Easter Sunday, for many, is a day full of promise, joy, new life.
As I walked through Balboa Park early this afternoon, I could see in many open faces a love of life. Laughter and smiles. Delighting in the sunshine. Soaking in our world’s beauty and the bright colors of spring.
I wandered about without any destination in mind…
A smile and Easter Bunny ears in the Balboa Park Visitors Center.Joyful baile folklórico dancing in the Plaza de Panama.Is there a more wonderful place?Plenty of flowers for a photographic background.The Spring Orchids In The Park Show attracts a big crowd inside the Casa del Prado.A street performer has colorful balloons ready.Mitchell Walker brought three didgeridoos today!Spring has turned the park’s trees bright green.I see golden California poppies along the San Diego Natural History Museum’s new nature trail.Spanish Village is always colorful, no matter the season.Abstract artist Lucas Smith is exhibiting in Gallery 21 through tomorrow.Another weekend in Spanish Village means more live glassblowing!Plenty of color here!The San Diego History Center will soon have the official opening of Taste San Diego: Filipino Culinary Journeys.What spring looks like between Casa de Balboa and the House of Hospitality.A couple of the International Cottages were open on Easter Sunday. This very beautiful pendant is displayed in the House of Korea.Imagination Station is now playing at the Marie Hitchcock Puppet Theater.A prickly pear blooms in the Kate O. Sessions Cactus Garden.Colorful umbrellas provide shade during rehearsal before the Sunday two o’clock organ concert.Talented musicians in a splash of sunshine along El Prado.An artist has captured some of this world’s infinite color.Balboa Park’s thriving rose garden attracts many families on Easter Sunday.
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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 X.
If you read this in time, you might head down to Balboa Park to enjoy San Diego EarthFest. The big environmental festival is being held on the grass near Park Boulevard and Presidents Way today–Saturday, April 19, 2025–until 5 pm.
Numerous organizations are present, providing education and volunteering opportunities to those who want to help protect our environment.
This the third year of EarthFest, not to be confused with the gigantic EarthFair that filled the entire park years ago. A smaller space, but still numerous participants! Non-profit organizations are joined by food trucks, artists, and vendors. There are several stages offering entertainment and education.
Because it’s mid-afternoon as I type this, I’ll quickly share these photographs. That might give you time to head on down!
“May the Fourth” be with blood donors in San Diego!
The Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park will be hosting a May the 4th Blood Drive, in partnership with the San Diego Blood Bank. The event will take place at the museum from 10 am to 4 pm.
Not only will this event include awesome Star Wars cosplay by local fan groups, but donors will get a free Comic-Con Museum ticket and a coupon for a complimentary Soapy Joe’s car wash!
The San Diego Blood Bank could really use your life-saving donation. You can schedule an appointment here. Walk-ins are also welcome!
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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.
In 1531 the Blessed Virgin Mary was said to have appeared miraculously in Mexico. You can read that history here.
Today, images of the Virgin of Guadalupe (a Catholic title of the Virgin Mary) can be seen throughout Mexico, and San Diego, too.
A standard image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, filled with symbolism, hangs in homes and churches. It is painted on murals, on cars and appears in tattoos. The Virgin of Guadalupe seems everywhere.
Not surprisingly, the iconic image also appears on textiles. An important part of the Virgin of Guadalupe story includes her likeness appearing miraculously on the inside of a cloak.
The exhibition features outfits worn by women and men, traditional huipiles (handwoven tunics largely worn by indigenous peoples in Mexico), jackets, shoes and more. Many of the crafted pieces are very colorful, as you can see from my photographs.
Signs throughout the exhibit explain why the Virgin of Guadalupe became a religious and cultural phenomenon–how, in Mexico, invading Catholicism eventually melded with indigenous sensibilities, producing the divine but grounded symbolism one sees in the now beloved image.
The Mingei International Museum has presented many outstanding exhibitions, and this one is right up there. I was surprised to see so many different objects, and such variety. I was excited to see so much life.
Each work seems a miracle of human faith and creativity.
How do I convey how awesome the Doctor Who exhibition is at the Comic-Con Museum?
If you’re a Doctor Who fan or anyone in San Diego who loves science fiction, it’s an absolute, positive must see!
I haven’t been a regular watcher of the long-running BBC show, but when I visited the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park today, I was blown away. The museum has hosted epic exhibitions in the past, but this one, Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder: Where Science Meets Fiction, might have the most wow moments.
The exhibition celebrates all fifteen Doctors and displays their distinctive costumes. A variety of props can be viewed up close. Best of all, visitors come face to face with dozens of life-size robots and creatures that have been used in the making of Doctor Who!
Most of the alien creatures are utterly bizarre. Some appear to have been hatched in a nightmare. (See my previous blog post about the exhibition’s awesome Monster Vault by clicking here.)
As fans know, scary-looking creatures in the show can actually be allies of the Doctor. When you travel by TARDIS across time and space, you never know who or what you’ll meet!
The exhibition, like the show, is mostly about wonder. Displays explain how Doctor Who story ideas are often based on actual scientific and technological advancements. Concepts like artificial intelligence, evolution and multidimensional reality are utilized in fantastic ways. Indeed, the show began in 1963 as an educational program. Curiosity is an essential element of Doctor Who.
