Icy and dark, the alley between Sherman and Benson avenues hides more than discarded cardboard boxes and coffee cups. Among the debris sits Bookman’s Alley, a reader’s paradise.

Walking through the patio doors of the little bookshop, you’ll see books of all kinds: old, older and ancient. Turning your head, you notice the man reading behind the antique desk. He almost blends in with the mismatched spines and yellowed covers of his wares.

Since 1980, Bookman’s Alley has been the best choice in the Chicago area for book collectors. No other store comes close to offering as large a selection of author-signed and first edition books. There are now more than 35,000 books in the store, but its beginnings are a little less grand.

Carlson’s career as a bookseller began in his own living room. Spending two years working out of his home, Carlson would frequent estate sales to find books he could afford on his meager salary as an advertising salesman and copy writer. Usually not finding much in the way of titles, he often came away with the oddball antiques that have become a trademark of his downtown shop. In fact, he accumulated so many he toyed briefly with the idea of doubling as an antique dealer. But that would have stolen precious reading time.

“I’m barely able to do one thing at a time as it is,” he says. “There is no way I could keep refurbishing the shop without disturbing my ability to sit here and read.”

Carlson’s peaceful daily routine of reading at his desk is a far cry from his impulsive youth growing up in Minneapolis.

“A friend of mine had enlisted in the army,” he says, “and I was taking his girlfriend to the train station and I was having such a good time I just got on the train to Milwaukee.”

The girlfriend in question starred in a travelling show on ice that stopped off in Milwaukee. When the show left the city, so did Carlson.

Relocating to Chicago, he began his work as a copywriter and ad representative. Though working with magazines such as Fortune and National Geographic, Carlson remained bound to a higher literary love.

“I wanted to do work that I enjoyed and this was it,” he says of his decision to open a book store. “I’d always read books and been given books as gifts.”

Carlson’s deep affinity for the written word is evidenced by his diverse wares from classics to pulp novels and all points in between. It is this distinctive selection – as well as Carlson’s reputation after 22 years in business – that has allowed him to weather the emergence of the industry’s corporate Goliaths. So distinct is Carlson’s target market that he doesn’t feel all that threatened by those same corporate giants, like Evanston’s Barnes & Noble and Borders Books and Music franchises.

“Clearly (the bigger chains) have had a negative effect on smaller independent bookshops, but I don’t think on the whole they’ve hurt me,” he says. “In fact, the two local chains send people here all the time.”

Carlson’s literary knowledge and his zen-like understanding of books has earned him a clientele all his own.

“There’s been a lot of memorable people who’ve been in here,” he says, adding that the shop has seen its share of page-turning drama as the setting for both a wedding and a memorial service.

Visiting authors have also had a hand in penning the shop’s history while finding a kindred soul in Carlson.

“We had a young novelist come, and a friend told her I was thinking about putting a chalk outline by the mystery section,” he says. “She laid down and I drew her outline.”

To paraphrase Will Rogers, Carlson has almost never met a book-lover he didn’t like.

“A large percentage of the people attracted to books and book shops are persons that I can enjoy because we have something in common,” he says.

Students don’t always share in his love of books or can’t find the time, he says.

“There are just a few students every year who really give a damn about books,” he says, “but some of them feel very passionate about them. I think most student have all they can do to keep up with their assignments.”

Whether he reaches the student population or not, Carlson is satisfied. “I’m with my friends – books,” he says. nyou