This exhibit of trash art is put on by the Trash Falcons, a group of folks who live near Lake Merritt (mostly). They started picking up trash during the first pandemic year when everyone was feeling down and wanting to get out and do something, anything!
They’re still going strong nearly six years later. Anyone can join them Saturday mornings. According to their website, they’ve collected 11 tons of garbage around the neighborhood, including fishing it out of the lake!
Some of the trash art is pieces created from found items. But most is the items themselves. The art is the fanciful and amusing descriptions they’ve written for each item. Here’s the description of a found Slinky: “Slinky used to live up in the clouds with its friends Yknils and Sylkin. One day, Slinky was going skydiving with Sylkin, but Slinky’s parachute did not work, so Slinky fell all the way into Lake Merrit, where they were found by the Trash Falcons.”
Other descriptions speculate on items tossed angrily into the lake for some reason, like ID badges of disgruntled employees. Many of the item titles are equally funny, like “Your Missing AirPods” and “Gasket of Destiny.” You can read all the hilarious back stories on the website here. The exhibit is at the Junior Center for Art and Science which includes this cute mural of the lake. It’s open till March 6, 2026.
The Lake Merritt Institute published a lengthy list of items found in the lake, such as a bag of carrots, backpacks with homework, a gerbil in a tiny casket, security officer badges, two kilograms of drugs (donated to the police department), a 1966 Raiders football schedule, a mannequin arm and a plastic piece of bacon.
I next visited the Rotary Nature Center, the next building over. I used to go there often when I lived in the neighborhood, particularly to see the bees, which were housed in a glass, ant farm style hive. You could see them go in and out of the building through a small opening in the wall.
The Center originally opened in 1953 and is the oldest municipal nature center in the US. That makes sense, since Lake Merritt is the country’s first wildlife refuge, founded in 1869. The lake contains several islands for birds to roost that humans may not visit.
I was happy to visit since it was closed last time I tried (due to fire). The bee hive is gone but the place looks spiffed up with taxidermied animals and interpretive exhibits.