Three Eyes of Pedro
Strange Fish Graffiti Becomes Local Icon
By Arthur R. Vinsel, Community News Reporter

     Cartoonist - turned - elegant interior design painter Dave Butkus didn’t expect to catch hell creating a mutant fish on a concrete catch basin high atop Gaffey Street hill 14 years ago, but he never imagined its destiny as an icon of San Pedro folk art.
     Appearing in September, 1991, the unofficial Point Fermin landmark has endured rub-outs by Gang Alternative Program (GAP) anti-graffiti volunteers, the elements, and all other threats.
     The familiar image is seen increasingly on T-shirts and decals for car windows or other surfaces that cry out for artistic enhancement. Some see it signifying environmental solidarity and a prophecy of coming havoc due to ocean pollution. (Charlie the Tuna on dioxin or a mermaid with birth defects.) dorsal fin—while others affectionately perceive it as a whimsical white whale, perhaps Moby Dick’s diminutive roadside cousin. But almost everyone likes him—or her—who knows?
     The three-eyed image originally spawned as a shapeless splash of white paint to eradicate graffiti from the drainage fixture near Angels Gate Cultural Center has survived through thick and thin—that is, through layers of latex and enamel paint over the original cartoon.
     Let the Michelangelo of the catch basin explain. “I originally saw a part of the creation in a spot where graffiti had been painted out,” says Butkus, 43, a San Pedro habituÈ who lives in Long Beach and owns The Ultimate Finish, a Bellflower paint contracting firm specializing in rare and exotic faux finishes. He works primarily in upscale homes, which nicely supports his two kids, but sometimes the born cartoonist feels unfulfilled.
     “I was driving up 38th Street after breakfast at the Pacific Diner when I noticed it. There’s no protest or political statement there. I thought, ‘I’ll just do something kind of fun to look at with that. And I came back about 11 one night and spent 15 minutes.’”
     “Our harbor water is not the cleanest for fish to live in,” says Butkus. So the three eyes—the pupils leering in three different directions—resonated with residents.
     “I look at that three-eyed whale every day of my life,” says Noramae Munster, creative marketing maven and civic activist who parks her Porsche on the corner of 38th and Gaffey streets.
     “Often when I tell my clients where I live, they say: “Oh yeah, up there by the three-eyed whale. It’s become a sort of Point Fermin logo. It actually has a legacy for San Pedro,” she notes.
     Noramae knows many artists, craftspeople, writers, poets and others from several years in a Seventh Street storefront she renovated for her firm in the burgeoning arts district.
     They include fine arts photographer Ray Carofano, of Gallery 478, artist Ron Linden and photographer Bill Gribble, a former Associated Press cameraman who originated the San Pedro Harbor Fish T-shirt and a second garment with true local flavor.
     The handsomely embroidered shirts—one depicting Butkus’ three-eyed fish and another simply bearing the no-explanation-needed term “PEEDROW,” are in short supply now. Gribble has been seriously ill, but they will again become available.
     “That illustration has become an icon,” says Gribble, part of the loose-knit San Pedro Union of Artist and Writers, which ebbs and flows through Old Town and often winds up at Carofano’s on First Thursdays.
     To suggest the art colony and its allies who appreciate the unconventional, creative, whimsical and oddball that give color and texture to life and our world have adopted the three-eyed whale is sheer understatement.
     “The graffiti bandits deface it. But it will get restored by someone, often within the hour,” says Gribble. Naturally, like any species, the ichthyological icon has evolved over the past 14 years with different artists adding their own touches in each restoration.
     Not one to see his handiwork hijacked, Butkus, a 1980 Miraleste High School graduate and 16-year San Pedro resident before moving to Long Beach, copyrighted the 1981 cartoon figure. His late father-in-law photographed it a few days later.
     “I’d rather be able to control the image, since I created it,” says Butkus. “And, I’d like to see the proceeds from it go to the downtown art community. I want it to do some good. I’d like it to help battered women or underprivileged kids.
     “I’ve worked hard for what I have and I know what it’s like not to have anything,” adds Butkus, whose custom finishing company is currently applying gold leaf trim in the old Farmers and Merchants Bank Building in Long Beach.
     He normally employs seven to 12 workers and several locals are helping gold leaf the building’s 1920s Broadway financial center turn luxury condos. Other frequent assignments involve faux finishes including marble, wood grain or antique wear in wealthy homes in Long Beach’s waterfront Naples district of Long Beach and Huntington Harbor in Orange County.
     Butkus and his more renowned brother Mike, 45, together once developed a comic strip called The Boneheads, but he says he hasn’t made a serious effort to push it in the media marketplace. Mike Butkus, of Burbank, is a motion picture artist who has developed characters such as Gollum, for the film Lord of the Rings.
     “He’s one of the few left who actually sits down and sketches,” says Butkus, adding his brother has done major work on such films as Robo-Cop II and Betelgeuse, plus director George Lucas’ Star Wars Trilogy. Mike Butkus was a Long Beach newspaper cartoonist in college and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. Dave was a business administration major at San Diego State’s Grossmont campus.
     “Our grandfather was an artist and writer. An uncle lives in the Loire Valley in France and he’s a fine arts painter. He had two art galleries, in Paris and San Francisco. I guess art is in our genes,” says Butkus.
     He suggests contacting him at for decal and T-shirt orders and he would love to see any other photos of the three-eyed fish in its various incarnations over the years.
     Oh by the way, he does not know who painted the one-eyed octopus that now graces another spot near his three-eyed fish.
     Noramae hired him for an interior paint project two years ago and while they were admiring Old Three Eyes, the bad-ass bass, Butkus remarked that the area really needed a one-eyed octopus.
     A day or two later it mysteriously appeared, but each denies responsibility, suggesting divine intervention.

The three-eyed fish in the early days shows how the icon has changed over many years of retouching, restoring and graffiti clean-up.

Bill Gribble had shirts embroidered with the image. He sells the shirts for a modest price, the proceeds go to the group identified as the San Pedro Union of Artists and Writers. 
Photo: Bernard Kane.