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Avocado Acres' walking circuit helps neighbors keep in touch
"'Leucadia' means 'sheltered paradise' or 'refuge,' which is not something to let go of lightly."
Online, “Leucadia” gets changed to “Encinitas,” but IRL is another story.
There is a magnificent hawk that likes to perch on top of Alila Marea, the new resort overlooking South Ponto Beach where Leucadia becomes Carlsbad. The hawk is unperturbed by the cost of the hotel rooms (which can run into four digits), or by the crashing waves. It stares steadfastly north towards Batiquitos Lagoon, surveying the open spaces for a tasty, scuttling mouse. But if it turned its head to the right to look across Highway 101 and the train tracks, it would see Avocado Acres, the small patch of Leucadia that is my home.
Avocado Acres was named in the 1920s. My home was built in the ‘70s, but some date back to the ‘30s. The remaining avocado trees from the original orchard are threaded along geometric lines through the yards; a couple of them are rooted in my garden. In 1986, Leucadia, which was founded by English spiritualists on Kumeyaay land, was incorporated into Encinitas, with the promise that it could retain its identity. But now, if you type “Leucadia” into any online address field, it automatically changes to “Encinitas.” “Leucadia” means “sheltered paradise” or “refuge,” which is not something to let go of lightly. Newcomers may not mind, but those of us who have lived here awhile — I’ve been here 26 years, and my husband Ron for 45 — retain a nostalgia for the dirt roads and the vanishing greenhouses, for an ethos captured by the informal slogan dreamed up by a couple of surfer friends of mine: “Keep Leucadia Funky.”
The author pays a visit to the miniature art museum along the Avocado Acres walking circuit.
I once attempted to explain this to some young visitors as we drove along Highway 101. I pointed out Fred Caldwell’s Antiques, a treasure trove whose contents all but buried the man in the back, who was a reservoir of local history. Not far north, standing outside the door and gate shop Rustic 101, was the wagon that Ron built for an unknown actress named Whoopi Goldberg; she pulled it in the San Diego Rep’s ‘80s production of Mother Courage. The twentysomethings in my car, admirers of the contemporary chunky design style I consider sterile Soviet, asked incredulously, “Why would you want to keep it funky?”
Fred Caldwell died this past year; his antique store is boarded up. Whoopi’s wagon is almost buried in undergrowth. In December, the bulldozer came for the last tiny hippie house from the ‘30s (the one with a yurt out back). Rents all along 101 have been jacked up, making it tough for small businesses.
Today, keeping things even a little bit funky means signing petitions and attending City Council meetings. Sometimes, a tree can be saved here and a matchbox strip of land there. (Thanks City Council for saving the hillock known as Surfer’s Point.) It’s mostly a losing battle, but a community is so much more than the financial value of the land.
First and foremost, a community is its people — and their interaction. Avocado Acres is zoned residential; we don’t have much in the way of gathering spaces. But we do have a walking circuit. I didn’t fully appreciate it until I was no longer able to use it: during the Covid year, when everyone was walking around the block to get a glimpse of the outside world and a smile from a neighbor, I spent seven months in bed with cancer. Afterwards, I had to re-learn how to walk.
First, around the house; weeks later, to my mailbox. Then to the neighbor’s mailbox — the one with a white wooden bunny on top — then gradually up the hill. Months later, I made it unaided around the circuit. All along the route, I was greeted by neighbors who seemed to know my story and gave me a thumbs up, or said, “Well done.” The experience increased my sense of belonging to a place where, previously, we had all been too busy driving to work to get to know one another at all.
The circuit shows me the best of Avocado Acres. The people who put out water bowls for passing dogs, and those who leave “help yourself” buckets filled with their excess oranges and limes. The retired schoolteacher who hangs up poems so passersby can be uplifted. (I once met a woman who told me she walked in our hood just to read the next installment.) The couple who built a miniature art gallery; anyone can contribute minute works of art and then take another one home. The three tiny libraries. When I walk through my neighborhood, I’m infused with gratitude for all these good and generous souls who contribute to my life whether we have met one another or not.
My neighborhood’s spirit resides in the warm woman who hosts an annual cookie exchange – open to anyone. It’s in the retired realtor who knows the name of every neighbor and their dog, and keeps tabs on whoever is ailing and could use a casserole. She and her husband host a street party twice a year; multiple residents pitch in to cook and serve their neighbors, plus the occasional lucky stranger who happens to be walking by. It’s in the well-read widower in his nineties who painstakingly copies significant articles from the New Yorker and delivers them to half a dozen people on his walking route.
We’re not without our problems. There have been robberies and break-ins — even when people are home. Parents who help their grown children struggle with addiction and homelessness. Family violence and incarcerations. Late night police visits and ambulances. Rising rents and impossible power bills. Lonely people who can’t afford to maintain their houses. Alas, none of this gets mentioned on NextDoor Leucadia; reading that, you’d think our only problems were speed bumps and roundabouts.
My neighborhood has its tensions just like everywhere else; between the old timers and the newcomers, the rich and the struggling, and, like the rest of the country, the right and the left. But when I, once a co-host of the community group Lefty Liberals of Leucadia, was stuck in bed for months, it was my Republican neighbor who brought me fresh flowers every week. Our divisions diminish when we see each other often, walk together and talk together. When I arrived in San Diego in the ‘80s, I was homeless. I never imagined owning a house, let alone complaining about keeping things funky. However, I do know that the spirit of my community doesn’t exist in worrying about the soulless, Huntington Beach future we’re headed for, or in nostalgia for the lost green spaces of the past, but in this place between past and future where we all live, right here, right now, under that magnificent hawk's watchful eye.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Avocado Acres' walking circuit helps neighbors keep in touch
"'Leucadia' means 'sheltered paradise' or 'refuge,' which is not something to let go of lightly."
