Paseo Nuevo
Midway up State Street is the Paseo Nuevo shopping plaza. "Nuevo" means "new," because
this was the "new" shopping plaza. Before this the only shopping plaza we had was La
Cumbre Plaza, where we started our tour. So we got used to calling this the "new mall,"
because it was the new one, and because we like calling it a mall even though it's actually
a plaza.
Then 10 years later they built another big shopping center way out on Hollister near
Ellwood, so we couldn't call Paseo Nuevo the "new mall" anymore because it no longer was
the newest one. So now we call it the "downtown mall," because that's where it is. The
new shopping center is called "El Camino Real," but that's too hard to say and no one
remembers that name. If you say, "I'm going to El Camino Real" people will ask, "Where's
that?" so we call it "the Costco shopping center" or "the shopping mall across from
K-Mart." It's also known as "Big Box" because that was it's code name while it was being
built before an official name was decided on.
Somedays there's a juggler there, or someone making balloon animals and things.
