The colors of life in Balboa Park become even more vivid in Spring. New flowers, bright greenery, San Diego’s sunlight on amazing architecture, sunshine on smiling people…
Here’s another collection of colorful photographs. I took these today while walking in one of the world’s most amazing parks.
Read the photo captions to learn a little more about each image!
New friends meet in Balboa Park.A tour of Balboa Park stops on El Prado to learn some San Diego history. In the background, Garden Stewards tend to flowers near the reflecting pool, and beyond them rises the Botanical Building, which is being renovated.’Spring flowers and the incredible wood lath Botanical Building, which is being rebuilt.A closer photo of the Botanical Building’s major restoration.Spring colors at the San Diego Epiphyllum Society’s big Plant Sale outside the Casa del Prado.Spring flowers around the fountain at the center of Balboa Park’s Plaza de Panama.Bicycles and spring colors outside the House of Hospitality.Spring into Summer at the Prado Perk!A peaceful bench near flowers and grass at the edge of the Casa del Rey Moro Garden.A perfect day for a bike ride through the park.Beautiful roses at the International Cottages.A garland of flowers inside the House of Sweden’s cottage.The Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Celebration will take place next Saturday at the International Cottages in Balboa Park.The Spreckels Organ Pavilion is a favorite spot for elegant photography.Models wearing handmade Oaxacan fashions smile in Balboa Park. They represent Floresita Customs & Imports!A painting class in the park. There is inspiration around every corner.A painter in the Plaza de Panama interprets scenery in Balboa Park.Chet play his guitar beautifully as usual.Mitchell pauses with his didgeridoo to talk to a passerby.The weekend Glass Show and Sale fills the Spanish Village Art Center with many colors.Stunning glasswork for sale is displayed on many tables.A sale!Glass artist Melissa Heaney has created some truly extraordinary pieces.What’s a Spring day without a ride on the fun Balboa Park Carousel?A family rides over green grass on the Balboa Park Miniature Railroad.Nearby flowers are super abundant!The very colorful Balboa Park Pow Wow is held every year around Mother’s Day.Native American culture comes to life in Balboa Park. It’s another beautiful, soulful Spring weekend.
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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)!
During my walk last weekend through Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla, I paused to take photographs of two plaques. One is over a century old. The other was created much more recently.
Both plaques honor people who, in their own way, made the world better. Both are heroes.
The Abraham Lincoln Centennial Memorial, set inside a boulder, is dated February 12, 1909. It was placed by the people of La Jolla beside a flagpole that no longer exists. I found an article that concerns the placement of this plaque. Read it here.
The second plaque reads:
In honor of our beloved mother Selma Malk, who enjoyed this view from her home at the La Valencia Hotel for 31 years.
The plaque was recently placed between a newly renovated picnic area and the scenic boardwalk south of La Jolla Cove.
According to this article: Selma Malk lived for 32 years at La Jolla’s La Valencia Hotel and volunteered at the Birch Aquarium and Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park. She died in La Jolla in 2017 at age 103.
In the next photo, you can see the historic La Valencia Hotel.
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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 a group of unsuspecting people confronted imminent danger at UC San Diego in La Jolla!
The large group could not know the sort of peril they’d be facing. We had gathered in Revelle Plaza to witness a performance by Cirque Inextremiste, but many didn’t realize that WE would be the performers!
Yann Ecauvre appeared and proceeded to drag long, very heavy wooden beams out to the surrounding audience. He stood the beams on end and then had ordinary hands (some of which were rather small) hold them upright. When unsteady beams began to precariously tip, the danger was safely overcome. Whew!
Then audience members began to build a wooden structure made of more beams. Higher and increasingly impressive the construct grew . . . those vertically held beams were added . . . then a chain of courageous humans holding hands mounted the crazy, tipsy structure!
The performance was called Damoclès. It was part of this weekend’s free La Jolla Playhouse 2024 WOW event!
Would you like to bring out your own courage? Damoclès will be repeated this afternoon. See the 2024 Without Walls Festival schedule by clicking here!
(By the way–were you there? That was me, surprised, given a yellow danger tape necktie, and helping to hold up the second beam. Taking photos during the ordeal was a challenge!)
These kids were fearless!
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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)!
Numerous old photographs and historical documents tell the story of how a few African Americans pioneers first came to Coronado in the late 19th century, and how their numbers would greatly increase beginning in 1944, because of the Federal Housing Project. The island had more than twice the African American population in 1960 than Chula Vista, El Cajon, Escondido, Imperial Beach, Lemon Grove, La Mesa and Vista combined!
The exhibition features stories of families through many generations, telling of their struggles and triumphs.
Some of Coronado’s earliest African American pioneers migrated west looking for opportunity, following Elisha Babcock, who would develop the once-barren island and build the Hotel del Coronado. In its early years, Coronado was considered more accepting of African American residents and visitors than most San Diego neighborhoods.
Members of the segregated United States military would also settle in Coronado–Civil War veterans, Buffalo Soldiers, and veterans of the two World Wars.
