Tag: social media

More fun San Diego photos on Instagram!

Want to check out some fun San Diego photographs on Instagram?

I just added a bunch of colorful photos to my Instagram page. You can see them by clicking here!

The photos I share on Instagram are from past blog posts. Over the course of eight plus years, Cool San Diego Sights has amassed tens of thousands of images.

When I add memorable photos to Instagram, I hope it might pique the interest of potential readers.

But you’re already here reading Cool San Diego Sights!

Thanks for visiting!

Feel free to follow my Instagram page, or click some of the links on this website. Who knows what you might discover?

A huge collection of street art images!

Do you love to discover new art?

Do you love to turn a street corner and suddenly find an amazing, unexpected mural splashed on a city wall or in a back alley? Or a small creative work painted on an electrical box by a neighborhood artist?

Cool San Diego Sights is now over seven years old. During my walks through San Diego’s diverse communities I’ve taken thousands of photographs of street art. I’ve recorded so many examples that’s it’s difficult to find them all in one place. Unless you visit my street art Pinterest page!

Even if you don’t ordinarily use Pinterest, click here and you’ll see (as of this moment) over 600 selected images of San Diego street art. Click any one of the “pinned” images and you will be presented with a link to my particular blog post featuring that art.

If you are a regular user of Pinterest, you can follow my boards and discover fun new things in San Diego as I walk around taking photos!

The general Pinterest page for Cool San Diego Sights can be found here.

If you simply want to see lots of great street art, click here!

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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Amish in San Diego, postcards, and Mexico.

I learned something interesting yesterday.

I was downtown inside the Santa Fe Depot, waiting at the train station’s kiosk for my microwaved chicken burrito, when I noticed a stand containing postcards. I wondered, in this digital age of ubiquitous cell phone cameras, where anyone can instantly post photos to social media, who would buy postcards? I asked and received a surprising reply. Amish tourists love postcards!

Which makes sense. The Amish tend to live much more simple lives, remaining largely “in the past” and shunning many of the conveniences of modern technology. And it seems to me that in some respects this might be wise. Less distraction. More eye to eye human contact.

I’ve often wondered why I sometimes see Amish folk walking around downtown San Diego, gazing about in wonder at the tall buildings and hustle and bustle around them. It seems a very odd place for these people to be. One thinks of the Amish driving pony carts in the rural Midwest or Northeast, not walking about urban California in the extreme southwestern corner of the United States.

I was told by my friend at the kiosk that the Amish come to San Diego to seek medical treatments in Mexico. I did an internet search and found this page with some explanation.

I asked my friend what Amish “tourists” were like. He explained they tend to be very quiet, but if you initiate a conversation they are surprisingly friendly and open, and in many respects much like you or me.

Next time I see these plain-dressed folk walking about, I think I’ll smile and say hello.

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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!

Help others! Join virtual Red Shoe Day online!

The 11th Annual Red Shoe Day is almost here! But this year it will be different. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the gathering of donations for Ronald McDonald House in San Diego will be entirely online!

Instead of plunking your spare change into a big red Ronald McDonald shoe held by a volunteer at a busy intersection, there’s going to be a virtual Red Shoe Day on June 4, 2020 that everyone can safely take part in and share online with others!

Ronald McDonald House Charities of San Diego, according to their mission statement: provides a “home-away-from-home” for families with children being treated for serious, often life-threatening conditions at local hospitals.

Put yourself in the shoes of a family with a seriously ill child and imagine how important this would be. You could spend much more time with your child as they undergo super scary medical treatment at a big, scary hospital. Read more about what Ronald McDonald House Charities does here.

And here is what you can do!

Click here and join this year’s virtual Red Shoe Day!

Recruit friends, coworkers and family members! Form a winning team!

Look at all the smiling volunteers I photographed in past years, before the coronavirus pandemic…

Click here to join Red Shoe Day and make a huge difference in people’s lives!

You’ll feel good, too!

Blogging during the coronavirus pandemic.

California is now under a stay-at-home order due to the coronavirus pandemic. The streets are almost empty as people remain safely in their homes to slow the rapid spread of COVID-19.

Obviously, this will affect my photography around San Diego. Until the situation improves, I’m going to curtail my outdoor walking, except to grab groceries and perhaps briefly exercise while avoiding close human contact. It’s a terrible situation. But we all need to look out for one another and do our best to minimize the impact of this very nasty virus.

What is an idle photoblogger to do?

Cool San Diego Sights already features thousands of photos–so I’ve decided to pick out past images and add them on a daily basis to my Instagram page, which is instagram.com/coolsandiegophotos.

I’m afraid I haven’t been very active on Instagram, but if you want to be cheered by colorful photos of the city, click the above link and perhaps give me a follow!

In the following days I will also concentrate on writing fiction. I have another short story in progress that concerns gratitude. Hopefully I’ll finish it soon.

To read some short works of thought-provoking fiction, you can click Short Stories by Richard.

Meanwhile, everyone who is reading this take care. We’ll eventually get through this awful situation.

The sun continues to rise.

Comic-Con cosplay photos and more on Pinterest!

If you like to use Pinterest, you might enjoy checking out a bunch of pins that I just now added to my San Diego Comic-Con Pinterest page!

