The Book Bike now able to resume distributing random free books in Chicago parks
David Miller
Gabe Levinson with his custom-built portable library, the Book Bike.
After a weeklong kerfuffle between the Chicago Park District and Gabe Levinson over whether his Book Bike service—which has been unloading free books to anyone who wants them in the parks for two years—can operate without a permit, Levinson wrote in a blog post this morning that the Chicago Public Library has intervened on his behalf to offer its official sanction to his business. “The result is a working partnership… satisfying whatever questions the Park District had raised,” Levinson writes. That’s good news, considering the requisite permits and whatnot would have ran Levinson $1,155 per hour for a rental fee, in addition to a $35 application fee and a $2,000 security deposit. So maybe libraries aren’t a waste of tax money.
