Thursday was a great day at Borders on Chicago's Magnificent Mile. Great, that is, for anyone in the market for two dozen cheap copies of "Full Frontal Nudity" by the actor Harry Hamlin.

For anyone looking for a real bookstore, the black-and-yellow signs in the windows told a sad story: ENTIRE STORE ON SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO!

By Saturday, Borders' marquee Chicago store, at 830 N. Michigan Ave., will be closed for good. And — here's what I think is the real news — the city's premier shopping street will be without any bookstore for the first time in decades.

"I'm sad it's leaving," said Brooke Stoltz, 38, a property manager who loved having a bookstore near her office, even though the book she came looking for on Thursday was long gone. "I'm becoming more of a reader," she said. "When good things are easier, you do them more."

By Thursday, the cavernous old Borders was more rummage sale than bookstore. Yellow tape, the kind ordinarily seen at crime scenes, cordoned off empty shelves, racks and tables that once bore the weight of millions of bound words. All fixtures were for sale. The shelves near the front door, once occupied by best-sellers, now flaunted such obscure titles as "El Asesor del Presidente," a Spanish-language biography of former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Price: 5 cents. "While Supplies Last," the sign said. No one was buying.

Borders was hardly a landmark on par with the old limestone Water Tower that stands just outside the store's windowed walls. It had occupied its prime corner for only 16 years, barely a blip in Chicago history.

But 16 years is half an eternity in retail time, and Borders had come to seem as basic to the street as traffic. Back in 1995, when it opened, spinning through its revolving doors was like stepping into a literary Oz, a unique place that, even though part of a chain, pulsed with ideas, people, cappuccino. Even people who sniffled that it was killing smaller bookstores — most memorably the cozy shop just up the street run by the legendary Stuart Brent — came for the books and the buzz.

I spent hours in the basement perusing travel books. Hours in the second-floor cafe reading the newspaper. Hours listening to CDs up on three. I discovered the poetry of Billy Collins in its first-floor poetry section. I bought stuff.

But now? The last time I went there, a couple of months ago, I sat in the cafe with my laptop and a cup of tea, bookless, next to patrons doing the same. Several appeared to be homeless.

"We're not allowed to comment on the store closing," said one of the clerks when I asked Thursday, though it has been reported that the store wasn't hitting its profit goals.

The national Borders PR person didn't return my call, perhaps because she has been busy with the recent news of Borders' widespread financial problems.

"Whenever I come here, there's always people in here," said Ignacio Depa, a sophomore at Walter Payton College Prep who comes regularly, mostly to study. He and a friend were cloistered on the floor in a bare corner, working on geometry. "I assume business isn't as great as it looks. I'll miss it."

A lot of people will. But money has no romance with the past. The economy is always shifting. Topshop, a British fashion retailer, is reportedly moving in to the Borders space. Still, I can't help but feel that Chicago's top street without a bookstore is like a bookshelf without a book. mschmich@tribune.com