Big Red, Where Are You? Someone Absconded With Carroll Park's Much-Loved Book Swap Cart

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Has anyone seen Friends of Carroll Park's big red book swap cart that is parked in front of Carroll Park on most sunny days?

The Friends group, an all-volunteer organization that lovingly takes care of our park, purchased the cart a few years ago and has stocked it with books for all ages as a book swap library. It has been tremendously popular with park-goers.

This past Wednesday, one of the group's volunteers wheeled the cart out at around 2:30 pm since the sun was shining and the park was full of people. When he came back to take it back into the park house at 6-6:30pm, it was gone.

Members of the group walked around Carroll Gardens to find it, but have found no trace of the cart or the books.

Friends of Carroll Park sent the following email out to its membership yesterday:

"Our much-loved book swap cart parked outside the park house Wednesday, and someone(s) absconded with it when nobody was looking.

We hope one of our board members was correct when suggesting, "Maybe they thought they would be stuck inside and wouldn't have enough to read."

If you've seen it abandoned somewhere around the neighborhood, or if you have any other information regarding its whereabouts, please let us know at Carrollparkbrooklyn@gmail.com and we'll fetch it.

Big Red has served us well since 2011, and we just want her back home where she belongs!"

Someone responded to the group to say:

"I did in fact witness someone pushing the cart away from the park yesterday between 5:30 and 6, but unfortunately I don't know where she took it or why. A woman in a red coat pushed it out of the park and south on Smith Street, past the play yard of PS 58. I was puzzled because I thought it lived at the park, but I thought perhaps she was taking it to the school.

Good luck! What a shame."

Perhaps the person who took the cart just wheeled it a few blocks away for fun? Maybe the woman was heading to the scrapyard on Smith Street to make a few dollars? Or, as one member of the Friends group imagined, the cart may now rest at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal.

If you have seen it anywhere around the neighborhood, please contact Friends of Carroll Park