Tag: pop culture

Preparations outside Comic-Con: 2 days to go!

Preparations are well underway for all the activities outside the San Diego Convention Center during Comic-Con 2024!

I walked through San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, along MLK Promenade and around the convention center a couple times today, curious to see what all is going on. I took a bunch of photos! (You might notice I haven’t sharpened or edited them.)

First, The Penguin banners were going up along the trolley tracks across from the convention center…

There’s going to be an Unknown Comics Pop-Up Store in the Gaslamp.

Workers were getting The Lodge ready for Paramount+.

Batman: Caped Crusader posters pasted to a downtown San Diego wall.

The two Star Trek/Dr. Who offsite locations now have outside graphics.

Workers were adding superhero graphics to the Marvel Contest of Champions Ferris wheel.

The Marriott Marquis now has Dragon Ball graphics above the front entrance.

Workers were preparing the Dragon Ball offsite on the Marriott Marquis Marina Terrace.

Here I’m walking down the bayside boardwalk toward the Hilton.

Abbott Elementary’s A.V.A. FEST has added their big slide. Happy people will plunge into a ball pit.

Work is finally underway at Adult Swim’s offsite: the Pirate Parrrty!

Workers are putting up the big FX wrap on the Hilton promoting What We Do in the Shadows.

Peeking into the FX offsite. Looks like a topiary garden.

More photos of the FX activation at Comic-Con.

Peacock’s offsite in Gaslamp Square, recreating the ancient Roman stadium Circus Maximus, now has a handsome exterior.

Baja Rick’s at Gaslamp Square now has graphics promoting the Olympic Games on NBC.

IGN is getting their balcony at the Hard Rock Hotel ready. Watch for celebrities here!

Workers are finishing up the AMC building wraps on the Hilton Gaslamp.

Getting the Peanuts offsite ready on Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade.

Not sure what this will be for.

The entrance is being created for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, just beyond Peanuts.

San Diego is nearly ready for Comic-Con in 2024! Preview Night is in two days!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

See movie star hand prints in San Diego!

Hand and shoe prints in concrete of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

If you’re heading to San Diego Comic-Con this week, heads up! Did you know you can see the actual hand and shoe prints of major movie stars and celebrities in a Gaslamp Quarter restaurant?

The prints of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Downey Jr., William Shatner, the actors who played R2-D2 and C-3PO, and even Michael Jackson can be viewed on the floor when you step into Mr. Tempo Gaslamp San Diego at 701 Fifth Avenue!

The building formerly was home to the Theatre Box movie theater. They had these hand prints brought in from Los Angeles, and they remain here to this day. Sadly, Mr. Tempo has dropped the Hollywood theme and many of the prints are now covered by tables. But it’s well worth stepping inside for a quick look!

By the way, the Shatner prints, if you can find them, were created here in San Diego, a couple years ago during Comic-Con!

Hand and shoe prints of The Hunger Games actors.

Hand and feet prints of Shirley Temple.

Hand and shoe prints of Humphrey Bogart.

Hand and shoe prints of Robert Downey Jr.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

SpongeBob greets hotel guests in San Diego!

SpongeBob SquarePants and his watery friends are now greeting guests inside San Diego’s Hard Rock Hotel!

Fun SpongeBob graphics can be spotted in the hotel’s lobby. They celebrate the 25th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants during Comic-Con 2024. The Hard Rock Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter will be buzzing with activity once Comic-Con begins later this week!

The exterior of the hotel is now covered with colorful SpongeBob graphics, too! If you’d like to see photographs of the huge, very funny building wrap, click here!

Paramount+ is behind the hotel’s fun interior and exterior during Comic-Con. They encourage people to Stream Like a Sponge!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Marvel superheroes ride a Ferris wheel!

Deadpool.

A group of powerful Marvel superheroes have boarded the cars of a big yellow Ferris wheel in San Diego for Comic-Con 2024!

