Waiting on a concrete platform for a steel box to whisk you off to work is a less-than-stimulating way to start your morning. And this is Miami, not Manhattan, so good luck finding a street musician, magician, or Human of New York to keep you entertained.
But Daniel Caballero, one of the recent winners of Miami's Public Space Challenge, hopes to change all that by adding a little literary flair to the city's Metrorail platforms.
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A Miami native and Stanford grad, Caballero digs reading, and thought a little bibliophilia might make riding the rails more pleasant.
"I take the Metro every day and I had seen the idea of having these little public library trading posts -- I kind of put the two together," Caballero says.
"The idea is have a post on the platform and you could just leave a book or grab a book," he says. The initial book selection would likely be curated by Caballero, but eventually he hopes the effort would sustain itself with passengers taking and leaving at will.
"Hopefully it just makes the metro a little more attractive and gives people something to read -- adds a sense of excitement," he adds.
He's working with transit to get the implementation underway, hopefully by the end of the year, he says. Initially, the post would probably be installed at one stop (which one is TBD). Then, it could expand from there.
So what are Caballero's top picks for train reading?
"2666 by Roberto Bolaño or On the Road with the Ramones by Monte A Melnick. Aside from being the books I'm currently reading, 2666 because I could probably read it multiple times and still pick out new details that I had missed before. I would pick On the Road with the Ramones because there's a good chance I'll also be listening to the Ramones as I ride the Metro."
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