Lit on the road
make an aside poking fun at the beat poet / traveling kid / freight hoppy legacy hehee
make an aside poking fun at the beat poet / traveling kid / freight hoppy legacy hehee
April, 2020, & our traveling bookstore, Books & Shovels, has been off & on the road 6 years now. At the time, founder Milo Temperance was based in Erie, PA, & with the help of some close homies, set up shop for the first time at the 2014 NYC Poetry Festival, our first launchpad for a cross-the-US Nostrovia! tour.
Exchanges are made via donations--either $$ or bartering. On Frenchman in New Orleans, someone sawed the air soothed with a violin solo. Austin, someone kicked down some wine & decided to inform us they weren't really Australian, that they were in acting school, & that we're the only heads they've told all day, a secret's worth a book, yeah? Mostly though, it's chaps, zines, & books we're dealing.
Since our first timid tour in 2014, we kept at it, often awkwardly, stubbornly, & with the support of many people who invested kindness & energy into our crew/travels/stock. The support we received over the years is as humbling as using words like humbling allows. The times crisis shed their whimpers for lead roles, we were blessed with (sometimes, aptly surreal & strange) opportunities to rearrange the pieces.
This all breaks down to the facts 1.) Books & Shovels started because we didn't know what else to do with ourselves, & 2.) we love travel & spoken word.
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Our shelves prioritize small press publications & contemporary underground lit, that we attempt to pair with more established writers in order to improve circulation access for folks who otherwise wouldn't be able to get their work out physically like this.
Our shelves are an odd, ever-molting cocktail. CDs, records, stickers, small paintings, graffiti, stickers, cassettes, [ whatever we can carry & feels reasonable/ethical to give our limited shelf space to ].
Talking one-on-one with each person who digs thru our shelves is how we enjoy pushing lit. Algorithms jiggle our nerves. The personable & concrete & campfire dances help soothe the anxieties my download manager accidentally embraced as a software update...that, & being more comfortable irl helps reduce the urgency of over-coming social media anxiety ;)
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We'll take the jug, book, & buck fifty. You can keep the nail. Our ride was cleared of everything with a sharp edge (NOTE: not to rob any passenger of their depression's throb) when we were thrown thru ink-hoops in Eudora, AK. Not looking to get pulled over by a state trooper who might see the nail & interpret that as a direct threat.
EXAMPLES OF INTERESTING TRADES
In Austin, we received showers & wine.
Tucson's given us tobacco for books. San Francisco threw down some cash. Venice Beach offered freestyles & graffiti.
Everything we distribute is donated, dumpstered, purchased independently, or directly bartered for. Everything that leaves our shelves is exchanged for a donation, bartered goods, or has been stolen.
What we're unable to sell we distribute to Little Free Libraries, or to organizations happenstance (& the bare-minimum need for the hallucination of breathing room in a station wagon packed with 4 punky kids & more books than they've collectively read...make of that what you will.)
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$ donated to Books & Shovels most immediately goes towards gas, or is set aside for vehicle repairs. Depending on our current financial situation, it may also be spent on food, purchasing books (preferably from independent stores / small press), vendor-fees, cigarettes, & occasional motels to shower & rest.
Outside of online-donations, books sales, & bartering, we'll also busk, gas jug, fly signs, or work odd-jobs to compensate living expenses. These practices shift & vary depending on who's in our crew & what our position to create/take opportunities to get where we're headed.
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