The team of anonymous transit activists who put benches at Muni stops that had no benches in June has struck again, adding 12 new benches to bench-less bus stops in the Lower Haight, Bayview-Hunters Point, and Potrero Hill.
It was early June when a group calling themselves the SF Bay Area Bench Collective went and installed eight “guerrilla benches” of their own at Mission District SF Muni bus stops that did not have benches. (They had already installed dozens of benches in the East Bay.) These benches were made of sturdy materials, with very high-quality workmanship, and the Muni-riding public seemed to love them.
But SF Public Works did not love the benches, citing risks of legal liability. “There are real reasons why we don’t just say, ‘OK, put whatever you want on a public sidewalk,’” Public Works spokesperson Rachel Gordon told the Chronicle in July. “There are real things a government needs to take into consideration.” Gordon added that her agency would make SFBABC remove the benches.
That seems to have not happened, and now the bench activists are installing yet more bus stop benches. SFist can confirm that this past weekend, the SFBABC put 12 more benches at Muni stops that had not had benches there.
“The SFBABC has installed 12 more benches in San Francisco this past weekend, more than doubling its previous count,” the group said in a statement to SFist. “The first eight benches installed in the city, as well as over 80 benches at East Bay and North Bay bus stops, have been exceedingly well received. This time, the scope of installation covered multiple neighborhoods including Bayview-Hunters Point, Lower Haight, The Mission, and Potrero Hill.”
The above map shows the location of the now 20 renegade benches the group has installed. They put in ten of them in June, and property owners asked that two of them be removed. This past weekend, they added 12 more, though a neighbor near 21st and Potrero streets asked for that bench be removed.
SFist has confirmed that there are new benches that were not there last week. This new one at Cesar Chavez and Florida streets was not there before, serving northbound riders on the 27-Bryant line (though curiously, southbound 27-Bryant riders do get a bench at an official , sanctioned Muni shelter right across the street at that very same intersection).
And 33-Ashbury riders will be pleased to see that the group has also put a bench at 18th and Dolores streets, right outside Dolores Parl Cafe, and next to Dolores Park.
The benches have received the occasional tagging. But the above graffiti job has since been cleaned up, as the SFBABC has recruited volunteers to “adopt” a bench, so to speak. “We encourage anyone who would like to adopt a bench to take a look at the adopters’ guide on our website and reach out,” they told us in their most recent statement. “We maintain all our benches and respond quickly to any problem reports via our website, whether or not the bench is adopted.”
Public Works said in July that they would "ask the bench folks to remove” the unauthorized benches. At that same time, the SFBABC told SFist that “If the city requests us to remove any particular bench then we will do so as quickly as possible.”
So either the city is not following through on asking for the benches’ removal, or the bench collective is ignoring the city’s requests. Either way, there are 12 new benches sitting pretty at Muni stops across SF that did not have any benches until this past Sunday.
Image: SF Bay Area Bench Collective
