Ring bells at noon, July 4th, America’s 250th Anniversary!

This coming Fourth of July, 2026, the United States of America will celebrate its semiquincentennial–its 250th Anniversary!

At noon on Independence Day, people in San Diego and across the country will be ringing bells to celebrate two and a half centuries of freedom. Would you like to join them?

There’s a free website that will help you, your family, friends, and interested organizations celebrate the moment. It counts down to noon local time, provides a digital Declaration of Independence, educational material, helpful information about creating your own ceremony, a participation certificate, and will produce eight different selectable bell sounds if you don’t have your own bell handy!

There’s even information about how to produce a ceremonial bell ringing broadcast on local radio stations.

The website is called Freedom Bells. You can learn more at FreedomBells.org or click here! Check out the website FAQs for useful ideas.

Share the news! Get those Freedom Bells ringing from sea to shining sea!

Plaque memorializes three SDSU rowers.

A plaque memorializes three San Diego State University rowers who perished in a tragic car crash in 1986.

Derek Guelker, Jim O’Hara and Mark Skinner were in a van with other college athletes returning to San Diego from a rowing club competition in Sacramento when the terrible crash occurred. Here’s an article explaining what happened.

I stumbled upon this plaque when walking past the Mission Bay Aquatic Center, a water sports equipment rental service that is located on Santa Clara Point. The aquatic center, owned and operated by Associated Students of San Diego State University and UCSD Recreation, is open to the general public.

If you’d like to see the plaque yourself, you’ll find it by a walking path that approaches the H Del Beekley Rowing Center.

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AI creates bizarre San Diego weirdly!

Just a fun post.

I thought I’d activate Galaxy AI Drawing Assist on my Samsung smartphone and have it create crazy images of San Diego!

Using the text “bizarre San Diego weirdly” and the pop art setting generated some wild results!

Lots of big surfboards, waves, tacos, hot air balloons, lighthouses, and strange structures, some of which kind of look like San Diego buildings!

Shelbi Bennett to exhibit at Brokers Gallery.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered about the art gallery located next to San Diego’s downtown Fifth Avenue trolley station. Sometimes I’ll peer curiously at the windows when I walk past.

Today the door was wide open!

Inside, what did I find? Singer/songwriter/artist Shelbi Bennett and some of her beautiful artwork, which is being installed in the gallery for an exhibition that opens on April 1, 2026!

Brokers Building Art Gallery is the name of the place. According to its website, the gallery traces its roots to a grassroots artist collective that has existed in San Diego for over 40 years. Originally housed in the historic Brokers Building at Fourth Avenue and Market Street in the Gaslamp Quarter, the gallery functioned as a rare, artist-run cultural space embedded directly within the city’s commercial core.

I learned the Brokers Gallery as it exists today hosts many events, including the monthly Open Mic Night, culture nights, live music, and rotating art exhibitions. Check out their event page by clicking here.

It was a pleasure to briefly meet Shelbi Bennett, who I recognized from her past performance on KUSI television. Fine works of art she has created were going up on the gallery wall!

If you’d like to visit her Instagram page, here it is!

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San Diego nurses organization cleans Ski Beach!

A big thank you to the several dozen volunteers representing the San Diego Association for Male Nurses! They picked up litter at Ski Beach in Mission Bay today!

I learned that the cleanup is one of many ways the organization improves our city and the people it touches!

The San Diego Association for Male Nurses invites old and new members (and any volunteers) to help with their many efforts, whether it’s coastal cleanups, providing blood pressure awareness to local communities, medically helping children in Mexico, demonstrating CPR in high schools, or handing out Narcan at Chicano Park Day this coming April 25!

Wow, these people are amazing! Super nice too!

According to their website: Our mission is to champion an inclusive professional nursing environment, provide support for current and future male nurses, and advocate to bring awareness to men’s mental and physical health issues.

Awesome! Why not join them?

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Watching the 2026 San Diego Crew Classic!

Late this morning I spent some time watching the final day of the 53rd San Diego Crew Classic on Mission Bay. I was walking near Ski Beach when I saw the rowers, so I crossed over to Crown Point and looked on from afar with other members of the public who hadn’t purchased a ticket.

With my fuzzy zoom photos you can see the extreme effort of the competing rowers. They were really putting their backs and arms into it! The San Diego Crew Classic in 2026 featured over 100 teams from across the country, including premier collegiate, junior and masters rowing programs. The Crew Classic is one of the nation’s most prominent competitions of its kind.

The college teams, including Texas, Washington, Cal, UCLA, and San Diego State, are among the best of the best!

Even though the racing was held at some distance from where we watched, the excitement was very real!

If you want to learn more about the big event and view the results, check out the Crew Classic website here.

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Fun photos at Opening Weekend Block Party!

Enjoy some fun photos taken early this afternoon at the East Village Opening Weekend Block Party! The 2026 MLB baseball season has begun and our San Diego Padres have high hopes.

Lots of fans were wandering up and down several blocks of J Street just north of Petco Park. There was live music, dogs dressed like Padres fans, cool lowriders in a row, food, kids making swag chains, a spray paint artist, and even a wiffleball derby!

Too much fun!

A ship, an airplane, or a unique trolley station?

Motorists heading down Interstate 8 at the east end of Mission Valley can’t help but notice this elevated trolley station. It’s the Grantville Station, of the San Diego Trolley’s Green Line.

The architecture of the Grantville Station is truly eye-catching and unique. Small signs posted in various places explain:

The central courtyard is a river-like gathering spot surrounded by pillars and beneath the station. Free form cast stone veneer walls, water washed flagstone caps, native riparian trees, shrubbery, and river rock mulch become a visual link to the nearby San Diego River.

Leather ferns and bamboo reeds planted near the stairwells grow from the plaza towards the elevated station 40 feet above.

The soaring station is a tribute to the aviation and nautical industries. The Trolley platform bows out in the middle, inspired by ship and plane architecture. The design repeats in the granite benches and bus shelters.

At night, spectacular streams of light beam upwards illuminating the pillars, stairways and octagonal tops of the twin elevator shafts.

On the platform, enjoy the unparalleled views to the north and south before boarding a Trolley to your next destination.

San Diego’s rich history includes important ships, shipyards, major aviation milestones and airplane construction.

The station’s architect was Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc. and the station first opened in July, 2005.

Last month I disembarked at the Grantville Station and walked around with my camera…

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Nine million women honored on USS Midway.

An exhibit on the hangar deck of the USS Midway Museum honors the approximately 9 million women who stepped forward to meet the nation’s needs during World War II.

Women contributed by serving in the United States military services, and by building the ships, aircraft, ammunition and other equipment necessary to fight the war.

There’s special emphasis on how women helped to build seaplanes and bombers at San Diego’s Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, and how women helped to construct the enormous USS Midway aircraft carrier.

Did you know that by 1945 women made up as much as 40% of the workforce in the nation’s aircraft factories? That was true as well at Consolidated Aircraft.

Did you know that more than 1000 women, working as welders, electricians, machine operators, pipefitters, mechanics and painters helped to construct the USS Midway in just 18 months?

Rosie the Riveter and Wanda the Welder were instrumental in the eventual victory of the Allies!

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Opening Day morning excitement downtown!

It’s the morning of Opening Day for the San Diego Padres, and the excitement has begun!

Reporters are in the Gaslamp Quarter commentating and interviewing fans. The Ben and Woods sports radio show is broadcasting from Baja Rick’s to a crowd of Padres fans!

Let’s go Pads! Beat the Detroit Tigers!