The amount of cool stuff popping up for 2022 Comic-Con is mind-blowing! A walk around downtown San Diego this Monday afternoon yielded more fun photos!
Among the burgeoning pop culture sights are vampire drinks, a large, rampaging Great Ape, a Starfleet Outpost, amazing sand sculptures, and some large, creepy dolls. And loads of the other stuff that I’ve already covered during previous walks!
I suppose what I really like about this time of year is how thousands of creative ideas suddenly come together and flower simultaneously in one place. It’s like some sort of human miracle.
Of course, the dreamers, creators, planners, builders, deciders all contribute innumerable hours of combined effort. But look what can suddenly arise if many minds and hands come together!
Why does so much of the popular culture center upon fantasy, science fiction, absurdity and horror? Because, I suppose, our brains are wired for survival. They become excited and active when faced by unknowns…
Crates that were marked Picard have been unloaded into the Starfleet Outpost, a Comic-Con offsite by Paramount+. The public can swing by starting Thursday. It’s located at Happy Does on Fifth Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter.Lots of colorful building wraps cover the Hilton Gaslamp. All four sides, in fact!Yikes. I knew Butt-Head would eventually show up.The three Audible sand sculptures on MLK Promenade are becoming more incredible as the sand artists do their thing.The modest Krapopolis offsite by FOX is a bit hidden, across from The New Childrens Museum. Hopefully people can find it. Look for the Super Slide sign above some trees.The big The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power wrap is coming along on one of the Marriott Marquis towers.It’s Great Ape Vegeta rampaging through the Bandai offsite behind the Marriott! I don’t think it can do much damage without its hands, however.Spotted in the distance between two crates.Looking at big The Rings of Power wrap from the San Diego Bay side.Forklifts lined up behind the San Diego Convention Center, with the American Horror Stories dolls wrap on the Hilton looking ever more creepy.Here come The Incredible Hulk! Thank goodness he’s in a good mood.Flying a kite where the Adult Swim on the Green has been in past years. I thought Abbott Elementary was going to set up somewhere back here, but I don’t see them yet.As I crossed the Harbor Drive pedestrian bridge, I saw several large The Rookie wraps going up on Petco Park. Those workers on super duper cherry pickers work fast.Well, whoever is going to build the Petco Park Interactive Zone here better get busy. They have two days to do it!The Rookie: Feds is being promoted by ABC at 2022 Comic-Con in a big way!And the big Krapopolis wrap on the Omni, promoting an upcoming animated FOX show, is almost done.Someone checks their phone beneath the IGN balcony outside the Hard Rock Hotel. Keep your eyes on this balcony for celebrities during Comic-Con.NBCUniversal is getting their NBCU Corner ready now. I see a bunch of Good Guys graphics. Those might be going into the Tin Fish.Quantum Leap is back on NBC this Fall.And here is Reginald the Vampire, coming to Syfy. No, I’m not thirsty. Thank you.
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, 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!
What’s this? It looks like 2022 Comic-Con has begun to slowly materialize by the San Diego Convention Center!
Local artist and muralist Shirish Villaseñor (@shirishtheartist) has begun painting the windows of Sweet Things Frozen Yogurt at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. She’ll be working to complete the fun artwork in the coming days.
I’ll swing by to take more photos as these many painted characters assume color and life.
Meanwhile, for the next two weeks Cool San Diego Sights is in full Comic-Con mode! I live downtown, an easy walk from the huge international pop culture event.
Fear not! I’ll return to more “normal” San Diego sights once Comic-Con concludes!
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, 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!
Chainsaw Man has arrived in San Diego for 2022 Comic-Con. The terrifying manga character is riding a MTS bus through downtown!
Crunchyroll is applying different wraps to a number of public transit buses. This is the third one I’ve spotted so far.
Chainsaw Man is also an upcoming anime that Crunchyroll will distribute outside of Asia.
Who is Chainsaw Man? A poor young man named Denji, who meets a dog-like devil which grants him the ability to transform his body into multiple chainsaws; he then joins the Public Safety Devil Hunters to use his horrific saws on devils.
Okay. That certainly sounds plausible. In the world of human imagination!
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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 spotted a new trolley wrap this morning. It promotes the upcoming Amazon Prime Video science fiction television series Paper Girls. The show is about four young paper girls who become involved in an epic adventure. They must save the world when they find themselves in a war among time-travelers!
As more Comic-Con trolley wraps appear, I’ll post photos!
Comic-Con is now about a month away, and more and more cool stuff should be appearing in San Diego. Stay tuned!
UPDATE!
A couple days later I got more pics…
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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!
Very few visitors to Balboa Park will see these fun birdhouses and artistically painted planter boxes. They’re a bit hidden behind the Centro Cultural de la Raza’s home, their repurposed water tank off Park Boulevard.
I believe the birdhouses were created in 2021 and are designed for owls. The way they’re painted certainly suggests that!
