I’m lucky to be able to ride my bike to work from my home, near Piedmont Avenue, to our office in downtown Oakland. Somewhat ironically, the road from home to work— Broadway from around Macarthur to around 20th— is known as the Broadway Auto Row. In its heyday, it was apparently a pretty glamorous place— my girlfriend’s grandfather used to be in the car business, and bringing the family to visit his clients on the Auto Row was a highlight of her life as a child. But now there’s not much to it: mostly a line of fairly sad car lots, some no more than storefronts with a few used cars for sale in a parking lot, and the occasional new car dealership that just feels out of place, like it’d rather be in the suburbs.
Anyway, I’m riding to work the other day, past one of the lots (I think it was the GMC/Subaru/Toyota place, I’m not sure), and I see this: