Today in Spectacular Bookseller Practices: A Random Used-Book Vending Machine | The Range: The Tucson Weekly’s Daily Dispatch
Now this is cool.
You may not know, gentle reader, that yours truly spent some time in Tucson, but they had nothing as out and out awesome as this back then. Ok, the Sonoran Desert is pretty spectacular, but we’re talking human crafted for the nonce.
This machine reminds me of a fair in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was the sort of festival where people in bright colors and face paint close down streets and act happily silly, with art! art! art! everywhere. Most of that art was framed or in plastic sleeves or in display cases. It was a beautiful day, full of cotton candy and bright sun and interesting people. But what I remember most was the truly clever Art-O-Matic* at the Somerville Red Line exit. For a dollar this repurposed soda machine would pop out a random cardboard tube containing art. In my case I got a three-inch tall roll of archival paper with an abstract hand-drawn sketch of feathers. Beautiful. I stood in the subway station with people streaming by and wondered how anyone could pass up an opportunity as effervescent as this.
That’s how art should be, I think. Not up on a distant pedestal, isolated behind velvet ropes. (Ok, obvious exceptions for the Mona Lisa, etc. because people can be jerks. But still.) Easy as buying a Coke.
* Oh look, it’s a thing! Different form factor and a slightly less appealing association (cigarettes and all) but same idea.
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