Hooray! Live organ concerts are returning to the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park! The free Sunday concerts at two o’clock resume this weekend!
The COVID-19 pandemic made public gatherings of this sort out of the question for a very, very long time. Weekly concerts, performed on the Spreckels Organ by world-renowned San Diego Civic Organist Raul Prieto Ramírez, could only be heard online.
But that horrible episode is over, and one of my very favorite activities is back!
Be sure to mark Sunday at 2:00 pm on your calendar. I just did!
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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 exterior renovation of the Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries building in Balboa Park’s Palisades area has begun!
I noticed during my walk through Balboa Park this morning that the painting of the building is underway. The new color matches that of the recently painted San Diego Automotive Museum directly across Pan American Plaza.
If you’d like to learn more about the 1935 Palace of Electricity and Varied Industries building, which has long served as the Municipal Gymnasium, and to see how the historic building will appear after its renovation is complete, check out this post from early last month.
(Visit that old blog post and you’ll see an image of the fantastic bronze panel that will be installed directly above the entrance!)
UPDATE!
Here’s a photo I took a couple weeks later…
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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 was lucky to get some photographs of the San Diego Archers annual King Arthur Tournament in Balboa Park today!
I was walking near the Rube Powell Archery Range behind Balboa Park’s Alcazar Garden when I noticed some archers dressed in medieval costumes. So I had to check it out!
One friendly archer posed for the above cool photo. I then watched a bit of the tournament from the top of the canyon and took a few distant shots.
I was told the San Diego Archers is one of the oldest organized archery clubs in California, having been established in 1938. Since 1962 their King Arthur Tournament is a popular annual event full of Arthurian costumes, pageantry and family fun!
(I didn’t notice any knights wearing shining armor. Perhaps I missed them.)
Interested in participating or learning more? Check out the San Diego Archers website here!
UPDATE!
I received a great Facebook comment concerning the San Diego Archers:
For your readers information. Archery has been practiced in Balboa Park since 1917. The archery range is open to the public and membership with the San Diego Archers is not required to participate in tournaments. The San Diego Archers host four novelty tournaments each year. In addition, there are more than twenty regular competition tournaments throughout the year. Participants are only required to show up with their own gear, sign a waiver, and pay a small fee. For more info: https://sandiegoarchers.com/
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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 House of Sweden in Balboa Park is having their Midsummer Celebration this afternoon at 2 pm!
As I walked among the International Cottages this morning, I saw members of the House of Sweden preparing their beautiful maypole. And a nearby garland!
The celebration this year will be on a smaller scale than usual, as we try to finally shake free of the waning coronavirus pandemic.
It’s June 20, and a flowering spring has led to summer. Once again regenerative nature will be celebrated by many hands.
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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!
After my visit to La Mesa today, I found myself in Balboa Park for another Sunday afternoon walk.
I kept looking right and left for an indication that this is Memorial Day weekend. I had to go to the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center to find it.
Even though the museum was closed when I walked past, I noticed fresh flowers and a wreath had been placed at its outdoor San Diego Vietnam Veterans Peace Memorial.
Those who fought and died in that terrible war are still remembered.
If you’d like to see photos of an emotional Memorial Day ceremony that was held at the San Diego Peace Memorial four years ago, click 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!
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!
A plaque that was dedicated on May 30, 1939 can be found in a seldom seen nook in Balboa Park.
At the rear of the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, behind the large bronze tablet that honors Ernestine Schumann-Heink, a small memorial plaque is set in the wall at the rear of a fountain.
The plaque appears to have been placed there by the American Legion and American Legion Auxiliary. But I can find absolutely nothing concerning it on the internet.
The plaque reads:
MEMORIAL FLANDER’S POPPIES DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO REST IN FLANDERS FIELD CITY SERVICE POST AND UNIT 537 MAY 30, 1939 A.D.
Flanders Fields poppies are often associated with May 30, or Memorial Day, which in earlier times was known as Decoration Day. Red poppies that grew over the graves of fallen soldiers in World War I resulted in Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s poem In Flanders Fields, and, later, the internationally recognized remembrance poppy.
The American Legion adopted the poppy as their official symbol of remembrance in 1920.
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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!
Public events in San Diego are gradually making a comeback as the COVID-19 pandemic subsides. As more residents and visitors become vaccinated, hopefully our beautiful city will return to something more like normalcy before too long.
Five years ago the situation was quite different! During the month of May so many unique events were recorded on Cool San Diego Sights that it’s difficult to choose just a few to revisit!
Click the upcoming links and you’ll find all sorts of colorful photographs that I took back in May of 2016.
You’ll see photos of newly opened Horton Plaza Park, the San Diego Zoo’s big centennial festival, the steepest part of a Tour de California bicycle race, a Women’s National sailing race on San Diego Bay, a floral wagon parade in Balboa Park, a fun stickball game in Little Italy, an inspiring Memorial Day at Fort Rosecrans, and more.
I was even invited to observe the recording of a cool live local TV show!
Click the following links to enjoy lots of photographs…
This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!
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This weekend I stepped into the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park to view their current exhibition, which is titled Measurements of Progress.
Graduating students (and a couple of professors) from UC San Diego’s 2021 Masters of Fine Arts program have contributed artwork that primarily concerns the ongoing human struggle to achieve certain ideals, particularly peace, liberty, and justice.
Given how the subject matter is largely political, it’s not surprising that some of the student art is ideological and simple. I was drawn to other more subtle, mysterious works that encourage the viewer to look open-eyed at a complex world and inward with questioning wonder.
A couple of pieces I really loved are sculptures made of fabric. Touched by soft light, they seem to hang in space like organic abstractions, sinuous, fragile, evocative, full of memory. One contains poetry.
Another strange, thought-provoking work is a series of prostheses that explores the “limited and flawed nature of human perceptions and the manner in which bodies experience the world…”
Another piece explores the cosmos in the artist’s own body. I’m not exactly sure what the 3-channel video depicts–possibly dyed slides under a microscope–but watching the movement of living cells in our immensely complex selves can make one less political, more philosophical.
Measurements of Progress is well worth checking out if you love endlessly fascinating productions of human creativity–particularly contemporary art.
The exhibition is free and will continue at the San Diego Art Institute through May 30, 2021.
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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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