Maybe the first thing you notice when you walk into Schein & Schein's North Beach store is the aroma. It smells like cigars, chocolate, and vanilla—and the source is the old paper that makes up the antique maps, prints, and books sold by proprietors Jimmie and Marti Schein. If that weren't transporting enough, there's the look of the store. "It has a 19th-century aesthetic for sure," says Jimmie. "I prefer to store everything in wooden flat files or crates, no metal here." The books are shelved in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along the back of the shop. In the digital age, this is the stuff of memory, history, and a bygone world. But, according the the Scheins, it's a world that an increasingly younger audience is seeking out.
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