Spring has arrived in the window of Mission Hills Automotive.
Yesterday I went for a long, very pleasant springtime walk. These photographs represent my journey through the west part of Hillcrest, then through an interesting slice of Mission Hills.
I started inside Hillcrest, headed west down Washington Street, took a momentary detour to Fort Stockton Drive, then headed back down Washington Place to historic (and some say haunted) Pioneer Park, which I will blog about in a day or two. I then hiked down sloping Mission Hills Canyon along the green, seemingly little known Robyn’s Egg Trail, which I also plan to blog about. Eventually I came out near San Diego Avenue, southeast of Old Town.
Come along and read the captions to get a taste…
A flying unicorn on a fence by Copper Top Coffee and Donuts in Hillcrest.Lovers in a window at Urban Fusion Decor.Springtime in a window at VCA Hillcrest Animal Hospital.A cool mural on the side of Dame and Dapper Barber Shop. One of the bird sculptures along Washington Avenue’s median. I believe the sculptures were a project of the Mission Hills Garden Club.Mysterious tile artwork on the corner of a building.Banner thanks cool teachers at St. Vincent de Paul School.Interesting old building is home of the Ibis Market.Mission Hills homeowners are hoping to have acorn-style street lamps installed, to create a more charming and historic look.One of many beautiful old houses I passed in Mission Hills. I believe this one is a Craftsman.Gravestones line a corner of Pioneer Park, which was built over a cemetery where many early residents of San Diego remain buried.Heading down green Mission Hills Canyon on a sunny spring day. The Robyn’s Egg Trail is rough and requires careful navigation in spots. Along its approximately half mile length I encountered one walker with a dog and one homeless person.Bright flowers along the path.A happy kitty face greets me as I arrive at San Diego Avenue!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
I was walking through Mission Hills yesterday when I suddenly thought I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in Balboa Park!
There, rising in front of me, was a miniature version of the old Ford Building, home of the San Diego Air and Space Museum!
The unique, cylindrical, Streamline Moderne-style Ford Building in Balboa Park, which resembles a V8 engine, was erected by the Ford Motor Company for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition.
This smaller version in Mission Hills can be found at the corner of Ft. Stockton Drive and Hawk Street. It’s the home of the Fort Oak restaurant.
Ford Building from 1935 California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park. No known copyright image from Flickr.
My walk yesterday went from Hillcrest through Mission Hills. I also visited Pacific Beach. Many photos and fascinating blog posts are coming! I also will be blogging about an amazing historic site in Vista, which I visited last weekend.
Now I’m about to head out walking again! Happy Sunday!
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This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!
Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts. If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!
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The San Diego Museum of Art’s new exhibition Young Art 2021: My World, Our Planet has opened!
At the title suggests, the museum’s biennial Youth Art exhibition has an environmental theme this year. Students from schools all around San Diego County have contributed.
There’s a new twist this time, however!
Professional artists, coordinated by Mindful Murals, are reimagining 25 works of this outstanding youth art by painting SDG&E utility boxes from Balboa Park down Park Boulevard into downtown San Diego. Every utility box “recreates” a canvas painted by a young person!
I’ve already photographed many of the utility boxes. So I was excited to see all the great original youth art hanging on the San Diego Museum of Art’s walls!
Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to compare some of the original art with the painted utility boxes? Of course it would!
The professional artists painting the boxes were encouraged to interpret the student canvases in their own unique way. You can see significant differences. (And painting an outdoor utility box that will be seen momentarily by passing motorists and pedestrians is very different than painting a canvas with a fine brush.)
To view photos of many more utility boxes, click here.
So, without further ado, here come the comparisons!
Plastic, Not Dinner, by Anjolie Ly, Westview High School. Large numbers of turtles are killed each year when they mistake plastic waste for jellyfish.Artist Brise Birdsong. A more perfect ocean environment.Strong Together, by Chloe Katz, Art Studio Light.Artist Amanda Saint Claire, mentoring Katie Flores.Turn Off the Light, by Anqi “Cici” Mei, Solana Pacific Elementary.Artist Nhuy Reid.2050, by Sheridan Liew, Sherry Art Studio/Canyon Crest Academy. A future of severe environmental pollution might look like this.Artist Lucy Helle.Wind Farm at Sundown on 8 East, by Arianna Larios, Homeschool.I don’t know the artist at this moment! When I learn, I’ll provide an update. UPDATE! The artist is Sean Hnedak.Oceana, by Alice Zhu, Westview High School. A girl’s serenity contrasted with her hair as an oil spill.Artist Alyssa Stewart.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
While walking up Park Boulevard in East Village today I discovered more utility boxes that are being painted for the San Diego Museum of Art’s cool outdoor exhibition Young Art: Outside the Frame!
Most of the boxes you see here are located around Park Boulevard and F Street. Last weekend I discovered other newly painted utility boxes in this same general area and posted those photos here. Click the link and you’ll learn more about this unique, very cool project!
(I noticed some of those earlier boxes are now finished, and I’ll be updating that blog post with additional images shortly.)
To see even more colorful utility boxes painted for the Young Art: Outside the Frame project, you can check out additional blog posts here and here and here!
