Sitting in his office on the second story of his bookstore on Connecticut Ave. in Dupont, amongst bookshelves, papers and a wall dedicated to paintings portraying skinny dippings, Deacon Maccubbin looks just as comfortable as the patrons that browse the collections only a story below. From the street, the store is barely distinguishable from the neighboring buildings — save for a rainbow flag flying on the exterior or the collection of new works and Valentine’s Day gifts displayed in the window. But upon entering Maccubbin’s Lambda Rising, D.C.’s largest gay bookstore, one is exposed to the fascinating collection of novels, magazines, art, comics, music, souvenirs and collectibles focused on serving the LGBTQ community.

“Our first ad bragged that we had 250 books in stock,” Maccubbin recalls with a laugh. “That was all there was back then.”

Lambda Rising has grown dramatically since its humble beginnings in a shared brownstone on 20th Street. After a visit to Oscar Wilde Books, New York’s first gay bookstore, in 1972, Maccubin knew that there was a market for the concept. “I thought, ‘one day Washington should have a store like this,” he says. After going to “one of those chain stores” in Dupont to see if they had any gay literature, Maccubbin says he was told condescendingly by the clerk, “We don’t sell those books.”

The problems persisted for Maccubbin. The libraries he visited around the area had a very limited selection of LGBTQ books. Librarians told him that books didn’t last long on the shelf for two reasons: They were either checked-out and destroyed by homophobic groups or stolen from the library by people who were too embarrassed to check them out.

It was then that Maccubbin decided to open his own store.

But the task wasn’t easy. In 1974, Maccubbin borrowed $1,000 from a gay activist and took the only $3,000 he had to his name to open Lambda Rising. “Our sales goal was $25 dollars a day,” he says. “That was enough to pay the bills. I wasn’t looking to make a profit.”

Maccubbin may not have been looking to make a profit, but Lamba Rising was beginning to make history. In 1975, the bookstore sponsored the first continuous Pride Day in the District, which it continued to do for the next four years until it became too large for the small business to handle. Maccubbin says the event now draws nearly 200,000 participants each year.

1975 was also the first time an ad for a gay and lesbian product was aired on television. The advertisement? Lambda Rising Bookstore, of course. “We had to keep telling [the broadcasters] that we were not an adult bookstore. We were a gay bookstore,” he recalls. “There is a difference.” Maccubbin’s fighting paid off, and the ad was broadcast during “The Phil Donahue Show” in the afternoon, and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” that evening. At the time, both shows’ episodes were dealing with gay issues. Throughout the 1970s, Maccubbin continued the ad fight, challenging the Yellow Pages’ and The Washington Post’s ad policies that did not permit them to run anything with the words “gay” and “lesbian.”

The story of Lambda Rising isn’t all pretty heroics, however. Maccubbin admits that the bookstore had to overcome a lot over the course of the late 1970s and early ’80s. “People smashed our windows, harassed us on the phone,” he says. “We even got bomb threats.” Maccubbin and company decided to keep fighting: “We kept doing it because we knew it was important. People told us it was important.”

After three years in the small 20th Street townhouse, Lambda Rising was forced to move to a shop on S Street, which now houses a Commerce Bank. Maccubbin says it was difficult to get people to transition to the new store. Where they could once walk into the brownhouse — which also housed a law firm and a comic book store — patrons were now forced to enter the street-front bookstore. “People asked if we were going to put curtains up,” Maccubbin recalls. “It was their first step out of the closet.”

When the bookstore moved to its current location in 1984, patrons again told Maccubbin that they would be unable to return to the store. After all, S Street is a side street. Patrons would now have to enter off busy Connecticut Avenue. “Within a few weeks, though, they were all back,” he says.

Maccubbin now runs three shops in D.C., Baltimore and Delaware, and Lambda Rising remains alive and well. The store started the Lambda Literary Awards, which honor gay authors and works focused on the LGTBQ community, as well as the Lambda Book Report, a quarterly review of contemporary LGBT literature. To compete with Amazon.com, Lamdba has an online store, which Maccubbin says boasts over a million items. The shift in technology has been a challenge, but Maccubbin says that they are always looking for things to keep people coming back.

