sunk into our consciousness that City Heights was considered an undesirable, crime ridden community filled with scary (non-white) poor people. During the day it was more gritty than scary here, but when the sun set the main streets cleared of pedestrians and the side streets were sunk in darkness. It was eerie driving through the alley behind our house, the car lights illuminating small groups huddled around dumpsters smoking crack. Used condoms were flung into the parkways and bushes. Once I found a syringe and learned never to garden without thick gloves.
We have been burgled and mugged and our car windshield was smashed numerous times. To my great anguish I found that this was not a kind or safe place for our cats. I learned the art of guerrilla warfare out of sheer necessity and fantasized how I could further refine it to better effect. Never underestimate the power of Tuvan throat singing played at the highest volume possible to disperse a threatening crowd outside your gate.
The economic bust in the 90’s had a devastating impact upon my already broken community. Home owners walked away from their underwater mortgages. And then there were boarded up abandoned apartments that were set on fire and stripped of copper. I had seen a great deal in my life, but I had never seen that kind of societal nihilism and economic annihilation.
It was a sheer fluke of fate that I walked into a nondescript building on University Avenue not far from the house. There was a sign in the window about how to get a street tree. This was the office of the newly formed City Heights Community Development Corporation. I ended up talking to Frank Gormlie, the CDC’s community organizer. Does the name Frank Gormlie sound familiar? Yes, Frank is indeed the Editordude of the OBRag and editor of the San Diego Free Press. And he is also why I am writing here.
At that point I hadn’t figured out much about City Heights. What was with this place? It was a tremendous relief for me to meet Frank. I finally had someone to talk to about this strange place and I was soon on my way to becoming a community activist. That required a crash course in the political and demographic history of City Heights as well as an in-depth look at how our city government operates. This was all fascinating, but more important, illuminating information.
To say that City Heights is an undesirable, crime ridden community filled with scary (non-white) poor people tells you everything except why. And because that statement does not address the why of it, it is untrue and only has value in diverting attention from the truth for dubious and contemptible reasons. The City of San Diego and its district wide elected representatives at the time turned their collective backs on City Heights because they could, and because they had much bigger and more important fish to fry north of Rte 8.
City Heights, along with the other mid-city communities of North Park, University Heights and Normal Heights were starved of capital improvement funds and public infrastructure investments. Zoning laws increased density without attendant increases in park spaces, libraries, recreation centers or transit opportunities. The Huffman hovels were not only dropped on properties that had been the site of single family homes, they wiped out mature trees and landscaping and covered everything in concrete. No onsite management was required for less than sixteen units. The uglification was complete.
At the same time, waves of Vietnamese refugees were being relocated to San Diego and many ended up living in City Heights. In the space of a few decades, City Heights residents became poorer, more culturally diverse as new waves of immigrants arrived from war torn corners of the globe, and transient. This is not the kind of electorate that keeps a close eye on the machinations of government, let alone influences it.
Community activism paid off to the degree that the I-15 construction through the heart of the community was mitigated with a block of cover and that the redevelopment effort at the Urban Village along University and Fairmount Avenue was also done at our behest and with our input. Two new schools were built, a police substation, a library with a performance annex, and a public park. These were critical steps to redress the neglect and inequity, but they still are not enough.
My small corner of City Heights did become safer and more stable over time. New first time home owners moved in and the abandoned apartments were sold and fixed up. I am no longer an urban guerrilla. The Great Recession has reached its cold bony fingers into my street and community and I am concerned about that. But as I said, we more or less all get along.
Anna Daniels
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I can’t wait until the Free Press becomes a crossroads for people talking about what’s going on their neighborhoods. Thanks for getting us started, Anna.
