You may be asking yourself, what does a productive member of society do on a nice sunny spring Saturday morning? And if your answer was gather a large amount of strangers to sit in a park to make fun of the concept of run clubs, now you would be correct.
You either right now are like, wow yes this is so insightful, or, you are thinking, damn we must have drastically different definitions of what a productive member of society is. Insert segue, enter sit club.
— Sit Club. What is it?
If there is one thing I admire about the British, it is how they proclaim to hate exercise as a stance, an opinion if I stated in California people would give me recommendations on how to get into it or how to overcome this distaste for it. If I was British, I would be able to say I do not do exercises and that would be that. But because I like warm weather and can’t take seriously someone who says that they are a world power while living on a street called Tinky Winky lane, I must learn to adapt to the athletic climate that the west coast lifestyle preaches. Many of my friends have joined this run club, which long story, was started by the dentist. I already do not like to run and much less want to be going and doing this with a bunch of strangers on a weekend, and risk a chance encounter with my dentist. Inspired by this aggravation, Danielle and I ideated the concept of a sit club, a run club, but you just go somewhere and sit with others.
— Working Phase / Posters and Flyering
Now that this is about our third or forth rodeo, Danielle and I have the routine down to a science of sorts. Ideate, brainstorm, make posters, flyer them around town, make some social media posts about the event, and then see what follows. We invited our friend Connie to come and help us make some flyers and then we printed a bunch of them. Thankfully we have such supportive friends, many of whom offered to take some of the flyers and put them up around town during their free time. Danielle even got her dates to put up flyers while they were out together. And I brought Russsell Coleman, my unpaid intern/boyfriend, and his coworker/ my friend Grant to hang up some in the park. While we were doing that we ran into our other friend Mason, who was up to his own independent scheming in the park but was more than happy to take some posters and started putting them all over town.
We walked around the park and put up silly clickbaity flyers that people started to post on reddit and it was getting about 2 thousand upvotes and shares. People started pouring into the Partiful and we were seeing RSVP’s now from around 1000 people. At around 300 people we no longer need to put up posters because most of the traffic we were now getting is from people sending it to their friends and so on.
Then we got a call from a reporter from CBS, and a few news outlets that have heard about the flyers and saw the event. They wanted to cover it before to try to gain some traction for the idea. And from that we created probably the silliest, news articles they have covered to date: our sit club.
— SF Gazetteer, CBS news, SF Standard
First Danielle and I met with Joshua from the SF Gazetteer. We chatted on the phone one morning about how we came up with the idea and such. He included in the paper that I had gone on a previous running date with the dentist and quoted it as a nightmarish running date! Which I would not normally have cared that much about but we were planning on going to the same event that we went the year prior to, the Holi themed run, for their run club 2 days after the article was released.
Link to article: here
Some quotes from the article:
Then we went on to meet with Sara from KPIX/CBS Bay area. Here we did a short segment on the idea for the club and some of our previous events, we enlisted a few of our friends to come and take a seat with us for it. We went to the pier and filmed the below video. It aired that night on CBS at 11 pm and we all huddled around my laptop to watch it. Russell is quoted talking about how he plans to put the couch on the lime scooters and bring it to the park. We immediately got a bunch of hate / racist comments, but as to be expected on the internet. Sticks and stones and so forth.
Video: here
Then we met with the reporter from the SF Standard. Funnily enough, we previously had befriended the reporter for the SF standard, during our Alex party and the dating posters we had been working on last year around town and she reported on a few of our schemes and events. She moved to LA and the reporter who is now in her role, reached out when she saw the flyers about sit club and wanted to talk. Danielle and I obviously jumped at the opportunity and decided that we have to befriend the new reporter as well. We met with her and she got some background for her article on the event that then was posted: here.
— Last minute prep
The event had to be postponed a week due to weather but that worked out super well because Russell was gone the previous week and really wanted to attend. I want to give a special call out to some friends who changed flights to make sit club and my commencement from earlier in the weekend, you guys truly are special. Anyways, originally the event was planned for Sunday, upon moving it decidedly it had to be on Saturday as soon as Danielle mentioned that SAT was in the term. This gave us more time for more media coverage as well.
I made some t-shirts that said you can sit with us, and some other tasteful options for friends who were going and using it more as a dating event, in the same way many people use run clubs nowadays. Connie and Danielle made some stickers then Danielle and I looked all over town for friends that had a megaphone we could borrow. Thankfully our insane taste in friends yields a high overlap between people we would know in the city and people who would have a megaphone in their possession.
I scribbled a sign that said sit at your own risk and quickly bended the letters sit onto a chain necklace I was wearing that day and ran to catch the uber to the park, for our sitters are waiting. I was running late because I had to pack a bag to go to Molossia, a micronation near Reno, that we were planning on visiting right after the sit club but thats a story for another time.
— Day of the event
The actual event went super well, it was a nice sunny day, lots of people came out to show their support. We played musical chairs and did karaoke on the lawn in golden gate park. One person who came to sit club was actually in a wheel chair and he entered the musical chairs. Everyone looked around unsure of what to do when we kept taking away chairs and he kept surviving because he had a built in chair. He ended up winning, and stealing the title from our friend Patrick. When asked about this later by the reporter he said he knew he would win and was so excited because he had never been able to participate in a run club event. What started as our silly joke ended up being super inclusive and allowed people from all walks of life to come and sit with us.
Another sitter mentioned that frequently the phrase take a seat is used when presented with bad news and this rebrand of the term was a great and super light way to get people together. We repeatedly were asked when is the next sit club? To which we told everyone that we definitely will do more events in the future, but are not set on them all being sitting themed.
People got super creative with their seats and Russell with the help of some friends and graciously tipping a Lugg driver brought his entire couch to the event. Another man brought this XXL beanbag he dragged there earlier. There was even a man who attended after hearing about the event to solicit his new built in backpack chair in the most silicon valley way possible. We made a strava account people could join and record their lack of steps, and this guy who brought an electric unicycle was a huge hit because he was giving people rides around the park.
Obinna who was one of the main focuses of the CBS segment, did not even attend sit club, and when questioned about it mentioned that he just wasn’t sure people would be sitting so he didn’t want to come?
Regardless, it was super fun to see everyone coming together even if just to do something wildly ridiculous objectively and seeing the meaning from it that everyone derived for themselves. Ultimately I think that means much more than any meaning Danielle and I could have asked people to view this event through, like a “chairity event” or another pun that died in the jokes graveyard because I couldn’t just figure out how to squeeze it in there perfectly.
To wildly misquote Neil Armstrong, (who I personally think would have been better at sitting than running if it is his arms that are so strong and not his legs but anyways), to loosely quote Neil Armstrong in a way that would more closely fit the situation i am in,
one (times 1000) less steps for man, many steps for sitkind
The reporters and photographer for the day from the standard were super nice and Danielle and I are befriending them outside of this. They say to never trust the media, but its hard when the media is two girls the same age as you in cute thrifted tops who also like brunch and our dumb ideas and the art of storytelling and creating.
— Minions coming out of it
After our Alextravanagza, we found the real stand out Alex from the crowd, and completely integrated him into our recurring cast of friends and characters. We had a similar goal at our big sit, but came with loftier goals, because somehow although the effort we are putting into the schemes is consistent, our turnout and media coverage has been increasingly successful, this means we will need many more helpers to help execute on bigger, dumber plans going forward.
Lots of people came up and asked if we were the ones who created the event and where they could find our next endeavor at the event. I said the flyers on the poles around the street and following my instagram but we also got a lot of interest for people who wanted to volunteer to help or offer their services for fun/silly events in the future. To take advantage of this, Danielle made a google form for us and sent it out after the fact, and we got some awesome replies with some people offering services for flyering, offering a venue space, and even a string quartet we could use. We have been slowly reaching out to members from the list to enlist in our future projects and could not be more excited to be growing this little community we seem to have created within our niche (does anyone know what our niche is? , can you please explain it to me).
Sign up to be a minion: here.
International minions accepted and appreciated.
— Conclusion:
In a city that is always concerned about getting ahead and “grinding” and working hard maybe just what you need sometimes is to take a seat and bring your couch to the park alongside around 200 strangers you met on the internet. That’s what they mean by a mental health day right? Anything that builds community is a cause worthy of working on, and caring about. Believe in yourself. You can fit that couch in an XXL Uber. You can do anything you put your mind to dear reader.
If you came to sit with us, thank you. If you sat at home in support while reading this, thank you. If you stood up and read this, I have nothing to say to you have you read anything I have been saying? Is this all a joke to you? Surely we would not go to all of the effort of creating a super elaborate event and inviting the entire city and talking to multiple news outlets about something that is all a joke, would we? :)
I hope to see you all at our next event. Unless it happens to be something where it is super dark and you are meant to not see others there or something. I haven’t thought about what it will be yet so I want to keep that option open just in case. Anyways, thanks again and happy sit to all that celebrate, see you next time.
a sitting ovation!