Birthday flowers in Fremont

There is no single downtown Fremont to deliver a birthday to, and that is the first thing worth knowing before you pick a bouquet. Fremont was assembled in 1956 out of five separate towns — Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Mission San Jose and Warm Springs — and seventy years later each of them still has its own main street, its own commercial rhythm and its own idea of what a front door looks like. An Ardenwood address in 94555, laid out on curved 1980s cul-de-sacs near Coyote Hills, has almost nothing operationally in common with a 94539 address up on the Mission hills above Mission Boulevard, or with a Niles bungalow a hundred yards from the Niles Canyon Railway platform. Four ZIPs take residential deliveries here — 94536 for Centerville, Niles and Glenmoor, 94538 for Irvington, Sundale and the Mowry corridor, 94539 for Mission San Jose, Weibel, Vineyards and the hill tracts, and 94555 for Ardenwood and Northgate — while 94537 and 94540 are post office boxes only and cannot receive flowers. So the useful birthday questions are which district and what time the recipient actually walks through the door. Niles behaves like a small railroad town with front gardens and narrow lots. Centerville is dense, walkable and commercial along Fremont Boulevard. Irvington is the geographic middle, wrapped around an old crossroads. Warm Springs at the south end is half industrial, half newer subdivision. Ardenwood is bay-facing, breezy in the afternoon, and closer to the Dumbarton than to Mission Peak.