When you live in Montclair Village, you can’t avoid the running chatter and obvious influences of living in Oakland and playing next-door neighbor to Berkeley.

If an archeologist landed here, would he or she be able to understand the political zeitgeist by the evidence we leave in our wake?  The easy answer is yes, and he doesn’t have to dig very deep either.

Let’s look at some of the left-leaning signs around town.  This first photo is located at Montclair’s ground zero:  the Mountain and Antioch intersection.  You may have walked by the stop sign a thousand times, and it actually says “Stop Bush.”

The next piece of evidence is a cryptic message scribbled outside McCalou’s Department Store.  There’s pretty much zero graffiti around town but this little message must mean something.  Does it say Joker?  Remember the outside world?  Is it meaningful or just a little tease?

The last evidence relates to our newspaper choices.  While the Oakland Tribune is probably nearby, there are other options here.  First, the Berkeley Daily Planet appears to be empty.  You can see the San Jose Mercury News peeking out and still available.  There’s also a broken door from the New York Times, which could mean the news isn’t getting delivered?  Not sure.

With these three pieces of evidence, perhaps there might be something pretty funny to say about Montclarions.  We are obviously left-leaning on the political spectrum – and it’s entertaining to see this play out in the Village.  There are red and blue people here, but the bias is clear.