“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.
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.
“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.”
Toms says representatives from Punk Bunny and Green Day contacted city staff about the plans for the plaque unveiling and that city staff were excited to participate.
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.
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.
“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, and waited with 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 to this story.