It appears at least some of the planter boxes were painted this year.
I took this series of photographs Sunday as I walked randomly around waiting for a San Diego Fringe Festival performance to begin. I thought I’d share them.
Enjoy!
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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!
Look what was painted in San Diego’s Little Saigon neighborhood a few months ago!
The extraordinary new mural appears on a large wall near the intersection of El Cajon Boulevard and Menlo Avenue. The artwork was created by Thao Huynh French of Mindful Murals. The very cool tiger was designed by Brian Hoang.
I was walking in the area recently when I was excited to discover this! Pretty amazing, huh?
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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!
An extraordinary panel was held this afternoon at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego.
The Science and Science Fiction of Star Trek’s Tricorder brought together four panelists who are helping to lead our way into the future. It will be a future of almost unlimited possibility, replete with groundbreaking technologies what were barely imagined when the original television series was created.
Dr. Erik Viirre, who acted as moderator, is Professor of Neurosciences at UC San Diego; Dr. Paul E. Jacobs is Chairman and CEO of XCOM Labs, and former executive chairman of Qualcomm; Dr. Yvonne Cagle is a physician, professor, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, and former NASA astronaut; Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment and head of the Roddenberry Foundation, is the son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett. He is also an executive producer on Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
The first thing the audience learned is that all four panelists are fans of Star Trek! (Did you know that the former head of Qualcomm, many moons ago, was founding member of Star Fleet Club La Jolla?)
The next thing we learned was that Star Trek has inspired generations of scientists, engineers, inventors and visionaries. Many technological advances we know today were first conceived by Gene Roddenberry and the experts he turned to for advice when writing the show. He wanted Star Trek to be believable and largely based on science.
We were reminded how Star Trek’s communicator became the actual flip phone, and how today’s smartphones have essentially become Star Trek’s tricorder. Think about it!
The various multi-function tricorders carried by Spock, McCoy, and other Star Trek characters could provide a user with all sorts of useful information. A tricorder could be used to ascertain location and weather, or analyze the physical environment or obtain cultural information. A tricorder could be used as a universal translator. It could even be used to assess one’s medical condition.
In many ways, your smartphone does all of those things today!
We then learned our own future contains even greater possibilities.
The panelists explained how a smartphone, or handheld mobile device, used by an ordinary person, could become a practical health tool. For example, such a medical “tricorder” could analyze the sound of irregular breathing or a cough and determine a likely medical condition or disease. And such a device, by detecting signals or other data from the user’s body, could provide a warning that a stroke or heart attack is imminent.
Projects like that are underway today!
Five years ago, The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE was a $10 million global competition to incentivize the development of innovative technologies capable of accurately diagnosing a set of 13 medical conditions independent of a healthcare professional or facility, ability to continuously measure 5 vital signs, and have a positive consumer experience. Read more about it here.
The co-winning Canadian team, CloudDX, propelled by their Tricorder XPRIZE participation, has gone on to commercialize remote, connected patient monitoring hardware and software that anyone can easily use at home!
And that’s just the beginning.
On the International Space Station today, 250 miles above Earth, astronauts wear a Smart Shirt that senses body temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen, EKG, and even the activity of heart valves!
Can you imagine a virtual reality doctor’s visit in your future? (Oh, wait. Star Trek envisioned this already. USS Voyager’s Emergency Medical Holographic Doctor.) Advances in artificial intelligence and tele-medicine have just barely begun.
(And yes, virtual reality was envisioned many decades ago. It was the basis for many tangled plots on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The holodeck!)
Those who sat listening to this extraordinary Comic-Con Museum panel learned all of this, and more. We saw that, in the hands of thoughtful people who desire positive, healthy outcomes, our technological future can be very bright, indeed.
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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!
Are the above chairs awesome or what? I bet you’d like to sit in one!
When I visited the Mingei International Museum last weekend, I set my astonished eyes on this furniture. I then admired other fantastic furnishings, all designed by world-renowned French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle!
The many sculptures she created during her lifetime are widely known. But chairs and tables and vases and mirrors? Yes!
You’ll discover all sorts of crazily colorful objects when you visit the Niki and Mingei exhibition at the Mingei International Museum!
You’ll see an exuberant, irrepressible love of life.
Did I mention Niki became well known for her sculptures?
If you love art–glass art in particular–you must absolutely head over to Balboa Park this weekend to check out a spectacular show and sale in Spanish Village Art Center!
The big Art Glass Guild’s Spring Patio Show features numerous skilled glass artists and their amazingly creative and beautiful pieces. Some of the glass is functional, other works are purely decorative. All are for sale!
You can see in my photos how extraordinary this annual show is. Even if you have no plans to purchase art, you’ll pause repeatedly to admire all the glasswork, and wonder how some of the more unusual or exquisite pieces were made!
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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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 