Destination JOY was a wonderful, very unique event held today in San Diego. San Diego Trolley riders could enjoy diverse entertainment and activations while on the trolley or at select stations!
The event included music, art, poetry readings and more at the Iris Avenue Transit Center. Inside a dark trailer, a makeshift art gallery presented The Goldie Collection by local artist David Gomez (@the_art_of_controversy).
Check out some photographs of his shining mixed media artwork. As a sign explained: The paintings in this collection tell a story of innocence lost, betrayal, hope and a friendship that spans generations… While the story and images might appear a bit exotic, the themes are universally human. Cool art, right?
David was also painting outdoors for the Destination JOY trolley event. I’ll be blogging about this fun San Diego event in my next post!
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I met Elie Kennedy today. She was at a table painting small, smooth stones inside the UC San Diego Park & Market building. She was participating in today’s Destination JOY event, which would bring San Diego Trolley riders into her smiling presence.
Elie makes lives in San Diego better. She does this by spreading hope and love with positive, affirming messages painted beautifully on stones. Perhaps you’ve seen Elie at art and craft events around the city. I also met her seven years ago in Balboa Park.
Elie has helped sick kids at Rady Children’s Hospital paint happy, hopeful stones. Above all, she’s an advocate for Suicide Prevention and Awareness. Her own family experience, and a day of painting stones on the beach for a loving memorial, propelled her down this road. The selling of her stones raises funds to bring awareness to the issue of suicide prevention.
Today, seeing the stones arranged on that table and her smile lighted my day. Chased away dark thoughts. Reminded me of important things.
The distinctive street art of Gerardo Meza (@mezarte) has been showing up in both Hillcrest and Bankers Hill!
I’ve noticed several electrical boxes painted in the last year in the two neighborhoods by the prolific artist. His colorful street art can be observed in communities all around San Diego.
Should you walk through San Ysidro just north of the Mexican border, you’ll find many examples of his work. Gerardo Meza is Chairman of the Border Public Arts Committee. Among other accomplishments, he’s also Coordinator of Art Box San Diego and Cofounder of the San Diego Art Society.
Gerardo’s artwork with its Mexican flavor is unmistakable. It can be weird, distorted, humorous, frightening, sexy, hip, mythological, ironic… It’s very original and definitely attracts your attention!
My first four photographs are of two boxes in Hillcrest…
And here come photos of two boxes in Bankers Hill…
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
I spied this very colorful mural in Bankers Hill on the north side of West Hair Salon on Fifth Avenue. It appears to uniquely combine elements of Día de los Muertos calavera face painting and Pride rainbow imagery!
The artist signature is that of Genaro Garcia (@artegennaro).
I took this photograph over a parked car the other day, but you can see most of the artwork.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Summer in San Diego is moving along. August has arrived!
As usual, a new month means it’s time to revisit blog posts from five years ago. During August 2019, Cool San Diego Sights featured some very unique and amazing stuff.
My photographs from back then include an epic mural depicting San Diego that few people see, an exhibition of very weird architecture inspired by UFOs, and jaw-dropping sand sculptures created by world-class artists!
Here come eight links to past blog posts that you might explore.
Click the following links to view photographs from five years ago:
Walk into The Old Globe theatre complex in Balboa Park and you’ll observe the sculpture of a golden crown. You’ll also pass rows of festive banners and signs. Their colorful graphics tell the story of The Old Globe’s special Henry 6 Project.
The Henry 6 Project has engaged the people of San Diego with groundbreaking community outreach. Not only can the public enjoy a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s several Henry VI plays, but as one of the graphics explains: The Globe’s radically inclusive vision opened every step of the creative process to the citizens of San Diego, weaving them into the fabric of the production not only with performance opportunities, but also through innovative, direct collaborations on nearly all elements of the production design.
Last week I photographed some of these signs and banners. Read the photo captions to learn a little more about the Henry 6 Project. Better yet, head over to beautiful Balboa Park and see all of this for yourself!
The world premiere of Henry 6 at The Old Globe is a two-part adaptation of Henry VI, titled One: Flowers and France and Two: Riot and Reckoning.
To read about this unique production on The Old Globe’s website, click here!
Director Barry Edelstein’s adaptation, Henry 6, is made by, with, and for the community of San Diego.The Old Globe’s Reflecting Shakespeare program works with individuals who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, or justice-involved, and provides a vehicle for healthy interaction, reflection, creativity, and personal growth…Community workshops explore scenic design. Other workshops and activities concern sound, lighting and costume design and music. Nearly 200 individuals were filmed for crowd scenes projected in the production of Henry 6.38 plays over 89 years. With this summer’s production of Henry 6, The Old Globe completes the Shakespeare canon…and (has) joined a small and select list of American companies to have achieved this feat…The Globe For All Shakespeare tour was designed for on-the-road performances to be enjoyed by audiences throughout San Diego County and in Tijuana. Performed free of charge in non-theatrical venues…these productions give audiences an intimate and compelling professional theatrical experience.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Look at these photographs that were taken last week!
I was heading through Balboa Park to the Comic-Con Museum (for my Comic-Con coverage) when I noticed that the restoration of the Botanical Building appears to be near completion. Look how amazingly beautiful it’s going to be!
Workers were busy painting the non-lath lower part of the immense structure. The area in front of the Botanical Building behind the construction fence, where grassy lawns and a small section of the lily pond have existed, was still mostly bare dirt.
If you’d like to see photos showing different stages of the Botanical Building’s deconstruction and restoration, and read more info concerning it (going back over two years), you can click here and here and here and here and here!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
If you live in downtown San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood, or anywhere near the County Administration Center, you’re in luck! The new outdoor recreation area in Waterfront Park opened last week!
