Haight-NoPa Repair Cafe

About once a quarter, the Park Branch Library community room fills with sewing machines, soldering irons, and tens of broken household items for about three hours. This is the Haight-Nopa Repair Cafe, where anyone can bring in their broken or worn possessions to be repaired by neighborhood volunteers for free.

This particular cafe was started by long-time neighbors Claire and Courtney. Claire, a sustainability and climate change planning consultant, was inspired by her friend Charlotte’s work on the Chiswick Repair Cafe in London. When she realized San Francisco didn’t have its own repair cafe, she reached out to her neighbor and friend Courtney, the community builder and artist behind @peopleartmusic. They figured that if Berkeley, Sebastopol, and Palo Alto (to name a few) had their own repair cafes or fix-it clinics, it was time San Francisco had one too. After lots of flyering, advertising in neighborhood newsletters, and recruiting volunteers, the event was first held in October 2025. Claire describes: “The tangible joy in the room from repairers and patrons alike was the most surprising and wonderful thing for me. The ring of the bicycle bell signalling a successful repair heralded cheers from everyone in the room.”

The repair cafe, which is not library-sponsored, is a well-staffed operation. There are 12-15 repairers, two people checking new people in, and even more logistics people running around. Courtney says, “I was surprised to find how much it took, you know, to put this on.” When an item is successfully fixed, it’s brought to the checkout desk and weighed. She continues, “The weighing is for us to measure how much we’re keeping out of landfills … at the core of it, if this is something that I would just throw away otherwise … [we’re] literally directly keeping it out of the trash.” For the items that can’t be repaired, Claire says “Sometimes it is helpful for people to have ‘permission’ to recycle an item if our repairers think it can’t be mended. So far we have repaired about 70% of items that have come our way, and for the others we try to make recommendations for where to take it if greater expertise or time is needed, or to recycle it.”

Over three events, the Repair Cafe has kept at least 335 pounds of items out of the landfill. This includes common household items like lamps, sweaters, and blankets, but there are some priceless sentimental items too: a 100-year old rosary and an engagement ring that needed to be soldered back together. “One really cute one was right at the end [of the event] and it was the repair for one of those BART Christmas sweaters with the lights. This woman brought it and she works for BART and she’s like, ‘Mine broke and it can’t break because it’s BART and that’s not a good look.’ And we repaired it!”

The whole process isn’t just about the repairs or keeping things out of the landfill, either. In the time spent waiting in line and the minutes allotted for each repair, Courtney and Claire have seen community being built in real-time among the 80+ folks that come by over the course of the afternoon. You can only bring items that you can carry, so the queue is full of local neighbors sharing the history of their sentimental items. At each volunteer/visitor pairing, repairers share their skills and tips in the repair process. And all throughout the room, everyone is sharing in donated baked goods.

To learn more about the Haight-NoPa Repair Cafe, go to repaircafesf.org or follow @repaircafesf on Instagram. The next event will be Sunday April 19th from 1:30-4pm at the Park Branch Library on Page St.