The exhibition explains that many African Americans in those early years worked as maids, cooks, nurses, butlers, housekeepers, gardeners, laborers, coachmen and chauffeurs. The pay was low and life could be difficult–many residents of Coronado would persist in supporting segregation for decades. Surprisingly, Coronado’s local schools were integrated from the beginning.
Visitors to the museum will learn how African American graduates from Coronado High School during the Civil Rights Era went on to successful careers and achievements in the arts, military, private business, and government. That success in the community continues to this day.
If you ever find yourself in beautiful Coronado, head to the The Coronado Historical Association‘s free museum and experience An Island Looks Back: Uncovering Coronado’s Hidden African American History.
You will be inspired by the life stories and accomplishments of African Americans who’ve called Coronado home.
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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)!
Byron Nordberg — In recognition of his many contributions to the development of passenger rail in Oceanside, San Diego County, California and the United States.
A plaque honoring Byron Nordberg is embedded in a boulder near the train platforms at the Oceanside Transit Center. It recognizes a visionary mover and shaker, who is largely responsible for the creation of this regional transportation center, where Amtrak, Metrolink, the Coaster, the Sprinter, plus Greyhound buses and several North County Transit District bus routes conveniently come together.
Here’s a great article that concerns the work of Byron Nordberg. And here’s a press release regarding his death in 1997. If you ride the San Diego trolley or the aforementioned trains, you might appreciate his early advocacy of rail in Southern California, as well as innovations that allow passengers to easily board trains without stepping up, safe tunnels and overpasses under and over tracks, and double tracks at stations that prevent unnecessary delays in the system.
From his childhood he was a lover a trains. I am, too. So I thank him.
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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)!
The Southeastern Live Well Center opened last year in Valencia Park, an urban community in Southeast San Diego. The impressive facility, which provides a wide range of health and social services, features diverse works of art, both inside and outside.
Take a look at the inspiring bronze sculpture that stands at the front entrance of the Southeastern Live Well Center. Stepping Beyond is dated 2023.
The artist Manuelita Brown’s statement is on a plaque at the base of the sculpture. Her words include: This sculpture signifies a human being pressing beyond current circumstances, leaving one space toward another while moving an obstacle out of the way…Eight medallions representing the flora of cultural identities in the community adorn the banner to represent our diversity and commonality.
(I walked around the perimeter of this large San Diego County facility last weekend and discovered a Wellness Garden filled with very colorful artwork. I’ll blog about that shortly!)
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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)!
This morning I saw this and more as participants prepared for the 42nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade along San Diego’s beautiful Embarcadero.
Every year the MLK Day parade along the waterfront is a big deal. Thousands come out to watch community groups celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and his enduring message of human dignity, equality and love.
Dancers, marching bands, students, veterans, beauty queens, activists, club members, law enforcement, politicians, businesses, car lovers, charitable organizations . . . all would move proudly down Harbor Drive.
I took photographs of everyone coming together before the start of the parade.
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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)!
An inspiring exhibit at the Lemon Grove Parsonage Museum celebrates friendship and community service. It’s titled Marching Forward.
The history of the Forward Club of Lemon Grove (later known as the Lemon Grove Women’s Club) is detailed with photographs, newspaper clippings and assorted documents. Visitors to the museum can learn about the club’s beginning in early 1913 (when Lemon Grove was a small ranch community) to its “last meeting” in 1998 to its very recent rebirth.
The exhibit describes: The club began, like many of its time, as a place for women to study literature and discuss current events. They didn’t stay inside studying for long; they were soon outside planting trees. In 1922, when the club was just nine years old, they built their own clubhouse… By the 1950s, a time when Lemon Grove was one of the fastest growing communities in the state, the club had 150 members… In 2022 the clubhouse 100th anniversary celebration inspired a group of Lemon Grove women to resurrect the club. They voted to use the historic name, so once again the Forward Club is going about doing good.
Community service that club members have performed over the years include helping the needy, the encouragement of youth, and neighborhood beautification. In addition, cultural events in their old clubhouse brought joy to many.
If you’d like to enjoy a glimpse of Lemon Grove history, and see how a group of pioneering women made (and continue to make) their community a much better place, plan a fun visit to the Parsonage Museum in beautiful Treganza Heritage Park!
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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)!
It was a bit damp on the morning of New Year’s Eve in Balboa Park. It had rained overnight.
Big weekend crowds wouldn’t turn out until the afternoon, which made my early walk quiet and easy.
I wandered about randomly, turning right or left with no clear destination. The sky was overcast and the air was chilly.
Kids splashed in puddles. Artists were setting up along El Prado. Street musicians were already filling the air with music. Ambitious tourists pointed at new sights, as they explored San Diego’s crown jewel. The faces of friends were already smiling.
Even on a gray, damp, chilly morning, Balboa Park is very alive.
I’m sure in the coming year this special place will bring more joy to you and me.
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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! 