Tag: san diego

Spanish galleon versus an aircraft carrier!

It’s almost New Year’s Day. It’s one of those days when we pause to think about the passing of time.

During a walk along San Diego’s Embarcadero this morning, I took these interesting photographs. They demonstrate how human technology has advanced over the course of five hundred years.

A replica of the 16th century Spanish galleon San Salvador (the ship sailed by explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo when he “discovered” San Diego Bay), built by the Maritime Museum of San Diego, was crossing the water. Just beyond were two active U.S. Navy aircraft carriers docked at NAS North Island: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71).

So how do these very different ships compare?

The historic San Salvador galleon was about 100 feet long. The two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers have a length of 1,092 feet. That’s more than ten times the length of an old Spanish galleon.

A galleon, built primarily of wood, would have a displacement weight of about 200 tons. The gigantic, mostly steel aircraft carriers? Their displacement weight is 116,800 tons–that’s 584 times heavier!

A Spanish galleon could travel at a maximum speed of around 8 knots (under ideal wind conditions). These enormous, nuclear powered aircraft carriers can travel at a speed over 30 knots, no matter the weather, without refueling for 20–25 years!

Today technology is progressing at a mind-boggling rate. Is it possible to imagine the distant future? In another five hundred years, will an advanced civilization still need or have ocean-going ships?

Only time will tell!

Happy New Year!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Wishing you Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Christmas is three days away.

It’s hard to believe another year has sped by. We’re almost a quarter of a century into the 2000s! How did that happen so quickly?

I think I’ll take the next couple weeks off from blogging. To relax a bit, recharge. After the New Year, Cool San Diego Sights should be back–in its 12th year–with more cool photographs from more walks! That’s the plan!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! May our adventures next year be better than ever!

I was considering what photographs to post here, and I decided to share old Christmas photographs taken about ten years ago with a lesser camera. But these half dozen photographs somehow made it into a great book written by historian Bill Swank: Christmas in San Diego!

Bill Swank for many years played Santa Claus at Balboa Park’s Spreckels Organ Pavilion during Christmas on the Prado and December Nights. He’s an award-winning author and leading authority when it comes to the history of the San Diego Padres. Learn a little more about him and his many merry endeavors here!

Anyway, the six photographs you see in this blog post appear in the pages of Bill’s 2015 book Christmas in San Diego. I feel very honored that they were selected.

San Diego is a city full of surprises. Here’s to more great memories!

Richard

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

San Diego holiday fun at Downtown Skate!

Looking for some holiday season fun in downtown San Diego?

Look what I discovered today during my walk along San Diego’s sunny Embarcadero. The first ever Downtown Skate roller skating rink at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina!

The 6000 square foot rink has a beautiful view of the Marriott Marina and sailboats passing on San Diego Bay, and features festive decorations that light up in the evening after dark. There are also tasty treats to enjoy like hot chocolate (and that yummy chocolate chip cookie that I devoured)!

Some of the folks working at Downtown Skate smiled for my camera.

Would you love to “roller dance” under bright, sparkling lights?

Looks like loads of fun!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Discover secrets of the Grinch at Seaport Village!

Did you know that the holiday season television animated classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas received a censored edit due to “inappropriate” language? And that the Grinch’s green color was likely inspired by a rental car?

Those are just two of many fun facts you’ll learn about the Grinch should you visit The Chuck Jones Gallery, which recently relocated to San Diego’s Seaport Village!

The surprising “Did You Know?” display stands next to works of collectible Grinch art created by Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as beloved children’s author and cartoonist Dr. Seuss.

I happened by the gallery today and enjoyed viewing a wide variety of classic pop culture art, and learning some surprising Grinch history!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Native and Indigenous Healing Garden and mural at SDSU.

In 2022, the Native and Indigenous Healing Garden debuted at San Diego State University, to one side of the Communication Building. The circular garden, which also serves as an outdoor classroom, is filled with healing herbs that can be freely harvested. Life grows in sunshine around a central stone fountain.

The plants in the garden represent various indigenous cultures: the Kumeyaay, the Aztecs, the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, and other indigenous people in California and Mesoamerica.

Painted beside the garden on one side of the Communication Building, visitors will also find a large, very beautiful mural.

This website provides details about the 30’ x 60’ mural: Designed by students as part of an Arts Alive SDSU project by History Professor Paula DeVos and Art Professor Eva Struble, the artwork includes various plants, animals, and designs with deep ties to Native Indigenous culture throughout California and Mesoamerica.

If I lived near SDSU, I know I’d walk by frequently, simply to sit on the shady bench you see in my photographs. One feels drawn to this healing garden, the smell of sage and other life springing from the earth, and the quiet beauty of the place.

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

San Diego canals, survival ideas, and a sky mirror!

I didn’t know what to expect when I recently visited the La Jolla Historical Society‘s museum to experience their current exhibition Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work.

The exhibition is described as a retrospective about the work of husband-and-wife team of Helen Mayer and Newton Harrison, who were among the earliest and most notable ecological artists. Founding members of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Helen and Newton were local San Diego artists for nearly four decades, where they developed their pioneering concepts of Ecological Art.