This community resource had been a work in progress for a very long time, and now it can welcome those who like to play sports, exercise, or walk their dog in the San Diego sunshine. You can see photographs of the area under construction here and here.
The recreation area occupies the northeast corner of Waterfront Park. It includes one basketball and two pickleball courts, five exercise stations, a ping pong table, plus a fenced off-leash dog area with agility equipment. Pickleball paddles and balls, table tennis paddles and balls, basketballs, and TRX suspension equipment can be freely checked out from a nearby information booth, which is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. during the summer, and from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. from fall to spring. A sign on the booth’s window indicates there’s also a bocce ball set and chess set available for loan.
I’m happy to see that the 1.25 acre area spared some of the old garden where it was built. And there are benches to sit in the shade of newly planted trees, and even a Little Free Library box near the information booth with books that young or old might enjoy reading.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Can you imagine being homeless or very poor and hungry? How difficult your day-to-day life would be. How depressed you might feel. How hopeless and inescapable the situation might seem?
I was walking home from San Diego Comic-Con a couple days ago when I met a couple of smiling guys selling water by the sidewalk. They had this sign:
What would you say to make someone’s day?
When I stopped to learn what those words meant, I discovered these guys are working to help the homeless and hungry in San Diego with Lids of Encouragement.
On their table I saw container lids with positive messages written on them. Lids of Encouragement uses these lids to seal care and food packages for those in need downtown. I told them I’d write a blog to help their effort.
I found this article written a couple months ago. It explains how the founder himself was homeless for a while. He must certainly understand what it’s like. The organization has been around for many years now. Lids of Encouragement might be small but it’s still going strong!
I also see students in downtown San Diego are writing encouraging messages on many of the lids.
You can check out the Lids of Encouragement website by clicking here. Perhaps you can help them in their very important mission to make lives better.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
It’s the final day of Comic-Con 2024 in San Diego. As usual, I went for a morning walk with my camera in hand.
In the early morning few people were about. I imagine many fans were sleeping in after yesterday’s super exciting Hall H reveals by Marvel, the Crunchyroll concert at The Shell, and other late night San Diego Comic-Con parties.
By mid-morning a crowd was growing in the Gaslamp Quarter and outside the San Diego Convention Center. While two offsites had disappeared overnight (the Bathroom Battlestation and MrBeast Lab), lines for the activations behind the convention center near the bay (FX, Voodoo Ranger, Adult Swim, Hulu, Abbott Elementary, and Dragon Ball) were already long.
Sunday is a day when many local San Diegans come out to enjoy the free offsite activations. I saw lots of families with kids!
Walking down Fifth Avenue early Sunday morning I saw this!Police bomb-sniffer dogs were getting underway. Thank you for keeping everyone safe!A fun photo near the FX offsite early in the morning.The IMDb Boat is gone.Banners remain for the two Crunchyroll concerts at The Shell.Fun graphics at The Shell box office.Additional colorful One Piece graphics remain at the San Diego Symphony’s outside venue, The Shell.No super long Hall H line winding through Embarcadero Marina Park South on Sunday.A Comic-Con view on Sunday morning from Embarcadero Marina Park South.The Dragon Ball line on Sunday morning was long. They give out good swag.Back in the Gaslamp. Wolverine and Deadpool got their masks confused!Sunday morning line at The Lodge.You can see how the crowd was growing during the course of Sunday morning.Romans in togas greet fans passing the Those About to Die chariot racing offsite in Gaslamp Square. A line was growing here, too.Setting up a sign by the SpongeBob squirting activation.A hot dog with mustard and no ketchup. Promotion of Universal Basic Guys on FOX.Shortly after ten o’clock the Petco Park Interactive Zone was already quite busy!Super cool Predator cosplay!Once more I’m behind the San Diego Convention Center. Comic-Con International chalk art!Pirates busy signing in visitors along the Adult Swim line.Having fun on the big carnival swing ride at the A.V.A. FEST of Abbott Elementary.More fun being had at the A.V.A. FEST!Will this guy get dunked?LANFest, through gaming, raises money for charitable causes. See their website here. They have 18 chapters in 3 countries!Stilt walkers greet fans to A.V.A. FEST during Comic-Con 2024.Adult Swim banner flies!Captain Hook cosplay near the FX offsite. Its line was very long by late morning!Now I’m heading back over the Harbor Drive pedestrian bridge. Less cosplay on Sunday, but still some good ones!Waiting a long time for a free slushy isn’t my cup of tea.I’m afraid I missed the Dexter activation. I’m going to steer my feet toward home.I have some cold water at home. Thanks anyway!A decent crowd in the Gaslamp Quarter just before noon. It’s Sunday at Comic-Con 2024.Powdered Toast Man cosplay from The Ren & Stimpy Show. Makes me wonder about lunch: What’s in my refrigerator?
I hope you enjoyed my photographic coverage of Comic-Con 2024. I think I’ll call it quits. My aging legs are tired!
It’s time to transition my blog back to its more normal self. I’ll be publishing a variety of posts concerning San Diego: unique events and festivals, museum exhibits, historic places, nature walks, street art–the usual Cool San Diego Sights stuff. I’m never entirely sure where I’ll walk next. Or what I might discover by sheer chance!
I do know I have photographs concerning Balboa Park coming up in the next couple days. So if you live in San Diego, or simply love the city, stay tuned!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
If you’d like to view all of my coverage concerning San Diego Comic-Con, including hundreds of cool photographs, click here!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things in San Diego, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Cool San Diego Sights! 