Deliberate Isolation in a Crowd

June 22, 2023 10:50 AM

Critically, the bench is classless. Particularly a park bench. From well-dressed ladies to homeless men, from horny teens to elderly people-watchers and pigeon-feeders, they come out to just be in the world a little. It exemplifies a certain kind of publicness, a truly democratic intervention and a place to be private in public, a small space in the melee of the metropolis where it is acceptable to do nothing, to consume nothing, to just be. Truly, a free bench is a wonderful thing. from A Place of Both Solitude and Belonging: In Praise of the Park Bench
posted by chavenet (22 comments total)

This is a nice article! In the interest of having a nice discussion, let it be pre-emptively conceded that some benches are becoming aggressively class consciously designed but we can still enjoy talking about regular benches as a nice thing, instead of lamenting the Enshittification of Modern Life, Ch. 237.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:04 AM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

This was a great article and worth reading, thank you for sharing.
posted by Fizz at 11:09 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Here's another piece by the author in a similar vein, this one on awnings. (Archive)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:43 AM on June 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

"Critically, the bench is classless."

I don't know if this has ever been true but it's certainly not true today. Pretty much every single park bench constructed today is blatantly hostile architecture.
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:58 AM on June 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

as i've grown up i've gotten increasingly uncomfortable in spaces that are owned by people. like, right now i'm sitting outside a coffeeshop across the street from the library i'd rather be at, because at some point in the past the library removed the outdoor seating that they used to have. i am annoyed, profoundly annoyed, that the owner of this space or someone in their pay might notice that the coffee i'm drinking isn't from their store and ask me to either move along or else pay more dollars than i'd prefer to pay for a cup of coffee. no thank you, i already have coffee, it's really good coffee, i'm just here to use the seating that you insist is yours even though it's out on the sidewalk in front of god and everybody.

i wish i could teleport this table across the street without anyone noticing. i'm wishing so hard that i'm having a little fantasy that i don't have the chutzpah to actually implement where i come back at night and carry this table and its associated across the street, maybe putting it behind the library so that they don't immediately realize where it got off to.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:03 PM on June 22, 2023 [14 favorites]

let it be pre-emptively conceded that some benches are becoming aggressively class consciously designed but we can still enjoy talking about regular benches as a nice thing,

It's hard for me to get on board with this premise. It's like saying "all bodies" but then excluding disabled people. We can't just wave our hands and say "I hearby concede, now let's move on".

Who gets to use park space is an acutely important point. It's not a minor derail.

If we're not speaking for the most oppressed, then what is the point of speaking about how egalitarian something is?
posted by splitpeasoup at 12:07 PM on June 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

The point was that we can salute how egalitarian the benches described in the article are. That is a thing we can do. We can talk about this article, and about the classic benches described in it, about most benches even.

We can enjoy an article about something that is nice, without derailing into talking about other shitty, inegalitarian benches, because everyone here knows about those, no one here would be for them.

And, not for nothing, but praising the humble plain old bench for its egalitarianism is, in and of itself, a statement against hostile architecture.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:20 PM on June 22, 2023 [13 favorites]

praising the humble plain old bench for its egalitarianism is, in and of itself, a statement against hostile architecture.

Ok, 100% agree with that.
posted by splitpeasoup at 12:31 PM on June 22, 2023 [7 favorites]

In the past, cities had restraints on the kind of people who could be in public places. There were ugly laws, vagrancy laws, Jim Crow laws where applicable, laws against crossdressing, and far more lenient laws about involuntary commitment. So the park bench could be open and free to "all," since the public was sifted for undesirables.

