I was heading along the Greatest Generation Walk this morning when my eyes were surprised by bright color at the Battle of Leyte Gulf Memorial.
I discovered that four wreaths of remembrance had been recently placed on either side of the bust of Vice Admiral Clifton Sprague. Two were traditional holiday wreaths. It’s now less than two weeks before Christmas.
The image was so striking, and so thought-provoking, I thought I’d share a few photos.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a desperate naval battle in the Pacific Ocean theater during World War II. Few who fought there are still living.
Two of the wreaths say We Remember.
The other two offer hope.
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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!
Yes, winter does come to San Diego. It begins in about one week. Winters in coastal Southern California are generally mild, due to our arid climate, and the moderating influence of the nearby Pacific Ocean.
Winter storms tend to be short-lived, gray and drizzly. In San Diego, if you want to see occasional snow, you need to head to the mountains of East County, and even then the returning sun and dry desert winds melt it in a day or two. Temperatures at the lower elevations almost never reach freezing.
However, winter storms in San Diego have been known to provide drama!
There have been unusually violent windstorms, huge surf and flooding. A few of those memories have been preserved in photographs on this blog. And so have examples of winter’s unique beauty!
To see photos from past winters, click the following links:
Snow and winter beauty at Cuyamaca.
Boats destroyed by El Niño winds in San Diego.
Photos of San Diego River, after three storms.
Glimpses of nature’s beauty after a storm.
Photos of winter along San Diego River.
A winter’s day full of magical light.
Storm brings huge surf to Ocean Beach Pier.
Amazing vistas atop Mount Soledad.
Signs of the coming big winter storm.
Los Peñasquitos Lagoon between winter storms.
Winter beauty at the Japanese Friendship Garden.
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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!
Walking through a city is like navigating through a sea of geometric patterns!
On all sides: circles, lines, triangles, squares, rectangles!
Look up, look down. See the grates, ironwork, bricks, manhole covers. See the windows and reflections. You’ll find yourself surrounded by architecture designed mathematically.
Some of the patterns are simple. Others are complex.
When you walk through a city, what shapes and patterns do you see?
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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!
Check out this fun mural that was painted on the side of Vespa Motorsport on Pacific Highway this year!
The creator is Nicholas McPherson, a local artist who signs his work Nicholas Danger. His cool, often whimsical street art can be found all around San Diego!
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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!
Do you love art?
Would you like to help people who find themselves homeless?
Every work of art you see was made by a unique someone who is homeless in San Diego. They are all hopeful people who’ve been provided a creative outlet and opportunity to make a little bit of income by the nonprofit organization HEAL. Right now many of their canvases are on display at the San Diego Central Library. That’s where I took these few photographs.
What you see is just some of the original artwork that you can buy. With their painted canvases, homeless artists earn money. All of these pieces tell a story from the perspective of a unique human being. See all of the artwork that is for sale by those who want a brighter future by clicking here.
According to the HEAL website:
HEAL-SD (Homeless Empowerment through Art and Leadership) is a nonprofit that provides opportunities for creative self-expression and personal growth for individuals experiencing homelessness in San Diego…
Art sales give the artists the ability to earn an income through their hard work, as well as helping to confirm their talent, self-worth, and ability to contribute to their community in a meaningful way.
To view the many works of art that are for sale, click here. Then please make sure to share that page so many others will see it.
Should you purchase a piece, your life will be enriched, too.
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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!
Are you a blogger? Do you want to help make the world a better place? You might want to join Bloggers Lifting Others Generously.
Looks to me like Little Italy is just about ready for Christmas!
Enjoy a few photos from early this morning!
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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 ever driven down Pacific Highway south of Old Town, there’s a good chance you’ve spotted an enormous whale!
That whale was painted by muralist Chris Konecki in 2016 for PangeaSeed Foundation’s environmental project Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans. (Many more amazing murals were created by other artists during this same citywide event.)
The big, colorful whale mural is on the side of BJ’s Equipment Rentals, between Wright Street and Estudillo Street. The title of this mural is Just Passing Through. Look closely and you’ll see scuba divers around the whale, either spray painting graffiti on the whale or removing it!
Vandalizing a beautiful living whale would be a horrible thing to do. Endangering these magnificent creatures with pollution in the oceans would be just as reprehensible.
Let’s keep Earth’s oceans clean!
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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!
Wow!
Did you step inside the Comic-Con Museum during 2019 December Nights? If you did, you saw an exhibit that was absolutely amazing!
Young artists Connor and Bauer Lee have created fantastic life-size cardboard sculptures of popular Marvel and DC superheroes, plus various Pixar and Star Wars movie characters!
I believe I recognized: Groot, Black Manta holding a mace, a tiny X-wing starfighter, Wall-E, a gigantic Hulkbuster armor (under construction), Thor’s Stormbreaker hammer, Iron Man, C-3PO, R2-D2, Baby Groot, Wonder Woman, plus other fantastic creations including several superhero masks.
The two brothers have been building these cardboard models for many years. I spoke to Connor briefly and he explained that they select an image of a popular character, blow it up, then begin to craft the sculpture based on that initial design. I asked how long it might take to finish the enormous, extremely complex Hulkbuster armor sculpture you see in my photos, and he said about a year.
According to the Cardboard Superheroes website: We hold free workshops for kids in an effort to promote the arts for youth as we’ve see funding for the arts being cut in school and are working to provide an alternative that is free and fun for kids.
That’s definitely a super cool and inspirational project! I’m sure young students everywhere would love to be creative and make their favorite characters with simple cardboard!
I hope local schools take advantage of what appears to be an awesome opportunity. For more info, you can contact Cardboard Superheroes at their website here.
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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!
Check out all this great pop art by local San Diego artists! There’s a little bit of horror and a little bit of Christmas!
All of these pieces are by the artists of Horrorgasm and were on display at the future home of the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park during 2019 December Nights.
Horrorgasm is a cool art event that is held annually in late October. According to the Horrorgasm website, it’s a “one-night-only celebration of horror and all things creepy, spooky and macabre.” In 2019 Horrorgasm was held in North Park, and featured “an Art gallery, an artisan marketplace, live performances, live readings of chilling tales, and our version of an escape room, the Horrorgasm Survival Chamber.”
As I wandered about the exhibit, I was pleased to once again meet artist Melody De Los Cobos, one of the founders of Horrorgasm. Last month we spoke briefly during a Love City Heights mural painting event, where she was mentoring a young artist. I blogged about that here!
Some great popular movies are represented in this collection of original artwork. A few humorous pieces had me smiling!
To learn more about Horrorgasm, visit their website here.
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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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 