Tag: chula vista

Baking pizza wings in Chula Vista!

What could possibly be better than pizza and wings? Pizza wings!

The painting of new murals is underway in Chula Vista! One, near the corner of Third Avenue and G Street, promotes La Bella Pizza. It depicts an angelic statue with pizza wings. I took a photo a couple weeks ago and then another a few days ago, so you can see the mural’s tasty progress!

The artists call themselves Arte Atolondrada (@arteatolondrada). I’ve learned another much larger mural will soon be painted nearby, on the east side of La Bella Cafe and Games. This fun project is being undertaken with help from a Create Chula Vista Art Grant.

Downtown Chula Vista continues to grow more colorful and dynamic!

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Swinging Friar at Chula Vista’s Vogue Theater!

San Diego Padres mascot the Swinging Friar is hanging out in Chula Vista!

You can find him on a construction wall in front of the historic Vogue Theater, which is now undergoing its big renovation. The Swinging Friar was painted by Ground Floor Murals.

The temporary wall includes other bits of street art, including a couple more images inspired by the San Diego Padres.

Around the corner, a cool Manny Machado mural is painted on the old theater’s north side. See that mural by clicking here.

Go Pads! World Series this season for sure!

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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 Twitter!

Filipino Artists of South Bay exhibition.

An exhibition by Filipino artists who reside in the South Bay is now on display in Chula Vista. Their works can be viewed inside Chula Vista’s two libraries and the City Hall lobby.

Yesterday I enjoyed looking at some of these pieces while visiting the Chula Vista Public Library Civic Center Branch.

I found the artwork on several library walls. Many of the beautiful creations seemed like glimpses of larger stories, emerging from an artist’s memory and heart.

Filipino Artists of South Bay continues through January 2023.

These photos provide an example of what you might see…

Family Dinner, Primo Gallanosa.
the luckiest cat, Nadine Tan Saldaña.
The Kiddos, Vince Alvendia.
Pag-uwi (Returning Home), Clarissa Tong.

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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 Twitter!

Filipinos of South Bay Exhibit in Chula Vista.

The current exhibition at the Chula Vista Heritage Museum celebrates the life and history of Filipinos in the South Bay.

Display cases are positively overflowing with photographs and ephemera. Moments large and small are collectively remembered. You see the hopes, struggles, victories, family life. There are memories of community gatherings and festivals.

Words and images tell what it was like as a Filipino to go to school or church, run a business, serve in the military, or work to improve the life of the community. Perhaps you share these experiences.

I peered into the display cases and found so much life.

You can see that life, too, throughout 2023. Visit the Chula Vista Heritage Museum, which is located inside the Chula Vista Public Library Civic Center Branch.

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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 Twitter!

Drop hammer in Chula Vista park recalls history.

Those who visit Bay Boulevard Park in Chula Vista can’t miss it: a 12-foot tall steel contraption with the word ROHR written boldly upon it.

This relic from the past is a drop hammer. These innovative, gravity-powered metal presses were utilized by Rohr Aircraft Corporation in Chula Vista to mass produce aluminum airplane parts.

Frederick H. Rohr, who owned a sheet metal shop in San Diego in the 1920s, helped to create the fuel tanks for Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis. He later invented the drop hammer. In 1940 he founded Rohr Aircraft Corporation with the help of Reuben H. Fleet (who in 1961 would found the San Diego Air and Space Museum).

Rohr Aircraft Corporation would begin in Fred Rohr’s backyard, before operations moved into the San Diego wholesale district near the Western Metals Company, then finally in 1941 to its building in Chula Vista. Rohr’s drop hammers would be instrumental in producing the many aircraft that helped the Allies win World War II.

Today the public can see a bit of Chula Vista’s history when they regard the drop hammer in one corner of Bay Boulevard Park. Appropriately, it now stands footsteps from the location of the old Rohr factory buildings.

For the history of Rohr in Chula Vista, check out this website. For a collection of Rohr employee memories, click here. To see a loudly clanging drop hammer in action, click 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 Twitter!

Cranes by Chula Vista park and marina.

Construction of the immense Gaylord Pacific Resort and Convention Center in Chula Vista is underway.

I was walking recently through Chula Vista’s Bayside Park, and out onto the peaceful Chula Vista Marina fishing pier when I took these photos.

The new resort and convention center is going to be gigantic. According to this article from last year, the total estimated cost for the resort hotel, convention center, parking structure and associated public infrastructure and parks is estimated to be approximately $1.23 billion. The plan is for the project to be completed in 2025. Fortunately, the long, grassy Bayside Park, at the edge of San Diego Bay, will remain open to the public.

