An absolutely gigantic sandcastle is now being built at the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier!
The huge two-stories high sand sculpture, which is being referred to as the Monument Castle, is the centerpiece of this year’s week-long Sun and Sea Festival. Imperial Beach has become Sandcastle City!
The I.B. Posse, a team of local sand artists, began to build the castle a couple days ago. The sand carving will continue through this week.
I intend to swing by again next weekend to check out the finished sandcastle! I’ll post those pics in an update here!
UPDATE!
I swung by the following weekend after the huge sandcastle was completed. I see the I.B. Posse was assisted by the Sand Squirrels, Dan Belcher, Bruce Phillips and Sculpting San Diego.
Wow! Check it out!
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Please enjoy these photos of many H.E.A.R.T. murals that can be found in Ramona along the length of Main Street. I happened to see these particular murals during my most recent walk through town.
The Ramona H.E.A.R.T. Mural Project promotes community pride, and entices those driving through this East County town, often on the way to Julian or Anza Borrego, to stop and explore.
According to the Ramona Murals website, the letters in the acronym H.E.A.R.T. stand for Historic and Hiking; Equine; Arts, Antiques and Agriculture; Rural vistas and drives; and Tasting of fine wines. Or perhaps it simply means heart. I prefer the latter.
Photos that I already shared of one multi-panel mural concerning the historical Verlaque Pioneer Store can be found by clicking here.
There are additional murals that I didn’t see, particularly those near the west end of Main Street. You can view those and find a map of all the murals here.
Hiking Mt. Woodson, 2018, artist Rik Erickson.Ramona Reflections, 2020, artist Gretchen Weidner.Bandy Blacksmith, 2019, artist Beata Wojcik.Music Mural, 2014, artist Jason Luper.Casey Tibbs, 2012, artists John and Jeanne Whalen. Casey Duane Tibbs was a Ramona resident, rodeo performer, stunt man and actor. In 1979 he was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.Country Lifestyles, 2017, artist Robert K. Teague.Lucky Spirit–Charles Lindbergh, 2016, artists John and Jeanne Whalen. Seems familiar? This mural was originally on the commuter building at Lindbergh Field–now called San Diego International Airport.Old Firehouse, 2017, artist Rik Erickson.Fire Engine #2 served Ramona as a front-line truck for brush and structure fires…It served for 39 years…Pioneer Cabin, 2019, artist Rik Erickson.Grand Kenilworth Inn, 2020, artist Beata Wojcik.The old Kenilworth Inn opened in Ramona (then called Nuevo) at this location in 1887 as the Ramona Hotel.Tending the Vineyard, 2017, artist Miguel Angel Godoy.July 4th 1914 Main Street, 2016, artist Anna Parker.Historic Commerce, 2014, artists Bob Teague and Mark Martensen.Ramona Mural, 2020, artists Loretta Alfonsi, Shirley Jones, Sunny Peterson.Ramona Body & Fender Shop, 2020, artist Daniel Hernandez.
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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!
In November 2013 an incredible thing happened. Over a hundred volunteers from several neighborhoods in City Heights–Castle, Swan Canyon, Fairmount Village and Azalea Park–came together to transform a dangerous, trash-filled vacant lot into a beautiful community gathering place.
In a matter of only a few days, the Manzanita Gathering Place, which you can see in the following photographs, was born.
I was introduced to the Manzanita Gathering Place in the northeast corner of Azalea Park last weekend and was absolutely amazed. The tranquil, rustic, art-filled spot, overlooking Manzanita Canyon, made me feel as if I’d traveled faraway, to the top of a mountain crowned with ancient magic.
Four columns around a stone sitting area are covered with mosaics. About 1500 square feet of mosaic art! The columns represent the four elements: earth, air, water and fire. They also represent the hearts of the many hands that made them–community members from four adjoining urban neighborhoods.
I was told the Manzanita Gathering Place is the perfect place to watch a sunset. I did see the Ocean Discovery Institute across the canyon below. Students often walk from there into the canyon to learn about nature.
A collaboration of community organizers, government, artists, business owners, schools and diverse neighborhood residents, the Manzanita Gathering Place was a Pomegranate Project. According to the Pomegranate Center’s website, the organization helps “communities design and build art-filled gathering places. In sometimes as little as four months from first community meeting to completion of the gathering place, hundreds of volunteers would give thousands of hours planning, designing and building their park. Between 1990 and 2017, Pomegranate Center created some 60 such projects in multiple cities, states, and countries…”
The Manzanita Gathering Place design team consisted of Brennan Hubbell, Ilisa Goldman, Vicki Leon, and mentor Milenko Matanovic, founder of the Pomegranate Center. In 2015 this truly amazing project received a Merit Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects.
A very beautiful nearby mural was painted in 2018 by San Diego artists Gloria Muriel and Alexander Banach…
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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!
I didn’t know tape art was a “thing” until I happened to walk into the Exhibit Hall at the Japanese Friendship Garden this weekend. And what I discovered blew me away!
This unique exhibition, simply titled Tape Art, has been on display for some time now, so shame on me, as a JFG member, for not knowing about it!
The artist is Chiho Harazaki. She utilizes adhesive tape that is cut into fine shapes to create artwork that is detailed and quite amazing. I photographed a few of her pieces so you can get an idea of what you’ll see when you pay a visit.
Some of the works on display depict daily life in Japan. Some appear like colorful Hanafuda, a style of Japanese playing cards. A few of her works, including a piece that is quite large and striking, concern the horror of Hiroshima at the end of World War II, and make an appeal to the viewer for peace.
Should you visit Balboa Park before July 25, 2021, step into the Japanese Friendship Garden. That’s when the exhibition Tape Art concludes.