Beginning this Thursday, the superheroes, participants in the Contest of Champions, will be joining fans wheeling through the sky a short distance from the San Diego Convention Center. The superheroes, however, won’t be doing battle, fortunately–they are merely decorative wraps that have been applied to the Ferris wheel’s dangling cars!

The free ride promotes the Contest of Champions game available on Google Play. I posted a blog yesterday that contains more details about the ride, which you can read here.

Meanwhile, enjoy these photos taken this Monday morning. Workers were busy applying the wraps, and a few were captured by my camera…

Iron Man.

Guillotine.

Kushala.

Spider-Gwen.

Shuri.

Wolverine.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Comic-Con’s elevators to Animation Domination!

Animation Domination awaits those who ride these special elevators during Comic-Con 2024!

The Omni San Diego Hotel has been decorated by FOX to promote their popular animated shows, from The Simpsons to Family Guy to Bob’s Burgers to Krapopolis. In addition to a positively enormous Animation Domination building wrap, the hotel’s main elevators now have some very colorful graphics, as you can see in these photos taken today.

As we approach the start of Comic-Con, more and more cool stuff is popping up around downtown San Diego! Stay tuned!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

More creativity, outdoor fun before Comic-Con!

What the heck is that green thing? It’s part of another fun, surprising offsite being created outside the San Diego Convention Center before Comic-Con 2024!

What I love about walking around before Comic-Con is the mushrooming creativity. Sure, the offsite activations, building and trolley wraps, and carnival rides are all about marketing movies, television shows, video games and whatnot–but it is creativity that brings delight to the buying public. Art and storytelling are an essential part of it all.

So it’s now Sunday afternoon before Comic-Con 2024. Several days to go before the pop culture convention officially opens. I’ve already posted lots of photos the past few days. But more stuff keeps materializing!

Local artist Shirish Villaseñor has begun painting the windows of the Starbucks at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront. It’s a SpongeBob SquarePants theme celebrating the cartoon’s 25th anniversary! (She has some big community mural projects coming up in San Diego which I hope to cover in the next couple months.)

The smile of a friendly artist!

The FX offsite and building wrap are getting ready. Like most Comic-Con offsites, it opens on Thursday.

Hulu’s Animayhem has returned in 2024. They’ll have a huge offsite behind the convention center.

I’m pretty sure you can’t slide inside this huge green pipe.

Some sort of fun factory.

A big swing ride at the A.V.A. FEST. Woo-hoo!

That cool Star Trek wrap is now 100% complete on the Marriott Marquis.

Crates have arrived for the Dragon Ball offsite. It’s going to be awesome as usual!

A big Dragon Ball wrap is being placed on part of the Marriott Marquis.

The second side of a trolley wrap design that I hadn’t been able to photograph earlier. The Boys.

The big, fun Marvel Contest of Champions Ferris wheel under construction along MLK Promenade.

More spooky Immortal Universe graphics placed on the Hilton Gaslamp.

A wider look.

My goodness! Wrapping the large Hard Rock Hotel all around with SpongeBob graphics takes many days of work.

The Lodge by Paramount+ is starting to look like a lodge.

The transforming power of human creativity.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Building the Circus Maximus in San Diego!

The ancient Roman chariot-racing stadium Circus Maximus is presently being built in San Diego! Workers are putting the structure together in downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp Square!

Admittedly, this Circus Maximus might be more of a minimus, seeing how it’s vastly smaller than the Roman ruin. It’s going to be a super cool offsite during Comic-Con 2024!

Comic-Con fans who enter the stadium (which I previously and mistakenly assumed was the Colosseum) will get to actually ride simulated chariots! While hundreds of tiny Romans cheer!

The whole experience promotes Peacock’s new series Those About to Die. As you can see in the next photo, the new Gaslamp Square video screen operated by MTS is showing an advertisement for the Roman gladiator show.

Circus might also describe activities outside Comic-Con once the international pop culture convention begins. Massive crowds and loads of craziness! The good kind!

UPDATE!

Whoa! Check it out! Later on I saw this…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Here come the San Diego Comic-Con offsites!

