Chicano Park — Attraction in San Diego

If you're a art lover you may want to stop by and check out this beautiful park rich with art and history! 🖌️🎨👨‍🎨👩‍🎨 • "For more than four decades, Chicano Park has served as a beacon for San Diego’s Mexican-American community. The site – well known for its murals and for serving as a meeting place for Latino organizing – undoubtedly has local importance. Three years ago, the US government acknowledged the park’s national significance by naming it a National Historic Landmark.📸 After the construction of the San Diego-Coronado Bridge in 1969, the city planned to make the space beneath a California Highway Patrol substation. But after residents occupied the area for 12 days, it became the 7.4-acre park that holds a special place in history. And in the decades since, the community has transformed the park into a celebration of Chicano and Mexican culture. And murals have played a large role in that. “Our idea was always to paint this place,” Mario Torero, one of Chicano’s park original muralists, said, according to the San Diego Tribune. “We told the story of the colors and dreams of our ancestors, painting new faces of our sad and glorious history on the pillars and screaming in full rage.” Since the 1970s, more than 70 murals have cropped up, with artists making commentary on everything from the Mexican Revolution, to the importance of la Virgen in their culture, to the need for arts and books. But as the years went by, some of the murals – most of which live on the pillars that support a five-lane highway – showed signs of damage because of the daily traffic. It took a decade, but starting in 2011, restoration on 20 murals began. The murals are an important part of San Diego history and the Chicano art movement."-...

This is basically like a central square of the Logan Heights neighborhood that gains its attraction from the fancy spray painted freeway pillars the area is under. The Art was done by some LA artists that came over one day to work on this project. The messages conveyed in the art are good food for thought and are supposed to reflect the local people. See my pic.

The park is located underneath a freeway, which gives it an almost surreal ghetto kind of vibe. However it’s a bit of a shame since it’s not the nicest location for kids playgrounds of which there are two! The playgrounds were deserted when we were there, with a couple homeless wondering around, a couple tourists and one or two locals. A strange combination really. There was a lady putting up a bunch of flowers for a festival at the local church. There are also a couple shrines around celebrated in the local style.

Overall this is a great place if you are interested in learning more about San Diego, it’s people and culture. I think it would be a little scary after dark, but during the day there were enough normal looking people to make me feel safe enough to be there alone.

I give it four starts instead of five only because I personally don’t find all the noise and smell pollution very pleasant. And also the homeless were hanging their blankets on the fence of the children’s playground which just didn’t make me feel comfortable. But I really enjoyed pondering the art and...

Interesting moment in history, interesting location. Under highway overpass with a lot of period folk paintings/artistic graffiti. Sort of wish it didn't say "Barrio si, yanquis no", because few blocks away there is a big photo of migrant workers celebrating Cesar chavez, and a careful scrutiny shows little blonde Okey kids among the faces of poor migrant mostly Hispanic supporters of Cesar Chavez. But hey, that's history both in its reality and contemporary conceptions. I try to show this to out of town guests, especially from Mexico. Inspiring for a long time SD resident to see how nice the Barrio is becoming, some of the descendants of the Chicano park crowd will be cashing in big on selling once low quality real estate. Hit up Northgate supermarket while there to further celebrate border...