A year after Lambda opened, he, some friends, and a few nonprofits put together D.C. Queer pioneers like Maccubbin paved the way for the District’s current state of LGBTQ affairs, a far less radical one. Deacon Maccubbin, right, and his husband Jim Bennett Credit: Darrow Montgomery Gay Dupont may not be dead, but it’s slowed down considerably-as have those who vivified it. The concentration of queer culture has scattered, however, and some look back on the “gayborhood’s” heyday with pride and saudade. In these venues’ absence have sprung new venues and meeting places, many along the 14th and U Street NW corridors, serving D.C.’s next generation of LGBTQ denizens. D.C.’s queer quarter has diminished with the fading of such institutional anchors, places where LGBTQ individuals could play out their identities and lower their guard among birds of a feather. P’s, the Fraternity House (later, Omega), Phase 1’s Northwest outpost, and the Last Hurrah (next called Badlands, and most recently, Apex)-watering holes that catered to gay men. Other LGBTQ spaces have vanished from Dupont, too, including Mr. Today, Lambda Rising’s final storefront, at 1625 Connecticut Ave.
After the store’s windows were smashed in the middle of the night, business owners along Connecticut Avenue NW organized a collection for Lambda Rising and donated the proceeds to Maccubbin, he says. “But people were here and they were gay.” Other residents were gay-friendly. Maccubbin spent $4,000 to launch it.Īt the time, “there weren’t many things that were gay” in the neighborhood, he says.
Lambda Rising’s first space was about 300 square feet and stocked with 250 titles. He’d settled on the name after the International Gay Rights Congress in Edinburgh adopted the Greek letter as a symbol of solidarity. Sensing a demand in the District, Maccubbin opened Lambda Rising, D.C.’s first LGBTQ bookstore, at 1724 20th St. Print mattered, not only as a means of relaying information on gay happenings but also as one of drawing queer folk together.
In an age where coming out was more dangerous than it usually is now, when being openly gay often triggered prejudice and scorn, books and newspapers like the Washington Blade, established in 1969, played a crucial role in creating communities. The District lacked such a literary mirror.
“But it was a warm and welcoming place where you could read stories about yourself.” “It was a very tiny, little space that had maybe a few dozen books on the shelves,” Maccubbin recalls. In Greenwich Village, Maccubbin stumbled across Oscar Wilde Bookshop, a store devoted to LGBTQ literature, considered the first of its kind. (“We were all hippies,” he quips.) A trip to New York in 1972 would change his life. Gay political groups and bars had taken root anti-war and civil-rights demonstrations abounded.Īn entrepreneur at heart, Maccubbin bought an ailing crafts store in Dupont two years later and transformed it into Earthworks, a head shop. He found an affordable boarding house about a block from the circle and fell in love with the city. on what was supposed to be a two-week vacation. “You could do that and they would sometimes discharge you.”
“I told them I was gay,” says the 73-year-old Dupont Circle resident, whose closet door came “flying off” when he was 28.