It’s sad that the Ocean Beach Pier has become so storm damaged that it is now permanently closed and must be rebuilt. If there’s a tiny silver lining to this very dark cloud, it’s that the locked gate at the pier’s foot has become the home of OB LOVE.
Ladies at the Ocean Beach Main Street Association informed me this mosaic art was created by members of the OB community a year ago. A San Diego lifeguard who was watching the pier agreed that it’s really cool!
Each small tile in the mosaic contains a photograph of Ocean Beach. I had to take a closer look…
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You might enjoy checking out these photographs of three cool murals in South Oceanside. I saw them about a month ago when I walked up South Coast Highway.
The first celebrates “South O” with a view of the Oceanside Pier (to the north) at sunset. The mural is painted on a side of the building at 1821 S. Coast Highway. The artist is Taylor Gallegos (@taylorgallegosart).
The next mural is tagged #ThePearlofSouthO. It’s another Oceanside Pier at sunset–but more abstract. You can find this work of art at 1745 S. Coast Highway.
Finally, anyone traveling along South Coast Highway has undoubtedly observed the next mural at Sea Hive Marketplace. The address is 1555 S. Coast Highway. It states: Greetings from Oceanside USA!
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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.
The Holiday Bowl was played yesterday in San Diego. It’s a time for family vacations–the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Passengers with rolling suitcases were boarding a cruise ship. No wonder so many people were walking along the Embarcadero this morning.
Wouldn’t you know, I took these photos under a gray overcast sky, and just as my walk ended the sun broke out and the sky turned bright blue. Not unusual in San Diego. Even in winter.
I began by walking north from the Broadway Pier…
I returned from the Star of India to the Broadway Pier, and will now proceed south…
The last old building at Navy Pier is being demolished, making way for Freedom Park. The almost 10-acre public park will be developed on the historic pier next to the USS Midway Museum.
New trees have been planted on the grassy lawn between the USS San Diego Memorial and the Embracing Peace statue of the Greatest Generation Walk.
Late Saturday morning, and the weekly Tuna Harbor Dockside Market was winding down.
A commercial fishing boat loads boxes of frozen bait.
This holiday season’s first ever “Downtown Skate” roller skating rink wasn’t open yet. The action would begin at noon behind the Marriott Marquis and Marina hotel.
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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.
Lately, if you’ve walked along San Diego’s Embarcadero past the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum, you’ve probably noticed heavy machinery and a pile of rubble near Navy Pier!
The old Naval Supply Depot headhouse is being torn down, to make way for the future Freedom Park!
I took these photographs on Sunday after jumping off the Coronado ferry. Having walked past the old headhouse hundreds of times over many, many years, seeing its destruction in progress is a trifle jarring.
Early this summer I shared photos when the demolition had barely begun. If you want to see those previous photos and find more information about the landmark Freedom Park project, 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.
A beach scene mural that shows the Oceanside Pier, a woodie and three girls with a surfboard on the sand has appeared in downtown Oceanside. You can view it on the parking lot side of Finney’s Crafthouse restaurant. Postcard-like words read: Greetings From OCEANSIDE.
The artist is Jerry Ragg. The mural was painted in 2024 in memory of JT Ragg.
I spotted the cool artwork during my weekend walk in Oceanside and took these photographs into the sun. Consequently, I had to increase the contrast of each image quite a bit.
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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.
The Sun & Sea Festival returned to Imperial Beach for 2024, attracting a good crowd as usual. And, as always, the annual event beside the Imperial Beach Pier featured sand sculptures!
A monumental sand mega castle was being finished by a group of local artists late this morning when I walked through the festival.
The “Back 2 IB” sculpture celebrates nostalgia. Carved into the sand are fun retro images that bring back fond memories of the 1980s, from Back to the Future, to Ghostbusters, to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, to Cabbage Patch Kids, to Rubik’s Cube, to Pac-Man. (I’ll be sharing more photos of the amazing sand sculpture in my next blog post!)
The festival also featured a Kids-n-Kastles competition, with 15 team entries built on the beach north of the pier. There was no adult competition this year. Sadly, there weren’t enough sponsors.
The COVID pandemic and sewage coming from the Tijuana River polluting the ocean off Imperial Beach have visibly hurt this long-running event, not to mention the Imperial Beach community and local businesses. Nobody was out in the water, apart from several surfers who were seriously risking their health.
I spoke to people at a Surfrider Foundation tent. They said very slow progress is being made to solve the sewage problem. The ocean here has been off limits for about two years now. It’s a problem that seems to have no end.
