We're Out of the Woods !
Dear Friends,
Walk-a-Palooza was an enormous success with over 4 hours of great music, good friends, and generous donations which totaled nearly $1500! We've since placed that in a special account to fund our Summer Free Concert Series. Wowser! There must have been more than 200 people who generously donated to the ongoing support of this wonderful concert series and so we are glad to announce that the concert series and the shop are both alive and well and, in fact, we have already started to sign-up bands for this summer and set up yard sale dates ( visit our website, walkacrookedmilebooks.com to see who's already on the schedule.) Our special thanks to Dr. Philip Krey, President of The Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia, ltsp.edu, for generously allowing us the use of Bowman Hall for free so that all of those donations go to the series. Not only that, but they've invited us back for next year and we hope to make Walk-a-Palooza an annual event. Also a big thank you to the 10 bands that played till the rafters shook, and toasted Walk a Crooked Mile Books with parodies and tributes that moved us deeply. Special thanks to David Heitler-Klevans of Two of a Kind and Jim Harris of Saint Mad who made this extravaganza happen and to Art Miron who masterfully served as emcee.
Also, a thank you to all of those who attended the concert and gave so generously. You are our neighbors, our friends, and our customers and Cynthia and I are also so grateful for the gracious way you responded to our call for help back in November when we realized that Walk a Crooked Mile Books was in danger of closing unless something drastic happened. And many amazing things did happen;
Our Devon St. Neighbors brought out lights and greenery and wonderful kitsch and decorated the Mount Airy Train Station so that it glowed so brightly on winter nights that we attracted more new customer. They then threw a huge First Night Party on December 4th with a bonfire and marshmallow roasts and invited lots of friends and neighbors who bought mountains of books and gift certificates.
Then the next Saturday, the Boyer Street neighbors sponsored a Saturday morning "Second Saturday" event with all of the kids from their neighborhood and again bought oodles of books as we all stayed warm with hot chocolate.
The Mt. Airy Independent, thanks to Karl Biemiller, the Chestnut Hill Local, thanks to Len Lear and Hugh Gilmore, and WTXF, Fox 29, thanks to Berlinda Garnett, all gave us great press that told the story of our distress and your wonderful response and brought in new customers to the store.
Our faithful customers all sent emails to their friends telling them about Walk a Crooked Mile Books and throughout the holiday season we had new customers showing up saying that their friends insisted they come and visit us. And they bought armfuls of books.
Several hundred people became fans of our bookstore on Facebook and cheered on our success.
And all of this was chronicled on our website, walkacrookedmilebooks.com, which has been generously built by our friend, Rachel Polisher from livealbum.org who built us a wonderful website which will continue to highlight our presence in the community.Please support her.
So, by the end of the Holiday Season, our sales had doubled over our best year in the past and we paid off our bills, had holes in our usually bursting shelves so there was now room for new books, we had hundreds of tremendously loyal old customers, dozens of excited new customers, and (in a first ever occurrence) a little money in the bank to get us through a long, cold winter. So, we feel renewed and recharged and confident that we can remain open and continue to be Mt. Airy's bookstore, concert series, yard sale site, book recycling center, neighborhood hang-out place, friend of dogs and little kids. etc.
Yahoo
Greg and Cynthia