Then, after viewing this art, be sure to walk down into the Lower Garden. It’s one of the most beautiful places in 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!
Please enjoy a bunch of cool photographs from five years ago!
Back in June 2016, I enjoyed a special tour at the San Diego Museum of Art, checked out incredible wood art and other fun stuff at the Alice in Wonderland-themed San Diego County Fair, saw that Comic-Con was on the way, observed the installation and debut of important downtown public art, and got a rare look at one of William Shakespeare’s First Folios!
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.
There’s a 7 story tall mural that was painted three years ago in East Village that practically nobody sees!
The mural, painted in a nook of Broadstone Makers Quarter, is titled Growing Harmony, and it was created by talented local artists Carly Ealey and Christopher Konecki.
If you’ve ever driven downtown east on E Street, to merge via that curving ramp onto southbound I-5, you might have barely glimpsed the hidden mural in your rear view mirror. From certain high spots in Golden Hill and Sherman Heights you might be able to see it in the distance. But the absolute best view is from the small, little-used 17th Street bridge that passes over the freeway onramp, just south of Broadway. I took these photos from that bridge.
A hand holds a hummingbird’s house made from many objects, some natural, some artificial. Human creativity can sustain and uphold life.
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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!
In late 2020 artists Carly Ealey and Christopher Konecki painted this huge LOVE mural in San Ysidro. You can see it on a wall as you exit southbound I-805 at East San Ysidro Boulevard, a short distance before you reach the Mexican border. The mural is a Border Public Art Committee project.
If you think this spray paint art is amazing, you might enjoy checking out another cool mural this artist team created in San Diego’s East Village a few years ago here!
You gotta love it!
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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.
Today I watched an amazing demonstration of some hardcore martial arts!
I was walking around the North University Community Branch Library in University City when a flurry of action caught my attention. Several members of the San Diego Korean Karate Club were practicing in a space outside the building!
The super friendly guys got talking to me and when they learned I’m a San Diego blogger, they consented to do a demonstration for my camera!
The fighting style I saw was ridiculously fast, powerful, and absolutely impressive. They were demonstrating Chung Do Kwan, which, according to the San Diego Korean Karate Club website, was “taught to the Korean military by Master Won Kuk Lee and Master Duk Sung Son…” It’s some deadly serious stuff.
Of course, the San Diego Korean Karate Club, which operates at the Nobel Recreation Center and Athletic Fields, doesn’t engage in lethal moves, but they will teach you kicking, sparring and conditioning drills, plus self-defense situations and tactics. They also offer special self-defense classes for women.
I photographed 6th Degree Black Belt Master Joe Montanez sparring with 2nd Degree Black Belt Junior Instructor Santosh Jois and have selected a few pics.
Their moves and counter-moves were so fast I could barely follow the action. In combat I would have succumbed to either one of them in a matter of seconds!
Check it out!
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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!
On Sunday I finally stepped onto the new platform that recently opened in Balboa Park under the huge Moreton Bay Fig tree, north of the San Diego Natural History Museum. The shady platform with welcoming wooden benches made of old logs was built by the Friends of Balboa Park.
The platform is the perfect place to relax, eat a snack or read, while listening to a strumming guitarist, or birds in branches, or happy laughter from nearby picnickers.
I took a photograph from the Moreton Bay Fig’s new platform of a sign down by some huge roots. The sign describes the history of this impressive, very beautiful tree.
I’ve transcribed the above words:
A Legacy of the 1915 Exposition
This Moreton Bay Fig Tree was planted over a hundred years ago in a formal garden created for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. While it has not moved, its surroundings have changed. The garden, designed for the Southern California Counties Building was later replaced by the San Diego Natural History Museum.
It has grown to be the largest Moreton Bay Fig in Balboa Park and one of the largest in California. It exceeds 70 feet in height, the canopy extends 125 feet in width and the trunk is 16 feet in diameter.
Balboa Park becomes even more wonderful as the years roll on…
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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!
Uniquely beautiful Mayan ornamentation has been added to the front of the San Diego Automotive Museum in Balboa Park!
This sculptural artwork, completed recently, has made the Automotive Museum’s historic 1935 California State Building even more amazing!
A little over a month ago, four permanent tile murals were installed above the Automotive Museum’s front entrance. In my opinion the new Mayan designs frame and complement the murals handsomely. (To learn more about the colorful tile murals, and to compare how the California State Building looked before the addition of Mayan ornamentation, you can click here.)
One thing I noticed is that the Mayan decoration now aesthetically links the California State Building to the old Federal Building, which is also located in Balboa Park’s Palisades, but on the opposite side of Pan American Plaza.
The Federal Building, future home of the Comic-Con Museum, has its own entrance uniquely graced with pre-Columbian style ornamentation. The 1935 California Pacific International Exposition architect Richard Requa, according to this web page, “had conceived an architectural plan for the Palisades showing how the forms of indigenous architecture in the American southwest and in Mexico could be used to produce a distinctive American style of architecture…”
For comparison, here’s an old photo of the Federal Building’s entrance after the closure of its last occupant, the San Diego Hall of Champions…
And here is the amazing new entrance to the San Diego Automotive Museum…
I also learned today that the Palisades’ nearby Municipal Gymnasium, which back in 1935 was the California Pacific International Exposition’s Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries, is also to be renovated and made equally amazing!
Stay tuned!
Here are two more pics I took this afternoon of the Automotive Museum..
UPDATE!
Here’s an architectural visualization I received of the California State Building with two flagpoles, and grizzly bears on the roof corners. In front of the building, at the center of a fully enlarged Pan American Plaza, you can see the proposed recreation of the 1935 Firestone Singing Fountains.
This is how the Automotive Museum might appear should plans finally come to fruition (without the palm trees and hanging vines)!
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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! 