“We had a history and heritage section in 1984 when we opened here [on Connecticut Avenue], with old books, first editions, signed editions,” he says. “We’ve started to bring that back.” Lambda Rising is also focusing on collectible porn from the 1950s and ’60s. Maccubbin makes a point to emphasize that while Lambda does sell erotica, it’s none of that “XXX stuff.”

Fitting for a bookstore, there is even a story for the name.

“In 1969, the Gay Activist Alliance of New York and New Jersey needed a symbol, and settled on Lambda, the Greek letter L, for liberation,” Maccubbin says. “It can be a symbol for change in physics. It represents an active element in chemistry. It was a stamp of justice on the Spartan shields — all great reasons for having the symbol that we discovered later on.” The symbol was adopted at First International Gay Rights Conference held in Edinburgh in 1974 as the official symbol for gay and lesbian rights, roughly around the time Maccubbin was planning on opening up shop.

According to Maccubbin, Lambda has remained a special place because they have never given up. “It was rough then, it’s rough now,” he says. One thing is for certain, however: Lambda Rising has helped shape Washington’s gay community for over a quarter of a century, and Maccubbin has no plans of closing shop any time soon. “If you told me you could make money selling gay books back then, I would have laughed,” he says with a smile. “I never thought it was possible, but it turns out it was possible.”

Lantern Books

For the most recent bestselling thriller or trendy diet guide, just head to any bookstore or even just make a few clicks on your keyboard to find exactly what you’re looking for. But if you want to shop in a store that isn’t tainted by fluorescent lights and gaudy displays or spend time digging through bins of books looking for the perfect airplane read — for under $5 — turn off bustling Wisconsin Avenue and head into Lantern Books. You just might find that unexpected gem that you’ll read for years and years to come.

Lantern Books is a non-profit used and rare bookstore — just one of three remaining bookstores operated by Bryn Mawr College Alumnae Association. The other two are in New Haven, Conn., and Cambridge, Mass.

The bookstore has been in several different locations throughout the Georgetown neighborhood for the past 30 years before it came to rest at its current location at 3241 P St., where it has been for 10 years. Walking into the store evokes a feeling of being in the stereotypical grandmother’s house. Lamps somewhat dimly light the two-story shop and the volunteers have a space to sit at a small desk with a cash box. The store has an elegant, older feel, and all of the walls are lined with books. About three shelves sitting behind the desk hold the store’s prized rare books, which can be priced as high as a couple hundred dollars. The rest of the store, however, carries used books arranged by topic and alphabetically by author (or in the case of the biographies by subject) that can come as cheaply as $2.

Lantern donates all of its profits to Bryn Mawr College Scholarship Fund, but the bookstore has seen a great drop in the amount it donates annually. Generally in a year, Lantern will donate about $20,000, but volunteer Sue Swisher, a Bryn Mawr alumna who has been working at the store for about eight years, remembered when that number was $55,000.

“That’s a measure of how business has fallen off and why used bookstores that don’t use volunteers, that have to make a living at this, can’t do it.” Swisher attributes this loss of business to the Internet, saying that the Web has had a “very sad effect” on bookstores worldwide.

“If you’re looking for a particular book, it makes a lot of sense to go on the Internet and find it” she said. “If you just want to come and see what’s here and look for the odd thing that you didn’t know you were looking for, then you still value this kind of experience.”

Swisher says that Lantern’s books come from a variety of donors.

“We’ve had people who have been customers for years and then they have to downsize and we get their books,” she says. “We have people who are book reviewers who bring us their review copies. We have people who clear off their shelves once a year so they can buy more books from us.”

The most exciting recent acquisition for the store, volunteers say, is a 14-volume Oxford English Dictionary, which has yet to be priced. Volunteers at the store said that they are so excited about this newest arrival that they are considering withholding it from their store-wide half-price sale that takes place every President’s Day and in October.

Kramerbooks

When walking into any bookstore today, we take our ability to grab a magazine or a book that piques our interest and curl up with it in a chair with a hot cup of coffee. But a mere 33 years ago that wasn’t the case. When what is now a Washington, D.C., landmark, — Kramerbooks — opened its doors in 1976, it was the first bookstore/café combination in the United States.

