CALIFORNIA – The last exclusively LGBT bookstore in San Francisco is set to close. A Different Light Bookstores, which used to operate four stores, established the San Francisco branch at 489 Castro Street in the heart of the city’s gay district in 1986.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the shop was a vibrant cultural centre, with frequent in-store events and exhibitions, a vast stock of new and backlist books, self-published books, zines, activist T-shirts and other materials. It also served as a meeting location and message center for a number of ad-hoc radical queer groups in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Many author readings took place at the store with appearances by Dorothy Allison, Diamanda Galas, Justin Bond and Larry Kramer.
Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Booksellers Association said, “As far as we know, there are no LGBT bookstores left in the state, at least ones selling new books.”
Gerard Koskovich, a curator of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender History Museum, has been visiting the bookstore for many years.
“From the moment it was founded, this store became a cultural center for the emerging queer community in the late 1980s,” said Koskovich. “Events, exhibitions, panel discussions, basically any important gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender author you can think of who published in English gave a reading at A Different Light at some point.”
