The pace of construction in downtown San Diego hasn’t appeared to lag during the coronavirus pandemic. The city grows and grows.
Even in times that seem dark, a human urge to press forward does not die.
I took these few photographs during my walk this morning.
And still I rise…
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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!
This morning I had to hurry through downtown to catch the trolley for work. Given more time, I could’ve taken a thousand photographs of abstract paintings on one fantastic construction site wall.
(Okay, there are fragments of wood and old peeling paper. So you might say some of these “works” are mixed media collage.)
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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 immense complexity of the city and its people is evident in every one of my walks.
A city is like a small slice of the larger human world. Many individuals heading in different directions, or forward together…talking or silently thinking…interacting in the places where they work, rest, shop, live. You see the complexity in the streets signs and the architecture, in restaurant menus and colorful store windows. You see it on the active sidewalks, in styles of dress, facial expressions, postures of ambition or resignation. A city and its people are too complicated to ever adequately describe.
Much of the complexity rises from the ongoing tangle of human desires, predilections, emotions. One thing that seems constant in the world is human yearning. And those yearnings often create tension.
Today I walked around downtown. I came upon a political rally at the County Administration Building. Roused citizens, desiring liberty, were chafing at the slow reopening of society during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. They expressed their reasons. They yearned for individual liberty. But others in our society yearn for collective security. It’s that never-ending political conflict.
As I continued my walk, I turned my eyes upward to see the mysterious, ordered windows where different people work and live. And I looked at the intersecting streets and sidewalks, where separate lives move forward.
All that human complexity makes a city what it is. It also makes every single walk every single day fascinating. And thought-provoking.
Even during the current COVID-19 pandemic, when the city seems more lonely and troubled than usual.
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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!
If the above images feel almost like a poem, it was my intention. To read a few philosophical stories I’ve written, click Short Stories by Richard.
This morning I saw several workers in Little Italy painting over ugly, newly scrawled graffiti.
During my walks around downtown, I’ve noticed that vandalism has increased during the current coronavirus lockdown.
The friendly guys painting over the illegal graffiti indicated that because the streets are emptier than usual, those who go about tagging buildings, walls, signs and other targets have become more active, as there are fewer eyes outside who might witness their activity. San Diego has had a substantial increase in the homeless population in recent years, and unfortunately that means gang members who move about the city selling meth and other drugs. I might be a bit naive on such matters, but I reckon at least some of this vandalism is the marking of territory.
In any case, it’s obviously a disturbing and disheartening situation.
I took some representative photographs this morning during my walk through Little Italy and along the waterfront.
Thank you to the unsung heroes–like those guys in the first and last photo–who work tirelessly to make our city not only less ugly, but safer for everyone.
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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!
San Diego is lucky to have some very talented street artists. You’ve seen many of their incredible murals on my blog. Their diverse work appears in almost every neighborhood.
Flash Alley in Normal Heights, north of El Cajon Boulevard and east of 34th Street, is like a small outdoor gallery lined with spray painted graffiti art. As your eyes move across walls emblazoned with fantastic, colorful images, you can spot the names of several local artists.
Their work tells a complex story about human dreams and gritty reality. How unbounded imagination gets tangled up with life on the streets.
Enjoy these photos that I took yesterday…
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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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I was looking at Google Maps, plotting out a walk around an area of Point Loma, when I saw a crooked green line connecting two segments of Whittier Street just northwest of Rosecrans Street. What does that mysterious line represent? I wondered.
So I walked from Rosecrans up Whittier late this morning to check things out.
What I found at Whittier’s apparent dead end were some hidden stairs that climb past homes and through lush vegetation toward Loma Portal.
I searched the internet to find something about the history of these stairs, but I’m afraid I learned nothing. Scarcely a mention anywhere.
The stairs themselves are in two segments: first below, then above Locust Street. A slightly fancy concrete bench or two are found along the ascending way, and at either end of the stairs, as you can see in the following photographs.
A couple of Point Loma residents were getting some exercise going up and down the stairs when I arrived. If you wonder about the face covering on the man in the final photograph, and you’re reading these words at some point in the future, this blog was posted during the coronavirus pandemic.
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The Gaslamp Quarter early this evening appeared almost like a ghost town. Partly boarded up. Mostly lifeless. Very unlike Fridays before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before the pandemic, huge crowds of people would fill the streets on a late Friday or weekend. The restaurants, bars and nightclubs would be packed. But those good times and that party atmosphere have suddenly ended.
I took photos early this evening around 6 pm as I walked up Fifth Avenue through the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter.
The mermaid and those hopeful, thankful messages you see in two upcoming photographs were in front of the Starbucks at the Hard Rock Hotel. They are one of the few places that are open. A nice lady came out, hoping for business. I promised her I’d let my readers know that Starbucks is open. But you must wear a mask.
A few restaurants up and down Fifth Avenue were offering take out, but I saw virtually no business. Almost no people were about, even as California and San Diego slowly lift the pandemic lockdowns and allow businesses to reopen under certain conditions.
I wonder how many of these establishments will survive.
Before the pandemic, many of the businesses in the Gaslamp had a tough enough time of it. Between the many homeless who drive potential customers away, and the sky high rents, I’ve been told it can be difficult to keep doors open. In recent years I’ve seen storefronts constantly change, and FOR LEASE signs on some buildings that never go away.
There have been ambitious plans to create an upscale, world-class pedestrian Gaslamp Promenade along Fifth Avenue. But I wonder. A virus seems to have other plans. Economic disruption continues. The future is in doubt.
It seems there’s a chance the Gaslamp Quarter might return to what it was decades ago. An area of downtown in slow decay. Or consider this harsh possibility: might the Gaslamp once again become San Diego’s seedy “Stingaree” red-light district, as it was a century ago?
Large signs up and down the streets contain hopeful messages, such as Stay Strong and Things Will Be Okay.
As a downtown resident, I do hope the Gaslamp comes out of this crisis okay.
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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!
It was foggy in downtown San Diego early this morning.
As I walked west down Broadway, I turned back to see rays of light breaking through the gray curtain. Sunlight reflected brightly from windows along the edge of the new federal courthouse.
A few minutes later, the fog–poof–was gone.
The sky turned San Diego blue.
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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!
This morning I was going through hundreds of unused photographs filed on my computer when I was struck with another fun idea!
Why not use a few of my old photos to create more oil paintings?
These digitally created “oil paintings” are of people in San Diego!
Can you recognize some of the locations?
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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!
If you need face coverings during the present coronavirus pandemic, today I discovered that handmade face masks are for sale downtown! They are being produced at Sante’s Tailoring located at 1150 7th Avenue, #1.
As I walked up Seventh Avenue, I saw a table covered with all sorts of colorful face coverings for sale, and met Luzney, who works in another of the building’s suites. Luzney’s Flowers and Gifts at 1150 7th Avenue, #2 has seen a sharp downturn in flower sales, as hotels are empty and weddings are put off during the COVID-19 crisis, so she’s helping to sew these cloth masks, too!
I learned from Luzney that the cotton, washable face masks will be for sale at this location Mondays through Fridays, from 9 am to 2 pm. If you live or work downtown, or just need some cool face masks once the countywide May 1 public face covering rules come into effect, either swing on by, or you can call their phone at 619-231-9898.
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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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 