signs: Village Market

Village Market

In upper Rockridge near the Mountain View Cemetery is the Village Market. It being a well-to-do neighborhood, the sign is well maintained. I always think of the area it's in as Rockridge, or Upper Rockridge if you prefer, but their website says:

Village Market is an upscale independent grocery store located in the Monclair District in Oakland, CA.

Huh? Even if you include Glen Highlands on the other side of 13 as part of Montclair, Village Market still isn't in it. Maybe they moved at some point?

a very Oakland Sunday

Tribune tower

My wife and I have been church shopping for a while now. We visited Fruitvale Presbyterian where monteskewed is currently pastor, and our neighbor's church in Berkeley, but we've got a fairly long list of ones we want to check out.

So today we visited Lake Merritt United Methodist Church, which was celebrating the 25th anniversary of its formation via the merger of two other UMC churches. The congregation is very Oakland -- diverse. On a church media website I frequent, you'll often hear the phrase "the church is not the building" (we even sang a song about that today), usually when someone wants to include the building in the new church logo they're designing. Churches aren't buildings, they're communities of faith, (hopefully) with a common mission of spreading the Word and living it.

Tiffany mosaic

But Lake Merritt UMC has a nice building overlooking the south end of the lake, with some astoundingly beautiful art, a 3-panel Tiffany mosaic titled Te Deum Laudamus. Each panel is 17' high by 8' wide and made of millions of pieces of opalescent glass. Together they dominate the sanctuary, overshadowing the great view of the lake (even on a beautiful day like today.) Ironically, while Lake Merritt UMC is very diverse, and open and affirming, the mosaic suffers from the same flaw as many classic works of art: everyone in the image is white. Regardless, the pictures don't do the art justice, so it's well worth seeing in person.

After church, we drove around the lake, hoping to find one of the restaurants on our list to check out that was open. Rico's, The Red Door Cafe, etc. were closed, but Golden Lotus was open. The food was great, and it was real treat for me being able to order anything on the menu. We'll definitely go there again. We walked around a bit admiring the beautiful buildings in Oakland, and I had my camera for taking more sign pictures.

Next we continued around the lake and did our grocery shopping at Trader Joe's. While I parked the car K went and got some coffee beans at Peet's. We looped back across the freeway and down MacArthur to Park, and came home to enjoy the rest of this beautiful Oakland Sunday.

signs: Blue Bird Liquors

Blue Bird Liquors

In the shadow the California Hotel is Blue Bird Liquors. Why is it that so many liquor stores have classic signs? Probably because they've been around for a long time (business is always good, whether the economy is or not), dating back to the era of great signs.

Jackson Pollock at the checkout line

Yesterday at Lucky's a couple of clerks were talking about the younger clerk's classes. One was an art history class. The younger clerk sounded sort of ho-hum as the other rattled off names she might have encountered like Monet, Manet, Renoir, et al. She recognized the names and said they looked at lots of pictures, and the instructor talked about why this thing was worth millions and this thing was "clean that $#@* up." The other clerk mentioned Jackson Pollock, and she didn't recognize the name, but when I said, "you know, the splatters of paint guy -- it looks like the kind of thing you get in trouble for as a kid", she knew exactly who I was talking about, and perked up. The two were still animatedly talking about art when I collected my purchases and left.

Jackson Pollock's Blue poles

signs: Art's Crab Shak

Art's Crab Shak

On Broadway not far from George Kaye's is Art's Crab Shak. The sign has been altered over the years. Art's has neon, and the martini glass at the bottom has the classic flashing bulbs, but lunches and dinners and Crab Shak are in different fonts. Crab Shak is in the dread Comic Sans font and so is probably the newest part.