This past weekend was Independent Bookstore Day and Local Yarn Store Day (the weekend before Maryland Sheep and Wool too, someone hates my wallet). I roped a friend into doing the DC Bookstore Crawl with me. I had, because I apparently like to stack a day, also planned a vet appointment for my cat. So we did that in the morning and then headed out around lunch for books and yarn. The DC area is really having an independent bookstore moment right now. I can remember when hitting six stores (the minimum for the book crawl prize) would have involved at least two suburbs. And I know friends elsewhere often still have to drive two hours to get to an indie, much less a romance and other genre friendly one.
So we started with Bold Fork, the cookbook and food book store. They also has some ice cream and drinks from some partners outside, along with a deal where you could take your receipt to two other local businesses for a discount.
Then we went to Lost City, where the romance is upstairs. This day involved more stairs than I remembered.
After Lost City we went to Looped Yarn Works which was not officially participating in LYS day, but they are my LYS, so got some yarn.
Then we stopped in Second Story which continues to have a wide selection of used books. Fantom Comics is right nearby but also involves stairs.
Then we took a brief tea break before heading to East City. We made a bad transit choice, going above ground forgetting there was an event of sorts in DC that evening so more people than usual downtown (even though the event was actually closer to where we'd been before, people are weird). But we made it. And shopped a little there. Stopped in at Labyrinth Games to admire some things. And then to Little City, which I had ridiculously not been to yet. Little City was our sixth stop, so in addition to the prize wheel, we also got our totes. (Many of the stores ran out of the official prize totes, but offered up another tote, which was fine by me.)
And then we ended at Loyalty, where I found a lonely looking Independent Bookstore Edition of a book along with some other goodies.
It was a lot of fun, if a bit exhausting. I find in spring I always sort of walk around a bit more (though not usually quite this much) and remember all these cute places that I love visiting. It's also so great to see stores packed full of bookish people. I hope the booksellers are recovered.
I also took advantage of Libro FM's audiobook sale, so my TBR is good for at least a few days.
