by Kevin Cody
Gustavo Zermeno Jr. was rushing to complete his mural of Dodgers Shohei Ohtani, and Kings Drew Doughty, and Dustin Brown Tuesday afternoon before the rain came. But it wasn’t easy because every few minutes passersby would stop him for selfies, which the affable artist never said no to.
Zermeno had been working for three days and anticipated needing another three days to finish the mural on the north wall of Ocean View Liquor, on Manhattan Avenue, at 33rd Street in Hermosa Beach.
Andrew Breithaupt and his sons Oliver, 7, and Teddy, 3, hadn’t known about the mural until they stopped by the liquor store Tuesday to buy beer for the 24th Place Holiday Cookies and Beer block party. The boys wanted a picture with the mural because they are big Dodgers fans, and big Kings fans, in part because Brown lived on their block until moving away after retiring last year. Breithaupt promised Zermeno he would send the photo to Brown’s wife.
The Venice-based artist has completed dozens of murals throughout Los Angeles. His mural of Kobe Bryant was featured on Fox Sports during the 2020 Super Bowl. The Rams commissioned him to do a 10,000 square foot mural of tackle Aaron Donald at SoFi Stadium. Last year, he completed a 1,000 square foot Kings mural on the side of Beach Cities Optometry in downtown Manhattan Beach.
Zermeno said he was walking down 33rd Street to the beach two weeks ago when he noticed Ocean View Liquor’s big, white wall on the north side of the building. It wouldn’t even need prepping, he thought to himself. When he stopped in the store to ask owner Norm Kalosh if he could paint the wall Kalosh proposed a Kings mural because many of the Kings, including Brown and Doughty, are his customers. Kalosh has made Ocean View Liquor a destination for craft beer fans.
But the plan changed when the Dodgers signed Ohtani. The north wall is now evenly divided between Ohtani and the Kings’ Doughty and Brown.
“It’s just light, shadows and illusion,” Zermeno said in explaining the hyperreal effect of his athletes’ bigger than life images. ER
