Love and respect are shown for those in the military who pledged to protect their countrymen, and defend freedom. They are honored on Memorial Day.
This coming Memorial Day will be very different. The coronavirus pandemic has caused public events around San Diego to be cancelled.
But I’ve learned there will be a live stream over the internet that celebrates Memorial Day this year, and the virtual event will feature four locations: the USS Midway Museum, Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery, Mt. Soledad National Veterans Memorial, and Miramar National Cemetery. Those who perished serving in the United States Armed Forces will be honored and remembered.
If you’d like to learn more, or view the live stream online this Memorial Day starting at 9 am click here!
In San Diego we are proceeding with the gradual reopening of society as the coronavirus pandemic seems to slowly subside. Today restaurants were allowed to open for dining. Strict guidelines must be followed such as maintaining super sanitary conditions and safe social distancing.
Some say the reopening of society is proceeding too quickly; others say not quickly enough. But the future is a tricky thing to predict. There are so many variables. So many different risks. All I know is that at some point we’ll look back and see what actions in the final analysis were most wise. And our knowledge will increase.
On another hopeful note, during my walks in the past couple weeks I’ve observed more signs around town celebrating unity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other signs express thankfulness to essential workers. You’ll see that one billboard I photographed about a week ago concerning restaurants now seems dated, but no matter.
That so many people have demonstrated an urge to stay positive during this terrible crisis seems a good sign for the future of humanity in general.
At least, it appears that way to me. I’m an optimist.
San Diego strong.To restaurants still delivering meals, thank you.Thanks (transit driver) heroes.
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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!
This morning I had to hurry through downtown to catch the trolley for work. Given more time, I could’ve taken a thousand photographs of abstract paintings on one fantastic construction site wall.
(Okay, there are fragments of wood and old peeling paper. So you might say some of these “works” are mixed media collage.)
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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!
A large face greets those heading east on Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach.
Turquoise Street in Pacific Beach, from Mission Boulevard to Cass Street, is the home of a lot of fun street art.
Check out some photos!
Mural on parking lot wall by Treelogy Cafe Restaurant.These colorful flowers are at the center of the mural.Old-fashioned advertising artwork on wall of Cafe Bar Europa.The happy wood shack of Blossoms Design Florist.Mural in a narrow alley celebrates 90 years of Crystal Pier.Bottom of the alley mural, with an octopus tentacle wearing a beach sandal. #octopier by @artanystefMural on the side of P.B. Yoga and Healing Arts.Enjoying a hot beverage with a dog. Mural by artist Gloria Muriel on the side of The French Gourmet.A fun blue character painted on another nearby wall by Gloria Muriel.
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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!
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Check out these two cool murals in Pacific Beach! Both can be found on the east side of Mission Boulevard, just north of Emerald Street.
The first super colorful mural features tikis, a green-eyed octopus and a happy blue bird. This one really grabs your attention! While walking up Mission Boulevard, I noticed it a block away! The imaginative artwork was painted around the entrance of Cheba Hut, by artist @BayneGardner.
The second mural shows an underwater scene teeming with beautiful marine life. The ocean, below palm trees and breaking surf, is the home to fish, coral, a swimming turtle, dolphins, sharks and more! You can find this fantastic street art, created by D. Longenecker, on the north wall of Taco Surf Pacific Beach.
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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!
A large building wrap thanking heroes during the coronavirus pandemic has appeared on Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres.
A large building wrap has appeared on Petco Park thanking heroes during the coronavirus pandemic. The huge graphic expresses gratitude to essential workers, firefighters, healthcare professionals and law enforcement who sacrifice to keep the public fed and safe.
It’s a wonderful sight.
We in San Diego are accustomed to seeing huge, colorful building wraps affixed to Petco Park and buildings surrounding the convention center during Comic-Con. But this wrap doesn’t promote popular entertainment. It’s simply a heartfelt Thank You.
Know what would be really cool? If Comic-Con followed suit with their own Thank You wrap! Having multiple wraps around downtown would be a little like Comic-Con, even though the world-famous pop culture event has been cancelled this summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
San Diego could have a visual Thank-You-Con for the real superheroes.
We need you. We thank you.San Diego frontline heroes… Thank You.
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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!
The creative process is messy. Heaps of old ideas and the peculiar shapes of new ideas are scattered on the ground around a busy creator.
With saw and hammer the pieces are cut and pounded until segments fit together. It’s sort of like a construction site.
In an essay you write for school, in a new work of fiction, a speech, invention, sculpture or painting . . . there are steel beams and two-by-fours, boards of drywall, sharp nails.
I walked past the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego’s historic La Jolla location yesterday. The already beautiful building is in the process of being altered, enlarged.
