On Being Ballyhoo
...and how we sustain ourselves in the midst of it all
Dear friends,
Welcome to this inaugural Substack issue of Being Ballyhoo. As there is a lot of ground to cover - more than I can possibly manage to traverse coherently in a single issue - please consider this to be but an introduction…the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing conversation as we navigate through what has been aptly described by visionary economist and author David Korten as the “Great Unraveling.” I just keep repeating to myself the adage “the only way out is through” - hats off to Robert Frost for that one.
So…how do we sustain ourselves in the midst of it all? The answer to that question is wondrously multifaceted and wholly dependent (I believe) on our willingness to think creatively and engage the powers of imagination - both as individual citizens and collectively. I don’t know about you, but I have to humbly confess that I have all too often through these past many months allowed fear to immobilize me…to derail my creative intentions.
Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you in better living conditions. ~ Hafiz
So this first issue of Being Ballyhoo is in many ways my attempt to push through my fear, to be as transparent as I can, first and foremost about what is needed to sustain the kind of transformative life-enhancing work we aspire to contribute to our community with Ballyhoo. I own this work…at least the impetus of it. But I am increasingly aware that it is not mine alone to do.
“To refuse to participate in the shaping of our future is to give it up. Do not be mislead into passivity either by false security (they don’t mean me) or by despair (there’s nothing we can do). Each of us must find our work and do it.”
~ Audre Lorde
If you are receiving this Substack you are most likely already aware of our history and the pandemic-induced financial challenges we have faced…as well as the crowd-funding campaign we initiated in late 2023 (if you’re not aware or need a refresher, you can view the introductory video to the campaign here or read the transcript to my February 2024 closing message here). The 2025 nutshell version of our situation is this:
Despite making many hard adjustments at the close of 2024 to try to rein in our operating costs (closing our doors on Mondays, eliminating an assistant manager position, and not replacing departing staff members to get our total staff number down to a bare-bones level) and despite the fact that the number of people visiting Ballyhoo continues to grow, our revenue intake is still not sufficient to our needs. One of the current reasons for the customer traffic to revenue mismatch is likely obvious to anyone paying attention…inflation related belt-tightening and general cultural chaos. Scary times.
The other major contributing factor is what led to our first crowdfunding campaign - what my very wise and excruciatingly honest small business advisor describes as our “unusually high” debt load for a small business this size (I know…thank you, Jeff) and we would likely be just fine if we could get that lowered (again…aware).
What I have finally come to realize and now even allow myself to express - without feeling shame for my failure in this capitalistic enterprise (more to come on this evolution in another post) - is that what we have created here in Ballyhoo is in nearly equal parts both a place of commerce as well as a “third place” (see notes below) community space that has immense intangible value. Ballyhoo and other places like this don’t fit well into the American capitalistic model - they require something a bit different to finance their existence. And we need them to exist. We need both customers and patrons…the terms are often used interchangeably, but there is a difference. We need patrons who contribute financially to our support because they recognize the necessary intangible benefits we bring to the community.
“It’s important not to limit our sense of what resistance looks like.”
– writer/activist Rebecca Solnit
When we closed out our first crowdfunding campaign, many of you asked us to come up with a way for you to provide additional ongoing support to this spunky countercultural place we call Ballyhoo. So this is it - we invite you to become a “Ballyhooligan!” with us. This is both our patronage building campaign as well as a public statement of our belief in the collective power of people choosing to make good trouble to help change the world.
We have set it up so you can either donate online at our website or at the checkout in the storefront. We also have Ballyhooligan! gear available for purchase at Ballyhoo.
“Make some noise…get in good trouble. Necessary trouble.”
~ John Lewis
“You know we cannot do this all at once. But every day offers every one of us little invitations for resistance, and you make your own responses.”
~ Victoria Safford, from the essay “The Small Work in the Great Work” included in The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times
"Reading is Resistance" is a call to action for readers to engage with literature in a way that fosters critical thinking, empathy, and social justice. The initial simple action of this campaign is to keep an ever-evolving display of recommended books as resistance resources available in the Ballyhoo storefront. Our intent is for this to grow into other actions we can sponsor either onsite or out in the community.
Read more about reading as resistance here.
The image below is only here as an example of how much I have yet to learn about using the Substack platform…I wanted to delete it and save to use in a future post, but the program won’t let me delete it. I can delete a single photo but not something set up in a gallery format. So here’s a little peek at some of what I’ve been reading lately…
And…as ever and always, our deepest gratitude to all of our customers and patrons wherever you shop us – in our Alma storefront or through our online affiliates Bookshop.org and Libro.fm – we value you more than we can express.
May all the good you seek, be seeking you as well.
Dawn
Dawn Daniels is the owner/manager of Ballyhoo Books & Brew…in case you haven’t met her yet. She will most often be the author of the Being Ballyhoo posts, but will be inviting other guest writers to join the fun from time to time.
Notes
More about third places:
Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place. Hachette Books, 1999.
https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/third-place-community-spaces/
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/third-places-as-community-builders/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/learning/do-you-have-a-third-place.html?searchResultPosition=2