Wearing a camouflage-patterned shirt and pants, The Swing Guy watched as park visitors lined up for a ride on his newly-installed tree swing Monday evening atop Bernal Hill.
The swing was gone by Wednesday morning, removed by the Recreation and Parks Department in a battle of whack-a-mole that has been raging for months.
“It’s an outrage,” said Charlie Holtz, passing the now-empty patch of hillside that afternoon. “The swing is the heart and soul of Bernal.”
The Swing Guy, as he is known in the neighborhood, would agree. A startup executive who asked that his name be withheld over fears of legal action, he is dedicated to fighting for the right to swing on one of the city’s most panoramic perches.
Within hours after the swing was removed on Wednesday, The Swing Guy had fashioned a new swing in his workshop, returned to the hilltop, hoisted himself up the rugged cypress tree, and secured the swing — his fourth at Bernal.
“I will keep doing this until the sun swallows the Earth,” he vowed.
It’s a classic San Francisco standoff: someone — in this case a self-described “light-hearted nerd” who has published research in applied physics — takes a playful risk that delights the neighborhood, only to have officials shut down the fun due to safety concerns. Though the city attorney’s office says it has no record of liability claims related to injuries from unauthorized rope or tree swings, parks officials point to a history of such cases in California and cite concerns about tree damage.
The opening salvo in the battle occurred in February, when The Swing Guy installed his first structure. A park ranger caught the millennial entrepreneur inscribing a phrase into the seat and directed him to remove it, warning of potential injuries.
The Swing Guy responded by designing Swing 2.0: He used rubber sleeves to protect the tree, adhesive-secured bolts, and chains rated for 600 pounds that were engineered to snap before damaging the tree. On the swing’s wooden seat, he etched the phrase “You can just do things (at your own risk).”
The Parks Department was unmoved and dismantled the swing. The Swing Guy quickly installed a third. Speaking initially on the encrypted messaging app Signal, he explained his urgency in terms familiar to any founder who has experienced an outage during a product launch.
“It’s important that the swings have high uptime,” he said. “The moment I saw the second swing was cut down, I canceled all my meetings and rushed to Home Depot. The new swing was up within 16 hours.”
He isn’t the first to erect unauthorized play equipment in city trees. After a guerrilla collective installed 50 swings in 2018, parks officials swiftly cut them down, arguing that if someone were to get hurt, residents would ask why the city allowed a known hazard to persist.
When asked about safety concerns, Amber Schadewald, a fan of the swings, shrugged. “It’s swing at your own risk,” she said. She described how a friend excitedly texted her the moment the new swing appeared and said, “It’s really popular.”
Eric L., a Bernal resident who frequents the park, had choice words for the Parks Department. “When the government starts regulating that you can’t even swing on a swing, what’s next? Sometimes you have to let people take charge of their lives.”
The San Francisco Forest Alliance, an environmental nonprofit critical of park prohibitions on tree swings, tree climbing, and going off-trail, laments the city’s stance. “The only tree swing SFRPD is okay with is on their logo,” the group quipped on its website in 2015.
Indeed, though the Parks Department has never installed a tree swing, its logo features one. The department’s Instagram icon has the same swinging girl — though the tree has vanished. The original logo remains on its website.
Tamara Aparton, spokesperson for the Parks Department, said in a statement that there are 184 playgrounds in the city “with swings we can vouch for.” As for the logo, “like most logos, it’s meant to capture a feeling (in this case of play and joy), not serve as a how-to for DIY park equipment.”
The department lists a history of injuries: Staff recall a French tourist who broke his leg on an unauthorized swing on Billy Goat Hill some years ago. In 2023, a woman died near Sacramento after falling from a rope swing. And in 2012, a San Diego high school student fell down a ravine after an unauthorized rope swing broke.
The student sued San Diego County — and lost. That case and a similar 1994 case in Los Angeles both ended in judges finding local jurisdictions immune from liability because swinging is an inherently hazardous “at-your-own-risk” activity that wasn’t condoned by officials.
Aparton acknowledges that the agency is playing a spoiler role. “We know it’s a bit of a bummer because rope swings can be charming, but we can’t assure the safety of people or the trees,” she said.
When asked whether it is possible for someone to work with the city to install a tree swing in an authorized manner, Aparton said no. “Having a chain wrapped around a tree limb (or rubbing against the trunk) while suspending the weight of adults over a hillside isn’t super safe,” she said.
Unauthorized tree swings have long enjoyed a covert popularity in the city. The Swing Guy says he is part of a lineage of renegade swing installers. He personally knows one of them, a cafe owner who was responsible for a series of swings popular “back in the day.”
“I see this as an art project,” he said, estimating that he has spent more than $1,000 on materials. “I’m tired of the paradigm of: How does art make you feel about the world? I think what art should be right now is: Here’s how I want the world to be different and more beautiful, and I’m going to go do that.”
Swing installations are only one of several ways he builds neighborhood ties around parks — he also hosts a weekly “pick-up party” cleanup of Dolores Park. But nothing he’s done thus far has rivaled the positive response to the swings. He’s now gauging interest in clandestine swing construction classes and providing DIY swing materials.
He recently installed a tree swing in the Presidio in a hidden spot designed to be a “delightful surprise for those who stumble upon it.” That swing is still up. And if you thought his cat-and-mouse game with the Parks Department has made him anti-establishment, think again: He’s taking a civics course called “How SF Gov Works” to learn more about city institutions.
“How much positive feedback I got made me realize I can make a meaningful impact,” he said. “It made me want to get even more involved.”
One visitor to the swing Monday, Hannah MacLeod, found the rope, seat, and tree sturdy and said the swing brought back an early memory of building one with her dad.
“I’ve come to this park once a week over the last year and a half, and today was my first time on the swing,” she said.
What did she think?
“Incredible. I don’t know why I haven’t done this before. I hope the guy continues to build them.”