I think there’s two elements. One is rent, which is a very real issue: Saint’s Alp and The Cheese Shop never had a quiet moment, were basically on the same bloc

I think there’s two elements. One is rent, which is a very real issue: Saint’s Alp and The Cheese Shop never had a quiet moment, were basically on the same block, and have both gone belly up. That said, the bookstore sucked. It had far too few books per square foot - easily an order of magnitude or more less than the Strand - but their curation was, outside of political tracts, bland and unsurprising. I’d never walk in there and find the book I was looking for; I’d never walk in there and find an unexpected gem. You have to deliver at least one of those, and your curation had better be top notch if your position is “we will only stock a (relative) handful of books.” They went out of business because they were bad at what they did, but great stores on the same block can’t cope with the rent either.