Pinole Honors Punk Icons Green Day With Key to the City

Hundreds of fans of the punk rock band Green Day cheered as Pinole city officials honored the band members for their impact and ties to the local community with the key to the city, a commemorative plaque and mural outside a 7-Eleven store on Sunday afternoon.

As eager fans wearing Green Day T-shirts waited for the band to show up, they sang along to their favorite songs and held instruments and memorabilia they hoped to get autographed.

“Just to be in close proximity with them is really exciting for me,” says Jasmine Buckles, who arrived in the morning from San Ramon to wait for the event. “I just went to their concert on Friday night at Oracle Park, and it was amazing.”

Buckles brought along Funko Pop figures modeled after the band members to get signed.

Green Day first formed in 1986 in the town of Rodeo, 3 miles north of Sunday’s event. Band members Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt both attended Pinole Valley High School, right across the street from the 7-Eleven.

“I didn’t quite make it all the way through high school,” Armstrong says in a short speech. “But Mike did, and the day after he graduated from high school, we took off on our first tour.”

Calling the band’s return to Pinole a “full circle” moment, Armstrong acknowledged family and friends, including his mother, siblings and his first piano teacher.

The small crowd in Pinole paled in comparison to the 42,000 fans who came to see the band two nights earlier in a sold-out show at Oracle Park in San Francisco. Green Day is currently on a stadium tour, playing their albums “Dookie” and “American Idiot,” as well as their fan favorites. The tour ends on Sept. 28 at Petco Park in San Diego.

Free coffee samples were provided by the band’s Punk Bunny Coffee brand. Green Day recently announced a partnership with 7-Eleven to release their Anniversary Blend of coffee, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their breakout album “Dookie,” as well as commemorating the convenience store’s 60th anniversary.

“There absolutely is local pride in having them from Pinole, and of course coming back to visit us and having the kickoff for their coffee company right here locally,” Pinole Mayor Maureen Toms says. “The key to the city is just a symbolic gesture that we’re recognizing that these folks are important.”

Toms says representatives from Punk Bunny and Green Day reached out to city staff about plans for the plaque dedication, and they were excited to participate.

Green Day’s commemorative plaque was unveiled outside of the 7-Eleven store, one of the band members’ frequent hangout spots in high school. The plaque featured lyrics from the song “Jesus of Suburbia,” reading, “At the center of the earth in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven… Billie, Mike and Tre were here.”

Band members also spray-painted their signatures on a mural dedicated to the band.

In his speech, bassist Mike Dirnt acknowledged how much attitudes about punk had changed since he and Armstrong walked the halls of Pinole Valley High School.

“I look around now and think, wow, half of us would have gotten beat up back then for looking the way we look now. And now, the same people who might have wanted to beat us up, they understand us, and we’re understood all around the planet. So this is an amazing thing. … Great things can come from anywhere,” Dirnt says.

“When you live here and are raised here, you feel like they’re just a part of everything that is the East Bay,” says Sarah Paine, who arrived early to the store with her 10-year-old daughter Virginia Gale waiting in anticipation. “They played their music, and you just knew they were icons. It was great. My teenage self is very happy right now.”

KQED’s Spencer Whitney, Katherine Monahan and Gina Castro contributed reporting to this story.