The People Yearn for Benches

Oakland's community-made bus benches are sparking hope in real life and online.

One backyard. A ton of wood. Dozens of neighbors. Some experts, some newbies. Great vibes. A perfect recipe for another excellent bench build!

Since the beginning of 2025, I’ve been a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Bench Collective, a “decentralized collaboration of local neighbors who build, install, and maintain much-needed benches, mainly at bus stops.” Thus far, this crew has installed over 110 bus benches across the East Bay and San Francisco.

As a transit organizer, communicator, and avid user, it was easy for me to stumble upon this nascent group. Thanks to the patience and knowledge of the lead organizers, I’ve developed my woodworking skills and can now train others on some parts of the assembly process! I also cover the bench builds on social media while keeping the rest of the crew anonymous for their safety.

Our bench build on November 22nd was no different than the others. I walked in on dozens of people sanding, painting, stenciling, cutting, screwing, hammering, drilling, and chitchatting. Then, one person walked up to me saying they came from one of my videos. Shortly after, another person said the same thing. And another. And another! I held back tears of joy as I thanked them for taking time out of their weekend to be part of this.

As we installed benches around Oakland, I asked my teammates to record me saying “no bench” prior to the install and “bench” afterwards. I thought this video format was silly and digestible. Transparently, I was also quite exhausted and knew this required less effort than filming the entire time, which I had done for past videos. After no more than 30 minutes of editing, I posted the video on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok and woke up the next morning to 1 million views, thousands of hopeful and joyful comments, and dozens of DMs from people asking to get involved or learn how to install benches in their community. Currently, the video has generated 3.5 million views across the three platforms. This was the heart of my strategy behind these bench build videos:

1. Provide a type of hope that recognizes the needs that the state must meet but has not. This isn’t simply a feel-good story. Our government should provide these services, but since they aren’t, we will.

2. Educate people on the harms that these benches are alleviating. Our transit is underfunded, which results in delayed service. We have a right to comfort while we demand better.

3. Encourage people from the Bay Area to join the bus bench builds and eventually transit campaigns more broadly.

I hope the progression of ‘bench build ➡️ content ➡️ more volunteers ➡️ larger and scaled bench builds ➡️ large and active mass transit campaigns’ actualizes in the Bay Area. Knowing that we have a Bay Area-wide transit ballot measure next year, the time is now to organize our neighbors to finally fund transit at the levels we need and deserve.

Moreover, this effort isn’t just in the Bay. Kansas City, Chattanooga, and other cities also have community bus bench collectives. According to KCTV5, “about 75% of Kansas City bus stops don’t have anywhere to sit.” Chattanooga organizers describe the city as a “seating desert.” Through these videos, I hope we can inspire people everywhere to get to know their neighbors and work collectively to address the needs of their community, including but not limited to transit.

It feels pretty incredible that these benches (and the village that builds them) bring joy to so many people. This is just the beginning.

If you’re from the Bay and want to get involved, please contact us at sfbabc.org <3