Back in January 2020, my local Buy Nothing's co-administrator came up with the idea of asking the local library to host a swap meet, except everything is free because, Buy Nothing... The librarian approved the request and the rest was history. Well, sort of. Recall that by March 2020, the whole world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. No library, no swap meet. Eventually things got back to normal, hard to believe but it happened. We continued to have monthly event, lots of stuff changed hands, all free, the leftover went to a nearby soup kitchen the next morning. The event got so popular that these days we need two cars to take the stuff to the soup kitchen. With the more recent events, I had to drop some stuff by the side of my house and advertise them as Curb Alert. I live near a train station so there is much traffic, sometimes everything would be gone by the next morning.
Today, I attended a similar event, organized by the Buy Nothing group in the King's Bay area. The local library is on Nostrand Avenue, between Avenue X and Avenue W. It was nice to look at the stuff without worrying about people grabbing too many or helping others separate the donations. I was just an attendee, not running the show. I did chat a bit with the organizer. I only visited King's Bay Library once before and didn't know that it has a sort of an art gallery just to the left of the lobby as you enter the building. It is a spacious room. The stuff was spread out on tables and clothes racks along the walls of the room and there was a little island in the middle with shelves and more tables. They plan to drop off the leftover at the Salvation Army on the same block, near the corner of Avenue W and Nostrand Avenue. I told myself not to take anything but in the end I took a music CD and two books, the books are for my own faux Little Free Library. It's good to see the Buy Nothing movement going strong and build the community through events like this Share Fair. Photos in the following Google Album:
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