Walk down Second Avenue on a Saturday morning and you'll smell the Morning Market before you see it, coffee and peaches and whatever's coming off the griddle at whichever stand drew the longest line that week. What's new this month is what's on the wall behind you. Story Books & Toys, at 150 S. Second Ave., just got a floral mural wrapping around its north corner, all peonies and botanical color, finished in mid-August by San Francisco muralist Nora Bruhn and her assistant Brittany Sunquist. It's visible from the entrance to the Gene Bianchi Community Center a few doors down, which means anyone walking to the Center this fall walks past it first.
That mural is the eighth one OakdaleARTS has put up since the nonprofit started commissioning them in 2020. If you did the mural walk around town last year, or even last spring, you haven't done this version of it. The organization added a wall in March and another in August, the fastest stretch of growth since the program began, and the loop through downtown looks different than it did even six months ago.
The Same Nonprofit Painted a Different Building Five Months Earlier
Before the Story Books & Toys piece, there was the Bordona building on F Street. In late March, local artist Lindsey Wetenkamp finished a Stanislaus River scene there, complete with a kayaker, on the side of the Bordona family's store. The family asked for the river theme specifically. Bordona, whose parents Bob and Phyllis own the building, explained the request simply: "My dad particularly loves the river." Stanislaus County District 1 Supervisor Buck Condit showed up for the ribbon cutting, and OakdaleARTS President Nancy Podolsky called it, at the time, the group's seventh mural.
Five months later, the eighth went up two blocks away. That's not the usual pace. Since 2020, OakdaleARTS has added roughly one mural a year on average, working with a different artist nearly every time. Two new murals in the same year, one in early spring and one in late summer, is new, and it's worth knowing if you're the kind of person who tells out-of-town guests where to walk downtown, because the map you gave them last year is already out of date.
No City Money Behind Any of It
Here's the part that doesn't show up on the wall itself: none of these eight murals were paid for with public funds. OakdaleARTS covers every project through sponsorships and community fundraising, and the group has been direct about it. As Podolsky put it after the August dedication, "OakdaleARTS receives no public funding for all the murals." The money comes from local businesses and events like the group's Fall Basket raffle, which has offered prizes ranging from Sierra Repertory Theatre tickets to a House of Beef dinner for four to gift certificates at Bloomingcamp Ranch and Roberts Ferry Gourmet.
That funding model matters for a reason beyond trivia. Murals painted on stucco and wood in the Central Valley sun don't last forever without upkeep, and the first one OakdaleARTS ever commissioned proved it. The original mural at 160 N. Yosemite Ave, painted by Cameron Moberg in November 2020, needed a full restoration within just over four years because of general wear on the wall and the paint. Artist Aaron "Fasm" Vickery, who had assisted on the original install, came back to restore it, and the cost was covered again by community sponsors, this time Bistro 120 owners Kelly and Matt Budine. The gallery isn't a one-time civic purchase. It's an ongoing bill that local businesses keep paying, year after year, mural after mural.
The Loop That Exists Right Now
If you want to walk it this weekend, here's what's actually on the wall today, not what was there when you last paid attention:
- 160 N. Yosemite Ave. at East E Street (2020, Cameron Moberg): The original, a working cowboy on horseback with a cow and calf under an oak tree and a blooming almond orchard behind them, 75 feet wide across a wall that's impossible to miss driving in from Highway 120. Restored in 2024 after four years of Valley sun.
- 213 E F Street, near the Oakdale Senior Center: A garden scene of birds, bees, and flowers, with tree swallows flying among oak leaves and acorns.
- 231 East F Street at South Third Avenue (2022, Joel Aguilar): One of the earlier additions to the walk, downtown on F Street.
- The Bordona building, F Street (March 2026, Lindsey Wetenkamp): A Stanislaus River scene with a kayaker, painted at the family's request in tribute to the salmon run they've watched for years.
- 150 S. Second Ave., Story Books & Toys (August 2026, Nora Bruhn and Brittany Sunquist): The newest one, a large-scale botanical piece visible from the Bianchi Community Center entrance.
That's five of the eight, spanning six years and both ends of downtown, from the highway entrance on Yosemite Avenue to the Senior Center on F Street to Second Avenue by the Community Center. Walk it start to finish and you'll pass Bistro 120, House of Beef, and both Last Call Brewing Company and Dying Breed Brewing along the way, which is either a coincidence of geography or proof that the mural map and the downtown business map are basically the same document.
Worth Doing This Weekend, Not Someday
One thing on the calendar makes this a better weekend for the walk than most. The Oakdale Morning Market keeps running downtown on Saturdays through September, so there's still time to grab coffee before you start and still time to make it a habit before it packs up for the year. Pair that Saturday morning with the loop past all eight walls, start to finish, and you'll have seen the current version of downtown before it changes again. Given this year's pace, it probably will.
If you're the kind of person who notices when a wall in your own town looks different than it did last spring, you already understand something about Oakdale that doesn't show up in a listing photo. That's the same local read Concierge Homes brings to every conversation about buying or selling here, in Oakdale and across the Central Valley and Sierra Foothills. If a move is ever part of your future, reach out and let's talk about what's actually happening in the neighborhood, not just what's on the market report.
