A stuffed cat head wearing a football helmet helps to designate the sports section at Bookman's Alley in Evanston, which owner Roger Carlson plans on closing soon. (Chris Sweda, Chicago Tribune / March 10, 2012)
By Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune reporter
March 12, 2012

Back in December, Roger Carlson said he would be closed by the end of January, that his three decades as a North Shore literary staple would come to a quiet end and he would retire. But in January, he said "now it'll probably be February." And in February, he said most likely everything in Bookman's Alley, the venerable, overstuffed, eccentric used bookstore he opened in an Evanston garage stall 33 years ago, would be sold off by late March. Last week, however, Carlson could still be found in his usual spot, behind his brown wood desk.
A customer approached.
"The gumdrop bowl?" she asked.
"Gone," Carlson said.
She handed him a few books and said she didn't have any checks on her. She would send him the money tomorrow. "Of course," Carlson said, and turned in his chair to face another customer.
"Are your books on religious art in any one place?" the man asked.
"Could be any place in this place," Carlson replied with a sigh.

Nothing seemed especially different about Bookman's Alley. It still can be found in a low-slung brick building behind Sherman Avenue that, with "Harry Potter"-like surrealism, looks smaller than it is, stretching room to room to room long after that seemed possible. Carlson's Nordic blues still twinkled, a white curtain of hair still hung from his head and a Southwestern-style blanket draped on the back of his chair. Indeed, Carlson appeared so cheerfully ensconced in his legendary bookstore, so hopelessly surrounded by its near geological layers of books and tote bags of books and boxes of books and odd miscellanea (top hats, scrimshaw, Abraham Lincoln bookends) that even an April closing seemed like wishful thinking.
Nevertheless, the store is closing.
Probably by the end of spring

Full piece at Chicago Tribune.