The chair looks like more of a… nugget? Like a chair that didn’t finish downloading? When I tried an image search of the jumbo Tootsie Roll-esque stool, Google said, “This might be a padded handrail.” As the video’s creator, Ronni Lee, explains in the caption, “I am tryna figure it out!!! I should’ve asked!! But it was only big enough for one cheek. I decided to stand before I hurt myself.”
Like the roaches at Erewhon, many horrible restaurant chairs are out there thriving in spite of themselves; there are the silver metal chairs (a millennial taco joint icon) that feel like cozying up to an iron lung, and the backless, towering bar stools that make those bone-chilling scraping sounds when dragged (because of course they never just slide) across a restaurant floor. But this French chair doesn’t just look uncomfortable — it almost looks like it knows something I don’t. It also looks vaguely familiar, and I wonder if I, too, once tried to mount this chaise during the seven years I lived in Paris. If I did, I clearly blocked it out.
The video has garnered 2.4 million likes on TikTok in just four days, and “how to use a leaning bar chair” is now trending on the platform, with folks in the comments explaining that this is simply a chair designed to be leaned against, not sat upon, which is fair I guess but still sucks.
If a restaurant is making enough room for something that almost feels like a stool, why not just provide an actual stool? I’m familiar with the frenzied ritual of ordering and drinking your espresso al banco, but this chunky shard just looks like it’s having an identity crisis.
The leaning chair isn’t confined to charming French restaurants either. For example, there are a handful of viral TikTok videos of its contemporary cousin at Kentucky Fried Chicken locations; in one video, a man languidly slides down its sides like a forlorn Everest hiker; in another, a woman approaches it in vain like a gymnast to a pommel horse. One comment on the latter video reads, “they had something like that at Costco inside by the hot dogs,” while another person writes, “fast food of the future… they don’t want you to stay.” Do these chairs transcend poor design, and veer into hostile architecture territory? Beyond Parisian cafés and KFCs, I almost exclusively found them in public transport zones. For example, the NYC Street Design Manual has a page dedicated to its LeaningBar, which it says it has implemented because “Leaning can be especially appealing to people for whom sitting requires gr effort.” As true as this may be, it also feels like a great way to make life more uncomfortable for people without housing. Why not a bar, and a bench?
For now, this almost-chair can keep its secrets.
