Where ever you grew up sounds like a wonderful place. In my mind I'm constructing a sort of Twin Peaks[1] type town where I can take my newly acquired book to the good quality dinner.

I have a similar sort of relationship with bike shops. You can tell a good one straight away and it's nothing like a chain store.

My local one is in an ancient 4 story building with lots of back stairs and rooms. In the very top floor the owner keeps his own private collection, which if he's in the mood and you ask nicely he'll show you.

When you're a kid independent shops like that, book shops, computer shops, bike shops, are magic (and they're still pretty good as an adult).

1. Without the murders and other worldly shenanigans obviously.

The value of benevolence of shopkeepers to their younger patrons cannot be understated. As a young kid I learned how PCs were put together from the local clone shop on San Pablo Ave in El Cerrito. I bought a 286 with 512k ram and two floppies and got to watch it be assembled and tested. Later (1989ish) I spent every moment I could at a Macintosh shop on Shattuck Ave in Berkeley playing SimCity on a then unheard of 20” color monitor (at least I recall it being that large). Today I’m at Google and just prior I was at Apple. The link is not direct, but the latter does not exist without the former (there was also a C64 prior to the 286, though without the shopkeeper story), at least in my case.

> The value of benevolence of shopkeepers to their younger patrons cannot be understated.

nit: s/understated/overstated/

oh my, yes, thank you!

I learned a ton about bikes in a store like that. Also how to quickly patch tires (this was my first 'real' job) and to spoke wheels. Great time and lots of respect for the old man and his son that kept that place alive for over 70 years. Unfortunately it's gone now.

There was something like this in Clifton, Cincinnati, Ohio, in the aughts.

sad that it is no longer. I would have been there by now.

I feel this way about baseball card shops! I loved going to those as a kid

Oh my god, you grew up in a fairytale :O

I love stories of little quirky & fable-like people who are known as "that X person", and they seem to be a master at whatever X is. Creates a real charming atmosphere wherever these people exist.

I imagine some of us are those kind of X persons in other peoples lives, where X ∈{Computer, Science, Internet}.

> She was the town's "book lady" or "just the bookstore everyone goes to" so it's obviously been a disappointment when that wasn't the case everywhere as I've moved on and visited other stores

Palo Alto used to have seven (!) bookshops downtown; now there is but one but that survivor is indeed run by a pair of "book ladies" as you describe (except for the tea or coffee).

I had a vacation house in a small town of about 2500 people that had a similar bookshop with a bunch of the usual staples and a somewhat esoteric mix of others. In a very deeply "red" area the owner also carried a lot of books that would definitely not appeal to that crowd, and they sold well. She eventually sold the business and it became a boring bookshop.

One thing that matters to me is opinion. One day I decided I had to see what the fuss about Ayn Rand was all about. So I went into another favorite palo alto bookshop (now gone) and asked the owner where they were as I couldn't find them on the shelf. He got a funny look on his face and said, "Oh, we always keep a few around for thoooose people as he led me to the spot.

I have great memories in the downtown Border's Books, reading through the stacks in the ornate former theater. Sadly, it's now a Blue Bottle cafe (not bad) and a coworking space (horrible) with corporate offices upstairs (sigh).

Used to love visiting two places on my yearly visits to Silicon Valley. One was the Computer Literacy bookstore and the other was Fry's computer store. Always spent money at both on each visit. Neither Detroit or Chicago had anything to compare to them.

The closing of that Borders was a tragic loss and the end of an era in Palo Alto.

The opening of that Borders was a tragic loss of an art house theatre (the New Varsity) and the arrival of a corporate behemoth that drove most of the rest of the bookshops (one next door!) out of business.

The permit for that building required that it be possible to turn it back into a live/film theatre. A friend of mine and I looked into turning it into a nightclub but in the end it was too much of a hassle (and Palo Alto is no longer the kind of place that has nightclubs and porno theatres (not the New Varsity!) downtown).

