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This post has been updated.*
It looks like the final chapter has arrived for one of the cultural landmarks of San Francisco’s gay community.
The Castro’s A Different Light Bookstore, one of the few remaining LGBT bookstores in the United States, is apparently closing. This comes on the heels of the possible (albeit temporary) closure of the Mission's Modern Times, another independent progressive bookstore.
“Everything must go” signs were spotted in the store Saturday. Dismantled shelving sat in a pile in the back of the store. Neighborhood chatter is that doors will close for good this spring.
A Different Light has been the gathering place for the Bay Area’s gay literati for decades – the company was first established in 1979. Local authors like Armistead Maupin would often pack the store full of eager readers when launching their latest titles.
But in recent years the store has struggled financially. Some publishers have complained about the bookstore not paying its bills on time.
The store’s owner, Bill Barker, could not be reached for comment. The person who answered Barker’s phone would not identify himself and said the owner was “in the desert” and unreachable.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2009, after closing the West Hollywood branch of A Different Light after 30 years, Barker said he had no intention of closing the San Francisco store.
But in a conversation with Barker in August of 2010, he told The Bay Citizen that his business was not doing well. Calling the future "a big question mark," Barker said that digital innovations like Kindle had been hurting in-store sales.
"We have been challenging ourselves — what does it take to stay open?" he said, noting that the SF location had six employees who he did not want to put out of work. He also cited cultural shifts in identity as a reason for flagging business: not as many queer authors (or their publicists) booked tours in gay and lesbian bookstores and he thought literature had moved away from overtly gay themes. "i think that you can only tell the gay and lesbian story so many times," he said.
But, ultimately, Barker suggested that the book-loving public was responsible for keeping such a venture afloat.
"if you want a community with a little bookstore, support those thing," he said, "If you choose not to do that … you're making a change in what your future is going to look like."
*Since this post was written we learned that the closure of Modern Times isn't necessarily permanent, so the phrase "possible (albeit temporary)" was added above.--Ed.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
Mark Pritchard
This doesn't surprise me. When I've stopped into the store during the last year, there was clearly very little energy there -- and I'm a writer whose books were carried there for years. But look at the "Related Content" under this story, about all the literary events. The fact that these events happen <i>without</i> bookstores says something, I think.
Michael Thomas Ford
While I am saddened to see this final ADL store close, it has seemed inevitable for some time given the impact online retailers have had on all brick-and-mortar booksellers and especially specialty bookstores. What I find disturbing, though, is this quote: "I think that you can only tell the gay and lesbian story so many times." I don't know Mr. Barker, and this statement might be part of a larger comment unreported here, but if this is indeed what he said, it's regrettable. The "gay and lesbian story" is the human story, and as long as there are gay and lesbian people we will have stories to tell and people who want to read them.
Brian Bouldrey
When I first got the headline on this story--from a post on The Facebookses--I remembered the things that have happened to me at the store--pissing Armistead Maupin off by chattering with David Tuller about burritos while Ned Rorem was reading way in the back, showing Bernard Cooper a very naughty children's book about Paul Bunyan, getting Scott Heim to sign a copy of Mysterious Skin to me, "For Brian, you were great in bed." Yes, ADL is/was a store, but it was also a place where things happened. I hope that there are other places where things happen, and we don't start confusing "alone" with "lonely" as our online socializing and purchasing habits grow. So long, ADL. All of the times we harmonized til dawn.
Melvin Baker
God not another iconic bookstore going under. The Castro is becoming a wasteland of empty storefronts. Our all virtual world will one day have a second life Castro Street for LGBT folks to stroll through, while the real thing is nothing more than shuttered storefronts.
bonzaipilot
I really hate to see any bookstore close (with the exception of borders and B&N) let alone one that has had such a history and meant so much for a community. What a shame!
Raymond Buscemi
I worked for ADL through the '90's. I went in to pick up some queer sci fi and told the manager that I really wanted to work there. I wanted to be a book-clerk because Patti Smith had been a book-clerk. My resume was a one page single spaced stream of consciousness paragraph and I was hired on the spot by Richard Labonte. He gave me - and other book-loving job-needing activist-artists so many opportunities and so much support that no amount of thanks could ever suffice. I feel so lucky to have been at the center of the queer universe for a brief moment in time. Working there meant that I met just about every LGBT person living in or visiting SF - I met customers who had been members of Mattachine and Daughters of Bilitis; I met Harry Hay and RuPual; Alan Ginsburg and Essex Hemphill.
And I got to work with an incredible cast of characters.
ADL was far more than a bookstore. RIP ADL!
tommi avicolli mecca
Unfortunately, this article doesn't begin to tell the story of ADL/SF. I worked there for almost 10 years from 1991-2000. I left when it was bought out by Barker and his business partner because I didn't like the change in focus from a community-oriented bookstore that nourished queer writers and even held writers conferences each year to a store that featured coffee table soft porn and only popular titles. We were a community space in the 90s, we allowed groups like ACT UP to meet in the office upstairs and in the yard, we sponsored open mics, we carried literature and magazines from around the world and in many languages. Even if it only sold one copy or never sold at all, we stocked it because it was queer.
When the store changed owners, it cut out the non-English language books, it reduced the magazine section to just male soft porn titles, it nixed the music, etc. It stopped being a community center. I left in disillusionment with the new direction. A lot of the other workers did as well.
Despite all we had done for the community of queer writers, there was never any acknowledgement of the support we had given and the space we created for them. Richard Labonté, who managed the store, and the wonderful folks who worked there deserved some credit for what we sustained all those years. But there was none given.
After we all left, the store stopped being a community center. When my book "Smash the Church, Smash the State: the early years of gay liberation" came out two years ago, a clerk there told a friend of mine that they weren't planning on carrying it nor hosting a reading, though many of the contributors were from SF and the anthology is the first collection of first-person accounts of the early years of gay liberation. Books, Inc. held the Castro reading and it was packed. That's why ADL failed, because it didn't nurture local writers and became irrelevant to the community.
I miss the old ADL of the 90s. I miss the amazing selection of books, the incredible writers who read there, and the spirit of community that we murtured. All that died long ago, and, as evidence by the lack of mention in this article, it's long forgotten, erased from our queer history.
How sad.
Mattilda Sycamore
When I was planning my first book tour in 2000 (for Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients), I was stunned to find out that the independent bookstores I’d always adored were not exactly excited about welcoming my presence -- I couldn’t believe that I had to court them, to prove my worth -- I thought they were there to provide a space for independent, challenging work! The exception was A Different Light -- I called the store from New York, where I was living at the time, and talked to Tommi, and immediately he said I know who you are, and we would love to do a reading. No other store was so welcoming, and I did packed readings there for my first four books (even after, as Tommi rightfully mentions, the store ceased to be anything like a community space). In the last 10 years, there have been so many changes in staff that the store didn’t even really feel like a store, maybe some kind of prop for a show that wasn’t actually going to happen? I stopped reading there when I went in one time, and found out that they didn’t carry any of my books -- after doing so many packed readings there, I was stunned! I wish I could say that independent bookstores support independent writers, but unfortunately that’s often not the case -- although I feel a devotion and loyalty to them nonetheless, still sometimes I wonder what is the point? To be sure, there are a few left that are doing something right, but A Different Light was unfortunately not one of them -- but Tommi, if you feel that you and Richard and the others were not thanked for the work you were doing to create one of the few meaningful spaces in the Castro, let me give you my thanks now!