In spite of this, however, there was plenty of fun to be had at the 2024 Sun & Sea Festival! Lots of food! Live music! A fantastic location and SoCal beach vibe!
Here are my photos…
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
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Near the center of the hangar deck of the USS Midway Museum, there’s a scale model of Freedom Park at Navy Pier. When completed, this large, new public park will occupy the historic pier that the USS Midway aircraft carrier has called home now for 20 years.
One can walk around the model and visualize in three dimensions how Freedom Park will appear when it has its Grand Opening, which is scheduled for Spring 2028. The park will include a formal parade ground, plenty of grass for recreation, gardens, benches, play structures, trees and winding walkways, and a monumental flag at the pier’s end which will be visible from downtown and across San Diego Bay.
This informative presentation provides an excellent overview of the plans for Freedom Park, including a detailed map and timeline for completion.
The parade ground will feature a central statue of John William Finn, San Diego area resident and last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the attack on Pearl Harbor. The park will also feature a Family and Sacrifice Monument, honoring the sacrifices thousands of military families have made, telling their stories. Navy Pier was once where many families waved goodbye to departing sailors.
A Footsteps of Freedom interpretive path will follow the length of Navy Pier and circle around the USS Midway, connecting with the present-day Greatest Generation Walk, where many military monuments exist today. (Including this Navy plaque, whose exact origin was a mystery, until some of this blog’s readers provided amazing information!)
Other features will enhance the new Freedom Park, such as a Digital Journey that people can follow with their smartphones.
Today, after viewing the model and taking a few photos, I asked a docent at the Midway Museum: where will visitors park their cars? (Most of the parking lot now atop the pier will be vanishing.) He informed me there is underground parking at the new RaDD complex across Harbor Drive. A small parking lot will remain near the entrance of the museum.
Of course, a project of this magnitude requires a lot of funding. There’s more money to be raised. If you’d like to buy a Freedom Park Legacy Brick and help with this effort, 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.
Demolition has begun of the crumbling structure on the east end of Navy Pier. The old building is the last remnant of San Diego’s historic Naval Supply Depot, which grew over the years into a major complex. You can read the fascinating history here.
Over the next few years, the surface of Navy Pier, including the large parking lot next to the USS Midway, will be converted into beautiful Freedom Park! The project is a partnership between the Port of San Diego and the USS Midway Museum.
Today I learned from a museum employee that before the walls of the old headhouse are torn down, workers are busy removing asbestos and doing the preliminary things that are necessary.
You can visualize how Freedom Park at Navy Pier will appear when completed by visiting this web page. I was told the park, which will honor “ordinary” heroes, will likely be finished in 2027.
When I was a young man I observed dozens of Army tanks parked inside this building and lined up along the pier. I wish I’d taken photographs. I believe that was back in the 1980s.
UPDATE!
The exterior demolition had begun in August…
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Two unusual ocean-going vessels are now visiting San Diego. Both are large and amazing!
The first, which you see above, is the Island Pride, a state of the art construction and support vessel. It features a large helicopter landing pad and an impressive crane. It’s docked at the B Street Pier. I don’t know why it’s in San Diego–I saw it this morning during a walk along the Embarcadero. If you’re curious, you can read about this impressive ship on its website here.
That helicopter pad in front makes Island Pride appear as if it’s wearing a hat!
The second ship, moored a short distance north of the Maritime Museum of San Diego, is the superyacht Aquijo.
According to this Wikipedia article, Aquijo is (or recently was) the largest ketch in the entire world! A ketch is a two-masted sailboat whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast. Aquijo was built in the Netherlands.
Take a look at the final photo. Impressive!
You never know what sort of cool sight you might encounter during a walk along San Diego’s Embarcadero!
UPDATE!
Here’s a pic of Island Pride taken several days later. It had turned around…
ANOTHER UPDATE!
About a month later, I spotted Aquijo docked behind the San Diego Convention Center…
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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)!
Meet an old-timer on the Oceanside Pier–a California Brown Pelican named Michael.
Michael has been hanging around the pier about twenty years, according to Jeff who works at the bait shop. Michael the pelican likes to gobble handouts from passing fishermen.
He likes to watch people walking along the Oceanside Pier, too.
Michael had a foot problem. Humans helped him out and now he’s much better. I could plainly see that he and Jeff were close buddies.
But he doesn’t like strangers to get too close.
How did the bird get its name? Jeff told me that Michael has a tendency to dance around–like Michael Jackson.
(Jeff also explained that Iggy the snowy egret will sometimes join him inside the bait shop. When I happened by today, Iggy, Ziggy and several other egrets were being shy, standing on the bait shop’s roof.)
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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! 