There was a time in the nineties when I was living in Portland (Michigan) which is a town of 3500 and it had a great bookstore downtown. Yet East Lansing where I live now, the home of my alma mater, Michigan State University, lost it's remaining bookstore downtown. That still boggles my mind.

Yet right after the dotcom crash the bookstores that had multiple aisles of programming books shrunk the computer section to half an aisle. They told me however they could order anything I wanted. I used to browse the bookstores on Sundays. Now I browse the web and order what I need from Amazon. Have to think they did it to themselves.

There continues to be indie stores, but I find one has to hunt online as well as offline for them. Importantly, to spread good word of them via word of mouth and also to purchase from them when one is looking for specific titles on top of usual browsing. A useful thing is to also follow authors you love; they frequent their own local bookstores and actively sign books that you can pick up! I know this is the case for Jeff Vandermeer and Martha Wells.

that sounds like a great bookstore to go into. I love used bookstores, sadly they have been going away.

I’m experiencing nostalgia from your story of a childhood I never had. Thank you for the vivid picture you painted.

It does bring to mind (to me anyway) the fantastic and charming movie about an old school booksellers running up against modernity, “You’ve Got Mail”. (1998)

Would love to visit a good bookstore like you described in london. Anyone got recommendation?

Fascinating. Was she independently wealthy? Selling drugs on the side?

I've always been curious about the financial aspects of businesses like this. I find they can often shed some interesting lights on ways to streamline operations/financials.

> always been curious about the financial aspects of businesses like this

I’m increasingly finding one of my favoured modes of leisure to be a book and a wine bar. Were I to open a wine bar in retirement, decades from now, I’d be fine running it at cost, counting the company and conversation as compensation enough. Swap that to a subsistence model in a low-cost locale, and the business still holds.

I know a woman who runs a used bookstore as part of her alcohol recovery therapy. I don't know the details, but I presume that it's to keep her mind occupied so she doesn't sit around and drink.

It's super low-end, but she's really nice. I don't go to her town very often, but I always stop by and give her $50 for 40 used paperbacks. We talk about them at the checkout, and she knows every one.

I know it's heresy to say on HN, but it's been my observation that there are a lot of people who run businesses not to get rich, but to enrich themselves.

> I know it's heresy to say on HN, but it's been my observation that there are a lot of people who run businesses not to get rich, but to enrich themselves.

I completely understand this. If you have money, why not run a business that either breaks even or loses a sustainably low amount of money? Making money for the sake of making money is as absurd as chasing political power for the sake of holding political power. Both involve confusing a means for an end. Money and power are only worthwhile if you can use them for something worthwhile that you care about. Otherwise, what's the point of putting in all that effort to obtain a means if you don't actually want to use it for something?

Off topic but do you just love wine and pleasant social spaces, or is there something about the whole wine bar experience in particular that makes it special, especially compared to other kinds of bars and cafes?

> do you just love wine and pleasant social spaces

Yes. Aperitif at a cafe in Italy scratches the same itch.

Probably owns the land, building etc. So long as property taxes are low it wouldn’t cost her much to stay there.

My dad has been doing this with coins for a couple decades. Going over peoples collections with them explaining the history origins what they’re worth etc.

I did the math once and he makes about two dollars per hour. But he loves it.

Pro tip from his own words coins are a terrible investment.

Stamps too. I buy 30-40 year old ones to use as postage and pay ~40% less than they paid back then.

Maybe they had some winners that made those losers profitable, but I have my doubts.

A lot of these old lifetime shops are already paid off, so they basically cost nothing but taxes to run, and the pension of whoever owns them pays for that, so they have basically no need or incentive to make money.

Cost of living. When I was in the Midwest I knew way more people starting businesses. If housing is reasonable and commercial rents aren’t too bad, all sorts of stuff becomes sustainable that would never make it a year in more expensive cities.