Beautifying a Utility Box
By Aanika Subramanian, age 9
Squeak, squeak. That was the sound of our gloves scrubbing off years and years of caked dirt from green metal. A group of us neighborhood kids were cleaning utility boxes on Chabot Road at College Avenue on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with the goal of painting two boxes and two poles a shade of baby blue. For the paint to stick, we needed to remove the dirt off first. That took a lot of time, energy and cleaning spray.
We were painting these boxes for a few reasons:
One, we wanted to make the community more beautiful. We noticed that the utility boxes were sometimes tagged or people put their old boba tea cups on top of them, and we knew that wasn’t good. We wanted to make the boxes look nicer so that people would appreciate it as art.
Second, we wanted to help our fellow muralist, Rachel Perls. She was going to paint flowers on the utility boxes and poles on top of the baby blue coat that we painted.
The third reason was because we wanted to build our community (not destroy it). We wanted to spend time with each other, to hang out and to work together to make something better. That’s how I think a sense of community is built.
Our team of kids encourages other small groups to come together to make Rockridge more beautiful.
Thank you to Rachel Perls for donating her talents to residents all over Oakland and RCPC for sponsoring our activity.
