A Different Light Bookstore, the beloved, landmark LGBT bookshop at 489 Castro Street in San Francisco, which opened in 1985 and once had branches in Los Angeles, founded earlier, and New York City, founded later, has announced that it will shut its doors by the end of April, according to the April 23 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.

A Different Light’s closing follows that of the venerable Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, opened in New York in 1967, and much earlier, Glad Day Books, in Boston. Glad Day, in Toronto, and Giovanni’s Room, in Philadelphia, are remaining ones of this endangered species that are, fortunately, still open.

The mainstreaming of LGBT literature, once only found on the shelves of specialty community bookstores; chain stores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, itself ailing; and on-line vendors, like Amazon.com, are all causes to which the demise of LGBT movement oriented bookstores has been attributed.