It's deep into summer - days are hot, there's ice cream to be had - and the town feels like it's in a bit of the doldrums, but luckily here in Ann Arbor we get hit next week with one of largest street art fairs on the planet. I love it. Other buisness owners, not so much - my hairdresser leaves town, for example - but I look forward to it as a week long off loading of, ahem, older merchandise.
It's a week when driving through downtown just isn't possible - over four days, 500,000 people visit the Ann Arbor Art Fairs - and it's almost a guarantee that one day it will pour buckets and one day at least will be sweltering. I don't mind, I'm in an air conditioned store, but I feel for the artists siting on concrete for four days. I only let artists and customers use our bathroom!
This week my husband has spend culling unloved books from corners of the store, from our store basement, and next week he and my son will haul them upstairs in readiness for selling on the street. The first couple years, we actually paid someone to sit outside with the dollar books, but it no longer seems worth it. If someone feels moved to steal a tattered Sidney Sheldon paperback, there's not much I'm going to do about it.
This year though we've tried to put out some better material - newer hardcovers that have gone paperback, for example. For a dollar, they're a bargain. We also have - the box. The box has books we've been hauling up and down the basement steps for 18 summers now. I think soon we need to have - a bonfire.
While I love books, and have made my life about them, the darn things replicate like crazy and it seems almost unstoppable. Somebody cleans out their basement, and we get the fruit of their labors, recycling old books back through the community. Sometimes there are certain treasures that it takes an odd ball to truly love, and frankly, there's always a few of them I sell during art fair where I mentally think -"Really? You want THAT?"
But often the pleasure of art fair, as it so often is during the summer months, is meeting people from out of town, including artists, who only come to town once a year and have made us one of their stops, where they can check in, re-fuel their book habit, and have a chat. I look forward to all those returning travellers. They make my July.
Yesterday, as it's the week before art fair, the store was full of regulars, getting their fix before the town is taken over. At one point I knew the name of every shopper in the store (and one on the phone). I'm not sure if that means the readng community is a small one, or a communal one, or both. Either way, July is full of pleasures not often found in January. I may as well enjoy it while it lasts.
