San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Check out S.F.’s tiny neighborhood libraries
Those of us who love San Francisco often hate the city for what it’s become — the dirty streets, the homeless crisis, the urban problems that seem only to get worse.
But out in the neighborhoods, and in other corners of the city, the story is different. The spirit of the city is alive and well. One example is the rise of small free libraries, usually found in front of private homes in wooden sidewalk boxes that look like birdhouses. They are tended by private citizens who admire books. Their slogan is “take a book, leave a book.” A gift to the street.
The tiny libraries have been around for not quite nine years, but they have sprung up all over San Francisco — and indeed the world — more recently. They come in two varieties: official Little Free Libraries, which belong to a worldwide nonprofit, and freelance libraries started by neighbors. San Francisco has 59 libraries affiliated with Wisconsin’s Little Free Libraries and dozens of similar unaffiliated operations.
It’s a huge movement. Little Free Libraries says there are 88,000 tiny libraries in 91 countries, from a Los Angeles police station to Siberia, where one of them is patronized by reindeer herders.
Though the locations of many of San Francisco’s tiny libraries are listed on the internet, most can be found by simply by walking in neighborhoods — “hidden gems,” the online San Francisco magazine 7x7 called them.
Most are found on residential streets, but there is a Little Free Library on 29th Street, just off busy Mission Street. There is another inside the Alioto-Lazio Fish Co. operation on Jefferson Street on Fisherman’s Wharf.
Annette Traverso, who runs the company, said she heard about the little libraries on the internet and decided to open one herself. “I thought we should give back to the community,” she said. She stocked a few books, set up a library in a small painted tiny house on a cart, and was open for business.
“Kids use it,” she said, “And tourists like it, too. Our most popular kids book has been ‘Curious George Goes to the Aquarium.’ People also take books about fish, especially about crabs.”
Books about San Francisco also do well, she said.
The tiny sidewalk libraries flourish in the city’s neighborhoods, especially where walking is popular. There are at least five of these libraries around Bernal Heights, where one of the best is run by Marc Coronado at 233 Elsie St.
The idea for a sidewalk library came up at a block party a couple of years ago. Coronado’s neighbor Marty Combs, who works in technology, designed and built a wooden structure, painted it blue and included a shingled roof.
They decided it would sit in front of Coronado’s house atop a low brick wall — “just at the height where a 4-year-old can reach it easily,” she said.
The biggest customers are children, Coronado said.
“Children’s books just fly out of here,” she said. “Next is travel books, and self-help books.”
Neighbors exchange books and sometimes leave things.
“Oh look,” Coronado said the other morning. “Somebody left a book bag.” People also leave fruit and candy for others to share. “It’s a wonderful neighborhood,” she said.
“And it’s great to have your own neighborhood librarian on the block,” said Michael Nolan, who lives across the street.
In the small world of tiny libraries, Sandy Lane’s Little Free Library at 836 Clayton St. in Cole Valley stands out. It is a mini Victorian, an architectural gem.
It holds about 100 books in a library that is an exact replica of Lane’s four-story Victorian house just behind it. The 1896 home is a classic in a neighborhood of classic houses, complete with a peaked roof, cornices and a dozen windows facing the street.
But where the garage is in the real house, in the miniature is a hinged gate that opens up into two shelves of books.
Lane, who built her little library herself, got the idea by discovering others in walks around the neighborhood. “I’ve always been a reader myself, and it looked like a fun project,” she said.
She found Little Free Libraries on the internet, sent in $45 to be a registered library steward, and combed the site for ideas.
The original library idea came from Todd Bol, who had an educational consulting firm in Wisconsin. He built a dollhouse-size library, loaded it with books, and in the spring of 2009 placed it outside his home in Hudson, Wis., not far from Minneapolis. He put a sign on it that said “Free Books.”
“I put up my library and noticed my neighbors talking to it like it was a little puppy. And then I realized there was some kind of magic to it,” he told the Washington Post.
Bol died last fall at age 62. His idea lives on, even on a street near you.
They say print is dying, but not everyone is so sure. “Books are still booming,” Lane said.