That messy Muni Metro stop/treacherous intersection at Church Street and Duboce Avenue? The one where there's never anywhere to sit after your outbound N-Judah just kicked you off? Well, things got a little more pleasant over there this week with the installation of nine bronze chairs, part of a new public art piece cleverly titled Chairs.
The bronze seating is an assortment of vintage chairs and artist Primitivo Suarez-Wolfe originally wanted to cast them out of melted-down Muni rails, Haighteration reports. As it turns out, the metal in Muni rails is too inferior to be used for seating and they don't appear to be actual bronze as that would make them a valuable target for Bay Area metal thieves.
Depending on which neighbor you ask, they are either a welcome place to sit and wait for a train or a new spot for junkies to shoot up. According to one Lower Haight resident, however, the chairs were all donated by folks in the neighborhood so they presumably hold some sentimental value for someone.
So far, the public reaction to the whimsical installation has ranged from "I love everything about them" to "I thought someone left their crappy old furniture out in the rain." Either way, it looks like they've been seeing some use. When your SFist correspondent walked through the intersection late Wednesday evening, we spotted one man taking a load off and enjoying a couple bottles of MGD on a chair bolted to the Southeast corner. Sadly, they also seem to be a magnet for trash already:
A few more golden chairs at Church and Duboce. twitter.com/DanJackson415/
— Dan Jackson (@DanJackson415) December 6, 2012