I walk pretty much everywhere in Oakland and I started noticing a weird trend where there were a LOT of free chairs on the sidewalks, so I started taking photos and compiling them into a series called “Chairs of Oakland.”
I have way more than 100 photos, but I tried to compile some of my favorites into a main grid and then made a little honorable mentions grid for the more questionable “chairs” of Oakland.
Special thanks to @blankfrank for reminding me about this little project!
@FlockOfCats well, this isn't really street furniture, but just urban recycling. they're offering the chairs to passersby (with maybe the vain hope that the trash people will take if nobody else does)...
@Alice@blankfrank We donated an old chair to a high school drama club as a prop for a play this Summer. My wife and daughter ended up seeing the play. Talking with people next to them explaining why they were there gave everyone a huge laugh!!!
@Alice@blankfrank
This is great. I really love it, and I admire you for your follow-through. I have all these projects I never complete: a collection of Irish music I was going to put together, we had a group of photos of everyone hanging their laundry in Italy that we were going to make a collage of. Maybe after we settle from the move I’ll finish one of them.
@Alice@lisamelton@blankfrank And these aren’t parking chairs, I assume? We have a lot of those where I live in Pittsburgh. “The items used have sometimes been referred to as the Pittsburgh Parking Chair, due to their common use in Pittsburgh and its nearby suburbs. “ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking_chair
@amart@lisamelton@blankfrank Oh, I’m familiar with parking chairs from when I lived in Chicago! The worst was when we spent HOURS digging our car out of the snow to run to the grocery store only to come back less than an hour later and find someone had put a chair in the spot to hold it. I didn’t expect it to be MY spot since I’d cleared it out, but I also didn’t expect some jerk to try to claim ownership of the spot with their dumb folding chair.
Chairs of Oakland are just legitimately free chairs left on the sidewalks of Oakland.
@Alice@blankfrank
I’m a free chair collector I only collect wooden chairs. My family understands that if they see a free wooden chair, bring it to me. I paint them reupholster if needed and give them away.
A person only needs so many chairs, so I share.
@Alice@blankfrank random thought: COVID/remote work may have caused an unusual increase in number of people investing in sitting improvements, explaining the abundance of free old chairs
@Alice@blankfrank
Here in Santa Fe, it's gates. Practically every house has an adobe wall around it and the gates are what distinguish them. Lotsa pics, but no move to compile yet.
@jgamble@blankfrank Yeah! I have a theory that there was such an influx in free black office chairs because, when the pandemic started and remote work became more permanent, people were finally like “I guess it’s time to get a decent office chair.”
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