Barrio Logan sits south of downtown against the waterfront, tucked under the arches of the Coronado Bridge. It is the oldest Mexican-American neighbourhood in San Diego, and it has spent fifty years fighting off the encroachments of industrial use, highway construction, and most recently gentrification.
Chicano Park — with its massive murals covering the bridge columns — is the neighbourhood's anchor and most visited element. Beyond the park, the streets around National Avenue have a growing concentration of restaurants, galleries, and art studios. La Catrina Mariscos on National Avenue is a reference point for seafood in a neighbourhood context, and the taquerias along Logan Avenue serve a local clientele rather than a tourist one.
The neighbourhood's character is best experienced on a weekday: the murals without weekend crowds, the tortillerias open in the morning, the sense that this is a place people live rather than visit. The Coronado Bridge overhead is simultaneously the neighbourhood's defining visual feature and the structure that nearly destroyed it.