Call Someone You Lost From a Wind Phone at Ocean Beach
Pick up a receiver that connects to nothing and say what you never got to say. On November 1 the light leaves Ocean Beach at 5:11 PM; on any other day, check the clock first.
🌊 Speak Into the Pacific
Ocean Calling is a sky-blue booth on the sand where Ortega Street meets the Upper Great Highway, inside the two-mile Sunset Dunes park that runs from Lincoln Way to Sloat Boulevard. A butterfly-shaped window faces the Pacific. Inside, a rotary phone hangs with no dial tone. You drop a pebble into a metal pipe so it rings like a coin, lift the receiver, and say what you came to say.
Artists Jamae Tasker and Sarah McCarthy Grimm built it in April 2025, both carrying the same kind of absence. Tasker's younger brother Reggie died by suicide in 2023. Grimm's younger sister Chelsea disappeared that September from a forest road in Arizona and has never been found. The booth is dedicated to them, and it stands open to anyone you can no longer reach, whether that person died, went missing, or drifted past calling.
Timing turns on the calendar, so pick the date first. On November 1 the clocks fall back, and sunset drops from 6:12 PM on October 31 to 5:11 PM that Sunday. Arriving at 4:00 PM gives you a slow hour with the phone, then the walk and the light. The park posts no closing date for the piece.
Nothing guarantees the receiver is in place. In June 2025 someone tore the phone out and splintered the wood; Tasker and one helper had it standing again in about six hours. CBS reported in June 2026 that thousands of people had visited since it went up, and neither the park nor the artists post whether the handset is intact on a given day. The booth, the dune and the ocean will be there either way.
At 5:00 PM the SF Philharmonic plays Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at Pacheco Surf Perch, 2000 Upper Great Highway, about 370 meters south of the booth and a five-minute walk along the promenade. The music is free from 5:00 to 5:30 PM, and the sun drops into the Pacific at 5:11 with the orchestra still playing. The five places below are a short ride inland, each worth its own trip rather than a stop on this walk.