Would I see paintings? What exactly was this ecological art?

What I discovered was unexpected and thoroughly thought-provoking!

The walls of the La Jolla Historical Society’s museum–the Wisteria Cottage–were covered primarily with technical drawings, maps and designs that conveyed innovative environmental ideas the couple developed over many years of working together.

If you love invention and human creativity, you’ll want to view this exhibition. You’ll see how human genius can create previously unthought-of technology that can benefit both people and the planet. You’ll observe how our understanding of nature and the ecosystems we all live in might conceivably be improved.

There were dozens of surprising ideas. I saw a proposal to create flood-reducing canals around downtown San Diego, practical Survival Pieces intended to create self-sustaining ecosystems (including a portable fish farm), and even a huge, Earth-orbiting sky mirror!

The Harrisons’ work is so expansive and full of variety that it’s hard to describe it all. So you’d better check it out yourself!

Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work is actually a multi-museum exhibition in San Diego County. The La Jolla Historical Society’s part of this exhibition is sub-titled Urban Ecologies, and traces the Harrisons’ collaborative practice during the late 1960s-1990s.

Additional parts of this exhibition can be viewed at the California Center for the Arts Escondido, and at the San Diego Public Library Gallery. Helen and Newton Harrison: California Work continues at all three locations through January 19, 2025.

If that’s not enough, this exhibition is part of a much larger Southern California event now underway: the Getty’s 70+ institution PST: Art and Science Collide!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Blazing sunrise photos along Harbor Drive!

Enjoy these photographs, taken early this morning around sunrise.

I walked through downtown San Diego along Harbor Drive, then on down Martin Luther King, Jr. Promenade, which parallels Harbor Drive. The sun would rise almost directly in front of me behind thin clouds.

You can see how dramatic the blazing sunrise was!

These photographs taken by my old camera are unaltered, except for some cropping. (I’m feeling lazy. Yes, I could’ve sharpened a few of them.)

What a beautiful day! What a beautiful city!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

A dazzling indoor Christmas display in San Diego!

Jewels of the Season has returned to the Timken Museum of Art in Balboa Park. The elegant lobby of the museum is decorated with over a thousand of jewel-like ornaments, creating perhaps the finest, most dazzling indoor Christmas display in San Diego!

Take a look at these photos. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

These one-of-a-kind ornaments were hand crafted by artists Florence Hord and Elizabeth Schlappi over the course of decades. Many of these precious works of art include colorfully embroidered and sequined patches that feature the San Diego Zoo, the Padres, the Star of India and other local attractions.

Visitors might stand in the museum lobby and simply stare with astonishment at the richly decorated Christmas tree, or the ceiling from which many ornaments hang like glittering stars.

Jewels of the Season can be freely enjoyed during the Timken‘s open hours until December 29, 2024. If you love Christmas, it’s a can’t miss for the entire family!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

San Diego artist James Watts and 100 Paintings!

Have you visited the downtown studio of San Diego artist James Watts (@jewattso)? The experience will blow your mind!

I’m personally inspired by James Watts. Like a perpetual motion machine, he happily creates, creates and creates. His studio is so jam-packed with creative genius that you don’t know in which direction to turn your eyes.

That’s going to be more true than ever, because he’s now in the middle of a new project. He’s creating 100 Paintings!

James showed me his work yesterday when I happened to walk by the open door of his magical studio. He has finished 18 of the 100 paintings so far.

His paintings are in groups of five; each group includes a still life, a nude, a portrait, a cityscape, and a symbolic or literary painting. He intentionally emulates the styles of different famous painters.

Gazing about his studio, you’ll notice that many works of art–paintings and sculptures–depict characters from classic novels, history or mythology. When he was a kid, James loved to sit in the library and read comic books and magazines. Today, as an accomplished visual artist, he brings the written word to life in new, fantastic ways.

For some reason, James reminds me of science fiction and fantasy author Ray Bradbury. His energetic love of life. His love of everything–from pop culture to the classics. His smile and enthusiasm.

Up next is a painting showing James Watts’ studio. Do you recognize it? Look for the art-filled windows (and his cats) in downtown San Diego on 7th Avenue between C Street and Broadway.

A couple of photos of new paintings inside the studio…

The next photo shows a painting inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis! (Lying next to it is a lamppost just outside the studio.)

James loves to use wood and other materials for his myriad projects. The next photo shows wood block finger puppets painted with images from the Epic of Gilgamesh!

Endless wonders fill the downtown studio of San Diego artist James Watts!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!

Photos of San Diego’s big holiday Pet Parade!

There’s a fun holiday parade in San Diego that seems to grow in popularity every year. The 2024 Gaslamp Quarter Pet Parade was held this afternoon, and thousands converged in downtown San Diego to enjoy the spectacle!

Excited dogs joined spectators lining the Fifth Avenue sidewalk. Costumed dog participants walked up the parade route or rode on small floats, while marching bands from several local high schools performed favorite Christmas music. Students from Eastlake High School, Castle Park High School, Chula Vista High School, and Montgomery High School contributed to the happy pageantry.

I joined the crowd smiling at the dog-gone merry parade! My camera got busy!

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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.

Thank you for sharing!