It’s normal for a big, successful rock band to get a key to the city when they return to their hometown. It is not normal for the ceremony to be in a 7-Eleven parking lot, but that’s what Green Day did on Sunday when they returned to their native Pinole, California.
East Bay natives Green Day blew through town this weekend on their Saviors tour, where the groundbreaking pop-punk band played two of their famed albums in their entirety. (Mark Zuckerberg was at Friday night’s Oracle Park show.) And it got a lot of publicity that Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong went on a profane rant against Oakland A’s owner John Fisher, and the A’s franchise, for their proposed move to Las Vegas.
It did not get as much attention that, as KGO reports, Green Day visited their hometown of Pinole on Sunday, and were given a key to the city. But very unusually, the key to the city ceremony was held in a 7-Eleven parking lot.
As we’ve noted, Billie Joe and Green Bay bassist Mike Dirnt both attended Pinole High School, which is right across the street from the Pinole 7-Eleven where this ceremony was held. The 7-Eleven locale is also a reference to the Green Day track “Jesus of Suburbia” from their American Idiot album, a track which contains the lyric, “At the center of the Earth in the parking lot/Of the 7-Eleven where I was taught/The motto was just a lie.”
“While Green Day may have traveled the world, their roots remain deeply planted here in Pinole,” Mayor Maureen Toms said at Sunday’s ceremony, according to the Richmond Standard.
Though as nice as this homecoming story sounds, the whole thing was really just a coffee promotion. Green Day’s Punk Bunny Coffee is now being sold in 7-Eleven stores.
Image: Green Day receives key to the city “at the center of the earth in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven aboration with 7-Eleven” on Sunday, September 22, 2024, in Pinole, Calif. (Don Feria/7-Eleven, Inc. via AP CONTENT SERVICES)
