Winter hours

Bindlestiff hours will be a bit irregular for the next few weeks as we train some new volunteers, rejigger work schedules, and do some much-needed work in the basement (which doesn’t require closing, but it’s hard for the person doing it to staff at the same time).

We endeavor to be open Wednesday through Sunday, from Noon to 7 pm except on Sundays, when we close at 5. However, we do not have volunteers available for all of those hours, and many shifts are being scheduled on a day-by-day basis. We can pretty much guarantee that we will be open Thursdays from Noon to 3:30 p.m. and Saturdays from Noon to 7:00 p.m. We expect to be open more often than not on the other days for at least a part of our normal hours.

If you’re contemplating a special trip, perhaps it would be a good idea to phone first, at 215.662.5780. (But you shouldn’t necessarily expect to be phoned back quickly if you leave a voicemail; we’re not all that good at checking that.) Otherwise, if you’re walking by and we’re open, perhaps that would be a good time to pop in.

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Open Christmas Eve day

Bindlestiff Books will be open Monday, Dec. 24, from 11 a.m. until 3:30 (or until the last customer leaves) for your last-minute shopping needs.

We will also have limited hours on Monday, Dec. 17 (call first: 215.662.5780), and our regular hours for the rest of the week. We will be accepting special orders through closing Wednesday, Dec. 19, which will be available for pick-up on Dec. 22 (or possibly earlier — this applies only to books in stock at our distributor’s Pennsylvania warehouse, something we will check on when we take the order). Orders placed after Wednesday are unlikely to arrive in time for Christmas.

We will be open intermittently between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

November hours

Bindlestill will close Halloween (Oct. 31) at 3:30 for the holiday.

Beginning in November, we will be open Tuesdays from 4 to 7 p.m. We will be open Wednesday through Saturday Noon to 7 p.m., and Sunday Noon to 5. A new group of volunteers is still settling in. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursday opening, Saturday and Sunday all have solid staffing and we will be open those days barring emergencies. We have pretty good coverage for Thursday closings and Friday openings, and expect to stay open most Fridays until our scheduled closing time.

We will be closed Thanksgiving Day, and likely Black Friday as well.

We plan on further expanding hours in December.

Baklava Benefit Sale for A Book A Day

A Book a Day will hold a baklava sale to raise money to buy art books for local public schools. A Book a Day program, a Penn Libraries–funded initiative, donates newly published children’s books to the Henry C. Lea School and the Penn Alexander School. Every month, eight new hardcover books are delivered to the school library, giving kids access to intriguing books on music, art history, poetry, and street art.

To learn more about A Book a Day, please visit: http://abookaday.edublogs.org

Saturday, October 27, 10:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Bindlestiff Books, 4530 Baltimore Ave., West Philly

Special Orders, Deliveries Delayed

UPDATE: This week’s delivery of books from our distributors arrived Oct. 9, as scheduled. We are still trying to recover 5 boxes of books from last week.

UPDATE 2: We were unable to recover the books, which have now been returned to our distributor. UPS made two more “attempted deliveries” hours before our scheduled opening despite promising our distributor that they would deliver the books during our posted hours (UPS told our distributors we did not have posted hours when we complained, which is consistent with decades of experience dealing with this company). We are going through order by order to reconstruct which books were returned, as the box received includes books from several weeks of orders.

UPS is refusing to make deliveries to Bindlestiff Books at this time, demanding that we make special ransom payments for each package in addition to the freight charges paid by our distributor. We have filed a complaint with our distributor and hope they will be able to intervene with UPS and get them to resume deliveries. But UPS has been increasingly resistant to making deliveries over the past six months, in one case a driver pulled up in front of the store while we were on the phone with UPS discussing a long-overdue shipment which they said was on the truck, remaining there for a few minutes — only to drive off without making the delivery as soon as the phone call ended.

We can not say whether their refusal to  deliver books arises from UPS’s general sloppiness and disorganization, which we have suffered from for decades, or is part of a company effort to transform their delivery model to collect from both shippers and recipients, holding packages hostage unless special payments are made. Unfortunately, most distributors and publishers insist on shipping via UPS, and so our ability to receive new books is seriously impacted. We will continue to ask shippers to intervene with UPS when it refuses to make deliveries, in hopes that the situation can be remedied before we are forced to close.

Baltimore Avenue profiled

The American Airlines magazine has an article on Baltimore Avenue, which stresses its diversity and has interviews with many people from the strip. The author knows enough to recognize that we’re in West Philadelphia (not University City), points to the Paul Robeson house, and notes our “neighborhood bookstore vibe … offering a smartly curated selection of fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, graphic novels, kids’ titles and more.”

Dollar Books

Bindlestiff Books will offer a wide selection of new books for $1 as part of the September Dollar Stroll, Thursday Sept. 13. The store will be open until 8 pm.