Alsace Walentine, owner of Tombolo Books, St. Petersburg, Fla., and her book-delivering bicycle were the focus of a piece by 10 Tampa Bay, which reported that she bought the green bike after moving from hilly North Carolina. She opened the bookstore in December 2019, but everything came to a halt on March 16.
"I do not like Covid. It was a night full of tears. I knew what we had to do for safety," she said, adding that the store focused on its website and boosting online sales, but she wanted a more personal touch during a for local deliveries.
"I do love my bike, obviously," she said. "We did over 200 deliveries while we were shut down."
Even after re-opening Tombolo to limited occupancy in June, "the bike remained a useful weekly tool," 10 Tampa Bay noted. "Regular customers would expect to see a masked Walentine pull up on her bike and leave a brown paper sack full of books on their front porch."
"I've been a bookseller for 20 years and we've never done anything like this," said Walentine. "It's fun to change an old tradition.... The great part about (deliveries) is we get a little bit of face time with people. Some people really are still indoors at their homes and that's it."