Avocado Acres' walking circuit helps neighbors keep in touch
"'Leucadia' means 'sheltered paradise' or 'refuge,' which is not something to let go of lightly."
Online, “Leucadia” gets changed to “Encinitas,” but IRL is another story.
There is a magnificent hawk that likes to perch on top of Alila Marea, the new resort overlooking South Ponto Beach where Leucadia becomes Carlsbad. The hawk is unperturbed by the cost of the hotel rooms (which can run into four digits), or by the crashing waves. It stares steadfastly north towards Batiquitos Lagoon, surveying the open spaces for a tasty, scuttling mouse. But if it turned its head to the right to look across Highway 101 and the train tracks, it would see Avocado Acres, the small patch of Leucadia that is my home.
Avocado Acres was named in the 1920s. My home was built in the ‘70s, but some date back to the ‘30s. The remaining avocado trees from the original orchard are threaded along geometric lines through the yards; a couple of them are rooted in my garden. In 1986, Leucadia, which was founded by English spiritualists on Kumeyaay land, was incorporated into Encinitas, with the promise that it could retain its identity. But now, if you type “Leucadia” into any online address field, it automatically changes to “Encinitas.” “Leucadia” means “sheltered paradise” or “refuge,” which is not something to let go of lightly. Newcomers may not mind, but those of us who have lived here awhile — I’ve been here 26 years, and my husband Ron for 45 — retain a nostalgia for the dirt roads and the vanishing greenhouses, for an ethos captured by the informal slogan dreamed up by a couple of surfer friends of mine: “Keep Leucadia Funky.”
The author pays a visit to the miniature art museum along the Avocado Acres walking circuit.
I once attempted to explain this to some young visitors as we drove along Highway 101. I pointed out Fred Caldwell’s Antiques, a treasure trove whose contents all but buried the man in the back, who was a reservoir of local history. Not far north, standing outside the door and gate shop Rustic 101, was the wagon that Ron built for an unknown actress named Whoopi Goldberg; she pulled it in the San Diego Rep’s ‘80s production of Mother Courage. The twentysomethings in my car, admirers of the contemporary chunky design style I consider sterile Soviet, asked incredulously, “Why would you want to keep it funky?”
Fred Caldwell died this past year; his antique store is boarded up. Whoopi’s wagon is almost buried in undergrowth. In December, the bulldozer came for the last tiny hippie house from the ‘30s (the one with a yurt out back). Rents all along 101 have been jacked up, making it tough for small businesses.
Today, keeping things even a little bit funky means signing petitions and attending City Council meetings. Sometimes, a tree can be saved here and a matchbox strip of land there. (Thanks City Council for saving the hillock known as Surfer’s Point.) It’s mostly a losing battle, but a community is so much more than the financial value of the land.
First and foremost, a community is its people — and their interaction. Avocado Acres is zoned residential; we don’t have much in the way of gathering spaces. But we do have a walking circuit. I didn’t fully appreciate it until I was no longer able to use it: during the Covid year, when everyone was walking around the block to get a glimpse of the outside world and a smile from a neighbor, I spent seven months in bed with cancer. Afterwards, I had to re-learn how to walk.
First, around the house; weeks later, to my mailbox. Then to the neighbor’s mailbox — the one with a white wooden bunny on top — then gradually up the hill. Months later, I made it unaided around the circuit. All along the route, I was greeted by neighbors who seemed to know my story and gave me a thumbs up, or said, “Well done.” The experience increased my sense of belonging to a place where, previously, we had all been too busy driving to work to get to know one another at all.
The circuit shows me the best of Avocado Acres. The people who put out water bowls for passing dogs, and those who leave “help yourself” buckets filled with their excess oranges and limes. The retired schoolteacher who hangs up poems so passersby can be uplifted. (I once met a woman who told me she walked in our hood just to read the next installment.) The couple who built a miniature art gallery; anyone can contribute minute works of art and then take another one home. The three tiny libraries. When I walk through my neighborhood, I’m infused with gratitude for all these good and generous souls who contribute to my life whether we have met one another or not.
My neighborhood’s spirit resides in the warm woman who hosts an annual cookie exchange – open to anyone. It’s in the retired realtor who knows the name of every neighbor and their dog, and keeps tabs on whoever is ailing and could use a casserole. She and her husband host a street party twice a year; multiple residents pitch in to cook and serve their neighbors, plus the occasional lucky stranger who happens to be walking by. It’s in the well-read widower in his nineties who painstakingly copies significant articles from the New Yorker and delivers them to half a dozen people on his walking route.
We’re not without our problems. There have been robberies and break-ins — even when people are home. Parents who help their grown children struggle with addiction and homelessness. Family violence and incarcerations. Late night police visits and ambulances. Rising rents and impossible power bills. Lonely people who can’t afford to maintain their houses. Alas, none of this gets mentioned on NextDoor Leucadia; reading that, you’d think our only problems were speed bumps and roundabouts.
My neighborhood has its tensions just like everywhere else; between the old timers and the newcomers, the rich and the struggling, and, like the rest of the country, the right and the left. But when I, once a co-host of the community group Lefty Liberals of Leucadia, was stuck in bed for months, it was my Republican neighbor who brought me fresh flowers every week. Our divisions diminish when we see each other often, walk together and talk together. When I arrived in San Diego in the ‘80s, I was homeless. I never imagined owning a house, let alone complaining about keeping things funky. However, I do know that the spirit of my community doesn’t exist in worrying about the soulless, Huntington Beach future we’re headed for, or in nostalgia for the lost green spaces of the past, but in this place between past and future where we all live, right here, right now, under that magnificent hawk's watchful eye.
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