I’ve been informed there’s a Ken Kramer “About San Diego” video on YouTube that concerns Codi, Old Town’s Favorite Horse!
You can watch the short video here.
To see several old photographs of Codi, and learn more about a horse that many in San Diego loved, click 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!
I discovered a little bit of history yesterday!
You know all those beautiful old succulents and cacti you see in Seaport Village, particularly around the plaza containing the main fountain?
As I walked around the circular plaza I happened to spy a painted tile on top of one planter wall.
Words explain: The beautiful succulents and cacti you are enjoying here were selected and planted by Mr. Chuck Ito of Leucadia, California. 1980.
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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!
Many fascinating old buildings stand in San Diego’s historic Gaslamp Quarter. Many were built in the late 1800’s during one of the city’s early booms.
I always enjoy looking at the 1886 Woolworth Building as I walk along Fifth Avenue south of Broadway. Not because its architecture is particularly unique or interesting. No, I see that word Woolworth near the rooftop and vague memories from my very early childhood flash inside my aged brain.
I recall how my parents would take me shopping at a Woolworth’s, and how I would always be treated to an ice cream at the store’s stainless steel lunch counter and soda fountain. Memories can be funny. Don’t ask me where this Woolworth store was. All I really remember is standing before all that ice cream, and always choosing Rocky Road.
So what happened to the F. W. Woolworth Company and their immense chain of retail stores? They morphed into Foot Locker! (Regrettably, I’m pretty sure most Foot Lockers don’t serve ice cream.)
Since you might have some difficulty reading the weathered plaque near the entrance to the Woolworth Building, I’ve tried to transcribe it correctly:
Woolworth Building, 1886. Originally Victorian in its architecture, this brick and wood frame building was used for retail stores on the first floor, offices on the second, and furnished rooms on the third. In 1922, Frank W. Woolworth, founder of the five-and-dime stores, had the building remodeled. The original Victorian bay windows were removed, and four Corinthian pilasters were added to a gray granite facade. Woolworth leased the structure for 50 years.
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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!
I’ve seen people stomping on grapes. Now I’ve observed people happily sliding through them!
That’s because a while back I found myself near the Grape Day Park playground in Escondido. As I walked around taking photographs, I saw a couple of kids descending the Vinehenge slide!
Vinehenge was created by artists Valerie Salatino and Nancy Moran in 2004. It’s a very fun part of the City of Escondido’s public art collection!
According to a nearby information sign, city leaders launched the Grape Day Festival back in 1906. “Thousands of visitors, brought in by the Santa Fe Railroad, enjoyed free grapes, danced, socialized, and engaged in other festivities on these grounds.” Today a very wonderful Grape Day Park features the Escondido History Center Museum Complex, which I blogged about over a year ago here.
Check out these fun pics of Vinehenge and its unique grape slide!
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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!
2021 has finally arrived!
Hopefully we’ll eventually return to a more normal state of affairs, once vaccines are widely distributed and the devastating COVID-19 pandemic has subsided. The past year has been extremely difficult.
What was going on back in 2016?
Plenty!
It’s time to look back at photographs that I took five years ago…
Click the following links to see some of the photographs I shared on Cool San Diego Sights in January 2016!
Pianos placed around San Diego for public to play!
Amazing public art is a hidden San Diego gem.
Photos of Chinese New Year celebration in Balboa Park.
Amazing art in San Diego: Classic paintings of ships!
Photos of Mormon Battalion Commemoration in Old Town.
Photos of Love Your Wetlands Day in Mission Bay.
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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.
It’s hard to believe, but today is New Year’s Eve. 2020 has been a year for the history books, to say the least!
What better time to share interesting photos from San Diego’s history?
A year ago I blogged about downtown electrical boxes along Fifth Avenue that feature old photographs from the Gaslamp Quarter. See them here.
During subsequent walks I’ve observed that more boxes on nearby streets have been decorated with similar photographs.
