Quirky Berkeley

The Quirky Material Culture of Berkeley

Quirky Berkeley
  • Walkers
  • Help us!
  • Links
  • Blogs/Albums
  • Contact us
  • Latest Posts
  • Quirky Berkeley in the Media
December 3, 2016 by tomdalzell

Recently Lost Murals

1340 Martin Luther King Jr. Way

1340 Martin Luther King Jr. Way

Art is not eternal.  Murals are intrinsically temporal – they come and they go.  We seem to be in no danger of losing our mural identity, but over the last year we have lost more than a few murals.   The “Welcome to Lorin” mural above has been overshadowed by a new building in what here was a vacant lot – gone are these images.

Speaking of overshadowing, the new Stone Fire Building at the corner of Milvia and University has now completely blocked the north-facing windows of the Tioga Building at 2020 Milvia,  The second and third-floor windows featured post-it art, now obstructed:

"Quirky Berkeley 09-26-2015" "Quirky Berkeley 09-26-2015"

Also relocated to the dustbin of memory:

"Quirky Berkeley"

2499 Telegraph

"Quirky Berkeley"

2499 Telegraph

The mural was spray-painted in 2013 by Tim Hon and Steve Ha of the Illuminaries art group.  Shakespeare Books closed in 2015, and when reconstruction began on the entire northeast corner of Dwight and Telegraph, we lost the mural.

2250 Dwight

2250 Dwight

2250 Dwight

2250 Dwight

The Roxie Food Center at Dwight and Ellsworth was until the last year a little neighborhood bodega.  There were several generations of murals on the building.  My favorite may be a false memory – it was on the east-facing wall and it was a horn of plenty filled with soda, beer, candy, and cigarettes.   The Roxie is no more, back to residential.  And the murals are no more.

No far from these two:

quirky_berkeley_031214_00879-x2 quirky_berkeley_031214_00896-x2

On the south-facing wall of Willard School on Stuart Street, there was a mural designed and painted by Malaquias Montoya in 1987 with help from California College and Arts and Crafts in Oakland.  It depicted heroic, multicultural figures in struggle and a dysptoian vision including American, Soviet, and British robot dogs.

The western end of the mural is still there, but this summer a more cheerful, colorful, apolitical celebration of Willard students replaced the Montoya dystopian vision.

cedar-market2 cedar-market6

The west-facing mural of the Cedar Market at 1601 California is gone. The store reverted to its original design, with large windows looking out onto California and letting light into the store.  The north-facing GOOD VIBES mural along Cedar is alive and well.  I liked the west-facing mural, but the re-introduction of windows and daylight in the store are a good thing.

The next ones hurt.   Popeyes Fried Chicken at 1776 San Pablo for a while broke the corporate mold and had small murals depicting Cajun musicians.

cajun-1 cajun-2 cajun-3 cajun-4 cajun-5 cajun-6

Corporate logos have replaced these lovely depictions of Cajun culture.  Too bad!

As I said above, murals come and murals go.  Berkeley is changing before our eyes, but the loss of these murals isn’t necessarily the result of the development boom.  No soapbox here or now about what is happening with Berkeley, only these photos celebrating what we once had and no longer have.

There is one exception to what I just said – the imminent loss of the mural at the old quarters of the Center for Independent Living.

Photo: Eduardo Pineda

Photo: Eduardo Pineda

This mural is, for me, so important that dedicated an entire post to it a few weeks ago.  I went to see it the other night but it was too dark.

I showed the photos to my friend.   He lingered over the Popeye’s Cajun murals.  “The strange thing is not that they are gone, but that they were there in the first place.  I wonder what the story is behind it.”  He was born on a day where it is predicted that those born that day will want to find out the story.  They are great people.  I know one other, so maybe “they are great people” is a stretch.  Not enough data points.

But, anyway, what about the post?

Quirky Berkeley 05-12-16

 

Posted in Uncategorized. RSS 2.0 feed.
« Martin Metal: Berkeley of the Past, For the Ages
Star Grocery and the Quirkiest Commercial Block in Berkeley »

3 Responses to Recently Lost Murals

  1. Mark Bulwinkle says:
    December 3, 2016 at 8:13 pm

    Great page. I love the stuff in a state of decay. mb

    Reply
  2. will d squier says:
    December 17, 2016 at 4:35 am

    I remember the cornucopia mural at Roxy. It made me laugh to see an abundance of cigarettes, beer and candy. To me it was a warning sign not at advertisement. It didn’t hit me as intentionally ironic. I always meant to take a photo of it. Oh well. BTW, great new mural on the corner of Adeline and Emerson.

    Reply
    • tomdalzell says:
      December 17, 2016 at 2:47 pm

      I shot the new mural at Black and White Liquors this week and will be posting it soon. Thanks for confirming my Roxie memory.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Here you will find photos of the oddball, whimsical, eccentric, and the near-rhyme quirky material culture of Berkeley.
Read More

Subscribe

Categories

  • Animals
  • Architecture
  • Cars, Trains and Planes
  • Food
  • Gone
  • Graffiti
  • Ma
  • Mailboxes
  • Major Quirky
  • Miscellaneous
  • Murals
  • Painted
  • Peace
  • Signs
  • Walks

All content © 2025 by Quirky Berkeley. Base WordPress Theme by Graph Paper Press