Sunday 28 February 2010

Wheels on fire

Look. Mobile libraries are cool again. They must be – this one was parked between the Tate Modern and a branch of Leon.


Admittedly neither of these places would pass for cutting edge in certain parts of Berlin or Brooklyn, but open the I-Spy Middle Class Cool book and they'll be right there next to The Big Chill and a Riverford organic vegetable box.

It seems strange to think of a roving library stopping off somewhere so urban. This is not a location that would strike me as culturally barren. But in the rarefied atmosphere of the Southbank, perhaps this van provides some kind of vital lowbrow lifeline, where punters can borrow a Dan Brown, no questions asked, and tuck it away in their fashionably sloganed canvas tote bag, just beneath their Malcolm Gladwell.

With Borough Market just a couple of hundred metres away, the mobile librarian probably does a roaring under-the-counter trade in Ginsters Pasties and Liebfraumilch too.

3 comments:

オテモヤン said...
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broken biro said...

I just got a job as a library assistant... do you think I'll get to ride the open road, peddling fiction along the highways and byways of rural Birkenhead, wind in my hair, softback, hard shoulder.

Miss Jones said...

I hope so! It sounds like the good life! (as opposed to The Good Life). x