Moving Shop, Phinney-Style!

Some of you may have noticed that Phinney Greenwood businesses seem to be playing Musical Chairs--Metropolis and Turabi switched places, the flower shop moved up Greenwood Avenue almost to 85th Street, and now Santoro's Books is moving in to the flower shop's old space!

Even more fun than that, with these short hop moves, our neighborhood businesses have been inviting their neighbors to help them move. Metropolis threw a moving party a couple of months ago. With generous help from so many friends and neighbors, they brag that everything was moved in 45 minutes!

Carol Santoro set her moving party for Friday May 30 at noon. I had missed the Metropolis move, so I was determined to get to this one, both for the great photo op and the fun of helping out.

As I grabbed a sandwich at Ken's Market, I could see the parade of hand trucks crossing at the light and heading up the street. What fun! How cool! I can't wait to help! So I headed across the street to Santoro's. When I got there at 12:05pm, I found out what I had seen was the very last load! They'd started by 11:30 and I'd missed the fun (and the photos)! Oh, no!




I went over to see the new shop and was invited to help unpack and shelve the books. Now mind you, to a book-geek with a gimp foot, this sounds even more fun than pushing hand trucks up and down the block! 15 or so of us stayed and had a wonderful time shelving books and visiting with our neighbors.

We each picked our favorite section, and with a little bit of guidance from Carol and the Santoro's staff, the alphabetizing and artful arranging began!


By 3 pm almost everything was unpacked and shelved. The staff was fine-tuning the spacing and remarking that they were at least a day ahead of schedule.

Many thanks for the generosity of friends, neighbors, and neighborhood businesses open to helping each other out.
That's how we do it in my neighborhood.