
Walk randomly about San Diego and you’ll inevitably stumble upon a few odd, humorous sights…









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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!

Walk randomly about San Diego and you’ll inevitably stumble upon a few odd, humorous sights…









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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!
Another short story has poured from my fingertips. This one concerns a strange natural phenomenon that isn’t explained by science.
The story might seem to be about a lighthouse and the refraction of physical light.
But it’s actually about how to magnify one’s heart light.
I’ve titled the story One Lone Candle.
Read it here.

Some fantastic, highly innovative art is now on display at the SDSU Downtown Gallery. Tom Loeser: Please Please Please is the title of the surprising exhibition.
Walk through the door of the SDSU Downtown Gallery and you might not be sure whether you’ve entered a bizarre furniture and hardware store or a dream-place where art conforms to your body. Those abstract paintings on the wall actually unfold into chairs! Those shovel handles in a row form the back of a beautifully crafted wooden bench! That colorful “luggage” tossed in a heap in one corner seems more appropriate for a comfortable living room than a cargo hold!
According to a sign in the gallery, Tom Loeser imagines new ways that the body, furniture and space can interact. He wonders: if the furniture we sit on were totally different, how might our lives be different too?
I can tell you resting on these pieces (and you’re allowed to actually sit on a few of his tumblers) would put me in a very creative and happy state of mind.
As I sat I might gaze at Tom Loeser’s artwork on the gallery’s walls, which includes fantastic blue cyanotypes and strangely elemental pyrography. Transformed by the artist’s genius, ordinary objects seem to radiate a weird spiritual essence. The images, like his furniture, seem to present a vision of unexpected potentialities in our practical, solidly physical world.
If you love really clever art, check out the SDSU Downtown Gallery before this exhibition ends on October 28, 2018!









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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!
Today I found myself walking through Coronado.
The sunshine was strong. I settled on a bench facing a margin of white beach and let my mind wander.
I and many others were sitting, relaxing, playing, speaking, thinking, soaking in one more summer at the edge of an ocean. A canvas of wide blue unrolled into the distance. Tiny glints of light beckoned from very far away.
My eyes were drawn irresistibly to a mystery beyond the horizon.
As our eyes rise to peer beyond life’s ebb and flow, we drift to strange places beyond our reach.
My photographs have been altered slightly. You might recognize Point Loma, Mexico and the small, rocky Coronado Islands that jut from the ocean a bit southwest of Tijuana.
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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!
To read a few small stories that I’ve written, wander over to Short Stories by Richard.
I got some cool photos yesterday when I walked past new lobster traps on a pier. The cage-like traps and their shadows, which were cast on a clean flat surface, created an illusion of strange dimension and space that captured my eye.
These grids of metal and shadow remind me of some unusual sculptural artwork I recently blogged about in the gallery of San Diego’s Central Library.
The following images almost look like molecules arranged in a matrix. Intersecting parallel lines seem to form an abstract, mathematical, three dimensional space.
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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!
Life is a stimulating adventure!

Do you enjoy unusual art?
There’s a cool exhibition now showing at the San Diego Central Library’s ninth floor Art Gallery called A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes. On display is the work of eight local artists: Adam Belt, Matthew Bradley, Sheena Rae Dowling, Andrew McGranahan, Arzu Ozkal, Cheryl Sorg, Jones von Jonestein, and Melissa Walter.
Some of the artwork is quite cosmic and trippy, while other pieces take a curious look at science fiction and our popular culture’s obsession with space travel, UFOs and extraterrestrial visitation.
If the exhibition’s name seems familiar, that’s because A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes was the title of a 1919 monograph by Robert H. Goddard, the founding father of modern rocketry.
After examining this artwork one might wonder: Exactly how did Goddard come up with plans to build a rocket? Was he actually a visitor from outer space? Is it possible? Maybe?
The fun exhibition will continue through September 16, 2018!











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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!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!

You’ve got another week to head down to the Broadway Pier to experience some very cool public art!
Sojourner, created by San Diego artist Adam Belt, seems to bend reality as you walk around it and step inside. Mirrors cause the viewer see our city’s beautiful blue bay in a whole new way!
Sojourner was commissioned by the Port of San Diego as part of their Port Spaces public art initiative. The installation will be removed after April 29, 2018.







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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!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Here are some very cool photos!
Early this morning, while it was still dark, I moved curiously around (and inside) the new Jaume Plensa sculpture Pacific Soul in downtown San Diego. Bright lights shining up from beneath the sculpture give its hollow but extremely complex form weird substance. Every angle fascinated my eyes.
If you’d like to learn more about this amazing public art, which now stands at the corner of Broadway and Pacific Highway near the Embarcadero, visit my original blog post, where several months ago, over the period of several days, I documented Pacific Soul’s installation. In that post I also provided some information about Jaume Plensa, who is a world-renowned artist from Spain.
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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!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
In downtown San Diego at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Ash Street you’ll find a very mysterious building. At first glance it appears to be a Gothic manor, or the corner of an impenetrable stone castle. Stranger still, a small shield on the building’s exterior includes the word GAS. Is this the castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, from which gas is expelled in your general direction? No–it’s a power substation of San Diego Gas and Electric!
The secure little building was designed by prominent architect Richard Requa in 1922, who would go on to become Master Architect for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition in Balboa Park.
My imagination is always electrified when I walk past this unusual sight. Is a Frankenstein monster being assembled behind those dark walls?
Here are some photos!
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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!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!

A slow, lazy day. One last November day of unseasonably warm weather. Like many, I had the day off from work.
A quiet stroll along San Diego Bay.
A day for dreaming by the water.











Today two ideas for short stories came to me like a dream. As I sat on a bench by beautiful San Diego Bay, I penned a few passing words.
I believe the titles will be The Failed Heart and A Dangerous Noise. When these stories feel finished–if that feeling ever comes–I’ll publish them on my writing blog Short Stories by Richard.