South, Pasadena

On the northern end of South Pasadena, you have one of the best avenues in Pasadena and perhaps in all of So Cal. First, East Colorado offers you a world of great restaurants, from Italian at Louise’s Trattoria and the healthy Mediterranean food at NeoMeze to Peruvian food at Choza Mama.

There are several nightspots on this drag as well. If you like the classic, fake dive bar experience, try Freddie’s 35er, where you can have cheap drinks and good times. For something a touch more sophisticated try the Bodega Wine Bar (it has great tapas too).

If you love shopping and have a taste for the expensive, you will find several jewelry stores and boutique clothing stores like Therapy on Colorado. If you are a bit of a book worm, like me, there are two great choices: Cliff’s and Book Alley. Both pretty good spots to lose a couple of hours.

On the eastern part of the neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from Pasadena City College, is Caltech, one of great science oriented universities in the country—kind of the MIT of the west in some ways.

On the northwestern end of the neighborhood, to the south of Colorado, you will find lots of office buildings, which account for the heavy lunch crowds during the week, and make up much of Pasadena’s commercial power.

You also start to get lots of condos and apartments as you move south—many are shoddy looking 1970’s style boxes, but many are newer, more well kept and well decorated places with underground garages and pleasant outwardly appearances.

As you pass south of Glenarm Blvd., the neighborhood suddenly changes character and goes from an apartment neighborhood to an upper class neighborhood, with wide avenues, quaint stone lampposts, and long, flat front lawns decorated with palms and curving driveways. At times the décor makes one feel as if you are in the ritzier parts of Miami. Though many of the large manors in this area have the distinctive red clay tiles common to Spanish Revival type homes, one often finds them atop homes that are not otherwise in the Spanish Revival style. The effect can be quite striking.

You can find a number of other architectural styles, like Tudors and some that I can’t even name. Unfortunately, a good portion of the homes hides away behind high hedges in this area as well.

Despite this, it can be quite enjoyable taking a little joy ride through the neighborhood, and imagining what kind of lifestyle those within must have.