Landmarks Tours
7th Street Warehouse
Billie Joe had just moved into this warehouse squat when he wrote Welcome to Paradise. Its bathroom was infested with rats, so he used a cat litter instead. It’s also referred to in the Sweet 16 line ‘throwing down a bottle of Olde English back in the warehouse’ and inspired the ‘wicked warehouse in Oakland’ Brandon moves into in Spike by The Network. One of My Lies was written here.
‘I had moved out of my house in the suburbs to West Oakland, into a warehouse that was rat-infested and in a really fucked-up neighborhood, with a lot of crazy punks and friends. I was paying $50 a month for rent, which was great, because, being in a band, you got paid a couple hundred bucks here and there – so it was easy to pay for rent, eat Top Ramen, and buy weed. It was an eye-opening experience. Suddenly, I was on my own, smack out in one of the gnarliest neighborhoods in Oakland. You look around and you see cracked streets and broken homes and ghetto neighborhoods, and you’re in the middle of it.’ — Billie Joe Armstrong, Rolling Stone, 2019
‘I had moved out of my house in the suburbs to West Oakland, into a warehouse that was rat-infested and in a really fucked-up neighborhood, with a lot of crazy punks and friends. I was paying $50 a month for rent, which was great, because, being in a band, you got paid a couple hundred bucks here and there – so it was easy to pay for rent, eat Top Ramen, and buy weed. It was an eye-opening experience. Suddenly, I was on my own, smack out in one of the gnarliest neighborhoods in Oakland. You look around and you see cracked streets and broken homes and ghetto neighborhoods, and you’re in the middle of it.’ — Billie Joe Armstrong, Rolling Stone, 2019
