Balboa Park was the peculiar venue for a big ski competition today!
Who needs snow when the House of Finland holds its annual lawn program at the International Cottages and provides skis? Grass works fine!
The afternoon Hiihtokilpailu (which is Finnish for ski competition) saw several teams (four athletes each, sharing two long skis) racing cross-country style (without ski poles). I watched the crazy spectacle.
One team couldn’t get out of the starting gate, two had calamitous, spontaneous collapses, and the fourth had major trouble turning around. One machine-like team named the Engineers would go on to win the big Final. (Fortunately, all contestants were awarded cookies.)
These photos of the silly “skiing” contest might make you chuckle.
I probably would’ve fallen over, too!
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A special Earth Day event was held today in downtown San Diego. C Street Keeps It Green was the name of the fun environmental event, which took place–surprise!–on two blocks of C Street.
I saw inspirational art being created, spoke to representatives of the Downtown San Diego Partnership, checked out info presented by I Love a Clean San Diego, San Diego Community Power, and the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, and enjoyed learning more about the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum–did you know every second Sunday they are open free to the public? There were smiling vendors, too, and music!
Enjoy some photographs and read the captions…
Inspirational art and messages are created on C Street in San Diego.Three Falls Brand had all sort of cool merch–many of the designs were a fusion of lucha libre wrestling and hard rock music.I learned the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum has an exhibition titled Poem ‘ Li Sao’, Qu Yuan & Dragon Boat Festival. The featured, very famous poem, by the father of Chinese romantic poetry, consists of more than 2,470 Chinese characters!Old photographs show how the Chinese played an important role in early San Diego history.Smiles by representatives of San Diego Community Power, which provides cleaner electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind at competitive rates.Another smile! Oside HandMade provided fun small potted plant projects for the Earth Day event.Creativity in action.San Diego County Bicycle Coalition provided all sorts of useful information.I Love a Clean San Diego told me about their recent Creek to Bay Cleanup. Tons of trash were removed from our precious waterways.I’m shown how small positive choices we make add up! And another big smile!Music for the event across C Street!Our beautiful planet Earth.A quote about nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson.Shayna Goodwin, a San Diego Clean and Safe Ambassador, creates her first mural. And it’s absolutely incredible!
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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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
The 29th Celebration of Champions was held today in San Diego at Embarcadero Marina Park North!
Families from around the region gathered for relay races, a circle of life, and happy activities celebrating kids who fight childhood cancer. The event benefits Rady Children’s Peckham Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, which offers one of the nation’s top pediatric cancer programs.
Young kids played and romped during the festival, and families remembered loving children who had tragically passed away.
Generous sponsors ran relays with individual families and children, everyone cheering encouragement. The San Diego Padres and Gulls were present, as were SDSU cheerleaders and Star Wars cosplayers and Batman with his cool Batmobile! I almost forgot the pony rides and carnival!
What an inspirational event. An immense crowd had gathered in the San Diego sunshine. Faith in humanity restored. You had to be there.
If you’d like to help out Rady Children’s Hospital, click here!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
Looking for something fun to do in San Diego this weekend? Head over to City Heights both Saturday and Sunday for the premier of Jokes, Jazz, and Razzmatazz!
The Jokes, Jazz and Razzmatazz multimedia art installation is opening at the City Heights Culture Atelier. The Atelier is a new cultural center in City Heights where local artists collaborate in the development of personal and collective works. (Perhaps you recall seeing my photos of their Beyond the Anthropocene installation last year.)
The event includes an artist reception, stand-up comedy show and live Jazz! The art, music, and comedy experience will be spontaneous and unpredictable . . . a razzle-dazzle razzmatazz!
The Atelier is located at 4425 Home Avenue, at the intersection of Home Avenue and Fairmount Avenue (the Columbus Club of San Diego building).
The free event welcomes the public both today and tomorrow starting at 2 pm. See the graphic above for the schedule!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
A new exhibit is being readied at the San Diego Central Library. Voices on the Inside presents the written words of women who’ve been incarcerated.
The exhibit is created by Poetic Justice, an organization that provides writing workshops for women serving time in prisons and jails, including the Las Colinas Detention Facility in San Diego.
As their website explains: Poetic Justice’s in-person writing workshops are typically offered for 6-10 week sessions…the participants explore therapeutic writing prompts and community building activities. At the end of a session, the participants graduate and receive an anthology of their writing and a graduation certificate.
Many of the women share their innermost thoughts, filled with humanity and new wisdom and hope that otherwise might be ignored or dismissed. The exhibit will be filled with examples of what they’ve written.
The opening reception for Voices on the Inside will be held at San Diego Central Library on Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 2 pm. Learn more by visiting the Instagram page @capoeticjustice.
To see this new exhibit, simply walk into the Central Library and turn right when you reach the main elevators. Many faces and words await you.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
A good sized crowd came out today to Balboa Park’s WorldBeat Cultural Center. The public was invited to take part in the 32nd Annual Multi-Cultural Earth Day!
