In Balboa Park today the rain stopped shortly after noon. I happened to get off the bus right then, and I started my afternoon walk through the Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden.
Beads of water gleamed on leaves, and on the flowers that were still in bloom as winter approaches. Many petals had already fallen to the soil.
Some of the roses, having grown taller than my head, mingled with the storm clouds that were passing to the east.
Here are a handful of photos…
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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.
The views this morning from the Imperial Beach Pier were dramatic!
Stormy weather brought a procession of very dark clouds, through which bright sunshine penetrated. The waves were pretty big, too, as you can see from these photographs!
Yes, some surfers were out. I saw a KEEP OUT OF WATER sign posted on the beach by the County of San Diego. For their sake, I hope those surfers don’t become sick from the rain’s runoff and all that raw sewage coming from the Tijuana River.
Anyway, the storm clouds, light and breaking surf resulted in great photos!
When I arrived on the Imperial Beach Pier, I saw a rainbow!
A few minutes after I left the pier, a big cell arrived and there was a long-lasting downpour. My final photo was taken from the shelter of a bus stop on Seacoast Drive.
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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 September, 2014, a powerful microburst struck Mission Valley, destroying many trees along the San Diego River.
San Diego’s first real winter storm of 2025 has arrived. A whole lot of rain is anticipated, especially tomorrow evening.
Storms in Southern California are usually big news. Our climate is naturally arid, so we could always use the precipitation. But there can be destructive flooding. That’s what happens when people live in what is essentially a desert.
It can be hard to remember that places now lush with landscaping and trees supported mostly sagebrush before human development.
Cool San Diego Sights is now almost 12 years old. I’ve had many opportunities to take photographs during stormy weather.
These are a few of my most dramatic photos.
In February, 2016, very high winds drove boats into the rocks along San Diego’s Embarcadero.In February, 2019, a big storm left debris under the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon bridge at Torrey Pines State Beach.In January, 2024, Mission Center Road became flooded near the San Diego River. Cars were stranded.In Februrary, 2019, Dan Plante of KUSI News was reporting at a flooded Mission Center Road.In February, 2024, guys from The Weather Channel were reporting from a flooded Fashion Valley Road.In January, 2016, cars were flooded in the lower level of the Fashion Valley shopping mall parking garage.In January, 2018, I spotted many umbrellas during rain in downtown San Diego.In January, 2018, cleanup at the Omni San Diego Hotel was required after a storm.In January, 2021, extremely high winds bent palm trees in downtown San Diego.In February, 2020, dark clouds over the ocean beyond Pacific Beach’s Crystal Pier portended a storm.In October, 2021, dark clouds hovered over Balboa Park as a storm gathered.In October, 2021, rain fell heavily at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, while a small audience on the dry stage listened to an organ concert and distant lightning.
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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 artist James E. Watts will be hosting an art show inside his downtown studio this coming Sunday, September 22, 2024. Visitors will have the opportunity to be transported by his wonderful Portal to Heaven!
I swung by his studio this morning and was able to sneak a look at his completed Portal to Heaven project myself.
An astonishing wall appears like a puzzle piece sky full of clouds. Each of the 105 hand sewn clouds, he explains, gather and radiate orgone life energy like a battery! Stand at the heavenly portal and feel its energy!
I blogged about this ambitious project last December. You can read more about it here.
After James showed me the amazing Portal to Heaven, I turned about and saw how he’s creating bunches of apples. They’re in groups of five. He calls them all together the Gates of Hell!
The apples are of different sizes, just as sins are. Would you take a bite of these apples? Perhaps a little one?
James Watts’ studio never ceases to amaze me. Creativity fills it wall to wall, and every time I visit it seems there’s a new, fantastic project.
James loves ideas, theories, philosophy, literature . . . different ways of seeing this world. With his art he inspires, teaches. He explained during our talk today that he’s a teacher without a classroom.
You’ll note he also has a big smile.
Next he showed me what he called a sense board. This particular work of art, which is titled Six Senses, actively interacts with a person using sound, smell, touch, taste, sight and intuition! Should you attend his art show next Sunday, perhaps you can try it out!
Interested, yet?
James E. Watts will host the 100 Clouds 100 Apples art show this coming Sunday, from 12 to 8 pm. His studio is located in the heart of downtown at 1046 Seventh Avenue.
Lovers of art just might find heaven!
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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 X.
