It’s been an exceptionally rough winter, so we thought we’d talk about what a big snow day looks like at the Brattle. Picture downtown Boston, quiet streets blanketed with feet of newly fallen snow. Almost everyone is staying home today—except for plow drivers and the Brattle staff. Are we having a cozy time in there? Not really. This is where selling books outdoors becomes a feat of endurance: we’re shoveling the sale lot clean, we’re shoveling the roof, we’re climbing onto a higher part of the roof and shoveling that, we’re running through cases of Hot Hands packets just to stave off frostbite. Sometimes we have to close the sale lot to protect our customers from themselves—we’ve learned that people will browse outside even in dangerously cold conditions. Join us for a chat about working in a winter wonderland on this frosty new #brattlecast.
Brattlecast #85 - Brattle on the MTA
Boston’s MBTA—iconic, idiosyncratic, and frequently vexing—features the oldest subway system in the United States, and probably the only one to have inspired a hit folk song about its fare hikes. Today we’ll take a look at MBTA ephemera, a big box of which has just arrived in the shop, and at train-related collecting in general. Collectors seek out antique subway signs, lovely frameable maps, evocative timetables of the vanished bus lines of their youth, and much more. Plus we’ll ask, in a time of looming climate change and increased social unrest around fare evasion, should public transportation be free?