Comment by arjie

Saw one of these at an Airbnb I rented in Bernal Heights for my parents to stay a few years ago. Neat little Mathematics textbook I used to teach my wife a little of this stuff. They're a loud signal of the neighbourhood. This one had some fun textbooks and romance books but in less nice parts of the city the ones I have seen are usually empty. Presumably, they are subject to the universal law I'm familiar with from the India of my childhood that anything that can be converted to money (no matter how lossy the mechanism) will be so converted.

I like the idea and books aren't something I value holding once I've read them so we put some sci-fi in back along with the textbook.

Amusingly, I saw them in the news a few years later under absolutely hilarious circumstances when the WSJ reported[0] that SF was fining some homeowners $1400 for a Little Free Library they'd placed outside their home after a neighbour complained. It seems to have had a happy ending with those people chasing it down till an ordinance was passed[1] permitting these.

0: https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-fights-urban-diso...

1: https://littlefreelibrary.org/2024/02/san-francisco-stewards...