I spotted this beautiful mural during my last walk in Oceanside. It decorates a wall on San Diego Street, between Lemon Street and Dubuque Street, about a block away from Balderamma Park.
The side of the wall that faces an alley depicts the Virgin of Guadalupe among prickly pear and other cacti. It also appears to be a neighborhood shrine. People have left fresh flowers.
The other side, facing San Diego Street, has been painted with colorful scenes, so full of life.
I couldn’t ascertain who the artist is. If you have any information, leave a comment.
…
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 printed banner duplicate of a very famous mural by Mexican painter Diego Rivera can be seen in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood. Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon at Alameda Central Park) decorates the exterior of the M & R Transmission building at 1775 National Avenue.
The original mural, painted by the artist between 1946 and 1947, can be viewed at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera in Mexico City.
The mural depicts famous people and events in the history of Mexico, passing through the Alameda Central park in Mexico City.It features many historical figures, including Hernán Cortés, Benito Juárez, and Frida Kahlo. The central figure is La Catrina, a skeleton figure symbolizing the connection between life and death.
I took these photos a few weeks ago, when I walked through Barrio Logan.
…
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.
Young dancers with the Gift of Dance, a local ballet folklórico school, performed today in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter during the annual Fall Back Festival.
These colorful photographs provide a hint of the dancers’ energy, fluid grace and poise. The dances transmitted pure joy. If you were there, you felt it.
Traditional Mexican dances included La Negra, La Raspa, La Madrugada, Tehuantepec, El Jarabe Tapatio, Los Machettes, and Las Chiapanecas.
Audience members were often clapping along with the music!
I hope you enjoy my photos…
…
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.
I walked through the California Center for the Arts, Escondido a couple hours before the start of this evening’s 30th Annual Día de los Muertos Festival. Workers, artists, performers and vendors were busy getting ready!
Papel picado was being hung, elegantly dressed skeletons were standing about, and squares were outlined on the ground, ready with candles and crosses for visitors to memorialize loved ones.
Inside the Concert Hall’s lobby I found a beautiful ofrenda and other traditional Día de Muertos decorations.
Back outside, I noticed a vendor had many marigolds.
This beautiful Día de Muertos is produced every year by the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. You can help support the event and learn about others by visiting their website here.
…
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 beautiful Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) event was held today in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood. Everyone gathered at Officer Jeremy Henwood Memorial Park to remember loved ones who’ve passed on from this world.
The highlight of the event was the many traditional altars (ofrendas) that honored family and ancestors.
After an introduction to the event and a blessing with the fragrant smoke of white sage, Mariachi Cardenal of Hoover High School took the stage and provided live entertainment.
There were creative activities for kids. Many lowriders were lined up to one side of the festival, and there was a Best Catrina Outfit Contest. Good old Fern Street Circus was there, as was the San Diego Guild of Puppetry. Community organizations present included the San Diego Library, San Diego Youth Services, City Heights Music School…
The sun was out and hearts were full.
…
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 great exhibition of art in downtown San Diego is scheduled to close this weekend. A UNIVERSAL MEXICAN: The Surreal World of José Sacal, on view at UCSD Park & Market, continues through October 25, 2025.
I’m glad I experienced José Sacal‘s bronze sculptures today, before they vanish. You can see from my photos how the artist has interpreted famous people and images from photographs and paintings.
As this UCSD Park & Market webpage explains, the exhibit invites audiences to experience emotionally charged, politically resonant sculptures that reimagine cultural and historical figures—from Einstein and Gandhi to Frida Kahlo and Don Quixote—through Sacal’s distinctive abstract lens. Known for his expressive bronze and ceramic works, Sacal challenged traditional forms to explore themes of identity, justice, and the human condition.
If you want to view these sculptures in person, do it soon. Head upstairs to the second floor of UCSD Park & Market.
The sculptures are arranged along the windows of the art gallery. Reflection and shadow from incoming sunlight gives these unique pieces additional character.
…
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.
