Where do locals actually go in San Diego?

North Park's 30th Street corridor between University and Juniper is where San Diego's under-40 crowd spends its evenings. Hamilton's Tavern on 30th and Beech in South Park has 28 craft taps and a back patio where the smell of hops mixes with jasmine from the neighbor's fence. Nobody checks the time. Tiger! Tiger!, a block north on 30th, pours from 24 rotating California and Belgian lines and serves its own cured meats. The crowd turns local on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when $5 pints pull in hospital staff from UCSD Medical Center and teachers finishing at Roosevelt Middle School. By Friday the ratio shifts toward visitors. The North Park Farmers Market runs Thursdays 3pm to 7:30pm along North Park Way. You'll smell roasting Hatch chiles from a block away in September. Produce vendors take cash, and the prepared-food stalls, $4 fish tacos and $3 pupusas, fill the benches with people who walked from their apartments.

Ocean Beach still operates on the San Diego that existed before craft cocktails and $2,400 one-bedrooms. The Wednesday farmers market on Newport Avenue between Cable and Bacon streets runs 4pm to 8pm year-round, and the crowd is flip-flops and sunburned shoulders. OB Noodle House on Newport serves a pho that locals argue about. Too sweet, say the Vietnamese families over in City Heights. The right amount of sweet, say the surfers. Sunset Cliffs between Ladera and Adair fills with locals watching the sun drop around 7:45pm in August. You'll hear someone's Bluetooth speaker, a dog barking at the waves 50 feet below. The salt air is thick enough to taste. Mind you, OB's WiFi situation is dire for anyone trying to work. Most cafes run 15-20 Mbps on a good day, and OB Beans on Newport caps sessions at 2 hours when the post-10am crowd arrives.

For remote workers, the question is where you can sit 4 hours without guilt. Lestat's Coffee House on Adams Avenue in Normal Heights stays open until midnight. The WiFi holds at 25-30 Mbps, the chairs are worn velvet and creaky wood, and the baristas will not passive-aggressively clear your table. Buy something every 90 minutes and nobody blinks. Bird Rock Coffee Roasters at 5627 La Jolla Boulevard runs a quieter operation, with outdoor tables where the marine layer keeps mornings cool until about 11am. The Hillcrest Farmers Market on Sundays, 9am to 2pm on Normal Street between University and Lincoln, is where you'll meet San Diegans who live in the neighborhood year-round. The guy selling kettle corn has been there over 15 years. Barrio Logan's Chicano Park, under the Coronado Bridge at National Avenue and Logan, fills on weekend afternoons with families and lowrider clubs. The 80-plus murals there date to 1973.

Skip the Gaslamp district south of Broadway after your first walk-through. Those 16 blocks between 4th and 6th avenues are priced for convention-goers and Navy shore leave. A beer runs $9-12, tacos $5-7, and the noise on Friday and Saturday nights makes the surrounding apartments unlivable past midnight. Pacific Beach's Garnet Avenue has the same problem, populated mostly by under-25s splitting rent four ways. If you want beach proximity without the Garnet chaos, look at Bird Rock or Mission Beach north of Santa Clara Place. Worth noting for longer stays, grocery access matters more than beach access by week 3. North Park has a Sprouts at 3610 University Avenue and a Trader Joe's at 30th and Polk. South Park has nothing walkable, and nobody mentions that before you sign the lease.