Goodness knows I have posted about Berkeley’s murals.  As of today, I have 11 posts on our murals.  Do you doubt me?  Go here if you do.

Here I share (share!) photos of painted surfaces that are not murals but are expressive and quirky.  Yes, I know – most are from homes but a few are commercial or industrial.  So sue me – they are quirky.

Let’s start big!  These photos are of an open garage in the hills.  Clearly visible from the sidewalk when the garage is opened, which isn’t all the time.  But, very cool:

Come to think of it, this might be a mural.  The mural purists, and they know who they are, would cry foul if I included this in a mural post.  That doesn’t bother me.  It’s just that I’ve been hanging on to these photos for a couple years and didn’t feel compelled to call them murals before so let’s just post them here.

I took the photos to my friend for his evaluation and enjoyment.  Have I mentioned that he is prone to fixation?  If course I have.  That was a rhetorical question.

At this moment he was listening to Carla Bruni’s “Quelqu’une m’a dit.”  He was fixating on his oft-muttered mantra of “all things must pass.”  He had four photos on an uncluttered Danish Modern linen laminate kitchen countertop (flat-panel stained ash cabinets).

The first was of James Dean gassing up a few hours before crashing and dying.

The second was of Cafe Ino in the East Village.  He had just learned that it closed.  He spent time in the East Village and to this day speaks of the coffee and brown bread toast served with olive oil and sometimes he had the white bean soup. He loved his time in New York.

Photos three and four are from Rockaway Beach.  He first went to New York as a boy on a summer trip from Detroit.  He claims that he is in both of these family photos.  He is, I believe, the little boy with checked swimming trunks in the top photo.  No idea about where he might be in the bottom photo.

His contemplation of James Dean and Cafe Ino and his childhood vacation trip, years before he “lost and found his way” as he puts it, left him on the verge of melancholy.  I hoped that the photos would cheer him up.  He traced the stripes on the photo of the painted utility pole on Chaucer Street.

What did he have to say about these paintings-not-murals?