Tag: creativity

Adventure Awaits at University Community Library!

Adventure Awaits at the University Community Library–or at least it does outside the front entrance!

Fun artwork decorates an electrical box at the University City public library on Governor Drive. I see Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin’s kite, a beanstalk, a whale, a hot air balloon and biplane, the solar system . . . and even a few books!

Check it out! (Pun intended.)

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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!

Bursts of beauty in Solana Beach!

Yesterday I took some interesting photographs of the tall sculpture that stands just west of the intersection of Highway 101 and Plaza Street in Solana Beach.

This public artwork looks almost like bursts of confetti up in the sky, or exploding fireworks, or atoms with their packed nuclei and fuzzy electron clouds suspended in space, or sudden irrepressible explosions of joy!

The sculpture blends in quite nicely with nearby palm trees, as you can see…

A bronze plaque at the sculpture’s base reads:

Plaza Beautification
1965-1967
A Gift to the Community from
SOLANA BEACH
WOMEN’S CIVIC CLUB
with appreciation to
Wadell Austin
Wenetta Childs
and other contributors

I believe the sculpture is titled Child’s Fountain. See a map of Solana Beach public artwork here.

To learn more about the sculpture and the artist who created it, Wenetta Childs, read this article.

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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 poet, a didgeridoo, and Balboa Park.

I spent a couple hours today with my friend Mitchell. He plays didgeridoo in Balboa Park.

We went on a walk and got lunch at the Japanese Tea Pavilion. Then I listened for a while to his extraordinary pulsating music.

During the concert a traveling poet came by, watched and listened.

After I said goodbye to Mitchell and began down El Prado, I came upon the poet sitting at a small table before his manual typewriter.

His name is Ben Bernthal. He will write an original poem based on words passersby give him. I gave him the word “didgeridoo.”

What I received was an exceptional piece of poetry and a friendly chat.

After I headed off on my way, it occurred to me that Balboa Park is one enormous, colorful poem. In the way every life is a sort of poem.

Visit Ben Bernthal’s website and learn more about a really great writer by clicking here. You can request a poem online. He will type the poem on high quality paper and mail it to you!

Better yet, if you’re in San Diego, look for him sitting at his typewriter in Balboa Park . . . before life’s grand adventure turns him elsewhere.

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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 times they are a-changin’ in Golden Hill!

Check out this fun, very colorful mural splashed on the west side of Influx Cafe in Golden Hill!

The mural, designed by Randall Christopher and painted by Grand Prestoz, was completed in August, 2019.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’ . . . EVERYONE EVERYONE
LOST SOMEWHERE IN THE MENTAWAIS

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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!

Colorful artwork at Golden Hill fire station!

I love this colorful, very unique public artwork near the entrance of San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Station 11 in Golden Hill!

The title of this piece is Signifire. It was created in 1997 by San Diego artist Nina Karavasiles. For outdoor art that’s nearly a quarter century old, it still looks shiny and new!

Signifire, which depicts a fire hose coiled around brilliant flames, is composed of bronze, chrome and glass mosaic. At night the water blue hose nozzle lights up!

Nina Karavasiles has created a variety of other works around San Diego and Southern California. Six years ago I took photographs of her very cool “Recipe for Friendship” at Amici Park in Little Italy. See those photos 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!

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!

Revisiting some strange, weird, bizarre stuff!

Over the years, I’ve shared photographs of some really weird stuff!

Given how I just blogged about a yellow bison on a Golden Hill rooftop, and how I recently posted photos of that goofy Wienerschnitzel street art in Imperial Beach, I thought I’d revisit other examples of strange, weird, wonderfully bizarre stuff that have appeared on Cool San Diego Sights!

In addition to viewing artwork that’s highly unusual, by clicking the following links you’ll feast your eyeballs on crazy cosplay, bizarre cars, flamethrowing bagpipes, a cattle drive through downtown San Diego, and other wacky stuff!

Click the following links to see these oddities!

Architecture inspired by nature . . . and UFOs!

Strange, bizarre cars of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Cleverly designed furniture is surprising, playful art!

