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Pinole honors punk icons Green Day with “Key to the City”

“I didn't quite make it to high school graduation,” Armstrong says in a short speech. “But Mike did, and the day after he graduated from high school we started our first tour.”

Armstrong called the band's return to Pinole a full-circle moment and thanked family and friends, including his mother, siblings and first piano teacher.

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

Green Day band member Mike Dirnt takes a selfie with his fan Alyssa Arriola of Reno in front of a 7-Eleven in Pinole. (Gina Castro/KQED)

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 coffee, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their breakthrough album “Dookie” while also honoring the supermarket's 60th anniversary.

Two women and three men stand next to each other. One is holding up a plaque with a key.
Pinole Mayor Maureen Toms presents punk rock band Green Day with the key to the city at the local 7-Eleven, recognizing the band's impact on her community. (Gina Castro/KQED)

“We are absolutely proud that they are from Pinole and of course they will come back to visit us and launch their coffee business here,” says Pinole Mayor Maureen Toms. “The key to the city is just a symbolic gesture to recognize how important these people are.”

A man holds a plaque with a key on it.
Green Day band member Billie Joe Armstrong holds the key to the city of Pinole, presented to the band for their impact on the community. (Gina Castro/KQED)

Toms says representatives from Punk Bunny and Green Day contacted city staff about plans to unveil the plaque and that city staff were excited to participate.

Next to a memorial plaque, someone makes a punk rock gesture with his hand.
Punk rock band Green Day will receive a plaque at a 7-Eleven in Pinole honoring the band's impact on the community. The plaque is a tribute to the band's lyrics. (Gina Castro/KQED)

Green Day's plaque was unveiled outside the 7-Eleven store, one of the band members' hangouts during their high school years. The plaque read the lyrics of the song “Jesus of Suburbia”: “At the center of the earth in the 7-Eleven parking lot… Billie, Mike and Tre were here.”

The band members also sprayed their signatures on a mural dedicated to the band.

A man wearing sunglasses sprays paint on a wall.
Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day spray paints his name on a mural honoring the band at a 7-Eleven in Pinole. (Gina Castro/KQED)

In his speech, bassist Mike Dirnt acknowledged how much attitudes toward punk have 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 been beaten up back then for looking the way we look today. And now the same people who might have wanted to beat us up understand us, and we're understood all over the world. So that's an amazing thing. … Great things can come from anywhere,” Dirnt says.

Three men stand with their hands raised next to a person in an animal mascot costume.
Punk rock band Green Day receives Pinole's key to the city, a plaque and a mural honoring the band's impact on the community. (Gina Castro/KQED)

“When you live here and grew up here, you feel like they're just a part of the East Bay,” says Sarah Paine, who arrived at the store early with her 10-year-old daughter Virginia Gale waiting excitedly. “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 to this story.

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