Have you read Two Years Before the Mast? You might remember how author Richard Henry Dana describes the tiny Mexican town of San Diego which he visited in 1835. He would ride into town for pleasure when not unloading, loading or drying cattle hides at La Playa in Point Loma. His famous work of literature vividly describes a fandango in Old Town at the home of Don Juan Bandini.
Bandini’s casa would eventually become Old Town’s Cosmopolitan Hotel, and the very room where the first waltz was likely danced in California can be visited in the hotel today. That’s the room in the above photograph!
Today I ventured into the Cosmopolitan Hotel and discovered two interesting signs in the historic room. The first explains how an extravagant wood floor was installed by Bandini for dancing. It was probably the first wooden floor in California.
Dana wrote in Two Years Before the Mast:
“A great deal has been said about our friend Don Juan Bandini, and when he did appear, which was toward the close of the evening, he certainly gave us the most graceful dancing that I had ever seen.
His slight and graceful figure was well calculated for dancing, and he moved about with the grace and daintiness of a young fawn. He was loudly and repeatedly applauded, the old men and women jumping out of their seats in admiration, and the young people waving their hats and handkerchiefs.”
More photos of the restored room today…
A second sign explains how in the later 1800’s, after the abandoned Bandini house had been acquired by Albert and Emily Seeley and converted into the Cosmopolitan Hotel, big social parties took place in this room once again. They were the talk of the town!
Would you like to visit the historic room yourself? Look for a friendly tintype photographer outside this door. Then step through!
While you’re at it, you can have an old-fashioned tintype photograph taken as a keepsake. Perhaps pretend you’ve traveled back in time to the mid-1800’s, when this photographic technology was developed!
…
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 year is passing by. In a couple of weeks, Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) will be observed. Loved ones who’ve passed on from this life will be remembered.
The gravesites at El Campo Santo in Old Town are decorated already. Every early resident of San Diego buried here is remembered with flowers, papel picado, Day of the Dead skulls… Every person here was loved by someone.
This small cemetery is the final resting place of so many different people: the Kumeyaay, Spanish, Mexican, American. Newborn babies, the elderly. The rich, the poor. Public figures, unknown people. The lucky, the unlucky. Victims of old age, disease, accident, violence, injustice.
Mortals all.
Every one was loved by someone.
…
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 San Diego History Center in Balboa Park, which is open free to everybody, has put up a beautiful ofrenda (altar) for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
Their ofrenda appears a bit different from prior years, but it still honors and remembers figures from San Diego’s past. Oh–and San Diego’s famous town dog from the late 19th century, Bum, too!
Making a family ofrenda is a beloved tradition in Mexico. The beautiful altar in the San Diego History Center also contains traditional objects like marigolds, candles, papel picado and photographs of loved ones who’ve passed on.
A nearby table invites visitors to the museum to make their own tissue paper marigold. These hand-made marigolds can be added to the altar with a note containing the name of your loved one and a message.
You may also take your special marigold home.
…
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.
I read this article about the new mural painted on Beyer Boulevard in San Ysidro, so I had to go see it.
The multi-wall mural was created by artist Mr. B Baby, whose real name is Michelle Guerrero. It’s her second collaboration with the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), which operates the San Diego Trolley. (The first mural painted late last year is also on the trolley’s Blue Line in South Bay–but just north of E Street in Chula Vista.)
This latest addition to the “MTS Color the Corridor” project contains colorful doll-like imagery you might recognize from other Mr. B Baby murals.
As motorists proceed under the trolley’s steel bridge, their attention is drawn to the two walls on either side, which represent the two sides of the San Diego/Tijuana border. The characters’ love for each other transcends the border.
Some online sites claim the mural is at the Beyer Boulevard trolley station, but that’s not true. It’s actually located here.
Unfortunately, relatively few people enjoy this amazing public art. Beyer Boulevard at this spot has very little traffic. Commuters on the trolley can’t really see the mural. Perhaps a rider could glimpse a small part of it while sitting at a right side window seat looking down. I’m not sure.
Cool San Diego Sights! 