Meet your new newsletter host, Uptown!

Once you spend your first Christmas and New Year’s in a foreign city, it immediately becomes a place synonymous with home. At least, that’s how it happened for me. 

Four years ago, I spent Dec. 25 watching the sun disappear behind the ocean and leave the sky bleeding different shades of orange, red and blue, over Pacific Beach. Somebody had written “Merry Christmas” on the sand. It was then and there, 4,064 miles away from my childhood home in Quito, Ecuador, that I realized there was nowhere else I would rather be. It was then and there that San Diego became my new home.  

After visiting this city during my study abroad year in 2020, I have continued to discover everything it has to offer beyond the beaches and shopping malls tourists tend to frequent. I quickly found the people local to San Diego and its communities to be the best this city has to offer. After all, it wasn’t the perfect weather that left me with no other option than to stay in California; it was its people.  

I’ll be bringing you this newsletter from North Park, where I’ve lived for the past six months and where I’m about to spend Christmas. I’m honored to share the stories held by both the people of San Diego, and those who, like me, have traveled from thousands of miles away to make it their new home.

Sidebar: Our Best of Uptown/Downtown list is live! Congratulations to all of the winners. Thanks to you, our readers, for voting.