Comic-Con is back in full force! After a few difficult years, due to COVID and a writers strike, it seems that in 2024 the epic international pop culture convention is going to be bigger and more exciting than ever! And outside the San Diego Convention Center there will be many fun offsites for the public to enjoy!

Many of those offsite activations are now under construction with less than a week to go until Comic-Con begins.

I walked around downtown San Diego, the Gaslamp and the convention center this morning and found all sorts of exciting activity. Check out these photos…

First up, The Lodge is under construction at the Happy Does Bar on Fifth Avenue. The Lodge is an activation that will showcase Paramount+ shows…

Next, at Gaslamp Square, Peacock’s unique Those About to Die Chariot Racing offsite is under construction. I was told visitors can actually ride around the tiny colosseum that is being built!

When I walked over the Harbor Drive pedestrian bridge, I noticed a lot of canopies are being prepared outside the San Diego Convention Center! It’s summer, the lines and crowds will be big, and shade will be welcome!

Between the convention center and the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, FX is setting up on the grass in their usual spot. I suspect that big building wrap on the Hilton will promote What We Do in the Shadows…

Not much is ready with Adult Swim’s offsite, yet. Looks like their usual setup…

I believe that next behind the convention center is the Hulu offsite. I’ll have to wait and see. I read the Abbott Elementary A.V.A. Fest offsite will be somewhere back here, too…

The Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina’s Terrace is where Dragon Ball will have their always super cool offsite. Workers were cleaning to get ready this morning…

A Shaun of the Dead offsite will be at 520 Fifth Avenue during Comic-Con 2024. I spotted a Winchester Tavern sign on the sidewalk outside!

What are these mysterious props coming down the street in a truck? Time will tell!

UPDATE!

The following morning I walked around to see what progress had been made…

First, I found where the Abbott Elementary offsite will be–at the end of the superyacht landing. They were getting ready to erect the A.V.A. FEST’s big swing ride!

Then I walked past Hulu’s huge site, which they continue to work on…

I passed the Adult Swim offsite by, where not much had happened yet, and then checked out FX’s progress, including their big wrap on the Hilton…

I crossed over to the Gaslamp where I checked out Peacock’s Those About to Die chariot racing offsite. My next blog post will show what I saw here this Sunday morning in more detail.

On the grass to one side of the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp some workers had begun conferring. I didn’t speak to them, but I’m assuming the Marvel Champions Ferris wheel will be here.

Some more construction going on at The Lodge…

And the Shaun of the Dead offsite up Fifth Avenue is making progress..

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Rings of Power found in the Gaslamp Quarter!

What would you do if you found a magic ring from Middle Earth? Would you place it on your finger? Would you eventually fall under the power of Sauron?

Well, some Rings of Power can be found in San Diego during Comic-Con 2024! You can see them near the Gaslamp Quarter, Historic Heart Of San Diego archway!

Some large, very cool looking building wraps are being applied to the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp across Fifth Avenue from the Hard Rock Hotel. They promote The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime.

I’ll take more photos as these building wraps approach completion and post them in an update below!

UPDATE!

The wraps appeared nearly finished the following morning. I took the following photographs under less than ideal light conditions, so I had to radically adjust contrast and brightness. But the darker images are fitting! After all, darkness will bind them!

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!

Star Trek captains beam down to Comic-Con!

This morning I noticed that two Star Trek captains are beaming down to San Diego for Comic-Con 2024! They’re materializing high up on the Marriott Marquis hotel in the form of a gigantic building wrap!

The wrap, when finished, will no doubt promote Star Trek shows on Paramount+.

(That yellow section in the middle of captains Picard and Pike is an old Esri User Conference wrap being removed now that their recent convention is over.)

I’ll take more photos once this cool Star Trek wrap is completed and post them below as an update!

UPDATE!

The awesome Star Trek wrap appeared to be nearly finished the following morning. I added contrast to the photos to bring out the colors, as our San Diego sun hadn’t yet penetrated the early overcast.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!