Should we all be worried? Many of Doctor Who’s most dangerous adversaries have materialized in San Diego!
Fortunately, most are confined inside the Monster Vault at the Comic-Con Museum. People can safely observe the deadly creatures and robots while moving through the museum’s epic exhibition Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder: Where Science Meets Fiction.
A huge collection of props from Doctor Who, the world’s longest running science fiction television show, is possibly the coolest part of the exhibition.
Today, as I visited the Comic-Con Museum, I noticed many Doctor Who fans entering the Monster Vault and remembering some of the show’s most terrifying episodes. Some of the detailed, life-size props are super scary. I wouldn’t care to meet real-life versions!
There are menacing Daleks–the Doctor’s arch-enemy: a hateful, genetically-modified species bent on conquest. There is mad scientist Davros, creator of the Daleks. There are different versions of the deadly cyborg Cybermen.
There is a mutated Dreg, a Sea Devil and a Silurian (both evolved reptiles), an armored Sontaran warrior, an Ice Warrior, a parasitic Weeping Angel that moves when you’re not looking, a bug-eyed Wrath Warrior, and more!
As a nearby sign explains: When designing monsters, sometimes the show’s creators explore different options that don’t make it to the screen… The possibilities of alien life are only as limited as our imagination.
Fashion Redux 2025 will soon be opening at the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park!
The extraordinary exhibition will include opulent garments created by renowned designers (including Hollywood’s legendary Irene Sharaff) worn between 1940 and 1988 during iconic San Diego events. They will be displayed along with unique creations by San Diego Mesa College students, who were inspired by the past styles and elegance.
I was wandering through the History Center yesterday when I noticed the exhibition is being set up in one gallery. I snapped the above photo.
Fashion Redux 2025 will be ready to go on April 10th–that’s this coming Thursday!
If you’ve never been to the San Diego History Center, located near the center of beautiful Balboa Park, why not go check it out? It’s a museum full of history, culture and amazing, important works of art!
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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.
The Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park has opened a fascinating exhibition titled Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman. Visitors to the fine art museum are encouraged to compare two similar but very different works: Albert Bierstadt‘s 1864 painting Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall, and First Nation Cree artist Kent Monkman‘s 2012 work The Fourth World.
The photograph above shows Kent Monkman’s painting (on loan from the Denver Art Museum) which reimagines the Bierstadt piece in the light of a different perspective.
Bierstadt’s oil painting conveys a sense of rustic tranquility and natural beauty; the somewhat shocking bottom portion of Monkman’s bolder, brighter acrylic piece shows bison being frightened and funneled in Yosemite through sheer steel walls by white men with guns.
Monkman’s contemporary painting clearly expresses that an environment can be forcibly altered by the actions of humans. Like any good art, the image ignites complex thought.
I’m no expert when it comes to the history of Yosemite. Doing some online research, I was surprised to learn that, according to a National Park Service Facebook post: Here in Yosemite, though, bison have never roamed.
Here’s the bottom portion of The Fourth World:
The next photograph is of Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall. It’s darker, vaguer, somehow more sublime. (The docent thought perhaps the painting needs to be cleaned.)
This Smithsonian website has a better photograph and explains: Bierstadt was inspired to paint Yosemite after seeing Carleton Watkins’s photographs in a New York gallery in 1862…In 1864, the year Bierstadt painted this view, President Abraham Lincoln set aside Yosemite as a protected reserve…
Head down to the Timken Museum of Art when they’re open and observe both canvases up close. When I visited, a friendly docent was standing by to answer questions and provide more insight.
The Timken, which contains many painted masterpieces, is always free! The exhibition will continue through June 8th, 2025.
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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 walked all around Balboa Park today and noticed all sorts of mysterious shadows. I took photographs, then decided to make a game of it! I like having fun! How about you?
Can you identify the actions or things that produce these interesting shadows? Here’s a hint: the people are regular street performers you’ll see almost every weekend along El Prado. What are they doing?
There’s no prize to win here–sorry.
Just fun!
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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.
San Diego’s legendary radio and television personality “Shotgun Tom” Kelly has created many fond memories. I remember listening to him on B100 back in the 1980s. Other San Diegans I’ve spoken to remember him introducing cartoons on The KUSI Kids Club. Over the years, he worked at KDEO, KPRI, KGB, KCBQ, KOGO, KBZS and KFMB-FM and Los Angeles oldies station KRTH-FM (K-Earth 101).
During my recent visit to the San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park, I was surprised to see an exhibit concerning Shotgun Tom. Did you know he’s a big fan of model trains? He even has his own cool model train layout! I was told he often visits the museum, operating trains of the San Diego and Arizona Eastern HO layout on Wednesdays!
According to the exhibit, the layout at his home is 10 by 7 feet and includes a radio and television station and a mountain for the TV station’s tower!
(I recall seeing a tiny “Shot Gun” Tom billboard in the Old Town Model Railroad Depot’s big model city, which sadly no longer exists. You can see photos of that incredible layout here.)
“Shot Gun” Tom’s real name is Thomas Joseph Irwin. The museum exhibit includes an old photo of his father J. G. Irwin Sr., a Santa Fe railroad engineer, on the 2357 switch engine in 1955.
Curious about the unusual nickname Shot Gun? It resulted from Tom liking to sit in the front of the family car beside his dad.
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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.
Cool San Diego Sights! 