Now we don't have most of those laws, nor should we. What we do have is a housing crisis, a mental health crisis, and an opioid crisis, all of which leave desperate people looking for a place to park their bones. So cities don't see park benches as an amenity anymore, but as a liability. Who to thank for this? Ronald Reagan, who else?
posted by Countess Elena at 12:37 PM on June 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Ahhhhh, that's the stuff. Thank you, chavenet! I rarely visit LitHub these days, because the impetus to go there was usually nudging from the now-diminished Book Twitter, sometimes MFA Twitter, especially when multiple sources would start shoving the same link at me. Before that, I started reading it quite early directly on the site, not via links, and the couple of pre-Trump years feel in retrospect like a halcyon era. It was the sort of time when I was earnestly pausing to slow down and read about benches and flaneurs and such.

To add to the "no privacy in the city" motif in the article, shout-out to another street photographer -- Vivian Maier (previously), who captured startlingly frozen moments, plenty on benches. One. Two. Three.

One of my favorite memories from library school was approaching, but not sitting down with, a professor on a bench who thought (and presumably still thinks) a lot about this sort of thing. He was clearly mid-culture, in the way this article frames desire for companionship on the bench, wanting to be both together and alone. I smiled and passed by, he gave me a sort of pained smile, and I don't believe we ever spoke again. A very delightful awkwardness.
posted by cupcakeninja at 1:27 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

I forget exactly which size it is, but many of those bench divider things are held on with bolts that can be easily undone with a hex key.

You know, if you were to be sitting on a bench and had nothing to do with your hands, you might end up fiddling with things.
posted by hippybear at 2:06 PM on June 22, 2023 [13 favorites]

Just finished a bike ride on Whidbey Island and sat myself on a bench looking at the ocean with a playground behind me. It was a wonderful place to let my poor legs stop their yelling.

I don't understand the hostile architecture links, they're basically like 90% non-benches and then there's a couple bad benches and some benches with hostile armrests. So minimally applicable to park benches which are remain pretty good for sitting at least and fairly often even laying.

(But hey that's the thing around here ain't it: negativity is always welcome, topical or not.)

Me and my wife have this joke, I think it started on a bench next to MOHAI on Lake Union where I pull out my cameraphone to take a great picture and act as though the wonderful perspective was some choice of my own rather than the designer who chose to place the bench with the wonderful view.
posted by Wood at 3:54 PM on June 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

In Edinburgh’s Princes Street there is a bench with a brass plaque stating simply: “Remembering J.C.H. Who was often tired.” It is a moment of small pleasure.

My mom sponsored a bench in honor of my dad in a little riverside park her Rotary club helps to maintain. It's nothing fancy, doesn't even have a back, but it's nicer to visit than a gravesite, in my opinion. And it's there for everyone to take a solitary break and enjoy the river, which I reckon his grouchy Trotskyite soul would appreciate.

Baltimore has a bunch of decrepit benches emblazoned with slogans - "Baltimore - The Greatest City in America" and "The City That Reads" - from public works projects in the 1980s and 1990s. They could stand to be spruced up, but its aspirational and I like them. Little story from The Maryland Curiosity Bureau podcast on the origin of the "greatest city in America" benches.
posted by the primroses were over at 5:44 PM on June 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

When I was dealing with raw grief, park benches were a good way to be somewhere and nowhere at the same time.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:26 PM on June 22, 2023 [9 favorites]

When we were courting as cash-strapped students, public benches were a welcome respite from pacing pacing the dark streets of our adopted city. In this century, we've been able to give back by sponsoring public benches in two different places in the name of our two most restless grandparents.
Baron Bob de Banquette
PS Could do better: steel and sea-air are a recipe for rust and nobody wants to bide-a-wee on a rusty bench.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:30 PM on June 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Since the article mentions it in passing, here's the opening of Watt by Samuel Beckett:

Mr Hackett turned the corner and saw, in the failing light, at some little distance, his seat. It seemed to be occupied. This seat, the property very likely of the municipality, or of the public, was of course not his, but he thought of it as his. This was Mr Hackett's attitude towards things that pleased him. He knew they were not his, but he thought of them as his. He knew they were not his, because they pleased him.

I figure the crows in my neighborhood must have a similar attitude, since they like to shit all over our public benches to keep anybody from using them.

