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JOURNAL
LOCAL INTELLIGENCE
Old Town runs along Front Street, a straight stretch on the west side of the freeway with raised board sidewalks, western facades and wooden awnings over most of the storefronts. It reads as a set piece at first glance. It is not one. The buildings were the town, and the antique arcades filling several of them have been trading long enough to be the real reason a lot of people drive out here.
The arcades are the part visitors underrate. These are multi-dealer buildings where you walk between stalls rather than browse a single shop, and they absorb an hour or two without effort. Prices run the full range. So does the merchandise, which is the appeal.
The south end of the street is the civic end. The Temecula Valley Museum and the community theater sit near Sam Hicks Monument Park, which gives you shade, grass and a place to put children who have finished with antiques. Walking the street from north to south and ending there is the sensible order.
What Old Town is not is large. It is a handful of blocks, and you can cover the whole of it on foot in a morning. People who arrive expecting a district come away thinking it is slight. People who arrive expecting a main street come away happy.
Front Street closes to cars several times a year for festivals and classic car shows, and those days change the math entirely. The street becomes far better and the parking becomes far worse. If a show is on, park well back and walk in rather than circling the blocks nearest the street.
On ordinary days there are structures and surface lots a block off Front, and they are the answer over street spaces, which turn over slowly. Weekend evenings are the busiest window because the restaurants and the shops overlap for a couple of hours before the retail closes.
Season matters more than the calendar suggests. Summer afternoons on Front Street are hot and the board sidewalks hold the heat, so mornings and evenings are the comfortable hours from roughly June into September. Winter days are mild and the street is at its emptiest, which some people prefer.
Hours vary by shop and shift through the year, so check before you drive over if you are going for something specific. Your local manager will usually know whether a street closure is scheduled for the weekend you are here, which is the one detail worth asking about in advance.