The Italy national football team, winner of this summer’s UEFA Euro 2020 tournament, is being celebrated on the streets of Little Italy. Banners have been hung from lamp posts in the downtown San Diego neighborhood, depicting players on the victorious soccer team.
I walked through Little Italy this morning and took photographs of several banners along India Street.
In this world whose history includes much grief and violence, perhaps a friendly sporting competition that brings people from many different nations together is a good thing.
Bravi Azzurri. Well done, Italy!
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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!
As many car racing fans know, seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson grew up in El Cajon, in San Diego’s East County.
Born in El Cajon, Jimmie Johnson began to race motorcycles when he was only four years old, and he won his first racing championship four years later. He attended Crest Elementary School, then Granite Hills High School. After he graduated, he competed in off-road motocross racing, with an extraordinary degree of success. To read a good bio of Jimmie, who in his youth also loved dirt biking in the desert during family camping trips and surfing, check out this website.
As one might expect, tributes to the now legendary Jimmie Johnson can be found around the city of El Cajon.
During my walk yesterday, I photographed a sign in the median of 2nd Street, a short distance south of Interstate 8. The sign was placed here in 2014. 2nd Street is playfully renamed Jimmie Johnson Drive – Home of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion.
The above photograph shows the sign’s north side. The following two photos are of the opposite side. The sign on its south side is lighter in color, probably due to fading from years of direct sunlight.
Banners celebrating Jimmie Johnson can also be found near the El Cajon Civic Center. In each banner, a cool graphic shows him standing next to his No. 48 Chevrolet, racing during his NASCAR career with Hendrick Motorsports.
The following photos show a banner on the north side of Main Street near The Magnolia performing arts theater. I noticed an identical banner hangs in the nearby Prescott Promenade park.
Starting this year, Jimmie Johnson is competing in the IndyCar Series, driving the No. 48 Honda over road and street courses for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Will the El Cajon native also excel at open-wheel racing? I wouldn’t be surprised!
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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!
It was raining when I walked up to the Walls of Excellence in Lincoln Park today. Moments after I lifted my camera, as if by magic, the sun came out, shining upon the names of students who have achieved a great honor in this southeast San Diego community.
Every year, since 2000, three seniors from each of four school are selected for inclusion in the Walls of Excellence. These students, from Gompers Preparatory Academy, Lincoln High School, Morse High School and the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, are honored with their own engraved glass panel. Those who are selected have excelled both in their studies and in community service.
Along one side of the walls are quotes concerning wisdom. Above the walls rises a beautiful monument like a long finger. When the sun comes out, that sky-pointing finger turns golden.
The Walls of Excellence is located on Imperial Avenue at Willie James Jones Avenue.
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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!
The students at Wangenheim Middle School in Mira Mesa have created posters that tell the truth about the destructive nature of drugs.
I was fortunate today to be walking nearby as members of the Associated Student Body were hanging these very creative anti-drug posters on the school fence facing Black Mountain Road!
And they were happy to pose for a group photo!
It’s Red Ribbon Week, when students in schools across San Diego and the United States engage in an annual drug and violence prevention awareness campaign.
Wangenheim Middle School students and members of the Associated Student Body are involved in all sorts of positive community activities, such as a Thanksgiving food drive. It’s encouraging to know the youth you see in the next photograph are some of our future leaders!
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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!
Occasionally, over the years, I’ve shared photographs of colorful banners hung from street lamps in Little Italy. Many can be found along India Street. Most celebrate famous Italian Americans.
The face you see might be of a popular musician, or an Oscar winner, or an inventor, or a Major League Baseball player, or a religious leader, or a powerful politician or businessman . . . you get the idea.
During walks through Little Italy in the past few weeks I noticed many banners that I hadn’t photographed yet.
In no particular order, here they are:
Mother Cabrini.
Bruce Springsteen.
Jerry Lewis and Frank Busalacchi (San Diego restauranteur).
Vito Marcantonio.
Fiorello La Guardia.
Louis Prima.
Dana Reeve.
Al Pacino.
Francis Ford Coppola.
Jimmy Durante.
Giada De Laurentiis.
Joe Pass.
Russ Columbo.
Robert Mondavi.
Jennifer Capriati.
Roger Enrico.
Ernest and Julio Gallo.
Frank Capra.
Carlo Vinci.
Dean Martin.
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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!
Today I enjoyed a tour of a fantastic outdoor mural exhibition in San Ysidro. It was the highlight of my day. I’ll blog about that shortly.
