[ Lost in the Landscape ]

balboa park holiday lights

Sat­ur­day night John’s wind ensem­ble had a con­cert in San Diego’s sig­na­ture Bal­boa Park. The park was dec­o­rated up for the hol­i­days with strings of lights, a sec­u­lar Santa with sleigh and rein­deer, and a decid­edly un-secular row of nativ­ity scenes.

In the last cou­ple of years most of the incan­des­cent lights got replaced with LEDs–Rah, green! But the wattage on every­thing seemed a lit­tle low this year. There were even a few thou­sand feet of light strings that were left in the “off” posi­tion. Maybe the city (which has been on eco­nomic hard times for sev­eral years now) decided not to splurge on run­ning more lights. Or maybe they were try­ing to make a state­ment that you can dec­o­rate for the hol­i­days with­out drain­ing the power grid.

What­ever the case, the dis­plays still did a pretty good job of fight­ing off that human fear of the dark at the same time they let you know that Dorothy, you’re not in Novem­ber any­more. Here are some pic­tures I took with John’s lit­tle dig­i­tal instamatic.

Enter­ing the park…

Palms and Christ­mas trees in the fore­ground, the Organ Pavil­lion (with the “world’s largest out­door organ”) in the background…

Another take on the palm and Christ­mas trees…

Acci­den­tal no-tripod hol­i­day light effects…

The park has a cou­ple of kid-scaled climbable sculp­tures by the late artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who used to live in town. These are extremely pop­u­lar with the lit­tle Gen Z’ers. Art that you can touch and climb all over–What a concept!

Here’s one of her fun, slob­ber­ing creatures…

And finally: El Cid (left, on horse­back) vs Santa (right, in sleigh).

Looks like El Cid won this one.

December 22 2008 | Categories: art • places | Tags: Balboa Park • christmas trees • holiday lights | 6 Comments »