Visitors to this unique Earth Day festival were not only treated to colorful multi-cultural entertainment, but had the opportunity to learn about two issues in particular: the changing climate and food accessibility. Visitors could also support organizations and local businesses that are trying in their own unique way to improve education, sustainability, and protect the environment. Artists and more ordinary vendors were present, too.
Special activities included a seed swap, a lesson on how to create and maintain a worm farm, and compost workshops. Kids could color fun artwork, too!
For the hungry crowd gathered outside in the San Diego sunshine, ethnic and vegetarian food vendors offered their special menus to choose from.
As you can see from my photos, I watched Azteca dancers perform for the crowd. They followed an impassioned speech by a holy man who once met the Dalai Lama. We need to raise our consciousness was his message.
Inside the WorldBeat Cultural Center I watched and listened to the joyful music of San Diego Taiko. I personally love energetic taiko drumming!
Other performances during the event would include Middle Eastern belly dance, West African drum and dance, Brazilian samba, and Native American drumming.
There were also tours of the center’s lush garden. I’ll have to do that next time.
I loved these Hopi Kachina dolls, made of cottonwood. They were hand carved by Arizona-based artist Elroy Kewanyama…
The following two ladies explained how Green Pocket Forest has partnered with the WorldBeat Cultural Center to create a 320 square meters Children’s Nature Zone, designed with the innovative Miyawaki method to spotlight 1000 native plants, providing habitat for 20+ species of birds and insects. Wow!
The San Diego Audubon Society table had tons of information about their current activities, plus beautiful bird artwork and a mural coloring station. (I learned their Bird Festival this year was a big success!)
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
Yesterday, at the Chicano Park Day event in Barrio Logan, I stepped into the Turning Wheel Mobile Classroom, which was parked next to the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center. What, I wondered, was this University of San Diego community outreach program up to?
I was greeted by Drawing/Painting teacher and Chicano Park Fellow Miss Jessi Rogawski, plus two of her exceptional Lincoln High School students!
I learned that about 70 students in Miss Jessi’s classes have learned how to create murals, inspired by poster art in the Chicano Park Day Poster Archive.
Students choose a favorite poster, analyze it, then produce their own original sketches, inspired by the poster design. Through a multi-stage process, including enlargement and color mapping, the sketches would evolve into finished murals!
What a great opportunity for young people to learn both the history of Chicano Park, activate their imagination, collaborate, and develop their creative skills!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
A large number of amazing lowriders and custom cars arrived in Barrio Logan today for Chicano Park Day. The 54th Annual Chicano Park Day celebration seemed bigger than ever, and lowrider car culture is always an integral part of the popular event.
Car clubs from all around San Diego and Southern California participated. Their carefully tended, gleaming machines were shining in the sunshine and attracting the attention of the huge Chicano Park Day crowd.
I wandered about, marveling at it all, and took these photos…
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
San Diego’s world-famous Donut Bar has moved its downtown location and greatly expanded! Their fresh new location at 1 Columbia Place opened yesterday, and early this morning I swung by to see my friends in action! Chef Santiago and staff were smiling and ready for another busy day!
All the usual great donuts were on display at the front counter, and a new section up front will soon be featuring cakes and other sweet bakery items! I saw that every sort of coffee awaits those who need a morning injection of caffeine, and the fun vibes are stronger than ever!
One super fun feature of Donut Bar’s new location is . . . the walls. That’s right!
The walls are covered with black-and-white graphics depicting San Diego. The cartoony graphics turn into a dynamic, colorful, augmented reality experience when you aim your phone at them! Donuts fly through the sky! A boat crosses San Diego Bay! Jets fly off the USS Midway! A baseball flies out of Petco Park!
The new Donut Bar location is 401 West A Street on the ground floor of 1 Columbia Place, a block west and north of the San Diego Central Courthouse. They’ve got outdoor seating perfect for sunny San Diego, too!
Now which yummy donut to choose…
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
Beginning this May, everyone is invited to join free, twice-a-month art walks in downtown San Diego!
Did you know a new 1.7 mile pedestrian experience has opened called the Bay to Park Paseo? And that the Paseo boasts over a dozen new art installations?
The art-filled Bay to Park Paseo leads from the Hilton San Diego Bayfront (rising behind the San Diego Convention Center and Petco Park) and leads north up Park Boulevard–all the way to Balboa Park!
Yes!
Ready to go on a fun walking adventure?
Free public guided tours of the Bay to Park Paseo will be available starting Saturday May 4, 10:30 a.m. and will continue on the first and third Saturday through November. The tours meet in the front of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront and end in Balboa Park at Presidents Way. Put on your walking shoes!
Self-guided tours are also available at any time using the public sidewalk along Park Boulevard. One of the installations makes use of very cool augmented reality!
To learn more about the Bay to Park Paseo, click here!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
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 (formerly known as Twitter)!
Cool San Diego Sights! 