First, there was the now defunct Sydney Kramerbooks, located on K Street, a bookstore that was very technical in nature, lots of economics and the like. While the current Kramerbooks is not a direct offshoot of that store, it was opened by a member of the same family.

Kramerbooks opened as part of the American bicentennial celebration and quickly became a Dupont hotspot, attracting an exciting and eclectic crowd throughout the decades. The café helps Kramerbooks appeal to more than just book lovers. With a full bar and wide range of mouth- watering dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner, they’re different from the many other independent bookstores that dot the city.

“Not everyone can read, but everyone has a stomach,” says general manger Scott Abel. “The bookstore attracts bookstore people, but the café attracts other people. We can get more people reading and that’s always a good thing.”

For bar manager Ian-Julian Williams (COL ’03), it was the café that brought him to Kramers. “I used to dine here when I was at Georgetown. Me and my buddies would order the chicken quesadillas, sit outside,” he says. “I liked the place when I was a customer so I got a job.”

Although the bookstore and restaurant are two different profit centers under the same banner, they “make up a single entity” says manager Michelle Mayering. “We really love having the café here.”

Of course it isn’t all about gastronomic delights — Kramerbooks wants to provide food for the mind and soul as well. “We don’t have specifically one age or one demographic [as customers]. There are young 20-somethings who work on the Hill, people involved in the arts community. A lot of what D.C. has to offer,” explains Meyering.

They don’t feel competition from major booksellers, like Barnes and Nobles, because they try and choose books that people genuinely want to read. Besides the standing collection of fiction and classics, many books are hand-picked from the seasonal lists.

Topics dealing with politics, philosophy, government and current events are especially popular.

Abel attests that the bookselling world is a “multi-faceted industry,” but to stay ahead of major stores and on-line retailers he says simply, “we keep the bad books out of the store.” Shades of political scandal have even touched Kramerbooks. During the Monica Lewinsky uproar, Kramerbooks was subpoenaed to find the name of the book she bought Bill Clinton as a gift. With the support of the American Booksellers Association, they hired a lawyer and refused to testify. But in case you’re wondering, the book was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.

Like any good bookstore, Kramers is known just as much for its atmosphere as for what it sells. With a staff that’s dedicated and enthusiastic about its love of books, Meyering believes that customers can “sense our energy and happiness to be here.” Abel wanted to have a “job that wasn’t a monster corporation” and found the “interesting and active” environment at Kramers the perfect fit.

Bridge Street Books

English professor Noreen O’Connor fondly recalls the helpfulness of Bridge Street Books when she was looking for a book about the artist Giacometti as a Christmas present for her brother. She had seen the book reviewed in The New York Times that day, and it was an artist that her brother loved, so she logically headed down to the M Street Barnes and Noble to pick up a copy. But to her dismay, Barnes and Noble did not have the book in stock and no one working there that she spoke to had even heard of the artist or had any idea what book O’Connor was talking about.

“So then I said, ‘Oh my goodness, I’ll go down to Bridge Street and see what they can do.’ I asked about the book and it was Phil [the owner] there, and the first thing he said was, ‘Oh yeah, that was the one in The New York Times Book Review today.’ And I said, ‘Exactly, that’s what I’m looking for,’ and they had it on the shelf too.” From the very beginning, Bridge Street Books has been a successful David among a sea of Goliaths.

It all started from an idea hatched during the doldrums of a trans-Atlantic flight. When owner Phil Levy was 33 years old, he was returning to the United States on a plane from London with his father and brother. When his father suggested that his son open a bookstore, Levy decided to follow his father’s advice, and Bridge Street Books finally opened its doors in June of 1980.

“In the first six months of my business, I tried to be as broad as possible,” said Levy. “I came in with the kind of bookstore that I wanted, but I had bestsellers, I had Danielle Steele. I had stuff I wouldn’t, I mean these were bestsellers, romance novels.” While running his struggling business, Levy noticed an odd thing — that the popular books that he hadn’t really wanted to carry in the first place were not selling. So he stopped selling popular bestsellers and instead focused on building the more serious bookstore that he had originally wanted.

“My motto is, ‘If it’s something I don’t want to sell, it better sell a lot or else we don’t need it.’”

