On the windswept coast of Ocean Beach, on the western edge of San Francisco, a small sky-blue cabin welcomes anyone seeking a point of contact with the infinite. It’s called Ocean Calling and inside it houses an old disco telephone that is not connected to any network. Yet, the ritual to activate it is of disarming emotional power.
Visitors place a small stone inside a metal tube — producing the typical ring of a coin in old public telephones — pick up the receiver and speak. The whisper of one’s words is entrusted to the breeze and the uninterrupted rhythm of the ocean, offering an intimate space to a feeling that modern society often tends to remove: mourning.
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The birth of the project from the wounds of Jamae Tasker and Sarah McCarthy Grimm
The work was installed in April 2024 by San Francisco artists Jamae Tasker and Sarah McCarthy Grimm, united by a shared grief. In 2023, Jamae Tasker’s brother Reggie took his own life, while in the same year Sarah McCarthy Grimm’s sister Chelsea disappeared without a trace.
From this suffering the idea of creating a place of emotional processing, inspired by the famous, germinated Wind Telephone created in 2011 by landscape architect Itaru Sasaki in Japan after the tsunami tragedy. The two creators take care of the site on a daily basis, cleaning the sand from the cabin and emptying the stone container every month: hundreds of stones that certify just as many calls to those who have gone further.
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A site also accessible to disabled people
Among the many visitors who frequent the facility, there are those who go there every three weeks with flowers in their hands to spare a thought for their missing mother. For others it is the means to keep alive the bond with their deceased daughter and parents. The installation is located at the intersection with Ortega Street, inside Sunset Dunes Park. Access to the cabin has an opening 106.68 centimeters wide and a counter placed at a height of approximately 86.36 centimeters, so as to also be accessible to disabled people. Although the closest route from Lower Great Highway is narrow and bumpy, the coastal area offers fully accessible ramps and reserved parking 5 blocks away along Taraval Street and Judah Street, ensuring anyone can get close to this extraordinary work of collective healing.
