San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 5

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 5

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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Throughout San Diego’s Chicano Park is the word Aztlán.

In the last picture above is a map of the United States with some states in red and Aztlán in white. According to Wikipedia, “Aztlán is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica and, by extension, the mythical homeland of the Uto-Aztecan peoples. Aztec is the Nahuatl word for “people from Aztlan.” The name of the San Diego State University sports teams is the Aztecs.

Continuing from Wikipedia: “The concept of Aztlán as the place of origin of the pre-Columbian Mexican civilization has become a symbol for various Mexican nationalist and indigenous movements.

“The name Aztlán was first taken up by a group of Chicano independence activists led by Oscar Zeta Acosta during the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s. They used the name Aztlán to refer to the lands of Northern Mexico that were annexed by the United States as a result of the Mexican-American War….”

Some historical linguists and anthropologists believe that the original homeland of the Aztecan peoples was in the southwestern United States. During the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Aztlán became a symbol of those who believed they have a legal and primordial right to the land.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
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If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

The African Pygmy Hedgehog

PICTURE OF THE MOMENT

This African Pygmy Hedgehog was running around at the San Diego County Fair, and the public (me!) were allowed to pet and play with them.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Hmmmm. Tasty.

PICTURE OF THE MOMENT

Someone —

and I won’t say who but his link is here —

came to San Diego and set up shop at the San Diego County Fair.

If I had not gone to the Fair today, I never would have known. 🙂

I had a hot dog there today. Sure was tasty. Thanks, Pink!

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Would you pay $5 for this?

PICTURE OF THE MOMENT

My scheduled inspection today got cancelled late yesterday evening so I decided to go to the San Diego County Fair today. That’s where I saw this:

Would you pay $5 for that haircut?

I would, and I did.

I offered the guy $5 if I could take two “mug shot” pictures.

I told him that I liked his haircut, and he was so excited that he said I didn’t need to pay for the pictures.

“Oh,” I said, “yes I do.”

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 4

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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I said in an earlier post that Chicano Park was located in a “bad area” of town. Society has defined the “bad area,” not me, as an area of high crime.

Our tour guide of Chicano Park was Salvador, who painted the very first mural in the park in 1974. Salvador invited us to come back on our own and enjoy the park, to which one member of our audience expressed concern about the high crime in the area. Salvador explained to us that Chicano Park is a sanctuary, and as long as you park in the Chicano Park parking lot and enjoy the park for its intended purpose — peace and relaxation — nothing will happen.

I’m pretty sure he can’t guarantee that, but in thinking about all the crime in Barrio Logan and Logan Heights throughout the years, I can remember not a single incidence being reported as having occurred in Chicano Park. I guess I should take Salvador at his word.

Following are some of the religious and spiritual murals from Chicano Park. Regretfully, I don’t remember the stories behind them. The first picture is of an older mural from the 1970s that is scheduled to be restored this year.

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 5, will be published on Saturday,
June 16.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Fire on the freeway!

About the same time that all the schools get out for the summer, traffic on the freeways gets bad. Oftentimes, though, it has absolutely nothing to do with children being out of school.

Those two fires were about a hundred feet from each other, so I suspect they were arson, a common cause of fires throughout San Diego County when the hillsides are dry. There were no firefighters on the scene yet so they apparently were new fires. We’ll find out on the news tonight how much damage they caused.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 3

San Diego’s Chicano Park

Part 1

Part 2

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On April 22, 1970, the Barrio Logan community and Chicano movement activists came together to protest a proposed Highway Patrol station being constructed on the present site of the park. For community residents, it was the culminating insult.

Barrio Logan already had seen hundreds of homes demolished to make way for Interstate 5 and the Coronado Bridge. Many toxic industries and junkyards had been located in the area, and there was a significant lack of schools, jobs, social services, medical services, and community facilities for its residents.

The protest was led by the Brown Berets, M.E.Ch.A., community activists, and artists. Negotiations took place over several days while protestors faced off with police and bulldozers. The result was that the land was given to the Barrio Logan community for a park. The Chicano Park protests came to symbolize the Chicano Americans’ struggle for self-determination and empowerment.

The murals in the park were painted by unknown and well-knowns alike. Chicano artists such as Victor Ochoa, Mario Torero, Yolanda Lopez, José Montoya, Sal Barajas, Juanishi Orosco, Berenice Badillo, and Carmen Linares have murals in the park portraying cultural, political, and social issues of the area, as well as the larger struggle for recognition and liberation of Mexican Americans — or Chicanos, or Hispanics, or Spanish Americans. The lack of a long-term name for their people illustrates the problem.