About all I could see during my walk were these big cranes, some trucks, excavation machinery and mounds of dirt. The last couple photos were taken from the fishing pier, then from a point next to a sculpture called The Fisherman.

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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 Twitter!

Beautiful mural at Living Coast Discovery Center!

There’s a very beautiful mural near the front entrance of the Living Coast Discovery Center in Chula Vista that was painted fairly recently. I saw it a couple weeks ago when I visited Sweetwater Marsh in the San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge.

The very colorful mural, depicting native wildlife and plants, decorates a roll up door behind a group of outdoor picnic tables. I took these photos.

I asked a Living Coast Discovery Center employee about it, but she didn’t know who the artist was. If you happen to know, please leave a comment!

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Chula Vista Art Guild Exhibition in Bonita!

Some remarkably good art can be enjoyed right now when you visit the Bonita Museum & Cultural Center!

The Chula Vista Art Guild Exhibition highlights the work of talented local artists, who’ve contributed many pieces in a variety of styles. Much of the artwork depicts the culture and life of San Diego’s South Bay. If you’re anywhere near Bonita between now and October 28, 2022, I recommend a visit! It’s free!

I learned today that the Bonita Museum’s upcoming Blooming Art event, hosted by the Bonita Valley Garden Club on October 21 and 22, will feature colorful flower arrangements inspired by the artwork now on display.

Everyone is welcome to create a floral arrangement for Blooming Art! All you have to do is head down to the museum, select a particular art piece that you’d like to complement with flowers, and let the folks at the museum know! But you have to do it by this Saturday!

Did you know that the Chula Vista Art Guild had a rather auspicious beginning back in 1945?

Alfred R. Mitchell, President of the San Diego Art Guild, co-founder of the San Diego Museum of Art, co-founder of the Fine Arts Society of San Diego, co-founder and president of the La Jolla Art Association, widely known as the “Dean of San Diego County artists,” was also founder of the Chula Vista Art Guild!

Here are just a few of the many great canvases now on display at the Bonita Museum & Cultural Center…

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Thank you for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often, so you might want to bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and check back from time to time.

You can explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on this website’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There’s a lot of stuff to share and enjoy!

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!

National Wildlife Refuge Week in San Diego!

A very special event was held today at the Sweetwater Marsh National Wildlife Refuge. National Wildlife Refuge Week was celebrated! And the public was freely invited!

I arrived around noontime and started down the refuge’s nature paths toward San Diego Bay.

At one station near a brackish wetland pond, a friendly ranger was inviting kids (and curious adults) to play Bird Bingo! How many wild birds could visitors spot? I saw a beautiful Snowy Egret.

At a second station, rangers were encouraging people to dip a net into the nearby water. Netted plankton was then observed under magnification!

The event was a fun opportunity to learn about the value of wildlife refuges, where animal and plant life–some of which is endangered–can thrive undisturbed. And where we humans can reconnect with nature, absorbing all that goodness that awaits us in wild places.

San Diego Bay National Wildlife Refuge consists of the Sweetwater Marsh and South San Diego Bay Units, preserving coastal salt marsh and intertidal mudflat habitat.

What’s in here?

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Living Coast Discovery Center, SeaWorld San Diego, San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and the California Department of Fish & Wildlife are working together on a captive propagation program to rear the endangered light-footed Ridgway’s rail…

I checked out the Bird Bingo first.

A Snowy Egret hunts for food in the pond.

Now heading through the wildlife refuge toward the Plankton Netting activity. I see downtown San Diego in the distance.

A curious kid was netting microscopic specimens.

At the Sweetwater Marsh National Wildlife Refuge today, there was much to experience and learn!

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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!

Chula Vista remembers When Heroes Fall.

A memorial to fallen San Diego County law enforcement officers stands across an outdoor plaza at the City of Chula Vista Police Department.

When Heroes Fall…We Remember was created by Chula Vista artist Mark Martensen in 2004. A central bronze sculpture depicts two bowed officers facing a curved wall.

Beneath fluttering flags, the black marble wall is engraved with the names of heroes from different law enforcement agencies throughout the San Diego region who’ve given their lives in the line of duty.

The moving memorial is the work of the San Diego County Law Enforcement Memorial Foundation.

If you know more about the creation and history of this particular memorial, please leave a comment.

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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!