It’s like a volcano erupting with the deepest blue! That was my first impression of two large monochromatic blue drawings at the Timken Museum of Art. They are part of this summer’s exhibition In Blue Time by the Timken’s most recent Artist-in-Residence Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio.
Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio is originally from Mexico. While living in Mexico City, she became fascinated by that city’s many murals.
Her large works of art are certainly eye-catching. Perhaps you remember her gigantic COVID mural on the side of the tall Bread and Salt building in Logan Heights, easily seen when driving back to San Diego over the Coronado Bridge. I posted photos of that mural back in 2021 here.
Much of Tatiana’s work has a cloud-like appearance–cloudy and nebulous, like memory. She has stated, per the museum website: “Memory is written once, then rewritten, manipulated, reinvented and recreated. Each time we reach for a memory it becomes something else. Forgetting is the distance from our past, the nebulous blue horizon of a memory standing at the edge allowing us to continuously reshape who we are.“
In the Timken’s temporary Exhibition Gallery, you’ll also find a recent large-scale drawing, created in collaboration with musical composer Stefan Cwik and inspired by the concept of time. It’s in my final photograph.
There are more of her works to see, too, plus you can add to the blueness! A community mural that anyone can help create awaits those who feel inspired. It’s entirely in blue!
In Blue Time is only on view for another two and a half weeks, through September 29, 2024.
The Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park is free and full of masterpieces by old masters. Nowhere else in San Diego will you find a painting by Rembrandt!
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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 X.
Enjoy half a dozen photographs taken this morning around sunrise.
It’s early September, still summer, and the weather has been unusually warm. A bit after 6 o’clock, the sky to the east brightened and broken clouds became even more beautiful above downtown San Diego.
My camera and I moved slowly west down Broadway from the vicinity of Santa Fe Depot. You can see in these photos how obelisk-like America Plaza with its colorfully lit trolley station is prominent in the foreground.
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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 X.
A beautiful sunrise illuminated San Diego this morning. Walking through Old Town, I watched scattered clouds to the east turn brilliantly yellow and orange.
The present-day Immaculate Conception Catholic Church stands adjacent to Old Town San Diego State Historic Park.
A modest adobe chapel that was built nearby in 1851 would be replaced by this church building. Its construction was begun in 1868 and, after various setbacks, was completed half a century later, in 1917.
In these photographs, you can glimpse a bit of the church’s façade and bell tower, elements of its Spanish Mission style architecture.
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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 X.
This morning, as the sun broke above the horizon somewhere east of downtown San Diego, sunrise colors painted the sky and reflected from building windows along Broadway. It was stunning.
I stood in the median of Broadway at Kettner Boulevard and aimed my camera at the risen beauty. A few minutes later, the fiery colors would fade.
Late tonight another big storm rolls into San Diego. More flooding is expected. Hopefully everyone stays safe!
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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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!
Inspired artist James Watts works in downtown San Diego. His studio is a fantasyland jammed wall to wall with amazing creativity. I like to swing on by occasionally to see what he’s up to!
Having finished his whittled fingers and toes project, James is now sewing together one hundred pillow-like clouds. Not ordinary clouds, mind you, but ones that gather and radiate orgone life energy like a battery!
James, whose creativity has no limit, intends to use the finished clouds to form a portal–an art installation on a wall where people can experience heavenly orgone energy. The carefully handsewn clouds are made of canvas, filled with steel wool and cotton, and painted in twenty shades of blue. It’s the same canvas the artist used for his fantastic Jekyll and Hyde project.
James explained that artists are like alchemists. They transform otherwise ordinary materials into things of immense value. Of course, he’s exactly right.
His unique visual art stirs up complex, subtle ideas. His surprising art inspires those who gaze upon it with an open heart and mind.
James Watts has also painted clouds–like ancient wisdom–on scrolls!
Check out his whittled fingers and toes, the cool project that preceded his clouds…
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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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!
M5, the world’s largest single-masted yacht, is presently docked at the 5th Avenue Landing superyacht marina behind the San Diego Convention Center.
M5 stands out from the other nearby superyachts. Its mast is so incredibly high, M5 cannot pass under any bridge that she can navigate to! That includes the San Diego-Coronado Bridge!
Read about the amazing yacht, which periodically visits San Diego, here.
This evening as the sun began to set, my walk along the south Embarcadero took me past M5. So I captured these photographs…
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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 X (formerly known as Twitter)!
Cool San Diego Sights! 