A small exhibit can be viewed in a glass display case in the I CAN! CENTER at San Diego’s downtown Central Library. It concerns the incredible life of Helen Keller.
Photographs and artifacts beautifully document how Hellen Keller overcame huge personal challenges to become the source of inspiration for countless people across the world today.
The I CAN! CENTER provides assistive technology, adaptive equipment, and accessible services for people with disabilities.
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
Changing Terrain: Regional Artists Interpret Our Landscape opened a week ago at the San Diego History Center. The diverse works of art on display are one half of a larger regional group exhibition. The Oceanside Museum of Art is hosting the other half.
Landscapes shown to be undergoing change range from urban to rural. The artists render vastly different landscapes: from the coast to the foothills to the mountains to the desert. Some of the pieces reflect transformations made by human activity, others effected by nature. They provoke deeper thought about our environment. They can inspire a whole range of feelings.
The varied landscapes include everything from a beach boardwalk, to a 150-year old Live Oak at the Marston House, to a streetscape in Logan Heights, to a modern cell tower with ravens and crows, to a merging of ancient rock art with an abstracted landscape, to views of Anza-Borrego from a car’s mirror…
I recognized many of the local artist names–all of them distinguished. They have successfully captured the beauty, complexity, and resilience of a border region where natural and human histories continually intersect.
My photos show the extent of the exhibition. Pay a visit to the free San Diego History Center in beautiful Balboa Park and see this great art with your own eyes!
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
(If you’re viewing this on a phone, open my website’s sidebar by tapping those three parallel lines at the top of the page.)
A new exhibition has opened this month at downtown San Diego’s outdoor Courthouse Gallery!
The theme this time is Artist’s Choice. Entries were accepted from around Southern California.
There are abstracts, portraits and landscapes, but I gravitated toward painted scenes of places in and around San Diego.
If you’d like to experience some great art, walk down Broadway beside the Edward J. Schwartz Courthouse and peer through the windows from the sidewalk.
Ode to Mission Trails, Elizabeth Washburn.Sunny Day in North Park, San Diego, Olga Freedman.California Tower, Norma Herrera.Torrey Pines Del Mar, Terry Orletsky.Ramona Road, Katie Karosich.
…
If you’d like to see San Diego through my lens, find the “Follow” box in the sidebar to receive new posts in your email, or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I frequently walk down Ninth Avenue past Modern Times Coffee in San Diego’s East Village. Whenever I do, I have to turn my head and glance inside.
Why?
Because the unusual coffee shop contains dinosaurs, clowns, a dragon and other wild, crazy sights!
The Modern Times Coffee website describes what patrons encounter as retro-future decor. Whatever you might call the outlandish assemblage, it’s a lot of fun!
Where else can you find Ronald McDonald sitting happily under a flying pterodactyl and disco ball?
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
(If you’re viewing this on a phone, open my website’s sidebar by tapping those three parallel lines at the top of the page.)
The late 19th century was a transformative time in San Diego. The arrival of the transcontinental railroad and a wave of real estate speculation sparked great changes to the character of downtown. Those who walk through the Gaslamp Quarter can see many historic old buildings that were built in the 1880s.
One of those historic buildings is the Hubbell Building, located at 813-823 Fifth Avenue. Its construction began in 1886 and was completed in 1887.
Yesterday, while walking through the Gaslamp Quarter, I realized that, after almost 13 years of blogging about San Diego, I’ve never taken photos of the Hubbell Building.
So here we go…
A plaque near the front door reads:
The Hubbell Building, 1886
The Hubbell Building is a three-story brick building constructed in the Victorian style. The lower floor has been used mainly for retail, particularly clothing stores. Some of the more notable shops were The Arcade, specializing in ladies’ fancy goods, City of Paris Clothing, and George Marston’s Gentleman’s Furnishings. Marston’s was very successful in San Diego, and operated here until it moved into its own building next door. The upper floors were leased to the Grand Army of the Republic from 1904 to 1926.
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
(If you’re viewing this on a phone, open my website’s sidebar by tapping those three parallel lines at the top of the page.)
Earlier this year, a new exhibit opened at the USS Midway Museum that remembers a certain group of POWs from the Vietnam War.
Captive Warriors: The Story of the Midway 11 includes painful personal experiences from wartime captivity. It’s a difficult exhibit not only to view, but possibly to locate. To find it, walk the aircraft carrier’s flight deck until you see a sign for AFT READY ROOMS/POW TOUR, then head down some stairs. After proceeding through several Ready Rooms, you’ll arrive.
My photographs provide an idea of what you’ll encounter. You’ll see images of the eleven USS Midway aviators who were captured during the Vietnam War, brutally beaten and imprisoned. Facing isolation and starvation in prisons like the infamous Hanoi Hilton, they endured unimaginably inhumane conditions.
You’ll learn how prisoners learned to communicate with one another by tapping code on the prison walls, how advocates in the United States including Sybil Stockdale worked to secure POW provisions in the Paris Peace Accords, and how the eleven prisoners from the USS Midway eventually returned home.
One part of the exhibit makes the horror feel very real. Visitors gaze into dark, cave-like cells to view suffering, solitary prisoners of war.
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
(If you’re viewing this on a phone, open my website’s sidebar by tapping those three parallel lines at the top of the page.)
The Hard Deck bar from the movie Top Gun: Maverick is being recreated in San Diego at the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum!
Once completed, museum visitors will be able to enjoy a bar filled with props actually used in filming the blockbuster Tom Cruise movie Top Gun: Maverick!
The temporary Hard Deck bar movie set that was constructed on a beach was directly inspired by the real-life I Bar military officers’ club located nearby on Naval Air Station North Island. Those original props are coming to the Midway!
The Hard Deck bar is being built on the aircraft carrier’s sponson, next to elevator number 3. What, you might ask is a sponson? It’s a structural projection that extends outward from the sides of a carrier’s hull or flight deck.
I learned from a super friendly museum docent that the Hard Deck bar is being built so that it’s relatively unobtrusive when seen from outside the USS Midway, to conserve the historical appearance of the aircraft carrier.
Very cool!
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
(If you’re viewing this on a phone, open my website’s sidebar by tapping those three parallel lines at the top of the page.)
Crew members of Gutsy Lady were on the deck of their fishing boat gutting fish this morning for the Saturday Tuna Harbor Dockside Market!
They were cleaning their fresh catch to be sold to anyone in San Diego who enjoys a healthy, tasty meal.
Gutsy Lady’s captain told me they are based in San Diego, after having made Honolulu their home. They sell fish to restaurants and dockside buyers. Every part of their catch is eagerly bought, fish heads and all!
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
Well over a thousand volunteers came out this morning to clean up San Diego Bay. Operation Clean Sweep was well underway when I walked down to the water!
I saw families between Grape and Laurel Street on the boardwalk and among the shoreline rocks filling bags with litter. I was told 14 tons of garbage was removed from San Diego Bay during the clean up event last year!
Operation Clean Sweep is made possible by volunteers, local businesses and the Port of San Diego.
Thank you for protecting the environment and keeping San Diego beautiful!
…
To follow my blog, find the “Follow” box in this website’s sidebar. Or bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