“I would say that off that [New York Times] bestseller list, out of the top 25 we carry about a third of it — sometimes even less.”

The store also has a lot of international support, due in part to the convenient locations of the Four Seasons Hotel and the Spanish Embassy. “It’s very fortuitous for us to be next door to the Four Seasons, and because of the kind of bookstore we have, we attract a largely European clientele. And also Asian- and Latin-American,” explains Levy. “The Spanish Embassy is, like, four blocks away, and so over the years I’ve had regular customers who have passed through the Spanish Embassy. And I am tooting my own horn in a way, but it’s interesting to me how Europeans like us because we’re not perceived as being a typical American bookstore. We’re not big, we’re not glitzy. We don’t have every bestseller hitting you in the face. And they like that, and they seem to understand.”

Of course, being just a block away from Barnes and Noble, Bridge Street Books has gone through difficult times. It is the last for-profit independent bookstore in Georgetown, but through the status as local landmark Levy has managed to stay afloat for 27 years. This is thanks in a large part to a strong and loyal customer base, including a small group of Georgetown professors who prefer the store to Follett — the company that rents space in Leavey and serves as the Georgetown University campus bookstore — even other outside businesses like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com.

Of the relationship that Bridge Street Books has built up with Georgetown University faculty, Levy says, “We’re kind of sensitive about the kind of relationship we have, meaning that we are a business, and my concept of dealing with academia is I don’t believe in privatizing academia, so it’s a respective relationship where we have a lot of things that a number of professors are interested in; we are simpatico with a number of departments at Georgetown, and we get to know a number of people who just like working with us and feel it makes life easier for them that they can use us in different ways.”

Tod Linafelt, a professor in the Theology department, said that he had been having a lot of problems with Follett Higher Education, including a lack of reliability and the fact that they were consistently charging students above the suggested retail price. So, he made the switch to Bridge Street Books.

“It’s sort of a combination of wanting people who are reliable and who you can call up and they know about books for one thing; but also can say, ‘Yeah we’ve got them ordered, and they’re coming in,’ and charge a fair price.”

Linafelt acknowledges the extra work students have to do in order to get their books from Bridge Street. “It’s a little bit of a pain in the neck for students … to walk down there, but I think what helps make it worthwhile is also supporting an independent bookstore, which you know, they’re dying,” he says.

Professor Frederick Ruf, a colleague of Linafelt’s in the Theology department, actually heard about Bridge Street through Linafelt, and said he too had grown disillusioned with Follett.

“I like a lot of people at the [Georgetown] bookstore, the individuals that I run across there I like fine. But you know as an entity, as an institution, it can be really hard to deal with. They can get book orders wrong, it’s a very difficult Web site that they use to order books and I, to be frank, I don’t like how corporate they are.”

n top of the administrative problems he had been having at the bookstore, Ruf said it’s the atmosphere that brings him back time and time again to Bridge Street. “It’s an entirely different philosophy towards books at Bridge Street, and it’s one that I like a lot. You know books, I think at the [Georgetown] bookstore, are a product, they are a means of making money, it’s not a book culture in the bookstore,” he said comparing the two. “They’re selling it as a product, and that’s just not true at Bridge Street. It’s just such a nice environment, it’s nice to be there, it’s nice to browse. Books are important, some books as physical objects are important. I mean I think it’s a little bit like the cult of the book that exists there and I like that a lot. It’s an experience that I want to make available to my students, and so I encourage them to go down there.”

But the personal attention received at Bridge Street makes all the difference. “It’s much nicer to kind of know that the person who’s doing the book ordering is going to keep an eye out and make sure things are going to go right for you,” O’Connor proclaims.

She also makes sure to order from them because the environment is something that she wants her students to be able to experience first-hand, saying “I want to help my students find places like these, which are about so much more than commerce. I have had some of the most stimulating conversations with Phil and his staff — the place just enriches my life, and I’m so happy they will give me the personal attention and order books for my literature classes.”

In the end, O’Connor recognizes Bridge Street as a part of Georgetown itself. “They are wonderful people who know so much about books,” she said. “[They] are such an anchor of D.C.’s cultural soul as a small independently owned bookstore.”

— Hoya Staff Writer Laura McKenzie contributed to this report.