Fourteen basketball teams from around California are competing in San Diego. It’s the 2025 Firefighter Summer Games, and the hoops action is taking place in Balboa Park at the Municipal Gymnasium!
There are teams from San Diego, Oakland, Los Angeles, Long Beach, San Francisco, Bakersfield, Redding, Fresno, Orange County and elsewhere in California.
I’m pleased to report that today San Diego in their first game beat Orange County Fire Authority 45-41. That was the situation when I peeked into the gymnasium during my Balboa Park walk.
The Firefighter Summer Games are being held in venues around San Diego. See the event website here.
Thank you to all firefighting heroes. You are very much appreciated by everyone.
May you also be heroes on the basketball court!
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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.
Fantastic 4 banners have appeared in downtown San Diego in anticipation of Comic-Con 2025 and the release of The Fantastic Four: First Steps in late July!
The big tentpole Marvel movie is highly anticipated, and it appears promotion of the film is in high gear.
Who doesn’t love the Fantastic Four in the comics? Cool sci-fi action with far-out concepts and cosmic characters, dimensions and places, and a family of likable heroes. A lot of fans are hoping the movie lives up to very high expectations.
This is the third set of street lamp banners in downtown San Diego promoting different movies for Comic-Con 2025, which I believe is unprecedented.
One month until the big international pop culture event!
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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.
Another sign has popped up indicating San Diego Comic-Con 2025 is around the corner. A new set of banners has appeared on lamp posts in the Gaslamp Quarter, and elsewhere in downtown San Diego!
The banners promote Tron: Ares, a science fiction action movie set to release later this year. It’s the third movie in the Tron series.
(The first banners for Comic-Con 2025 promote Predator: Badlands. See those photographs here.)
Can you believe it? I’m so old that I saw the first Tron in movie theaters. The groundbreaking visuals blew everyone away back then, and the concept of virtual intelligence was mind-blowing in 1982, when mass produced home computers were a completely new thing.
Back then I had one of the very first personal computers: a ZX-81. It had, with an added expansion module, all of 16K memory! Forty three years later, the slim phone in your hand might have 16GB or more memory!
Where will we be in another 43 years? Will humans be any wiser?
All I know is that Comic-Con is a month away! Bring it on!
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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 San Diego County Fair is a “Summer Pet-tacular” so you know lots of fun pet stuff can be enjoyed all around the Del Mar Fairgrounds!
Wandering around, whether its inside the Pets Rock Live on Tour theme exhibit, or the many art and hobby exhibits, or the Paul Ecke Jr. Garden Show . . .you never know what funny pet images you’ll discover! A dog running for mayor? A skateboarding cat?
Enjoy some random photographs I took during my visit a couple days ago!
Also, if you missed it, check out the fair’s humorous Meowseum of Fine A(rt) 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.
In San Diego? Would you like to watch skilled artists create Japanese ink paintings? Would you like to learn this traditional Japanese art?
Head over to Balboa Park tomorrow, Sunday, June 22, 2025, when the 22nd Annual Art Exhibition by Friends of Sumi-e resumes in Room 101 of the Casa del Prado!
I swung by today. I love the simple elegance of this unique art form, and whenever I see there’s an exhibition of Japanese brush painting (called sumi-e or suiboku-ga) in Balboa Park, I can’t miss it.
The participating members of Friends of Sumi-e are always delighted to demonstrate their craft. Today Gaye Lingley showed me how to create an orchid. Here she is, near some of her exhibited artwork:
And here she is creating the orchid. She told me learning Japanese ink painting is never ending. I thought: isn’t that true of any art form?
The orchid is finished. A few strokes of the brush have created depth and subtlety:
Meanwhile, instructor Naoko Ozaki was holding a demonstration across the room….
You can see how, six years ago, Naoko created an incredibly beautiful flower here.
Interested in Japanese brush painting? Want to learn how to do it? Check out the Friends of Sumi-e website here!
Some of the beautiful work on display this weekend:
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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 free community Garden Fair was held today in Balboa Park celebrating Pollinator Week!
Local organizations that support our natural environment were lined up outside the San Diego Natural History Museum, providing the public with information about native plants and wildlife.
While pollinating bees and butterflies flitted about flowering plants in the Natural History Museum’s nearby nature trail, visitors to the park were learning about how they can help maintain a beautiful and healthy environment.
