Berkeley Public Piano
05 Aug 2018A few updates (April 2020)
The original post starts at “Overview”. I just thought I’d make a few updates now that it’s been about two years.
We originally thought the police would be annoyed at our antics. In fact, the exact opposite happened!
First I just wanted to say that most of us at the Police Department are big fans of the Public Piano. We were saddened when the last piano was vandalized and were happy to see the new one at the MLK Building.
You might be wondering about that last sentence. It turns out the piano was eventually vandalized, but my roommate, Josh, led the effort to replace it (if you’re counting, this would be the third piano). He got a really beautiful upright piano, painted with a landscape view of Berkeley!
Finally, sometime toward the end of 2019 Josh’s piano was also destroyed. But at this point it seems the piano had actually become a sort of institution on campus. We were quickly contacted by people who wanted to replace the piano and were asking for advice. The piano was replaced almost immediately by a group of sophomores.
It’s rather awesome to think that there’s a sort of legacy associated with the Berkeley piano now, with maybe three generation of students having taken part in maintaining its presence on Sproul!
Here’s my original post:
Overview
If you visit UC Berkeley you may encounter a brightly painted piano on Sproul Plaza, the main thoroughfare on the south side of campus. If you’re lucky you might hear some beautiful music from the piano. If you’re unlucky the piano may have already been removed, demolished, vandalized, or have otherwise met some unsavory end. Either way, this post is to recount the tale of how the piano ended up there in the first place.
The Berkeley Public Piano was the result of much work by a close group of friends and me. This may sound sappy, but we were all united in the goal of bringing the joy of music to an otherwise dreary and sterile campus. We were tired of students walking with their headphones in and eyes on the ground, rushing to their next class or to the library to finish their homework and ignoring the world around them. We wanted people to slow down and appreciate life.
Inspiration
The summer of 2017 I visited Denver. There, on the 16th street mall I found brightly colored pianos on every block, free to use by anyone who wanted to. In addition to being impressed, I was slightly miffed that Berkeley did not have one.
Feedback
Arriving at Berkeley after the summer, I told anybody who would listen about a potential public piano. The typical response went something like this:
- Wow that sounds really cool
- Wait, how would you get a piano?
- Wait, who would pay for it?
- Wait, how would you transport it?
- Wait, wouldn’t it be vandalized?
- Wait, wouldn’t it be stolen?
- Wait, wouldn’t the administration take it away?
- Wait, what if it rains?
Evidently, there were many hurdles to overcome.
Acquiring a Piano
As everybody knows, the first step to putting a public piano on Sproul is to obtain a piano. And as it turns out there are many free pianos on Craigslist (I’d say maybe 4-5 in East Bay every week). This is because there are many people who want to be rid of their piano but don’t want to pay to get it moved out. So they offer the piano for free under the condition that you provide transportation. I set up alerts for free pianos in east bay and waited for the free pianos to roll in.
I ended up visiting two houses with pianos. One on Albany Hill and one in the Berkeley Hills. Both pianos were utterly massive and had to be carried down a narrow flight of stairs. I gave up on both.
Finally, I received an alert about a piano in Oakland. It was perfect: on wheels, easily accessible, and a short drive away. I decided to go for this one. At this point in time I was really the only person working on this project and I’m pretty sure everybody assumed I was delusional. Nevertheless, I managed to convince my roommate, Max, to come help me pick it up. I rented a U-Haul (total cost about $60) and we hauled the piano back to Berkeley.
Languishing
The piano sat in our apartment for about 5 months. I blame too much school work and general indolence.
Inspiration
With about a month left of school, I was suddenly inspired by the last minute panic that accompanies any protracted length of procrastination. Faced with the prospect of getting kicked out of my apartment and having an entire piano to deal with I decided to finally put the piano on Sproul.
We rallied a group of friends for the job. It was suggested that we might be ticketed or punished by the Berkeley Police Department, so we decided to sneak the piano on to campus well after midnight. At around 2 am we rolled the piano through Southside and on to Sproul plaza. It was a surprisingly fun time! It was exciting!
Success and Disaster
The piano caused quite a stir. For three or four days it stood on Sproul plaza with people marveling at it’s mysterious appearance. Scenes like this were common:
But alas, all good things must come to and end. As abruptly as the piano had appeared, it dissapeared. Nobody knew where it was. The theory that was floating around was that people had stolen the piano.
My theory is that people had simply assumed the piano was up for grabs. There was no sign to indicate that the piano was meant to be shared, nothing to imply that the piano should stay on Sproul, nor was it entirely obvious what the function of a dilapidated piano was on Sproul Plaza. Why anybody would possibly want such a crappy piano I have no idea, but I attribute this ostensibly ugly display of the dark side of human nature to a simple misunderstanding.
Whatever the case may be, it was evident that we had hit upon something. Here is a message we received from the person on the piano bench in the picture above:
I really just wanted to reach out to say thank you guys for putting that out there. Piano throughout my life was a huge outlet, and I haven’t been able to get my hands on a real acoustic one around Berkeley in a long time. That photo was also taken about 30 minutes after I got my backpack and laptop stolen on campus; I was absolutely devastated and really needed to vent, and the piano really just happened to be there, which is something I have never seen on campus in my 7 years of being around the area. I played it that evening, and came onto campus for about an hour or so the next day and played some more, and I really think it helped me get through the past couple of days.
I know it was just a social experiment, but I just wanted to let ya know it really helped me get through a hard time. Thanks again :)
It was messages like these that made it clear to us that we had to put another, better piano up.
A Second Chance
In the wake of the publicity that the original piano had received, we had no trouble finding a group of people willing to sell their piano to put on Sproul. Phoebe, a Cal student, was selling one for $200 and even offered to paint it with her art friends.
In addition to a new piano with a paint job, I endeavored to make it completely obvious that the piano was to be for the public. To that effect I bought some chains and a lock from Ace Hardware to tie the piano down, and also made a sign for the piano. Moreover, this second piano had no wheels making it ludicrously difficult to move (a hindrance while we attempted to move it, but an advantage in preventing it from being moved).
Once again, at around 1 am a group of friends and I lugged the piano (on a luggage cart stolen from the basement of Unit 2) on to Sproul.
For the next couple weeks there was hardly a moment that the piano was not being played. This time, the piano stayed.
