Where I Go: Penasquitos Gardens

Traversing the Gulf Back to a San Diego Apartment

Where I Go: Peñasquitos Gardens | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

I haven’t brought my wife or son to see where I mostly grew up. I keep meaning to. But even though it’s less than a mile from my father’s condo in Rancho Peñasquitos in northern San Diego County, the gulf between that place and the apartment I grew up in the ’70s and the ‘80s seems to spread beyond the horizon, a distance only traversable by me, and only in my memory.

Maybe that’s why more and more I find myself, as I wash the dishes or fold my son’s …

by Oscar Villalon | May 15, 2020

Where I Go: Meeps Vintage

Finding Liberation in a D.C. Clothing Shop

by Allison Miller | May 8, 2020

Washington, D.C., is a beautiful, tidy town. For the better part of my years there, I was mostly very sad.

It was not a city I thought I’d first move to …

Jai Hamid Bashir Wins Zócalo’s Ninth Annual Poetry Prize

In ‘Little Bones,’ a Girl Considers a Utah Sunset, Intoxicated on ‘Untold Plans for Eternity’

Interview by Jackie Mansky | April 16, 2020

Since 2012, the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize has been awarded annually to the U.S. poem that best evokes a connection to place. This year, talking about “place”—a concept always …

A Native Hawaiian Returns Home

Thirty Years After My Family Left for Prosperity in California, I Moved Back to the Islands I Thought I Knew

by Stephanie Launiu | February 13, 2019

The land sparkled like glitter. It was 1961 and my mother let my brothers and me take turns sitting by the airplane window, but I was lucky enough to commandeer …

There Is a Real Bedford Falls—It’s My Upstate New York Town

An Uncanny Physical Resemblance and a Frank Capra Visit Connect Seneca Falls to His Holiday Classic

by Frances T. Barbieri | December 6, 2018

Bedford Falls, the town that is the real star of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, is a fictional place. But it closely resembles a real town.

I live there.

The evidence …

How Traffic Circles Became Ground Zero for the French Middle Class

Garrisoned in Roundabouts, ‘Yellow Vest’ Protesters Want Urban Elites to Respect Their Suburban Dream

by Robert Zaretsky | December 5, 2018

Just over 50 years ago, Jacques Tati’s Playtime opened in French movie theaters. In the comedy, Tati once again features his iconic character, Monsieur Hulot, the confused but courtly Parisian …

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