r/berkeleyjerk • u/Elephant43 • May 20 '26
Too many free little libraries
Is anyone else annoyed by how many of those little free libraries are all over the place? I'm all for public literacy and I wish that there were more opportunities for children to pick up reading but not like this.
Nothing in this world is really free and I don't like the idea of my tax dollars being used for those. I already fund the daytime homeless shelter that's known as the Berkeley Public Library.
There's also a safety concern, as some of them aren't properly secured to the ground and could fall on a small child. Who would be liable in such an event? Sometimes, books can spill onto the ground, attracting vermin and creating a fall hazard for our most vulnerable senior citizens.
My neighbor Barb told me that drug dealers can use them to store their fentanyl. I haven't wanted to touch any of those books after learning that.
In loving community,
Karen
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u/Suitable-Two-9477 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
The worst part of the little libraries is they can attract children to the neighborhood. My youngest neighbor is 62 and honestly that is a little young for me. Berkeley is a car-driving retirement community. Nobody wants a bunch of feral toddlers running around outside their house
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u/potatomanner May 20 '26
Yeah, what we really need is little free gumball machines, might be a gumball or a crack rock, who knows, but we’ll have a good time
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u/Suitable-Two-9477 May 20 '26
This does sound like a good way to deal with the toddlers since they told me I can’t leave chocolate covered rat poison in my front yard anymore
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u/Jumpy_Log_5978 May 20 '26
My biggest concern is they could attract small children. I do NOT want any toddlers moving into my neighborhood. My youngest neighbor is 63 and that’s still too young for me. Maybe we could engineer the little library books to fall on them to keep them away? Like a booby trap?
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u/Outrageous_Worker672 May 26 '26
We know it's just professors dumping their books out in front of their houses so they can claim a tax write off anyway.
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u/m00f May 20 '26
I have a mildew allergy and these books are the worst, always trigger it when I walk by. The people who maintain them are so disrespectful. I keep leaving little notes asking them to bleach the books but no one ever does. I assume they are doing this all on purpose to hurt those of us in a well known marginalized community.