Guerilla libraries in Hoboken, NJ

On Monday my friend Leanne Ogasawara had a post at 3 Quarks Daily that was, in part, about Little Free Libraries. According to Wikipedia:

Little Free Library is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization that promotes neighborhood book exchanges, usually in the form of a public bookcase. More than 150,000 public book exchanges are registered with the organization and branded as Little Free Libraries. Through Little Free Libraries, present in 115 countries, millions of books are exchanged each year, with the aim of increasing access to books for readers of all ages and backgrounds. The Little Free Library nonprofit organization is based in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States.

The first one was built in 2009 by Todd Bol as a tribute to his mother. Then this that and the other and his idea became a movement. His original goal was to create 2150 libraries, thereby surpassing the number of libraries endowed by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

I can remember going to “the Carnegie library” when I was a kid. To me that label was just the name of the library. It was only somewhat later that I learned who Carnegie was. I particularly remember taking out books about American Indians, which, by the way, is what I wanted to be when I grew up. That's also why I wasn’t fond of my curly blond hair. Whoever heard of a blond Indian?

I digress.

Anyone, at the very end of her article, the last line, Leanne had a link to a map of Little Free Libraries. So I went looking, and found one in Hoboken only a few blocks from me. Here it is, beneath the 14th Street viaduct:

And here’s the official tag, with its charter number: 137333.

According to the map, there are seven Little Free Libraries in Hoboken. The red tear drops mark the libraries.

The one in the photos is the one near the upper left of the map. The two at the right are even closer to my place. For some reason I didn’t spot them the first time I looked at the map.

Anyhow, a couple of years ago I discovered something very like those free libraries a bit closer to me than that Little Free Library. The box is a bit larger and is decorated:

It seems to have been adopted by a Girl Scout troop. I’m not sure what’s going on with the spelling of “Hoboken.”

Here’s what it looked like back in 2020 when I first spotted it:

In this last photo you can see how I stuffed it with copies of a little book I’d edited: We Need a Department of Peace: Everybody’s Business, Nobody’s Job.

More later.