The city charges at least $6,000 to put a bench in Golden Gate Park, with a plaque in memory of a loved one. For more than a decade, a roller-skating engineer in the Inner Sunset has opted to go his own way, making and installing some 210 benches in the Sunset and around the city — for free.
The highest density of public benches built and painted by Chris Duderstadt are scattered around the Inner Sunset, where Duderstadt, 77, has lived off and on for 52 years. Park-goers enjoy a scoop of gelato on the bench outside Hometown Creamery on 9th Avenue. A group of people (and their dog) sit down on another with their haul from the Sunday farmers market. Outside Yifang and Little Sweet, young couples rest on a bench, waiting for boba.
A few more rest in his backyard, waiting for special events like the Inner Sunset Flea Market, when even more pedestrians arrive in the area, looking for a spot to sit down.
A trained machinist with an engineering degree, Duderstadt’s first bench was made for a friend’s veterinary clinic in 1977.
“If you understand veterinary clinics, they have to mop the floor all the time,” Duderstadt said. He made benches that could be bolted to the wall, rather than the floor, so all the nooks and crannies could be cleaned without moving furniture around.
Designing one bench, as it turned out, was not enough. He began planning another, and figured out the contours by comparing all the benches in the Golden Gate Park. “The average wasn’t comfortable!” he said. After several versions, he settled on what he called “the off the wall” bench: A shape with slightly angled seat and backrest, which allows sitters to shift back and forth, prompting better posture. “I like to think they’re comfortable for everyone,” he said.
He installed one of the first examples of that design outside of an apartment where he lived at the time, on a steep hill near Ortega Street and 11th Avenue. That bench is still there.
Locations of Duderstadt’s benches in San Francisco
Source: Chris Duderstadt, as of January 2025. Some locations are approximate.
Map by Junyao Yang.
And he kept on building benches. In 2003, the Recreation and Parks Department started to level and widen the skating area near Sixth Avenue and JFK Drive. Duderstadt, who had been roller-skating in the park since 1978, offered to provide benches for the renovated skating space. Today, skaters still rest on those benches and catch their breath after a dance session on wheels.
Around 2012, Duderstadt was challenged by a friend, Adam Greenfield, to make a bench entirely out of wood. Greenfield, who lived in the Sunset, would “take a chair and just set it up at the corner and sit there to talk to people.” Portable benches would really level up the socializing opportunities.
Duderstadt took on the challenge. These wooden, portable benches made the Public Bench Project possible, he said. He envisioned it to be “a place of community and happiness,” and created a website so that people could request their own benches or build their own. (In either case, Duderstat recommends familiarizing yourself with local bench regulations first.)
The benches began to spread across the neighborhood, mainly by word of mouth. “We had various neighbors that wanted a bench,” Duderstadt recalled.
Barbara Oleksiw, the owner of a blue house at Sixth Avenue and Irving Street, asked for several benches. Then she went across the street to Yellow Submarine, the sandwich shop, and convinced the owner to take a bench. “And it just exploded. Sometimes a design will promote itself, shall we say,” Duderstadt said proudly.
He donates all the benches, although people sometimes contribute to the expenses of building one. The materials cost about $80 apiece. It takes him about an hour and a half to build a bench.
Requests have slowed down “considerably” in recent years, Duderstadt said. He currently makes about two a month.
Not all of the benches have survived. Some were stolen. A couple were destroyed by cars. “Anything you put on the street is going to get hit by a car someday,” he said. “It’s going to happen. Including us.”
Duderstadt lives near 10th Avenue and Irving Street, and sees his benches every day. “It makes me feel good. Beyond people hanging out there. It really serves a function for older people,” he said. “I really like to put them on hills. If you’re going to hike up that hill, you need a place to rest.”
Painting the benches takes anywhere between a couple of days to weeks. On a pair of benches donated to the Jefferson Elementary School on 18th Avenue, he wrote, “make a friend, be a friend.”
At the entrance to the Inner Sunset Farmers Market, he switches the bench out often. In October, the bench was painted in stars and stripes, and read “VOTE.” During Pride month, it was covered in rainbows. Right now, a Giants bench sits at the entrance, to celebrate the team “having a perfect season so far.”
But some remain unchanged. A blue-and-yellow bench has been sitting on the right side of the farmer’s market since the breakout of the Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022. Sunflowers covered the backrest, while the seat was painted with tank ruts.
“I really wish we could move on, but we can’t,” he said. “I think people need to be reminded that the Ukraine war is still going on.”
Duderstadt has a sister in Massachusetts who is also an artist. She has an entire barn filled with her work. “The benches, I don’t have a barn to store them,” Duderstadt said. “I put my art out on the street.”