Pacific Pinball Museum Hosts Dan Fontes Memorial Friday

If you've ever driven under I-580 in Oakland and found yourself looking up at a giraffe, you've seen Dan Fontes' work. On Friday night, the Pacific Pinball Museum on Webster Street opens its doors for a free public memorial in his honor.

Fontes died in April after a long illness. He was 67.

Dan Fontes memorial details

• When: Friday, August 21, 6 to 10 p.m.
• Where: Pacific Pinball Museum, 1510 Webster St.
• Cost: Free and open to the public.

The hosts are Kristine Holohan and Julie Lucchesi, who was Fontes' partner. "Dan gave so much color and joy to Oakland and the Bay Area," they said in a statement shared with Patch, which first reported the memorial. "Let's gather to remember him the best way we know how, with community, music, pinball, and love." Organizers say the city of Oakland will also recognize what he did for the place he loved.

Who Dan Fontes was

Fontes built a career painting the parts of a city everybody else writes off. His best known piece, "Giraphics," turned the grimy underbelly of I-580 into a stretch of savanna, with giraffes and zebras standing around in the shadows of a freeway underpass. He did another huge one off I-880 called "Emergent Sea Turtles." That's the thing about his murals. You don't go to see them. You're stuck in traffic and one of them just shows up.

He was a serious pinball person too. Lucchesi told Patch he was an avid collector, and he served on the Pacific Pinball Museum's board of directors. The museum announced his death in late April.

Why the pinball museum makes sense

The museum sits at 1510 Webster St., over on the West End. Alameda doesn't really have a downtown. It has Park Street on one end of the island and Webster Street on the other, and the pinball museum has been a Webster Street anchor for years, the kind of place where you bring out-of-town relatives and lose them for three hours.

A room full of flippers, bells and people who knew him is a pretty fitting place to say goodbye to a guy who spent his life making loud, bright things in unglamorous spaces. Bring the kids or don't. It's a memorial, but the hosts are asking for music and pinball, not silence.

Looking for more to do around town this week? Check our events calendar, and the Soul of Our Nation show at Rhythmix is still up through the end of the month.