Tsunami Books in Eugene, Ore., is fundraising, including a $200,000 GoFundMe campaign, to buy its building at 2585 Willamette St. Lookout Eugene-Springfield reported that the bookshop "aims to protect its idiosyncratic home from rising property values and ensure it remains a haven for the arts in perpetuity.... The store isn't in danger of closing; there's no impending deadline that's prompting the push to buy. But Tsunami's worker-owners think the wave can build to safeguard its future, which they're coining a '$10 movement' to collect small donations toward a cash purchase."
"We've had a million people come through here," general manager and worker-owner Scott Landfield said. "If we had 50,000 ten-dollar bills, either come through GoFundMe or through our tip box, we're going to have the building. And it's only going to cost 10 bucks."
The 4,600-square foot building is "prime real estate," with a valuation of $747,218, per county records, Lookout noted. Raising $1 million would allow the bookstore to make an outright cash offer, said Landfield, who is the general manager and largest shareholder in Tsunami. "I hold the record for old white guys in America. I have worked longer, harder, more honestly, for less than minimum wage than any other old white guy in America. Still making less than minimum wage."
For Landfield, buying the building is a matter of securing his life's work after three decades of paying rent. "There's a lot of things I've done that I'm pleased with, but I never really planned on doing them," he said. "Some things that I planned on doing, like writing a lot of books, finishing them, I just assumed that's what I was going to do with my life. But trying to make it and pay the rent with your muscle, and your line of bullshit to the next customer, and that's everything you got? It takes everything you got."
"For 30 years, we've been paying rent on time, and we've paid over a million and a half in rent," he added. "When you're poor and you got to pay that much rent, you can't ever not be poor."