I'm definitely the solitary bench-sitting type, but I remember really liking the way the benches were set up in Union Square Park in Manhattan, in long rows facing each other from across the path. It seemed like it encouraged interaction without requiring it. It's been years though, not sure what the vibe is like these days.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:25 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

Park benches in NYC in particular have been super helpful to me at various points in that decade of living there. A place to think and a place not to think. Morning noon and night. As an urban traveler, good benches have always signaled relief from slapping the pavement all day. You can tell a lot about the character of a city or town by their benches and pocket parks.

Now as a volunteer for nearest city park, I see more of the lifecycle of the park bench. Benches are used hard here, for all sorts of reasons. They need repair and replacing often. The city prefers fake wood now because it is maintenance free, but those don’t feel right so we repaint and fix individual planks, etc. It is also surprising how often people want to donate benches.

No one has suggested benches yet that one could not recline on. But that is not to say that some benches are not claimed for long spells by people using them as a home base. I don't think that long term occupation is a primary role for a park bench; it ceases to serve the public when monopolized. OTOH, I think that there is always a chance that anyone among us might need one for a night or a safe rest during the day. So it is good that no one in control of these benches yet thinks that making benches less comfortable is a good idea.

Long live the long bench, to support all the configurations that need them for a while.
posted by drowsy at 3:30 AM on June 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

We put a bench in the park for my dad when he passed, and added a bronze plaque for my mom when she passed, and we were fortunate to get one of the last benches where the cedar slats for the seat and back fit into the cast bronze ends, cast at the local foundry and the guy died some time ago now so no more local foundry. The sun and weather works away at the cedar, I sand it all down and apply Danish oil each year (but missed last year) and so far the only vandalism is 'TRANS RIGHTS' scratched in on the seat slats. In a town this size, I still marvel that we got 'TRANS RIGHTS' and not some mindless dick graffiti. The town started installing benches made of those composite plastics, I think the one major vulnerability is how brittle they can get during extreme cold but no-one is out in the park in January anyhow. The sun sure seems to heat the material though. I like the cedar slats, personally.

We keep a bench around the back of the restored train station and a particular town drunk takes a seat there every day or so, drinks his mickey or two, eats some random stuff, and passes out.

Many of us spend a good portion of life going from this place to that place, our places are well-defined (my home, my work, my kid's soccer pitch) and the public spaces and benches are a good reminder: nothing is really ours, and some people actually live that way.
posted by elkevelvet at 6:44 AM on June 23, 2023 [4 favorites]

Old friends, old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes
Of the old friends

Old friends
Winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset

The sounds of the city
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust on the shoulders
Of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy

- Simon & Garfunkel

I am 69 and this song has been heralding old age for me since I was a teenager, in high school, when we'd acquire ancient overcoats from the thrift store (also invoking Aqualung). In fact, I have a kind of unwritten contract to meet a chum from those days on a park bench next year, but living on opposite sides of the country, it may not happen.
posted by Rash at 11:39 AM on June 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

I am 69 and this song has been heralding old age for me since I was a teenager

The entire Bookends album is a brilliant meditation on the passage of time from the standpoint of a rather young couple of performers. It's also basically Simon And Garfunkel's equivalent of Sgt. Peppers, with a lot of studio work and even spoken word sections. It's easily my favorite SaG album, and I wish it were more widely known.
posted by hippybear at 1:03 PM on June 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sometimes a hex wrench is not needed.

Not sure if the bench is still there, it started as guerilla art, removed by city, then reinstated due to outcry.
posted by sammyo at 2:12 PM on June 23, 2023

My favorite bench is the one on Hill Street in Mankato MN, where the real Betsy, Tacy, and Tib sat in the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. You can still sit there today.

There’s also a corresponding Friendship Bench in Claremont, CA, where the author and her husband lived for many years.
posted by elphaba at 6:02 AM on June 24, 2023 [1 favorite]