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 4, will be published on Thursday,
June 14, the same day as the new season of “Suits” gets under way on USA. 🙂

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

My relatives, the succulent people

Back in 1966, shortly after my wise old grandmother had adopted me, I asked her if I could have a small plot of land for a garden. She had the most beautiful gardens in all of Kingsville, Texas. Something was always growing and blooming — morning glories, Christmas cactus, poinsettias, oleanders, nandinas, ligustrums, roses….. and that’s just the stuff planted in the ground. Her hanging gardens were second only to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

She said, “Yes,” and gave me the hottest spot in her yard, right around the air conditioning compressor. Air conditioning compressors put out a lot of hot wind, and she never got anything nice to grow there.

Enter Russel Ray Kirk Jones Kirk, the 11-year-old juvenile delinquent from Utah.

A friend, Richard Schmidt (whom I would love to find some day!), had a garden in his yard, and he introduced me to cactus and succulents. He and his parents took me down to McAllen, Texas, one Saturday to a cactus nursery. I came home with a box full of cactus and succulents. Those plants loved it in the hot sun by the hot, windy air conditioner, and soon I had cactus flowers and succulents blooming right along side my wise old grandmother’s beautiful flowers.

By the time I graduated from high school, my friends were calling me the Cactus Man. When I dropped my “Kirk Jones Kirk” last names and simply became Russel Ray, I also switched from cactus to succulents. Many of my friends now know me as the Succulent Man. Succulents are my speciality.

Yesterday I went for my annual summer visit of the San Diego Botanic Garden:

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I found my long-lost relatives, the succulent people:

 

Look at that last picture, at the lady’s chest, and you can see a necklace, a broach, and two boobs created by the succulents. Don’t believe me? Proof:

Vision, people, vision! Use your creativity, just like the succulent people creators did! 🙂

I also loved her dress:

The San Diego Botanic Garden is where the Sapphire Tower is, and there were several blooming yesterday.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray (that’s me!)

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 2

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 1

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On October 17, 1989, a 6.9 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area. It is known as the Loma Prieta earthquake, named after a mountain peak near the epicenter. Many people throughout the world got to watch the earthquake live on television since it happened just before Game 3 of the 1989 World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s. How ironic that the most powerful earthquake to strike San Francisco since the great 1906 earthquake would include two Bay Area major league baseball teams. Destroyed in the earthquake was Interstate 880 as it ran through Oakland. Also damaged was the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

On January 17, 1994, a 6.7 earthquake struck the Los Angeles Area. It is known as the Northridge earthquake, named after the city where many deaths and great destruction occurred. Destroyed in this earthqauke were many sections of freeways throughout the Los Angeles area, including the nation’s busiest freeway, the Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10).

After the destruction caused by those two earthquakes to the many freeways used daily by millions of people, the building codes were modified to include seismic retrofitting of all bridges and freeways throughout California. That retrofitting threatened to destroy the murals of Chicano Park as it would require encasing bridge support columns in additional steel and concrete.

The people living in the areas surrounding Chicano Park fought the new retrofitting standards…. and won!

There was a community protest gathering on Saturday, March 23, 1996. The City and State were petitioned, and actually listened. Imagine that. Governments listening to its citizens [that was an editorial comment].

CalTrans engineers came up with a different method of retrofitting the columns that would leave the murals intact and visible. The picture below shows the type of retrofitting, called “hinge extensions,” used on the bridge columns in Chicano Park to keep freeway sections from separating during an earthquake, as happened in the two mentioned earthquakes.

The following graphic shows both the “hinge extensions” and the “steel casing” which would have been used on the columns in Chicano Park, forever encasing the murals in grout, steel, and concrete.

Additional pictures of the murals in San Diego’s Chicano Park are below, with the first picture being of the very first mural in Chicano Park, dating to 1974 and recently restored.

San Diego’s Chicano Park, Part 3, will be published on Wednesday, June 13.

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!

Eat this!

PICTURE OF THE MOMENT

Many decades ago in Texas I had a vanity license plate. Cost me an extra $35 annually. It was simply the name of my business.

My first license plate in California was a vanity plate. I’m not sure how much extra it cost me, but the money was supposed to be used for wildlife conservation. Not sure if I ever believed what the state government was telling me, so I quit giving them the extra money. Hmmm. Maybe that’s why the state is broke.

Today I was following a car that had a serious case of oil burning, definitely needing a tune-up, probably an oil change, maybe a new head gasket.

Get a load (so to speak) of what I saw when I had to stop behind him at a traffic signal:

Looking for real estate services in San Diego County?
I can highly recommend
James Frimmer, Realtor
Century 21 Award, DRE #01458572

If you’re looking for a home inspector,
I recommend Russel Ray — that’s me!