HOLLYWOOD — The shelves held snow globes of a place that never snows, thousands of them, and Manny Sable could tell you which sold best in July (the sign in a globe) and which in December (the same sign, dusted with fake flurries), because he had been counting for fifty-two years.

Mr. Sable, who ran a souvenir shop on Hollywood Boulevard near Highland Avenue from 1972 until this year, died December 2 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 86. His son confirmed the death.

The shop sold what the boulevard has always sold to the people who come to see it — the T-shirts and the keychains, the miniature statuettes careful never to be actual Oscars, the maps to homes the stars mostly left long ago. Sable made no apology for any of it. The tourists wanted a piece of Hollywood to carry home, he said, and it was an honest trade to sell them one.

He knew the sidewalk in front of his door better than the city did. He knew which stars on the Walk of Fame drew the biggest crowds, where the foot traffic pooled, which cracked panels tripped people. When the long-delayed repaving finally reached his block this year, tearing up the terrazzo and rerouting the crowds, he was philosophical about the lost business. “They should’ve fixed it twenty years ago,” he told this paper in the spring. “I’ve been selling postcards of a sidewalk that was falling apart. Let them fix it. I’ll still be here.” He was, until nearly the end.

“Manny watched that boulevard for half a century, and nothing surprised him anymore,” said Ilse Broward, who ran a shop two doors down. “Good years, bad years, the crowds, the empty stretches. He used to say the boulevard always comes back, because people never stop wanting to stand on it.”

Emanuel Sable was born in Chicago in 1939 and came to Los Angeles in his early thirties with a small inheritance and an eye for retail. He opened the shop on a handshake lease and expanded it twice, employing, over the years, a long roster of neighborhood teenagers for whom it was a first job.

He is survived by his son, Aaron Sable, of Sherman Oaks, who now runs the shop; a daughter, Renee Iglesias, of San Diego; four grandchildren; and a brother, Sol, in Chicago. His wife, Frances, died in 2007.

The shop stayed open through the week of his death, which his son said was the only fitting thing. In the window, among the snow globes, the family set a small hand-lettered card with his name and dates, angled so it faced out toward the torn-up sidewalk and the tourists stepping carefully around the construction, most of whom did not know to read it, a few of whom stopped.