As you can see in the next photo, the fun goldfish box was painted by Ground Floor Murals. They also created a super cool mural in City Heights celebrating Tony Gwynn. See that here!
For the other boxes that follow, many of which are just getting started, I don’t know the artists yet…
The next three boxes are on the sidewalk adjacent to some very cool East Village murals I blogged about here!
UPDATE!
Here are a couple photos I took several days later…
ANOTHER UPDATE!
And a week or so later I took more photos! I now see the box with the words YOU ARE MAGIC is by artist Amanda Lopez (@amanda.makes.art). The box with the whale in the clouds is by Tory Brooke Marshall (@afrothynothing). And the face with flowing red scarf is by Mindful Murals!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Walk along Highway 101 in Solana Beach and you might notice a series of plaques describing historical buildings.
During my most recent adventure in Solana Beach, I took photos of several buildings and plaques immediately south and north of Plaza Street/Lomas Santa Fe Drive. This stretch of highway was the coastal town’s main street a century ago.
To learn more about these and other historical buildings, and to view a variety of interesting old photographs, visit this page of the Solana Beach Civic And Historical Society. They’re the ones who created the plaques.
This first batch of photos is from the 100 south block of Highway 101. All of these small, modest buildings are now home to local businesses, including an eatery and salon.
Stanley Estes’ Radio Service Shop, 1931.Howard and Irene Witmer’s Sandwiches, Fountain and Sundries, 1927.Ira E. Conner’s Meats, Groceries, Hardware and Dry Goods, 1925.Claude E. Miles’ Solana Beach Meat Market, 1926.William and Angie Kurtz’s Solana Beach Drug Store, 1928.
The next three photographs were taken on the 200 north block of Highway 101…
Ray Hobberlin’s Barber Shop and Residence, 1948.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Today was an historic day! Four long-anticipated murals have debuted above the entrance of the San Diego Automotive Museum!
Yesterday’s scaffolding has been removed, revealing beautiful tile artwork that will be enjoyed by visitors to Balboa Park for many decades–perhaps even centuries–into the future!
I first blogged about the project back in late 2017. You can read what I wrote here.
As I explained, these permanent tile murals “…are based on murals that decorated the (California State Building) during the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition….Much of the California State Building’s original ornamentation no longer exists, including the four original murals. They were created for the exposition by Hollywood set designer Juan Larrinaga. Painted on fiberboard to appear like tilework, they depicted California’s commerce, scenic beauty, agriculture and industry.”
The exquisite tiles were created by RTK Studios in Ojai, California.
Those who enjoy at visit to the San Diego Automotive Museum, or the newly opened Pan American Plaza in front of the museum, will now be able feast their eyes on these four truly remarkable works of public art!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
If you’ve driven through the intersection of Palomar Street and Broadway in Chula Vista you’ve no doubt seen it. A long, very colorful mural painted on the wall by nearby Orange Avenue, between a small city park and the El Mirador Trailer Court.
I believe the wall was painted fairly recently–that’s what a gentleman who works at Jack in the Box across the street told me.
I love the bright, cheerful designs! It appears that many refer to aspects of our region’s unique cultural and natural heritage.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
A few weeks ago, during my adventure in El Cajon, I walked around the Knox House Museum, which was closed at the time. I took a number of photographs of the historic structure, and the gazebo in small, grassy Judson Park to the north.
The Knox House Museum is operated by the El Cajon Historical Society. The building is a restoration of Amaziah Lord Knox’s original two-story, seven room El Cajon Hotel, which was built in 1876 near the present day corner of Main Street and Magnolia Avenue. The building also served as the Knox residence. In later years the hotel was altered in various ways and greatly enlarged. In 1972 the City of El Cajon purchased the original building and moved it to its present location, at the corner of Magnolia and Park Avenue.
To learn much, much more about the old hotel, the present day museum, and the history of El Cajon, which began in earnest with the discovery of gold in Julian in 1870, visit the El Cajon Historical Society’s website here! Among other things, you’ll learn why the Knox House Museum is painted in such unusual colors!
I spotted this old gazebo in Judson Park, across Park Avenue…
The plaque on the gazebo includes: In 1875 the bustling commerce of ore wagons, stage coaches and other traffic of the times passed this spot on route to and from San Diego and the gold mines of Julian. This land was later granted to the City of El Cajon by the C.S. Judson family…The gazebo was constructed by the El Cajon Historical Society…Dedicated July 26, 1992…This rose garden was presented to the people of El Cajon by the East County Rose Society…Dedicated November 2002…
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This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!
Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts. If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!
To enjoy future posts, you can also “like” Cool San Diego Sights on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.
I walk past this sculpture at the corner of University Avenue and Bancroft Street every so often, and when I do I always search for a plaque or other indication of when it was created and by whom. To me it’s a complete mystery.
For many years this flame-like sculpture with patterned tiles at its base has welcomed people driving west into North Park from City Heights. I have no doubt someone out there knows its story–but I sure don’t!
If you know anything, I’d be very curious to read your comment!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Cool San Diego Sights! 