Wind phone at San Francisco's Ocean Beach gives grief a voice

At the edge of San Francisco, on a windswept stretch of the Pacific, sits a small sky-blue phone booth with a sign that reads "Ocean Calling."

Inside sits an old rotary telephone. It has no dial tone. No signal. No wires connecting it to the outside world. And yet, for many who visit, it can reach further than any phone on Earth. 

For Wynne Bamberg, the booth has become something of a lifeline. Every few weeks, she makes the trip to Ocean Beach carrying flowers and memories. She comes to call her mother, who died in 2017.

"It's an intention," she told CBS News Bay Area, "I'm not doing the dishes, I'm not weeding the garden. I'm just here to talk to her."

Bamberg doesn't expect a voice on the other end. But she never feels like she's talking into empty space.

For Caitlyn Thompson, the phone offers a connection to the daughter she lost and to the parents who are no longer here.

"I used to come out to the beach all the time and I would talk to the waves and now I can use this," she said.

The ritual begins the same way for everyone.

Visitors step inside the booth and drop a small pebble into a metal pipe. The sound echoes like a coin dropping into an old payphone.

The phone itself may be disconnected, but the act of making the call is deeply intentional.

And that, according to the artists who created the installation, is the point. The phone was installed in April of last year by Jamae Tasker and Sarah McCarthy Grimm, two Bay Area artists brought together by grief.

Tasker's brother, Reggie, died by suicide in 2023. That same year, Grimm's sister Chelsea disappeared and has not been found.

Their shared experiences led them to create a space dedicated to something modern life often struggles to accommodate: mourning.

"Grief is a universal human experience and many of us don't have a lot of tools to process it," Tasker told CBS News Bay Area. 

The installation is inspired by the original Wind Phone, created in Japan by garden designer Itaru Sasaki following the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Sasaki installed an unplugged rotary phone where grieving people could speak to loved ones they had lost.

The idea resonated far beyond Japan.

Today, there are hundreds of wind phones around the world. But Ocean Calling feels uniquely tied to its surroundings.

"Most of the wind phones are somehow in nature," Grimm told CBS News Bay Area. "For both Jamae and for me Ocean Beach was hugely healing."

The booth is painted the color of the sky. A butterfly-shaped window frames the Pacific Ocean. Wind rattles through the dunes. Waves crash endlessly beyond the glass.

Tasker and Grimm care for the space almost every day — watering plants, sweeping away sand, polishing the phone.

Once a month, they perform another ritual. They empty the pebble receptacle. Hundreds of stones tumble out. Each one representing a call.

The response has surprised even the creators. Thousands have visited since the booth opened.

Some arrive alone. Others come with children, parents, partners, or friends. Many return again and again.

What draws them there isn't necessarily the belief that someone is listening. It's the opportunity to stop. To make space for grief.

In a culture that often rushes mourners toward closure, Ocean Calling offers something different: permission.

Back inside the booth, Wynne places the receiver gently back into its cradle. The waves continue rolling toward shore. The wind continues carrying voices out across the Pacific. And for a few moments, the distance between loss and love feels just a little bit shorter.

"I feel connected to my mom," she said.