{"id":293104,"date":"2025-11-15T11:37:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T11:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/293104\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T11:37:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T11:37:12","slug":"the-oakland-is-proud-mural-has-been-repainted-in-east-oakland-by-del-phresh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/293104\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018Oakland Is Proud\u2019 Mural Has Been Repainted in East Oakland by Del Phresh"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cOAKLAND IS PROUD\u201d mural became a symbol of the Town\u2019s resolve, and its cultural relevancy extended to city marketing, album covers, tribute murals and even a nationally syndicated television show.<\/p>\n

Phresh\u2019s original piece was painted over long ago. But last weekend, here at the same exact location, he and a few friends remade it, painting \u201cOAKLAND IS PROUD 2\u201d in metallic silver and royal blue along E. 12th Street.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018OAKLAND IS PROUD 2,\u2019 a re-creation of Del Phresh\u2019s famed mural, in the same spot as the original along E. 12th Street in Oakland. (Pendarvis Harshaw\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Given Oakland\u2019s current issues, ranging from housing to violence, and the way people remain passionate about the Town despite its depiction in the media, Phresh\u2019s piece is as relevant today as it was when he first painted it nearly 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

From an East Oakland Wall to the World<\/p>\n

After first painting a smaller, scrappy iteration of the mural on a wall of the historic St. Joseph\u2019s Home for the Aged, Phresh returned (this time with permission of the center\u2019s Ray Castor) and spent the entire summer of 1987 completing \u201cOAKLAND IS PROUD.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it was done, the multicolored, bubble-letter piece stretched the length of a full city block, and soon became a cultural landmark.<\/p>\n

It was featured in the opening credits of Mark Curry\u2019s television show Hangin\u2019 With Mr. Cooper<\/a>, and provided a fresh background for the cover image of Capital Tax\u2019s 1989 self-titled record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Oakland rap group Capital Tax featured Del Phresh\u2019s \u2018OAKLAND IS PROUD\u2019 mural on the cover of their 1989 EP, shown here in the original photo location. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

In 2020, Phresh collaborated with Oaklandish to create merchandise using the logo<\/a>, as well as a piece reading \u201cOAKLAND IS STILL PROUD<\/a>,\u201d painted on the wooden boards covering the retail store during protests in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

The mural\u2019s legacy doesn\u2019t stop there. It\u2019s appeared on event flyers<\/a>, and has been\u00a0remixed within other prominent murals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey got a photo of it at the Oakland Airport,\u201d Presh says, adding that he\u2019s even seen it used in commercials promoting tourism to Oakland.<\/p>\n

Repping his Home Turf<\/p>\n

Well-recognized as a style king in his craft, Phresh made noise locally when he won a mural competition hosted by the KRON-TV show Home Turf<\/a> in 1986. A year later, he stepped onto the international stage by appearing in Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff\u2019s seminal 1987 book Spraycan Art.<\/p>\n

Fitted in a customized jean jacket and hand-painted baseball hat embroidered with his given name, Joel, Phresh remembers his initial discovery of this spot on E. 12th.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first piece on this wall, I got arrested for it.\u201d It was a style piece with bubble letters, he says, and it made waves. \u201cBack in the day,\u201d says Phresh, \u201cyou didn\u2019t see graffiti out here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others had scribbled on the walls and tagged their turfs, but it wasn\u2019t stylized images and lettering \u2014 graf writing as we know it now.<\/p>\n

\"AnOakland graffiti artist Del Phresh poses for a photo beneath the BART tracks in East Oakland, across the street from where his legendary \u2018Oakland Is Proud\u2019 piece was originally painted nearly 40 years ago. (Pendarvis Harshaw\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Before the Town\u2019s scene got popping, Phresh honed his skills by hitting up the surfaces of AC Transit\u2019s 82 bus, tagging his first graf handle \u201cGERM\u201d as he rode through East Oakland.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until being arrested for painting the wall on E. 12th that he changed his name. Handcuffed and sitting in a patrol van, it hit him.<\/p>\n

\u201cFresh. I like that, because that\u2019s gonna be synonymous with with hip-hop forever,\u201d he remembers thinking. \u201cBut I gotta be original.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added \u201cPh\u201d in place of \u201cF,\u201d and \u201cBow!,\u201d he exclaims, \u201cthat\u2019s how I got my name, sitting in the back of the paddy wagon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Getting Active in Graffiti Crews<\/p>\n

While Phresh treated the Town as his playground \u2014 he was the first to do a piece in the 23rd Yard<\/a> of East Oakland \u2014 he really got his start by running around Berkeley and San Francisco.<\/p>\n

A fly kid named Dizzy D, known for sporting Pumas and Adidas suits, was the first to take Phresh around the Bay, bombing walls. Soon after, Phresh got his first paid gig, painting at a store under the old Leopold\u2019s Records near Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was almost done,\u201d says Phresh, reminiscing on his first paid job, \u201cand this kid came in, and he\u2019s like \u2018I\u2019m Kaos, I\u2019m from TF.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The mention of the well-known TF, or Task Force crew, caused Phresh to freak out, but he played it cool. When he was invited to join the crew, he calmly\u00a0obliged.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

His work then started to spread all around the Bay, taking off after he met two kids who went by the names Style and West.<\/p>\n

They arranged a meeting on that same concrete and grass median under the BART tracks on E. 12th. One of the trio had the idea to form their own crew. They called it the \u201cBomb Squad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were bombing the shit out of the city,\u201d says Phresh, noting that the crew\u2019s acronym of \u201cBSK\u201d came together when they added the word \u201cKings\u201d to their title.<\/p>\n

\u201cBSK was the first crew (in Oakland),\u201d says Phresh, adding that other crews immediately popped up thereafter. \u201cWe had the fame, we had the notoriety, we had the stats.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cOAKLAND IS PROUD\u201d mural became a symbol of the Town\u2019s resolve, and its cultural relevancy extended to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-293104","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}