There was a bookstore like that in Ottawa 30 years ago. I was young and thin in those days; now I doubt I could squeeze through the piles of books without knocking something over. The owner not only kept acquiring more books, he didn't want to sell the ones he had! Once I found an atlas of Napoleon's campaigns I wanted to buy for my fiance.

"Ohhh, this is rather an expensive book!"
"That's alright!"
"It's... ummm... $45.00"
"I'll take it!"
(Sigh)
"Let me just write down the name of it. (Sigh) I won't see a copy of THIS again... (sigh)"

Spot on! This was this bookseller's method as well.

He started to price everything so that it stayed in his private collection.

There was a place on the corner of Wellington and Clark in Chicago exactly like that. On three occasions I was there when the Fire Marshall came in to give the old MSU professor who owned it a warning. He was partial to art books, and gave away Military History.

I'm struggling to picture it. Will have to ask the wife she lived over there for a while. We used Community over in Dark Slope as that was close to home. Nothing like that collection, but workable when the staff were willin'. The now defunct Accident Or Design in Providence as well as Newspeak served us well also.

Community Books in Park Slope is NOTHING like The Community Bookstore. It's a jill-come-lately.

Agreed. I google-mapped it and see where it is. I was picturing something the other side of Atlantic.