Along the construction site fence are images of paintings in the museum’s collection. Beyond the fence, you can see the messy but semi-ordered heaps. It’s a moment in the creative process. Once all the elements of that mess are integrated with creative energy, the finished building will be spectacular.
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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!
A beautiful, serene face painted on a utility box on Prospect Street in La Jolla.
Here are additional art discoveries I made today while walking about the Village of La Jolla–the central, downtown part of La Jolla. I’ve enjoyed other meandering “street art walks” in the past, and you can see those photos here and here.
During this most recent walk, I photographed a few more of the ever-changing Murals of La Jolla, plus some fun trashcan art I hadn’t noticed in years past. Plus a few other cool finds!
Enjoy!
Two of five colorful abstract sculptures, on the patio in front of 1261 Prospect Street.A third fun sculpture!A flowery head in the window at Robina Apparel and Accessories.A cute dog peers from a trashcan in La Jolla.Another trashcan down the sidewalk has been painted with flowers.Once Upon a Time in the West, 2017, by artist Kota Ezawa. Louis Kahn, master architect who designed La Jolla’s Salk Institute, appears to be deep in thought.An ornate bench in the courtyard outside the rotunda of the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library. A small plaque on the bench reads In Memory of Genevieve Ferguson from Friends.One scene on the metal bench seems to depict a villager working in a field.More trashcan street art. This abstract painting is wildly colorful.I walked down the outdoor corridor of the Arcade Building and found two pieces of beautiful metalwork. This one is alive with turtles and a fish.One of three similarly painted electrical boxes which stand in a row on a sidewalk. An artist’s folksy rendition of Village of La Jolla shops.Stylish, jazzy posters on a building invite guests to enter the Manhattan of La Jolla restaurant.Is All That it Proves, 2015, by artist Marcos Ramirez ERRE. Thomas Paine’s famous quote as an eye exam chart, reminding us opinion is simply opinion.Small mural on the outdoor patio of Bernini’s Bistro shows pizzas being prepared.Close-up photo of one of the Murals of La Jolla. Bill 2, 2019, by artist Alex Katz. The subtle facial expressions of modern dance choreographer Bill T. Jones.
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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!
Quarantine Dreams mural in La Jolla. When quarantined due to the novel coronavirus, you can’t travel, dine, date, surf, play sports, or even play catch outside with the dog. Hang in there!
The coronavirus pandemic is no laughing matter. But I cracked a smile when I discovered a gently humorous mural and amusing “war posters” pertaining to COVID-19 in La Jolla.
I spied the mural, titled Quarantine Dreams, at the entrance to an alley off Pearl Street. The artwork speaks for itself!
The posters, some of which were done in the distinctive World War II style, are on display in the windows of Copy Cove on Pearl Street. The posters offer helpful advice for fighting the invisible enemy, COVID-19. (I believe you can purchase the posters at this shop.)
Enjoy!
Don’t hoard rolls! Eat less chili. Flatten the curve! Support our healthcare heroes. Don’t be a burden. Don’t do stupid sh*t.Buy takeout. Touch your face, lose the race. The enemy win when you touch your face.A dirty phone is a danger zone! Damnit! Wash your hands. Victory at home starts with a good scrub!Good fellows use elbows. Keep the nation fighting fit! Stay back, Jack! Use air fist bumps.
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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!
The immense complexity of the city and its people is evident in every one of my walks.
A city is like a small slice of the larger human world. Many individuals heading in different directions, or forward together…talking or silently thinking…interacting in the places where they work, rest, shop, live. You see the complexity in the streets signs and the architecture, in restaurant menus and colorful store windows. You see it on the active sidewalks, in styles of dress, facial expressions, postures of ambition or resignation. A city and its people are too complicated to ever adequately describe.
Much of the complexity rises from the ongoing tangle of human desires, predilections, emotions. One thing that seems constant in the world is human yearning. And those yearnings often create tension.
Today I walked around downtown. I came upon a political rally at the County Administration Building. Roused citizens, desiring liberty, were chafing at the slow reopening of society during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They expressed their reasons. They yearned for individual liberty. But others in our society yearn for collective security. It’s that never-ending political conflict.
As I continued my walk, I turned my eyes upward to see the mysterious, ordered windows where different people work and live. And I looked at the intersecting streets and sidewalks, where separate lives move forward.
All that human complexity makes a city what it is. It also makes every single walk every single day fascinating. And thought-provoking.
Even during the current COVID-19 pandemic, when the city seems more lonely and troubled than usual.
He was simply resting in the sun.
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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!
If the above images feel almost like a poem, it was my intention. To read a few philosophical stories I’ve written, click Short Stories by Richard.
Cool San Diego Sights! 