Some more strange sights from around San Diego (continued from last year’s series).

First, a modern Stonehenge from the UC San Diego campus, all made with stone (or cement) cubes. Update: Found some info on USCD’s Stonehenge.

Modern Stonehenge

Then there was this cactus in Old Town, which looked like it was made up of feet!

Cactus feet

Vegetable Garage
Something about the phrase “Vegetable Garage” just sounds funny. (This is at Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego.) There’s also a Fruit Garage.

Samuel Adams... Smoothies

Sam Adams Smoothies? Where’s Lister from Red Dwarf? Someone needs to tell him he can get those beer milkshakes here! 😉

We weren’t entirely sure just what was supposed to be haunting this hotel, but it’s next to Hooters. Make of that what you will…

The Haunted Hotel

And finally, here’s a movie-style marquee from the Ghirardelli shop.

Ghirardelli - Now Playing!

(On a side note, I really miss having a Ghirardelli shop in South Coast Plaza. After shopping overload, I could just stop in there, get a milkshake, and be able to face another store or two. Plus I actually had a reason to go to South Coast Plaza on occasion.)

(Continued in Part 2.)

Up at the visitor’s center for the Mauna Kea observatories, there’s a sign that says, “Beware of Invisible Cows.” It was dark when we were there, and I tried to get this picture without using the flash since there were people with portable telescopes ten feet away, so it’s really blurry:

The actual invisible cows sign (blurry)

Fortunately someone in charge recognized the humor value, and the visitor’s center sells bumper stickers:

Beware of Invisible Cows
Why invisible cows?  It's dark and foggy.

Of course, it turns out other people, visiting during the day, have snapped better pictures of the sign.

Update 2025: They still sell stickers, magnets and T-shirts featuring the warning! The T-shirts are printed with the words, but not the cows, in glow-in-the-dark ink, so at night, the cows are in fact invisible. I’m tempted…

Note: Our visit to Mauna Kea was on Saturday, April 9, 2005.

Across the street from the Irvine Civic Center:

Bunny crossing?!?

This brings back memories of days in UCI’s student housing. There were rabbits everywhere. The complex was right next to a big empty field, and rabbits would hop through all the time. “Oh, look, a rabbit!” “Yeah, yeah, same old, same old.”

But this is the first time I’ve seen a road sign. Of course, given that even the people in Irvine can’t stick to crosswalks, I expect there will still be problems with jaywalking (jayhopping?) rabbits!

(Continued from part 1.)

Our hotel was located within walking distance of the Little Italy trolley stop. Diagonally across from a coffee shop (“It’s a Grind”) that we frequented during our stay was this restaurant:

Indigo Grill

Katie informed me that one of the Indigo Girls has, in fact, opened or invested in a restaurant, but this doesn’t seem to be it.

Here’s another restaurant (or more likely a bar) that we spotted, this time in Downtown San Diego:

Martini Ranch

This was Friday night with Sean, when we were wandering around the Gaslamp District and environs looking for a place to eat. We found ourselves wondering… was this a martini made with Ranch dressing? A place where martinis grazed and rustlers had to watch out for stampedes? Did they serve a crispy ranch martini with bacon?

Actually, “Grand Admiral” Sean should take the credit for the next one: I don’t remember if it was this year’s con or a past one, but he was on one of the escalators with Timothy Zahn, who remarked that the view always reminded him of the view inside the Death Star cannon. Inspired, I checked out that particular escalator, and Zahn’s right: it does look like the Death Star cannon!

[View from the escalator on the east half of the San Diego Convention Center]

And, in closing, an image from our hotel room this morning. It seems that Salvador Dali had somehow gotten into our room and transformed our soap:

'Melting' soap

(Continued in Volume 2.)

»All pages site-wide with this tag