What a beautiful article. San Diego is broken up into neighborhoods with names, sometimes several names, and for some reason, this has been difficult for me to comprehend which name goes with which area of the city I am in. You have help bring significance and imagery to the neighborhood called “City Heights” I will not forget. In order to find out exactly where this was I looked it up and I’ll share the City website’s profile: ”
City Heights is centrally located in the San Diego metropolitan area, south of Mission Valley, north of the Martin Luther King Freeway (State Route 94), between Interstates 15 and 805 on the west and 54th Street on the east. Development in City Heights is a mixture of single-family and multi-family residential with commercial and other non-residential development concentrated along the major arterials, including El Cajon Boulevard, University Avenue, Fairmount Avenue, and Euclid Avenue. There are also pockets of neighborhood commercial areas throughout the community. A small portion of industrial development is located on the southern edge of the community.”
Within City Heights there are sixteen distinguishable neighborhoods, each with its own identity. Neighborhoods that comprise City Heights are: Corridor, Teralta West, Teralta East, Colina Park, Cherokee Point, Castle, Azalea Park, Hollywood Park, Fairmount Park, Bayridge, Fairmount Village, Swan Canyon, Islenair, Ridgeview, Chollas Creek and Fox Canyon. Neighborhood associations in each neighborhood are the focal points for local control of local affairs and are the sources of recommendations to the City Council.”
Damn Canadians…..;-)
Brenda- Thanks! When asked to be more specific about where I live, I usually say “City Heights is where the rubber hits the road.” I appreciate your more detailed approach. ;)
And I’ll tell folk I’m form OB…where the debris meets the sea…
And apparently very dyslexic…
By dog, I think you are Jack!
I loved this writeup. As a fellow City Heights resident, I love this neighborhood.
I picked City Heights because it reminded me of my other favorite neighborhood, Jackson Heights, NYC. I love everything about it and don’t mind other San Diegans trashing the place because the group that lives here and has made it home is committed to making it better. I’ve found a wonderful group of people that care about similar issues as I do: food, transportation and other livability and land use issues and it is very exciting to be a part of a larger effort to improve the neighborhood for future generations.
Sam, we are fellow travelers. I care about the same things you do and will be writing about each one of those topics as the weeks go by. I am looking forward to more conversations with you.
Anna,
If you haven’t contacted them already, check out Activist San Diego over on Wightman. I think they have been involved in the City Heights neighborhood for about a decade.
Wow. I have really missed your voice. Brilliant, heartfelt writing. Welcome home.
Colinas is where I call home. But according to realtors, I live not in Colinas nor City Heights, but in South Talmadge. Why stop there? Why not call the neighborhood Far-Southeast La Jolla! I like it where I live. I get to listen to Cambodian karaoke–for FREE, mind you. I am walking distance from splendid, authentic Ethiopian/Vietnamese/Middle-Eastern food. And Colinas park is a gem. The golf course–yes, there is an 18-hole golf course (a really, really short one) in City Heights–is one of San Diego’s best-kept secrets. Thanks for writing about City Heights. For me, it kind of puts the “neighbor” back alongside the “hood.”
Anna, what a great intro to City Heights, complete with several priceless lines…
“They do not fly a rainbow flag”
“the lost art of sitting on the front porch”
“Never underestimate the power of Tuvan throat singing played at the highest volume possible”
One column in, and you’ve already hooked this reader. And thanks to Matt’s comment above, I’ve got a new place to golf. Love it!
Dixon: I should share something. Some local kids were on the other side of the fence on the golf course, watching me go into my backswing. They made a fart noise as I swung. I mis-hit the ball. I turned around. They said, “F*ck you looking at, whiteboy?” I said, “Wow… never heard that said on a golf course before. Well done!”
LOL – City Heights, a melting pot, indeed!
Friends- this feels like HOME! Much more to come. Anna
That’s weird, I made a comment here yesterday and now it’s gone. What a wonderful first start, I said then and repeat today. Thanks for the shout-out. Anna – some of our readers may not know – became the Chairwoman of the City Heights CDC and her beloved Rich managed to get himself onto its Board for 20 years.
Coming soon, Look for the development of the city heights loop trail….http://www.sdcanyonlands.org/
Beautifully written from the heart, Anna. City Heights is the better for it!