Earlier in the afternoon, I walked a little around the neighborhood and found myself looking at some creative artwork on a fence at the San Ysidro Community Center. I’d stumbled upon the Gold Award project of two local Girl Scouts!
According to a sign on the fence, in 2018 Orian Martinez restored the community center’s outdoor playground, and Sofia Perez-Valles created the Utopia Mural on the surrounding fence, embellishing it with positive messages.
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has closed the San Ysidro Community Center and its outdoor area for many months now, so if things look a bit weathered and ragged, you can understand why. But the positive efforts and messages endure.
The actions and leadership of these two Girl Scouts have indeed made the world (and their community) a better place!
Utopia Mural.
Butterflies decorate a gate to an outdoor playground and gathering place.
Sign near entrance to San Ysidro Community Center.
Two Girl Scouts achieved the Gold Award for a 2018 project at the San Ysidro Community Center.
Recycled materials turned to art on the chain link fence.
Courage.
More colorful butterflies.
Action Changes Things.
The future has many names. For the fearful, the unknown. For the weak, the unreachable. For the brave, an opportunity.
Action is the foundational…
…skill to all success.
Fall seven times and get up eight.
If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll arrive where you’ve always gone.
Changes bring opportunity.
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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!
This coming Sunday, Cool San Diego Sights turns seven years old.
Seven years doing this? Unbelievable.
Starting a blog and watching it grow very, very slowly over many years has taught me an important lesson about life. Patience and perseverance might be the two most important keys to success.
While having fun and doing things that I love–walking and writing–I have spent literally thousands of hours working on Cool San Diego Sights. A good chunk of my life has been spent taking and selecting photos, cropping and adjusting them, doing research, being a detective, plotting out future blogs, making corrections, being obsessive/compulsive, providing updates, pulling out my hair (what’s left of it), periodically wondering if I should quit this sometimes tedious exercise…
And now, to my complete surprise, I find myself getting traffic from Google News, News Break, Chrome’s suggested articles, and a remarkable variety of major websites.
As a result of Cool San Diego Sights’ growing success, one of my other websites, Short Stories by Richard, is being visited by students from classrooms around the world. Most are reading my little story One Thousand Likes, which I’m told might be used in an upcoming twelfth grade textbook produced by one of the world’s most prestigious publishers.
Pinch me.
Is this real?
To think this thing started on a whim. I’ve always walked. I had an unused little camera. I created a simple, easy WordPress blog. I figured I’d post a photo and a few words once in a while.
So if you’re a blogger or writer out there in a ridiculously enormous world that contains billions of web pages, and you’ve begun to wonder if it’s really worth the effort–keep at it! Don’t give up! Do your best! Stay passionate! Write well, be truthful, be original, be creative, be smart, be curious, understand and appeal to your readers’ humanity, and remember to always maintain your sense of humor!
San Diego’s beloved Torrey Pines Golf Course is one of the most beautiful and famous golf courses in the world. It has a history of great competitions between the world’s top professional golfers.
Last weekend I walked a little around Torrey Pines Golf Course and took photos of outdoor plaques that honor notable past champions.
Plaques along one side of a practice putting green at Torrey Pines Golf Course.
The Century Club WALK OF FAME.
Arnold Palmer, San Diego Open Champion 1957, 1961.
Billy Casper, San Diego Open Champion 1966.
Gene Littler, San Diego Open Champion 1954.
Tom Watson, San Diego Open Champion 1977, 1980.
Craig Stadler, Buick Invitational Champion 1994.
Jack Nicklaus, San Diego Open Champion 1969.
Scott Simpson, Buick Invitational Champion 1998.
Gary Player, Buick Invitational Champion 1963.
108th United States Open Championship, June 12-16, 2008. Champion Tiger Woods.
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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!
An author labors every day, hour, minute, writing, brainstorming, re-writing, doubting, dreaming, despairing, pouring out heart, soul and some of their deepest, most vulnerable thoughts for the entire public to read.
Will the finished words be criticized?
Will the author be ridiculed?
Will all that hard, agonizing work simply be ignored?
During the month of February, the San Diego Central Library is honoring the work of local writers. Books and eBooks that have been published in the past year are on display in the Local Author Showcase. The beautiful books have taken center stage on the first floor of the library for everyone to admire.
Writing is difficult. Writing a book is extremely difficult.
Congratulations to those who dared and succeeded!
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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!
Cool San Diego Sights! 