Gustavo Zermeño Jr. had big ideas for the walls outside Oceanview Liquor in Hermosa Beach.
The artist envisioned a giant mural paying tribute to the Kings on the large wall facing north — “because a lot of the players live in the South Bay area,” he said — and another one that featured both the Dodgers and Lakers on the smaller wall facing south.
But just as Zermeño was getting ready to start the project earlier this month, something huge happened that altered his plans:
The Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani.
Video game company 2K Games says it made a donation to help keep a Kobe and Gianna Bryant mural on the wall of Hardcore Fitness in downtown L.A. for another year.
Zermeño knew what he had to do.
“I was like, ‘OK, let’s put Ohtani on this side and make this Kings-Dodgers, then we’ll do Lakers on the opposite end,’” Zermeño told The Times on Tuesday while standing on a ladder outside Oceanview Liquor.
As he spoke, Zermeño was painting in the color on the Kings portion of the mural, which features images of Drew Doughty and Dustin Brown. To their right is the already completed Dodgers portion, which features images of Mookie Betts and the star of the show, Ohtani.
“I already kind of had the idea, at least the direction of where I wanted to take the mural,” Zermeño said, “so right when they signed Ohtani, I was like, ‘OK, let’s just plug these in and make him the focal point of the project.’”
Zermeño’s painting is one of at least two murals of Ohtani in his new uniform that popped up in Los Angeles County after the Japanese superstar signed a 10-year, $700-million deal with the Dodgers less than two weeks ago.
Shohei Ohtani’s unique contract presents an equally unprecedented business opportunity for the Dodgers to make up to $1 billion over the next decade.
Prociety sports merchandise store owner Eric Park had already arranged for artist Jonas Never to paint a sports-themed mural outside his shop in the Fashion District of downtown L.A. when the Dodgers’ big news broke.
“We were gonna decide between the Dodgers, Lakers or any of the local teams,” Park told The Times in a phone interview Tuesday. “And then just right when we were talking about it, Shohei announced his signing, so we’re just like, ‘Oh, we have to do this.’ ”
With some help from fellow mural artist Droyce, Never quickly completed his larger-than-life portrait of Ohtani in his No. 17 Dodgers jersey with a bat on his left shoulder while standing in front of the word “Sho-Time” in giant letters.
“Had to welcome @shoheiohtani to LA the only way we know how,” Never wrote on Instagram along with photos of the mural.
The mural was finished Saturday , and Park said it already has attracted a lot of attention.
“There’s been a bunch of people that [have] been coming by the building, just taking pictures, taking selfies and we even had a couple major Japanese news networks come by and interview us,” Park said. “We were even contacted by Japanese tour groups that wanted to come by.”
Dodgers catchers Will Smith and Austin Barnes now appear where pitcher Julio Urías once was on a stadium mural celebrating the team’s 2020 World Series win.
Zermeño said a number of enthusiastic fans have stopped by to check out his work this week as well.
“These past four days have been pretty wild,” Zermeño said.
One of those excited visitors was Manhattan Beach resident and lifelong Dodgers fan Colin Sako, who said he had to come by and get pictures of himself in front of the Ohtani portion of the mural to post on social media and send to his friends in Hawaii.
“For me, it’s just he’s the best baseball player in the history of baseball,” Sako said. “And for him to come to L.A., it’s huge — huge!”
Visitors have flocked to Bellflower to see the L.A.-centric 54-foot-by-10-foot mural. City officials have said the artwork violates multiple ordinances and may come down.
Are you a true-blue fan?
Get our Dodgers Dugout newsletter for insights, news and much more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
