West Street underneath the 580 freeway in West Oakland isn’t big, but it’s busy: the onramp is right here. About 10 feet off the ground, David Burke is perched on scaffolding with a paintbrush in his hand, right in front of a block-long mural.
“I’ve lived here for 15 years,” he says. “This is my home. I love this city.”
He looks down from the portrait he’s working on, then wipes off some of the orange paint off his brush. The full mural is a West Oakland scene complete with Victorian houses, birds, tree-filled streets — and four giant children. Students at West Oakland Middle School designed the piece, and each of these four figures are superhero children who use their powers to help keep the neighborhood clean, healthy and safe.
“I really feel like as artists it’s our job to shape the communities we live in and share talents with those communities,” says Burke.
He’s the art director for this project and has been working on community murals for 20 years. This one is part of a set going up on underpasses all over the neighborhood. He met Antonio Ramos while painting the first mural in the series, just two blocks away from here on San Pablo Avenue.
“He rolled up on his skateboard and was really excited about what we were doing,” Burke remembers. “He was a really talented artist and also he brought smiles to everybody’s face. He painted on anything he could get his hands on. He was a musician, he was a designer, he skated. He’s from the neighborhood, went to Berkeley High School, went to Berkeley City College. We really really miss him.”
On the morning of September 29th, Antonio Ramos was shot and killed while painting here. Burke remembers the moment it happened.
“I was here, but I was on the other end of the wall -– the wall’s 200 feet long. And so I heard the shot, I ran down and found my friend lying in the street.”
Like many people around here, he’s still in shock.
“Whatever exchange took place between Antonio and the suspect was so small that nobody working even had a chance to turn around,” he says. “It lasted a few seconds. And it was over.”