Boxcar Books celebrates 8th anniversary with store-wide sale

A local book store with a volunteer staff will celebrate Valentine’s Day and its 8th birthday this weekend.

When IU junior Tara Johnson was looking for a way to be more involved in the Bloomington community last year, she immediately thought of the small store located just outside campus. She filled out an application and soon joined a completely unpaid staff of more than 30 people.

Boxcar first opened in 2002 after months of planning. Bloomington residents Ali Haimson and Matthew Turissini initially created the store as a home for the Midwest Pages for Prisoners Project.

Pages for Prisoners is a organization of volunteers who collect books to send to prisoners in an effort to promote self-education among those who are trying to rehabilitate themselves.

“We were looking for a funding mechanism for the project but also wanted to increase acceptability and knowledge of small press books, ’zines and self-published materials,” said Turissini, who is now in the IU School of Medicine.

Since then, the store has changed locations, which has allowed the Pages project to become a tax-exempt non-profit organization. Boxcar Books has organized annual “rock ‘n’ roll proms” and grown considerably, both in stock and community awareness. Boxcar now has over 7,500 books.

“In the first year we did several times more sales than we expected to, and it’s doubled since then a few times,” Turissini said.

One of the main areas of growth is the textbook section. When the store started carrying textbooks four years ago, there were only two shelves, but now the books take up an entire wall. Some IU professors, especially in the gender studies and English departments, have required readings only available for purchase at the store, said volunteer coordinator Taylor Dean.

“They are what allow us to afford this space,” she said. “We’ve been able to write a lot more checks to other community organizations we want to support. Textbooks are what have allowed us to do that.”

The birthday celebration will be low-key compared to last year’s festivities, which included live music and partying well into the night. “We’re kind of gearing up for the 10th year,” Dean said.

Johnson said this year’s party will feature several dozen cupcakes and a 20 percent-off Valentine’s Day sale of books with pink and red covers.

Johnson said she found working her first year at Boxcar to be rewarding and now works a volunteer shift every Monday. She said what sets the store apart from other alternative bookstores is its involvement in the community.

“We’re a bookstore that tries to be a lot more than a bookstore,” she said.