In 2006, I sold my home in La Costa after a painful divorce, rented for a while as I waited for the market to settle, couldn’t wait any longer (I hate renting) and bought my 1,500 square foot bungalow in Azalea Park. I love my neighborhood. I chose this neighborhood and here’s why. Quirky – you betcha. People fly lots of rainbow flags here – they get passed out at the monthly Azalea Park Neighborhood Association meetings. We live in a neighborhood of well tended cottages, next to some that need a bit more TLC but they get lots of encouragement to improve. The sense of community is greater and more authentic than anything I ever experienced in my 25 years of living in Carlsbad. People here love the environment and they care for the canyons. We are so environmentally friendly that we built our own water conservation garden that has art made from found and recycled objects. People adopt uncared for plots of land and turn it into gardens. We don’t ask for permission – we just do. All of our streets, which are named after plants and flowers such as Violet and Pepper have been “planted” with artfully designed flower markers on each street to brighten up our walks. And, people here walk a lot – we walk our dogs, we walk for health, we walk the canyons, we walk just to see what’s going on. When I tell people I live in Azalea Park, other people in other neighborhoods brighten up and say, “I heard about that community!” They think we’re special, too. Of course, we share some of the same problems as the rest of our community – a few weeks ago a random shooting claimed the life of a young man. I didn’t include the word, “senseless” to describe these acts of violence, because aren’t they all? Even our candle light vigils couldn’t right this wrong. But, we press on, looking forward to the installation of a bright and shiny sign at the entrance to our neighborhood at the corner of Poplar and Fairmont and the 2014 completion of the Ocean Discovery Institute bordering Manzanita Canyon. I’ll celebrate my four year anniversary living in Azalea Park in July and look forward to the next decades of neighborhood bliss. Thanks for this great opportunity to share my joy.
Felicia- your wonderful post about your own home in Azalea Park reveals the fact that City Heights is in fact made up of distinct neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods look and “feel” different from each other. Our canyons, the great connectors, provide a special diversity and richness to our lives.
Thank you for the intimate glimpse into what makes City Heights home for you.
I,and all my buddies grew up in East San Diego in the ’50’s & ’60’s. We went to Hamilton elementary and St. Marks church. The center of our universe was V-Z market at the corner of Fairmount & Poplar, even saw Mr. Peanut there waving at all the passing motorist. Entering our neighborhood, you were greeted with, “Welcome to East San Diego” diagonally spanning the intersection of University and Fairmount. This place was heaven-on-earth with canyons, Helms bakery trucks, gramma close by and rolly-pollie bugs. Kites in the sky, baseball cards, flexy-fliers, swirley double cola’s and fizzies. School and whiffleball, hide & seek, hunt for grasshoppers in the canyon – watch out for tarantula hawks. Hey, lets go to V-Z and cash in some bottles and get some Bazooka gum…….Oh! gramma’s calling – must be cookies!
Duke- Thanks for the postcard from the past! Do you remember any vernal pools here? I vaguely remember someone telling me that there were.
PS- tarantula hawks and rollie-pollie bugs still here
Hi Anna – I do not remember Vernal Pools, however, after it rained, the canyons would collect water and the runoff would create little streams and pools. Some of these pools became home to pollywogs , reeds & cattails. Before Azealia park was created, it was the largest of the canyons with lots of wildlife. Also, there were beehives and a few feral cats. Lucky Market, was down on Home ave. near the little league fields. There were lots of friendly lizards that inhabited the little eco-system adjacent to the store. The canyons were home to Alligator lizards that liked to bite.
Anna, I have read your article with much interest, as I am coming from the East Coast this week to explore the city life of City Heights with the intention to make this community our home within the next year.
Thanks so much for sharing some history and your personal experiences…I look forward to exploring! MaryBest
Mary- Stay in touch! You can be a “foreign correspondent” while you check out City Heights and San Diego. Best wishes to you.
Any updates? Your thoughts on Albertsons pulling out?
Ty- I’m working on a follow up about the Albertson closure. Thanks for your interest in the issue. Community interest is important.