“Portals in Time” (2007) A permanent public art installation interpreting the major cultural and historic influences of a modern, multi-ethnic city.

While it would be tough to find a city in San Diego County with more home-grown civic pride, to many outsiders National City has always had the hard-scrabble, hairy-armed sensibility projected by the influential pop singer Tom Waits, who once hung out there. With his earthy songs and his inimitable, raspy voice that embodies mid-American authenticity, Waits still cherishes time spent in his teens working at Napoleone Pizza House on National City Boulevard, the city’s main drag.

In recent years, the city has launched major urban reinvestment efforts to revitalize National City Boulevard while enhancing the strengths of its old neighborhoods from which flows its signature civic pride. Major projects began to spring up along the boulevard in 2003 with completion of a new $ 1 million Chamber of Commerce Building followed a year later by the opening of the $ 20 million South County Regional Education Center housing a satellite campus of Southwestern College.

Both lay barely a block from Brick Row, an 1887 row house treasure listed on the National Register of Historic Places. To tie these elements together, and to send up an unmistakable flare signaling that respectful change was afoot, the city turned to noted public artist Paul Hobson to create a centerpiece of the new public promenade stretching from the Brick Blocks across National City Boulevard to the new Education Center.

The result is Hobson’s piece “Portals in Time,” completed in 2007. It consists of six colorful freestanding walls and archways, or “portals,” depicting National City’s distinct phases of history and identity: the Kumeyaay period; the Spanish period, the early agricultural period of the late 19th Century, the modern industrial period – as well as the city’s current identity as center of the San Diego region’s Filipino community.

The installation, a mélange of adobe block, brick, cement castings, stucco and colorful mosaics, some bathed in a curtain of water, creates a pedestrian promenade across National City Boulevard at Ninth Street. One end of the corridor is anchored to the entrance of National City’s historic Brick Row, and the other end opens onto the sidewalk threshold of the Education Center, a powerful statement of the city’s daring dream about its future.

The result is a site-specific icon that articulates community identity, values, energy and optimism while providing a needed “pocket park” on a busy urban thoroughfare. And if Waits’ earthiness still holds sway for some outsiders when thinking about National City, they might do well to remember the title of one of his signature songs: “You’re Innocent When You Dream.”

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