Books moving down the block

I participated in this. They did in fact sometimes pass more than one at a time.

Specifically, they’d planned out the fact that they had to cross the signalized intersection at Somerville Ave @ Mass Ave, and they didn’t want to shut the road down.

Therefore, they stationed employees with carts at the intersection, and did a thing where they’d load up the first cart while the “don’t walk” signal was on, and keep going until the cart was full. When the “walk” signal turned on, they’d push the loaded cart across the street (and send an empty cart in the other direction). On the other side, by the Porter Square MBTA station, an employee would start unloading the books, 1-3 at a time, and the chain would continue from there. They did a pretty good job of timing things so that by the time the cart was empty, the walk signal would change again, so a new loaded cart would cross the street and keep the line going.

But anyway, TLDR yeah they did sometimes pass multiple books at a time. Not so many that it would be cumbersome for the next person in the chain to take the hand-off, so usually it was 1-3 at a time.

I participated and it was over in less than 45 minutes. Even at a book a second (which wasn't happening), that would have been 2700 books. I suspect it was more like 700. Happy to be corrected by someone who was counting.

Brilliant, though. Everyone enjoyed themselves. I'm glad I helped out.

It was a publicity stunt to make long time customers feel they were part of the bookstore "family" and keep coming to the new store. I didn't get to Cambridge until it was over, so I don't know if it worked or not.

I participated in this today, so can fill in a bit of detail.

• It was absolutely a PR thing. This wasn’t about efficiency, it was PR — start right when the Honk Parade finished going by and there was a crowd milling around anyway, some of whom are surely already patrons of Porter Square Books, get them to help shift some of the inventory from the old space, and get a chance to see the new space — and take a free “promo” copy book too, if anyone wanted one. And make sure some news cameras are on the scene for some free publicity.
• They didn’t want to hire a police detail, or deal with the rest of the logistics involved in shutting down access to the Porter Square shopping center, Somerville Ave at Mass Ave, etc. So they kept it limited — today’s “bucket brigade” only moved two shelves — the “romance” section. They’re having professional movers get the rest next week.
• It was fun. Bah humbug.

was moved, or will be moved, by truck, and that they always planned to do that.

This was a PR stunt, not an exercise in efficiency.

It wasn’t always one book — sometimes we’d pass up to three or so — but any more than that and it started slowing down the rhythm of passing them along. This was very much a “many hands make light work” thing, where it was actually easier to pass no more than a couple at a time.

Boxes would’ve been the same problem: then somebody would have had to get a bunch of boxes, pack them on the source side, pass them down the line, unpack them on the destination side, maybe send the empty boxes back, etc. It seems like a good idea but the logistics would be a lot more complex than what they actually did.

Also, we only moved the Romance section. Professional movers are getting the rest of the inventory next week.