They pulled up in a black Toyota pickup, hazard lights flashing in the balmy night.

Three men emerged with tampers and bags of EZ Street asphalt slung over their shoulders. Clad in button-down shirts and work boots, they crouched over the road on Perkins Street, a rutted artery that twists through Oakland’s Adams Point neighborhood. The men worked quickly, pouring black ooze into a gash in the pavement, patting it down and driving over it twice.

One down, 11 to go. It was another busy night for the Pothole Vigilantes.

“It’s easy,” said Eric, co-founder of the outfit that’s captivated residents while drawing criticism from City Hall. Both Eric and his partner, Brian, asked that The Chronicle not publish their last names, fearing that their enterprise may be illegal.

Oakland officials have responded coolly but displayed little inclination to crack down on the group. “We can’t condone, and do not recommend, that residents do this work themselves, not least because it raises safety issues while people are working in the streets,” city transportation chief Ryan Russo said.

But the rogue street crew shows no sign of slowing down. In a city where potholes are a raw topic and a symbol of the government’s inability to deliver services, Brian and Eric became overnight celebrities.

“Of course Oakland has pothole vigilantes — we’re a DIY town,” Mayor Libby Schaaf tweeted earlier this month. She noted, however, that Oakland doesn’t need the help. Its Department of Transportation just put together a $100 million three-year paving plan, funded by an infrastructure bond that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2016. The city also began a pothole blitz this month, in which crews work 12-hour days to fix crumbling roads.

Schaaf will promote the effort at a news conference in East Oakland on Tuesday.

“Thanks, PVs,” the mayor tweeted. “This job will be for in-house union pros.”

Since forming last month, the Vigilantes have filled more than 50 potholes. Recruits who attended a meet-up in West Oakland have filled an additional 20. Eric and Brian learned their trade by watching instructional videos on YouTube, and they’ve boiled it down to basics: Find a pothole, pour the asphalt, tamp it down, pour in more asphalt, drive over it.

They’ve taken an “each one teach one” approach to street repair, drawing followers on social media and raking in $7,000 donations through a Venmo account and GoFundMe page. After patching five potholes on Perkins Street on Wednesday night, they drove to the Oakland hills to fix pavement for a donor who’d chipped in $500.

“We want the community to take on a vigilante identity,” Eric said. Initially, he noted, the pair aspired to be an “Uber of potholes” — they wanted to create a smartphone app and on-demand service. But their work quickly took on a larger meaning: part do-gooder crusade, part flashy stunt, part civil disobedience.

Bad street conditions affect just about everyone in a starkly divided city — rich and poor residents all cope with tattered roads that wind up the hills and down through the flatlands as Oakland grapples with a $500 million maintenance backlog and more than 7,000 requests to patch pothole. So it didn’t take long for the Pothole Vigilantes to go viral.

“It’s obvious the city has a problem,” Brian said. “Hopefully this will light a fire under their asses to figure it out.”

Many people applaud the Vigilantes. Cars, cyclists and electric scooters orbited the block while they worked on Perkins Street, and several motorists honked approvingly, or rolled down their windows to yell thanks. Yet others are wary, saying the group is only deepening cynicism and mistrust in city government. Some fear they pair aren’t using proper equipment or techniques to fill potholes and could ultimately be held liable if their work damages someone’s car or causes a cyclist to get injured.

“I understand the desire and the emotional impetus to do something,” said City Councilman Dan Kalb, who nonetheless cautioned that “these guys are not experts.” A shoddy pothole job by an unlicensed amateur will get washed out in the next rainstorm, Kalb and others said.

“Taking it into your own hands, that’s taking a lot of responsibility,” said Ginger Jui, executive director of the advocacy group Bike East Bay. “If someone gets hurt on the repair you made, you’re opening yourself to liability.”

Kenya Wheeler, who heads the city’s Bicyclist and Pedestrian Advisory Commission, was pleasantly surprised when the Vigilantes filled a giant road crater in the Glen Echo area, where he lives. They came during the night, he said, and left flyers on car windshields to promote their cause.

Yet the notion of private entrepreneurs taking over a government service makes Wheeler uneasy. For one thing, they’re under no obligation to spread the resources evenly, let alone prioritize streets that are most in need. He pointed to the $500 donor who got a special patch job in the hills Wednesday.

“That’s like paying your way to be a VIP,” Wheeler said.

By contrast, Oakland’s Department of Transportation developed a social equity strategy for its paving plan, shifting a larger portion of the bond money to low-income neighborhoods that have long felt ignored by City Hall. It’s enraged affluent residents in Montclair, Upper Rockridge and other hills districts, who say they’re being shoved to the back of the line.

“Hey, I applaud these vigilantes,” said Carolyn Burgess, chair of public safety for the North Hills Community Association. “Right now, people aren’t seeing the results of the taxes they pay.”

With frustrations mounting over the glacial pace of street paving, people across the city embrace the Pothole Vigilantes’ go-it-alone spirit. A couple dozen followers showed up to a recent meet-up at Lowell Park in West Oakland, where Eric and Brian handed out supplies from the back of a U-Haul truck: two pallets with 50-pound bags of asphalt and tampers to flatten it down.

As twilight fell, participants began lugging the tools back to their cars.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve applied asphalt to a street,” Colin Mariott-Sanders said. He learned the art of paving from his grandfather, who built makeshift speed bumps on a road in Riverside.

Mariott-Sanders and his wife, Tatiana, said they’ve watched cyclists wipe out on potholes that dimple the streets outside their home in West Oakland.

Casey Cannon, who lives nearby in the Longfellow area, said she’s memorized the location of every nick and dent in the pavement.

“I have to ride my bike on the opposite side of the street, into oncoming traffic,” said Cannon, who found out about the Vigilantes from a Nextdoor post. She bristled at Schaaf’s tweet that described citizen-potholing as part of Oakland’s counterculture.

“We’re not HGTV people,” Cannon said. “We’re desperate.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan