Bocce courts and fish markets once lined India Street, San Diego's Little Italy restaurant corridor you now walk. The street's name has nothing to do with South Asia — it refers to the India rubber trade route that once passed nearby, a reminder that street names in old port cities often preserve the memory of commerce long since vanished. India Street was the heart of the Italian fishing community's daily life: the bocce ball courts, the fish markets, the restaurants where fishermen ate before and after their ocean runs.
Today the street is lined with acclaimed restaurants, coffee roasters, wine bars, and the weekly Amici Park farmers' market. The farmers' market itself is held in a small park that was reclaimed from surface parking — a story repeated across Little Italy as the neighborhood made a deliberate choice to prioritize pedestrians and public space over cars. The Mercato, Little Italy's Saturday farmers' market, is one of the largest and most-attended in Southern California.
Walking India Street today, you are walking through a neighborhood that successfully held onto its identity through the worst of freeway construction and urban renewal, and then used that identity as the foundation for something new.