Balboa Park Turns 100, Part 5

With mere hours left in the year of the centennial, this is the fifth + final installment of my "Balboa Park Turns 100" series.

These photographs are from October, an incredibly warm fall Saturday when my family + I headed to Balboa Park to see the traveling exhibit Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland at the San Diego Museum of Art. Despite the heat, we began across the pedestrian bridge at the gardens and worked our way to the Cabrillo Bridge + back again.

I'll keep it short by saying, in conclusion of this series, that there is no where else on earth like Balboa Park. If you haven't been, go. If you have been, return!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Balboa Park Turns 100, Part 4

San Diego's Balboa Park turns 100 years old this year, and to celebrate I've been working on a series of Balboa Park-related posts that include both my own photographs and postcards from my collection that are relevant to the Panama-California Exposition. For part 4 I'm going to bend the rules a little to include two items that precede the Exposition because I think they are too fantastic to leave out.

Enjoy!

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Though El Cajon, CA was referred to as "Cajon" for about 30 years in the late 1800s, it was changed back to "El Cajon" in 1905. Correspondent Josie G. didn't use the proper name of the town 9 years after this fact.

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The San Diego County Courthouse was built in 1889 and stood at the corner of Front Street and Broadway. It was demolished in 1959 and replaced by a modern county courthouse. That building was completed in 1961 and was razed to be replaced with a $555M superior court building, now under construction and scheduled to open in 1916.

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I absolutely love this correspondence: "Thurs. morning 9-23-09. Dear Alberta, arrived O.K. stopping at Richelieu 1055 5th St. Mr. + Mrs. Bowles send ___. Taking a street car ride this morning to Coronado this afternoon. Weather fine. Your mother feeling daily good. She joins me in love. Yours, L"

 The Richelieu Hotel was located at 1055 5th Ave. in downtown San Diego. The House of Blues is located on that plot now. This Wells Fargo handbook for travelers from 1915 I found while looking up the Richelieu is very informative and a great artifact from the Exposition, click here to have a look.

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These three postcards were part of the motherlode I mentioned in my last post.

Interested in catching up with the Balboa Park Turns 100 series? Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The Star Theatre

Oceanside's Star Theatre, built in 1956, is celebrating the competition of restoration of its magnificent marquee, the largest and oldest operating neon sign in all of San Diego County. A sign dedication ceremony will take place this coming weekend.

In February 2012 I shared some photographs of the Star aside this caption:
"Located on Pacific Coast Highway in Oceanside, CA, the Star opened in 1956 and has maintained more or less in one variation or another -- church, movie house, Pussycat theatre, live venue -- since. It's a cute corner theatre which originally held just under 1,000 patrons. In the late 1990s the theatre was vacant, I remember passing by it countless times on my Vespa journeys from San Diego to Orange County and back, the bright yellow marquee [dark and] blank, until one day it wasn't anymore (if memory serves, I believe a Van Halen tribute band was passing through town and was going to rock the Star). The stars and the marquee are wonderfully colorful and stand out amongst the other buildings in downtown Oceanside." (Please click here to see those original photographs.)

In anticipation of the restoration of the Star's marquee, and in excitement for the new life that has been brought to the theatre via the Star Theatre Company, here's a look back at a 2012 photograph of the Star that I took with my Brownie Hawkeye camera. I am looking forward to visiting it again soon to see those stars shining brightly.

© Monika Seitz Vega, 2012

Balboa Park turns 100, part 2

This next set of photographs are from the fall of 2010. Each of these are straight out of the camera, unedited. The film I was shooting (I believe it was a roll of Lomography 100 B&W given to me by a fellow I'd purchased a different camera from) had been slightly exposed, resulting in some light leaks + the numbers and guide dots of the backer paper being burned onto the film. The resulting images are among my favorites not just from Balboa Park but from anywhere.

Balboa Park turns 100

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Panama-California Exposition, which celebrated the completion and opening of the Panama Canal. San Diego's Balboa Park set the stage for the 2-year exposition, establishing the park as a destination for art, architecture, and entertainment. 

Growing up in San Diego, Balboa Park was the destination for field trips, family outings, and when I got older, adventures with friends. It was one of the first places I visited and photographed when I got a "real camera"as a teenager. It remains one of my favorite places, and I visit the park every time I am in San Diego. There are a lot of memories waiting for me there, and it is wonderful to get to revisit them.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Balboa Park as we know it, I'm looking forward to diving back into my prints and negatives to share photographs I've taken there over the years. This is the first of what will be a series of posts of my Balboa Park photographs, which I'll share as I come across them.

The following 5 photographs were taken in February of 2013. The camera I used, a 1950s Argoflex 75, had been high in my camera rotation for a couple of years prior, unfortunately this was the last roll I shot with it because of how severe the scratches were that it'd leave on my negatives, quite visible here. Despite the imperfections, I think these images are lovely.

And just for fun, to kick off this series of photographs, how about Mabel Normand + Roscoe Arbuckle in "Fatty and Mabel at the San Diego Exposition"? This short is also celebrating its centennial this year.

my hometown.

All photographs © Monika Seitz Vega, May 2014.

San Diego's Santa Fe Depot

During a recent trip to San Diego we made it a point to stop and photograph the 1915 Santa Fe Depot. Now referred to as the Santa Fe Plaza, this rail and bus hub was the start and end of many of my traveling adventures during the years I lived there. It was nice to be back and feel the excitement of the station, and to catch a glimpse of some new, classically designed railcars.

Might I suggest listening to Robyn Hitchcock's "I Often Dream of Trains" while looking at the photographs? It's a wonderful song that gets stuck in my head often, while daydreaming.

All images © Monika Seitz Vega, 2013.