I walked around the museum to check things out…
Yes! Ecologik is included in a Women in STEM exhibit at the San Diego History Center!There are well over 500 species of bees native to San Diego! They can detect tastes with their front feet!Don’t we all love a clean San Diego? Of course we do!Many informative displays concerning pollinators and our natural environment.I see flowers and pollinators (including a bat) on this table!The San Diego Chapter of the California Native Plant Society is a great resource. They welcome new members!I didn’t know there’s a Paradise Hills Native Garden. I’ll have to check it out!The San Diego River Park Foundation had a table with great information.Volunteers with the San Diego Natural History Museum were providing a tour of their nature trail in Balboa Park.More exhibitors on the museum’s Moreton Bay Fig tree side.San Diego Canyonlands had some native pollinators on display.Hello to the Master Gardener Association of San Diego County!And hello to the San Diego Bird Alliance! They were demonstrating a native seed library. Create your own!You can help save Monarch butterflies by planting milkweed seeds.Endangered Concepts has repurposed unrecyclable plastic. The plastic fills decorative boulders! Clever idea!Learning at the California Native Horticultural Foundation table.Hey, NAT Garden Corps–this Garden Fair is a very cool event! That’s milkweed people can plant.
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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.
You’ve probably seen those book lending libraries placed near the sidewalk in front of homes. The boxes are filled with books that anyone can borrow.
Well, did you know there are similar native seed libraries?
Native seed libraries like the one in my photographs provide free native plant seeds for community members to use in their gardens.
As we know, native plants in San Diego are drought resistant and attract pollinators such as butterflies and birds. They’re good for biodiversity and a healthy environment.
If creating your own native seed library is something you’d like to look into, or do, check out this webpage on the San Diego Bird Alliance website. They provide starter kits that include seeds, envelopes, labels, brochures, posters and other materials for your box. Building the structure is your own fun project! (Perhaps make them similar to one of these.)
The 2025 San Diego County Fair has a theme that’s close to the heart. It’s all about beloved pets.
Not surprisingly, a variety of non-profit organizations centered around animals are present at the big summer event in Del Mar. I stumbled upon several of these organizations. I’d like to draw your attention to what good people (and animals) are doing in their community.
The above dog and the next photograph represent an organization in Baja California, Mexico. La Manada Feliz rescues animals and provides them with a better life with loving people. Here’s their website.
La Manada Feliz operates a cage-free sanctuary where rescued dogs can receive medical care, learn social skills and heal. Their website says: Help us achieve our mission by adopting, supporting as a guardian and/or volunteering at our dog sanctuary in Valle de Guadalupe.
Next up, San Diego Spaniel Rescue does exactly what its name says. They are an all volunteer based non-profit organization dedicated to providing breed education, rescue, fostering, medical and adoption services for abused, abandoned and/or homeless Cocker Spaniels.
If you’d like to help them or would like to adopt a rescued spaniel, you can go to their website here.
More good work and smiles can be found at Pug Rescue San Diego County.
Here’s their website. Pug Rescue of San Diego County (PRSDC) is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to rescuing unwanted, neglected, abandoned, and relinquished Pugs and placing them into a new permanent home where they may live out their lives in a loving and caring environment.
Check out the friendly dogs in my next photo! They are part of Pawsitive Teams!
Pawsitive Teams was founded in 1997 with a desire to be a volunteer-inspired and volunteer-run organization designed to promote the use of well-trained dogs to improve the lives of San Diegans. Our volunteer service dog trainers spend two years with their canine charges prior to placement with individuals with limited mobility who can benefit from the skills of our specially trained dogs. Our therapy dog program is overseen by a steering committee of volunteers dedicated to using therapy dogs with a variety of populations such as at-risk teens, active-duty military, children testifying in court, and those with mobility or developmental disabilities. Our mission with the therapy dogs is to partner with community organizations and work together with professionals in accomplishing client-related goals.
To learn more, check out the Pawsitive Teams website by clicking here.
Need I say the San Diego Humane Society does many wonderful things for animals in our community? They were at the San Diego County Fair, too, encouraging people to adopt a loving pet. Not just dogs!
Find your fur-ever friend today!
There are many ways that you can help their good work. Here’s their website.
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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 popular attraction at the San Diego County Fair is the Exhibition of Fine Art on the first floor of Grandstand East. The fair’s theme in 2025 is our love for pets, so it isn’t surprising many of the fine art entries depict beloved animals.
The exhibition is extensive and broken up into many categories based on media and subject matter. Artists who’ve submitted their work, hoping for a blue ribbon, are from many walks of life all around San Diego County. When I checked out the exhibition, I couldn’t help noticing pets were a common subject, and not just dogs and cats. I saw rabbits, parrots and other critters!
There are pet portraits, pets painted humorously, pet abstracts! If you have a pet or simply love animals, the art will definitely put a smile on your face.
I photographed random examples that I really like…
Look who I met as I left the fine art exhibit. Woof and Meow!
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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! 