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Have you seen the giant whale in the middle of the street in Old Town? Don’t worry, we’re not talking about a real whale. It’s a large, colorful mural on Second Street, between F and G Streets. And if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to check it out soon, because it won’t be there for very much longer. 

The whale mural was done as a collaboration between three local artists, Blake Reagan, Kyle Sanders and Chris Dmise, who painted the piece on Second Street as a part of the Eureka Friday Night Market last week. The process was relatively quick for this particular mural, with the artists starting on Friday, Oct. 20 at about 3 p.m. and finishing up the piece at 7 p.m. that night, all while blasting whale songs while they worked.  

Blake Reagan told the Outpost today that the whale is a humpback and is about 75 feet in length, larger than an actual humpback whale, which generally grow to be somewhere between 45 and 60 feet long. 

But this beautiful, majestic creature will not be gracing our Old Town street for very long, as the City of Eureka is planning to repave the street. Brian Gerving, director of the public works department, said that he was not entirely sure when that portion of street would be torn up, but that work on the Old Town streets is expected to resume this Thursday, so the whale could be gone as early as this weekend. 

Raelina Krikston, coordinator for the Friday Night Market, told the Outpost that she asked the artists to paint that section of the street to provide some “vibrancy” on that block, which is closed off for the market, but didn’t have any vendor booths set up there. Because the street was slated to be repaved, it was incredibly easy to get approval from the City to paint a mural there. The artists were also well aware of repaving plans, and were happy to paint the piece, even knowing that it would be temporary. 

Krikston said that the project was a great success — many people stopped to watch the artists paint on Friday night. She’s hoping that this project will help encourage the community and the City to think about adding murals to surfaces other than walls. She also hopes to have more opportunities for live, public art at future Friday Night Markets. 

“It was a good opportunity to bring it all together and we were lucky enough to have support with the market,” Krikston said. “People really enjoyed it…We could maybe do it every week.”