Mike O'Brien - "The official statement is that we're going to try to keep it open."

There's no official statement that the Bookstore on West 25th is going to close, says the bright-eyed proprietor Mike O'Brien. But with green flyers spelling out the word SALE in the window, he's getting questions about that a lot lately. With his wavy grey hair and bushy beard, O'Brien could be a character in Moby Dick or some other novel about ships, their captains and the unforgiving sea. "People see the signs for 60 percent off all books, and they assume that's the case," he says. "The official statement is that we're going to try to keep it open."

One of only a few remaining independent, used booksellers in the region, the shop once known as Six Steps Down (named for a former half-basement location on Franklin Circle), has been a fixture in Ohio City for most of its 30 years. It's one of those bookstores that causes a certain type of customer to say you "have to be careful" when you go in there. Shelves and old wooden pear crates are stacked high and lined with the titles of yesteryear. There are chairs near the front windows.

In three decades, O'Brien has had evolving series of readings by poets and writers, as well as workshops. The third Saturday of every month poet Jim Lang hosts a poetry reading and distributes a "Bag-o-zine" collection of local poets' work on loose flyers. The fourth Tuesday of every month poet Gina Tabasso hosts a workshop in which poets sit in a circle to read and discuss each others' work.

His hospitality has earned plenty of good will. Last fall Lang put together an anthology, 30/25ths: Not Just Any Versary, to commemorate the bookstore's 30th year. About a year ago, friends helped organize a rent party which enabled him to pay off back taxes and get current with his rent. Just a few months later, though, he began to slip behind again.

O'Brien says the things that sell most quickly and for the best prices are "heavy- duty philosophy and psychology" books.

"I can't keep original-language Greek and Latin authors on the shelf," he says.

But the condo and restaurant boom that has given much of West 25th Street an economic boost in recent years hasn't rubbed off much on the store. O'Brien says he's "several months behind in rent," but quickly adds that his landlord has been "incredibly patient."

O'Brien is committed to the idea of a physical store with a door open to the street, even though he sees both the neighborhood and book sales generally going in a different direction. While the area around the West Side Market has flourished with new condominiums, restaurants and bars, he says that traffic doesn't keep the same hours as his bookstore, and that people who have come for a night out aren't in the book-buying mood. Meanwhile, bookstore chains have solidified their position in the market, and online sales have increased.

"Ironically I have sold books online to people in this very neighborhood," he says.

He's put books up for sale on Amazon and "more esoteric stuff" on Alibris, but that he'd "hate to give up the ability to help the neighborhood by getting books in the hands of people who are not great readers."

O'Brien says it wouldn't take much to turn things around: just two or three people a day buying two or three books each would put him "within shouting distance of solvency."

But at the moment all he knows is that he'll stay open through the month of April.