In my old neighborhood in the part of Berkeley that's secretly Oakland (the city limits forming a penninsula just around my apartment), there used to be a "free store" on the corner—shelves for people to leave unwanted consumer goods and to take them to a good home. It stopped being a thing shortly before I left, due to some combination of adverse attention from city municipal code inspectors, [and a fire](https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/07/21/south-berkeley-free-store-destroyed-by-fire).
-There was a butcher-paper sign on the fence with a pen on a string, asking community members to write a note on what the free store meant to them.
+In memoriam, there was a butcher-paper sign on the fence with a pen on a string, asking community members to write a note on what the free store had meant to them.
One of the messages read: