Sitting behind a desk in a poorly-lit, dank Charles Village basement - one that could just as easily belong to a frat house or to Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs - Russell Wattenberg looks up over an errant pile of books to take in the surroundings.
"Is everyone finding what they want?" he says. "Is everyone being greedy?"
The handful of patrons inside The Book Thing nod as they continue to peruse the cramped basement's wares. Yet, truth be told, it is often hard to find anything other than serendipity in a small room that is filled to the ceiling with more than 250,000 free books and magazines.
The Book Thing's mission is to put unwanted books into the hands of those who want them, to provide a public domain where people can drop off old books or try scrounging up a hidden gem. Inside the basement, books are jammed into every nook and cranny, making it possible to find a worn paperback copy of Macbeth only a few inches away from How to Win at Gameboy Games.
Yet what is most impressive about the operation, which Wattenberg believes to be the only of its kind in the country, is that no money is exchanged - everything in the basement is 100 percent gratis. So how does he afford to keep the venture running?
"I hold up liquor stores," Wattenberg says, managing to hold a poker face for 10 seconds before cracking a smile.
In actuality, The Book Thing receives donations from both individuals and corporations, given either online or in the bin that Wattenberg keeps outside the basement door. However, Wattenberg refuses to receive donations inside the building.
"I don't like to mix money and books. It ain't kosher," he says. "The whole point of free books is no money."
The need for funding has never been more pressing for Wattenberg and his small staff of volunteers, who are in the midst of moving The Book Thing to a nearby location in Waverly after four-and-a-half years at its current site.
While the current location, on the corner of 27th Street and North Charles, was a big step up from The Book Thing's previous location (the back of Wattenberg's van), expansion has been limited due to the basement's lack of bathrooms, heating, handicap accessibility, and most importantly, adequate space. The new location is slated to open on April 1.
One of the difficulties behind fundraising for The Book Thing has been the lack of exposure that they receive, aside from the red FREE BOOKS sign on the sidewalk outside the building. The interesting problem that Wattenberg has discovered is that people aren't willing to accept that there is absolutely no catch.
"I used to advertise a little bit, but it just didn't make sense," he says. "For instance, City Paper used to give me a free classified ad. So in between 'free DSL' and 'free phone sex' would be 'free books.' People don't believe they can get free DSL or free phone sex, so why would they believe they could get free books?"
After all, it seems silly for Wattenberg to have to advertise his services when he is really more of a middle man than a businessman. He considers himself to be merely a liaison in the natural process of people trading their used books with each other, and envisions a world in which his role would be unnecessary - where people would finish a book and leave it somewhere for others to find, like at a bus stop or restaurant.
"Russell liberates knowledge," says LeAnn Foster, a member of The Book Thing's volunteer staff.
The Book Thing was created six years ago, when Wattenberg was the manager of Dougherty's Pub in downtown Baltimore. Every Friday, a group of teachers would come to happy hour after work, and would frequently complain about the lack of books at their school.
"Under the Schmoke administration, there was this mandate that each teacher needed to have a certain amount of books for each student in their classroom," Wattenberg says. "So I started taking 10 percent of my tip money and using it to go out to thrift stores to buy books for them. Other people started to hear about what I was doing, and started giving me books that they didn't want anymore."
Soon Wattenberg began to receive books that the teachers couldn't possibly use, and that was when he decided to turn his increasingly popular "book thing" into The Book Thing. Ever since, he has enjoyed his role as the Robin Hood of books, and has vociferously encouraged greediness among his "customers."
"That's it?" he yells at two women, as they leave the basement with their arms full of free books. "We have boxes you can fill up, you know. You guys are a couple of literary lightweights."
For now, Wattenberg just hopes that moving the quarter of a million volumes to their new location will go smoothly, and that The Book Thing will continue to thrive despite a non-existent profit margin.
"There is one thing that sucks about all this, though," he says. "I can't ever have a sale."
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