The special page now contains almost 450 cosplay and other fun photographs that I’ve taken while walking around Comic-Con during the past five years!

To see all these cool photographs in one place, click here!

Cool San Diego Sights is now on Instagram!

I’ve finally done it!

People keep asking me if I’m on Instagram. Until now I’ve replied no.

For over five years I’ve posted tens of thousands of unique photographs here on Cool San Diego Sights, and to my other blog, Beautiful Balboa Park. So I figured it’s time to get in gear and start posting photos to Instagram, too!

My new Instagram page, titled coolsandiegophotos, can be found at https://www.instagram.com/coolsandiegophotos. Check it out!

This morning I added several dozen photographs that I took in the past month to my Instagram page. From this point forward, I’ll post select photos as I continue to walk about San Diego!

I’ve also added an Instagram icon to my website’s sidebar. Do you see it under the word FOLLOW? Click it if you’d like! (Those other icons help you to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr.)

Cool San Diego Sights will continue to be my main blog and center of activity. It’s where all of my photographs appear, and where readers can enjoy descriptions of random walks and discoveries.

If you do choose to follow my Instagram, thank you!

Have a great day!

Richard

How to help homeless youth this Christmas!

Donations and care bags are being gathered for homeless youth this Christmas at the SDSU Downtown Gallery and the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Donations are being gathered for homeless youth this Christmas at the SDSU Downtown Gallery, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

If you’d like to help homeless youth in San Diego this Christmas, donations of helpful items are being accepted by the SDSU Downtown Gallery, and the downtown location of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. School supplies, youth clothing and hygiene items would be very helpful.

Donations are welcome at both museums through December 20, 2018.

You can also join compassionate teens and big-hearted members of the community as care bags for homeless youth are hand assembled on December 20th from 5:00 – 7:30 pm.

Enlarge the above flyer for easy reading by clicking my photo. Feel free to share the flyer on social media.

You can also learn more details at the MCASD website by clicking here!

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Are you a blogger? Do you want to help make the world a better place? You might want to join Bloggers Lifting Others Generously.

Cool San Diego Sights turns five years old!

This coming Friday, Cool San Diego Sights will celebrate its five year anniversary!

Huh? Seriously? How is that possible?

Apparently I’m having fun, because time is flying!

I keep telling myself that I’m going to slow down this blogging thing, but it doesn’t seem to happen. I keep on walking like crazy, and I keep seeing more “cool” stuff. And so the trusty old camera keeps rising up to snap photographs.

I suppose as long as my legs continue to move, Cool San Diego Sights will expand!

Thanks to all who visit this blog. Some of you I know personally, thousands of you I will never meet. Thank you for coming along on my semi-random walks around San Diego.

During the past five years, too many amazing things have happened to mention. Starting this blog has allowed me to see things I would never have seen, meet people I would never have met. It has completely changed my life.

When I hit the publish button for my first modest post, Ribbon of life mural by the San Diego River, I had no idea how this thing would grow. Cool San Diego Sights now features 1784 blog posts and nearly twenty thousand photographs. It’s approaching half a million page views.

Cool San Diego Sights has also been the successful launching pad for Short Stories by Richard. Writing fiction is my true passion. I still can’t believe that my short story One Thousand Likes has been read by a bunch of tenth grade students. That’s utterly amazing. What an honor.

So, here we are, moving through time, and I have no idea where my next walk will be. Probably from Cortez Hill to a downtown trolley station as I head off to my job this morning. And then I’ll just keep pushing forward.

As of this moment, the only material waiting in my computer are photos of cool street art along El Cajon Boulevard, which I’ll post in the next few days. Beyond that, who knows? Anything is possible!

Have a great week!

Richard

How you can help USO San Diego fight hunger!

The USO is collecting food at Grocery Outlet Bargain Markets around San Diego. Buy a five dollar bag of food for a hungry neighbor, receive a five dollar coupon for the store!
The USO is collecting food at Grocery Outlet Bargain Markets around San Diego. Buy a five dollar bag of food for those who are hungry, receive a five dollar coupon from the store!

Before I post more photos of Comic-Con, let me alert my local readers to a great opportunity to help others. I just discovered an easy and essentially free way to help fight hunger in San Diego!

Walking back home from Comic-Con, I realized I needed groceries, so I swung by the downtown Grocery Outlet Bargain Market. As I stepped inside, I was greeted by two friendly volunteers from the USO. They’re working to fight hunger in San Diego!

I learned that during the month of July, shoppers who purchase a $5 bag of food from their table to help feed the hungry receive a $5 coupon from the store!

Kudos to the USO and their efforts. Kudos to Grocery Outlet Bargain Market for their generosity!

I also learned the USO collects food twice a month from a mobile food pantry in partnership with Feeding San Diego. Check out the USO San Diego Facebook page for times and locations!

USO San Diego collects food twice a month in partnership with Feeding San Diego. Check the USO Facebook page for their Mobile Food Pantry locations!
USO San Diego collects food twice a month in partnership with Feeding San Diego. Check the USO Facebook page for their Mobile Food Pantry locations!

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Are you a blogger? Do you want to help make the world a better place? You might want to join Bloggers Lifting Others Generously.