These examples were discovered on sidewalks throughout the Gaslamp!
If you’d like to see photos of Horton Plaza Park’s redevelopment in 2015, including the fountain and the park’s many historical monuments, click here.
If you’d like to see a sculpture of Bum, San Diego’s famous town dog, and learn more about his history, click here!
To learn more about Chinatown’s history, see my blog post concerning the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum here.
To see photos of the 2014 All-American Soap Box Derby, which was held in nearby Sherman Heights, click here!
To see photos of a 2016 Bonita Museum exhibit titled My Animal World concerning Joan Embery, which highlights her many guest appearances with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, click here!
Happy New Year!
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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.
Visitors to Balboa Park walking between the Desert Garden and Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden might notice a single olive tree. It grows a short distance from the winding pathway, near some logs at the edge of Florida Canyon where people can sit while listening to ranger talks.
What they probably won’t observe is a plaque describing the tree. The plaque, which is not easily seen from the busy walkway, explains the olive tree was donated to the City of San Diego by the local Greek community in November 1976.
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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!
Yesterday morning I walked from Hillcrest to the top of the Georgia Street Bridge to watch the sunrise over North Park.
After a few quiet minutes, with the daylight gradually increasing, I walked back down to Park Boulevard and headed east along University Avenue under the bridge, where I photographed the plaque from the historic structure’s construction in 1914.
According to this page of the City of San Diego Digital Archives: The Georgia Street Bridge was built in 1914 in one of the city’s earliest suburbs, crossing over busy University Avenue where streetcars once traveled. The bridge’s basic design is Romanesque Spandrel Arch with Mission Revival styling. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The bridge recently completed a major renovation that included seismic and structural retrofitting.
As you can see in my photos, I then ascended the bridge again from the east, while gazing down at early morning traffic below. The second-to-last photo with the two buses is from the top of the bridge, looking west into Hillcrest’s Egyptian Quarter.
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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.
At the south end of Pacific Highway, a short distance from Seaport Village, an historical marker can be observed by the sidewalk. In 1954 it was placed adjacent to the old San Diego Police Headquarters, which today is home to the shops and eateries of The Headquarters.
The marker reads:
LA PUNTA
DE LOS MUERTOS
(DEAD MEN’S POINT)
BURIAL SITE OF SAILORS AND MARINES IN 1782
WHEN SAN DIEGO BAY WAS SURVEYED & CHARTED
BY DON JUAN PANTOJA Y ARRIAGA, PILOT, AND
DON JOSE TOVAR, MATE, OF THE ROYAL FRIGATES
“LA PRINCESA” AND “LA FAVORITA” UNDER
COMMAND OF DON AGUSTIN DE ECHEVERRIA.
STATE REGISTERED LANDMARK NO. 57
MARKER PLACED BY SAN DIEGO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
AND THE HISTORICAL MARKERS COMMITTEE
ERECTED 1954
But according to The Journal of San Diego History’s article A Monument to an Event that Never Happened, this marker is wildly inaccurate! There is no burial site and no one died on the Pantoja voyage. And “dead men” probably refers to pine logs! Huh?
To read the article, click 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!
Several plaques and monuments honoring military veterans can be found around Grape Day Park in Escondido. One tribute, the Wall of Courage, I previously photographed here.
At the east end of the park, between Broadway and Escondido’s City Hall, two marble monuments stand together in the shade of trees.
The four sides of an obelisk display the United States Constitution’s first Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights, which guarantees our individual rights and liberty. According to a plaque at its base, the obelisk was presented by the Escondido Rotary Club to the City of Escondido on July 4, 1976, during our nation’s Bicentennial.
The second monument honors all veterans who serve to defend that freedom. The memorial was dedicated twenty years later, in 1996 on Veterans Day.
It reads: The eternal gratitude of the citizens of Escondido and the nation is extended to every man and woman, living or dead, who wore the uniform of our military services with honor past, present and future.
A flag flies above both.
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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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 