Padres banners and flags are going up throughout downtown San Diego–in the Gaslamp, East Village, and around Petco Park! The city is almost ready for 2025 Opening Day, which is tomorrow!
This morning, Padres personnel were putting up fencing beside Petco Park for the anticipated long lines and crowds. Tom’s Watch Bar, which has taken over the old location of Social Tap, was hurriedly installing big television screens.
Tens of thousands of excited fans will converge downtown for the early afternoon start. The Pads are playing the Braves. Let’s go!
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Was that a strange mirage in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter this morning? I don’t think so!
The Museum of Illusions San Diego had its front door open and construction workers streaming in and out. Their building has a brand new paint job and a big Museum of Illusions sign above the entrance. It appears they’re getting ready to open soon!
That’s what their website says, too. Check it out here.
Mind-boggling holograms, optical illusions, rooms that puzzle human perception and play tricks on your mind…
Sounds cool!
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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.
Western Flyer, the world’s most famous fishing boat, will be visiting San Diego on March 26, 2025, and you have the opportunity to tour it!
If you’ve read John Steinbeck‘s famous book Sea of Cortez, you’ll recognize the name of this fishing boat. In 1940, Steinbeck and his friend Ed Ricketts explored the Gulf of California in this very boat.
For decades the boat was lost, then it was found and restored by the Western Flyer Foundation. It now operates as a floating classroom, educating youth about the intersection of science and literature.
With a General Admission ticket, visitors to the Maritime Museum of San Diego will be able to step aboard and tour the legendary fishing boat as it makes its visit to our city!
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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.
The 2025 Major League Baseball season is about to begin. And look who has appeared on San Diego’s Embarcadero along Harbor Drive. Players representing the San Diego Padres!
Before the start of every season, new Padres player banners appear on downtown lamp posts. You can find the banners around Petco Park and elsewhere. Some of the banners inevitably feature new faces.
I took these photographs today.
Last year the Padres were arguably the second best team in baseball. They were a game away from beating mighty Los Angeles and going to the National League Championship Series. How will the team do in 2025?
Jackson Merrill 3Nick Pivetta 27Xander Bogaerts 2Manny Machado 13Yu Darvish 11Fernando Tatis Jr. 23
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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.
People who enter Balboa Park through its grand west entrance pass a “hidden” balcony that few observe or know about!
The second floor balcony at the Museum of Us is accessible to museum visitors through the Living with Animals exhibit. The patio-like balcony, with its welcoming chairs and tables, offers views from the southwest corner of the California Quadrangle.
Visitors enjoy views over the Rube Powell Archery Range toward downtown San Diego, and of the Cabrillo Bridge to the west. There’s a fantastic view of the historic Balboa Park Administration Building across El Prado.
The next two photographs show the exterior of the Saint Francis Chapel at the southwest corner of the California Quadrangle.
Looking over the Rube Powell Archery Range toward State Route 163 and hazy downtown San Diego…
Now we’re looking west along El Prado toward the Cabrillo Bridge. Few people entering Balboa Park will notice the little known balcony as they approach the park’s grand west entrance…
The Administration Building, seen fully in the next photo, was the first building constructed (1911-1912) in Balboa Park for the Panama-California Exposition.
Final architectural plans for the Administration Building were developed by Carlton Winslow under the direction of lead exposition architect Bertram Goodhue.
(If it appears the building was designed by Irving Gill, here’s an article that casts doubt on this and discusses the issue.)
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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.
On the south side of San Diego’s popular Waterfront Park, a stairwell descends to an underground parking lot. This colorful mural greets people as they begin to descend the stairs.
The public art, dated 2014, is a photo reproduction on aluminum of San Diego-based contemporary artist Allison Renshaw‘s original painting Last Call, which is on display inside the nearby County Administration Building.
As the artist’s website explains: Allison’s work offers multiple perspectives, discordant vocabularies, and malleable boundaries. Her art is informed by particles of our urban and natural landscape along with culture found in the everyday…
I can’t believe it took me 11 years to finally share a good photograph of this eye-catching art. Back in 2014, I posted a blog documenting opening day at Waterfront Park, and you can get a glimpse of the mural in one of those photographs!
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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.
The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park was jammed with families as you can see from the following photographs. The community event was an early March preview of the 2025 Conrad Prebys 5th Anniversary Summer Season at this most amazing San Diego bayfront venue. If you’ve never had a chance to attend a concert at the Rady Shell, you are truly missing out.
When I came by, San Diego band Cassie B was up on the stage covering favorite songs from different decades and singing original compositions, too. I heard the music of Queen, Mariah Carey, Taylor Swift… Many in the audience were dancing, swaying, singing along!
During the big event other performers would include San Diego Symphony musicians and local band The Farmers. It was the perfect afternoon for an outdoor picnic!
Anyway, I was totally impressed by another San Diego Symphony production, as I always am. I couldn’t believe the massive crowd!
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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.
A weird glowing jellyfish–perhaps giving birth? A wildly creative lamp? Some alien creature from the planet Pandora? A dream-thing resplendent with arcane symbols?
As I walked in darkness this morning through downtown San Diego, a very strange, seemingly living thing caught my eye. It was shining in the studio window of artist James Watts!
Colorful murals have been painted on a rooftop structure above Pinch Pottery Studio in San Diego’s downtown East Village.
Stylized hummingbird and hearts artwork can be seen from E Street, if you raise your eyes to look for it. I love how a strange, mysterious eye seems to be staring back at you from what appears to be a barred window!
Another mural depicting a pink Volkswagen Beetle on the east side of the rooftop structure can be seen from Tenth Avenue, if you look above Pokez Mexican Restaurant.
This artwork’s style appears familiar, but I’m not certain who created these faded murals. If you know, leave a comment!
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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.
When I think of railroad workers manually driving spikes with hammers, I think of black-and-white photographs of workers laying tracks across deserts and mountains in the 19th century. I imagine the hammering of that Golden Spike, joining the rails of the first transcontinental railroad.
Well, here in downtown San Diego, in this high technology 21st century, a group of railroad workers were using spike mauls today to hammer (you guessed it) good, dependable spikes!
Tracks that support the Amtrak Surfliner, North County Transit District’s Coaster, and freight trains are undergoing maintenance this weekend. (I saw a big tamping machine in the distance, which is used to pack ballast under the tracks.)
The last time I saw a person swinging a spike maul, a John D. Spreckels impersonator was hammering a Gold Spike at the 100th Anniversary of the San Diego and Arizona Railway event in Campo. See those fun photos by clicking here!
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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.
Cool San Diego Sights! 