Rachel Crawford (right) of Akimbo Books with a customer at a recent pop-up event at John's Tex Mex.
Customers of John’s Tex-Mex in the South Wedge typically get their tacos and burritos with a side of refried beans or mashed potatoes. On a recent Saturday, they got a side of indie lit, too.
Nestled in a back corner of the restaurant, past clusters of patrons gorging on guacamole, was a pop-up bookstore fashioned out of a small table displaying a couple dozen books — novels, essays, and poetry, mostly from small presses and international authors.
The exhibit was the work of Akimbo Books, a local online bookseller that specializes in contemporary literature and has developed a workaround to paying for a brick-and-mortar store by staging pop-up shops. In the process, it seeks to reintroduce what is a rarity in Rochester’s literary landscape nowadays: new titles.