Key Takeaways
- Too $hort's honorary "Too $hort Way" street sign at Foothill Boulevard and High Street in East Oakland was discovered missing on Wednesday, Oct. 21, and the City of Oakland had installed a replacement by Thursday morning.
- Oakland police said they could not confirm what happened to the sign because they had no "incident details" about the reported theft and had received no reports about it at all.
- Councilmember Noel Gallo pushed for the honor, calling Too $hort "the first rapper from Oakland" and crediting him with putting out relevant music across five decades.
- Oakland dedicated the three-block stretch of Foothill Boulevard between High Street and 47th Avenue to Too $hort on Dec. 10, 2022, with Ice Cube, Mistah F.A.B. and Sway Calloway attending the ceremony at his alma mater, Fremont High School.
The Oakland street sign honoring West Coast rapper Too $hort has been replaced after a purported theft.
The honorary "Too $hort Way" marker, which was unveiled during a December 2022 ceremony at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and High Street in East Oakland, went missing on Wednesday, Oct. 21. By the following morning, the City of Oakland announced that a replacement had gone up.
While stealing a street sign is considered a misdemeanor offense in Oakland, local police said in an email they could not confirm what happened because they had no "incident details" about the purported theft, according to KTVU.
While celebrating the street sign naming, Councilmember Noel Gallo, called Too $hort "the first rapper from Oakland" and "the most successful having put out relevant music across 5 decades” in a tweet.
Oakland dedicated a three-block run of Foothill Boulevard between High Street and 47th Avenue to the rapper during the event. In attendance at the ceremony were his friends and rap peers Ice Cube, Mistah F.A.B. and Sway Calloway at Fremont High, where then-Mayor Libby Schaaf declared it "Too $hort Day." The rapper attended Fremont High upon relocating from Los Angeles to Oakland in 1980 when he was 14 years old.
“I was standing up on a foundation that was already solid, it was already built. So I really had to uphold the legacy of Oakland and the bay,” he told SFGate at the time. “It wasn’t like it was me who was starting this for the first time — big things had happened in the bay, it had a rich history. I’m not taking it lightly.”