Amazing, fantastic, crazy cosplay everywhere!

Street musician plays flamethrower bagpipes!

Photos of cattle drive through downtown San Diego!

The fantastic, amazing Harper’s Topiary Garden!

A (strange) Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes!

World’s most amazing car, displayed in San Diego!

Bart Club street art on a San Diego corner.

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This blog now features thousands of photos around San Diego! Are you curious? There’s lots of cool stuff to check out!

Here’s the Cool San Diego Sights main page, where you can read the most current blog posts.  If you’re using a phone or small mobile device, click those three parallel lines up at the top–that opens up my website’s sidebar, where you’ll see the most popular posts, a search box, and more!

To enjoy future posts, you can also “like” Cool San Diego Sights on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.

The very cool Nite Owl mural!

Here is one very cool mural!

You can see it in Pacific Beach as you drive east on Garnet Avenue past the Nite Owl Cocktail Lounge.

The artist is Hanna of Hanna’s Murals. You can see another one of her murals here.

I briefly spoke to Hanna perhaps a year ago when she was doing some painting at the entrance to a La Jolla office. I asked what her favorite creation was. She specifically mentioned the Nite Owl mural.

I finally checked it out!

UPDATE!

A couple months later I noticed there’s a second mural on the opposite, east-facing side of the Nite Owl building!

Drivers coming down Garnet Avenue, if they turn their heads at the right moment, are welcomed to Pacific Beach!

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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!

Comic-Con Museum helps you create comics!

I’m no graphic artist. I can barely draw a stick figure.

But check out some news I learned today in an email blast from the Comic-Con Museum!

The fun Comic-Con Museum@Home web page has begun an online series where a variety of comics layouts can be downloaded by anyone and everyone!

The first PDF file they’ve released contains six pages of blank, ready-to-use comics layouts. You can print them out and create your own cool comic strip or comic book!

Here’s an example of one dynamic layout:

When I read this email I had a sudden silly idea. Using a few of my photos of cosplay (mostly from past San Diego Comic-Cons) and the graphic editing software GIMP, I’d create my own thrilling comics page! (My creative efforts were limited to applying the “cartoon” filter to cropped photos.)

Mind you, I did this as a rank amateur, merely goofing around this evening by cutting and pasting some images on my computer. As you can see, I obviously did not use the Comic-Con Museum layouts.

You can surely do better than me!

You’re artistic efforts will instantly surpass my own if you download the Comic-Con Museum’s first set of professional comics layouts here!

Hey, Cool San Diego Sights is mostly about enjoying life, learning new things and having some creative fun, right?

Four cool murals in Pacific Beach!

Here come photographs of four cool murals in Pacific Beach! Until a recent random walk through PB, I hadn’t seen any of this artwork.

I believe the first three murals are relatively new, but the fourth, which is quite faded, appears to have been painted years ago.

First up is a colorful interpretation of a Volkswagen Bus with surfboards, which was painted in front of the Pueblo restaurant by artist Katie Gaines.

(I photographed a mermaid mural by this artist on the back of the same building last year. That was during a fun Pacific Beach guided mural tour, which you can revisit here. The great Quetzalcoatl mural in that blog post is also at the rear of Pueblo.)

I’m pretty sure the next mural, on the front of Funhouse Tattoo, is by the artist Maxx Moses. But I’m not absolutely certain…

At the entrance to Brazilian Bowls you’ll find a mural by @TarsoRibas…

And, finally, check out some fun street art near the corner of Hornblend and Ingraham. Life is a Beach in PB was created by Dana S. Owens (DanaToon)…

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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!

Colorful mural full of Aztec imagery!

I love this super colorful mural. It’s jam-packed with elaborate Aztec imagery!

I saw it as I walked down Main Street at the intersection of Vesta Street. The artwork adds life to a corrugated steel wall outside G & A Automotive. I believe it was painted fairly recently, but I don’t know the artist.

Additional artwork can be seen inside the auto repair shop’s small yard, but there was a No Photography sign. You’ll have to swing by to see it all for yourself!

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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!