BALTIMORE—Lambda Rising bookstore, an institution in Baltimore’s heavily gay Mount Vernon neighborhood, is closing this spring after 24 years as Baltimore’s only GLBT community bookstore.

Owner Deacon Maccubbin told the Baltimore Citypaper last week that Internet competition and declining foot traffic led him to the decision to shut down the store.

“More than half of independent bookstores in the country have closed in the last 10 years,” Maccubbin told Citypaper. “It’s not just bookstores. It’s retail in general. Everybody is hurting, especially now in this recession.”

The store is in the first floor of the Baltimore GLBT community center on West Chase Street and counts filmmaker John Waters as one of its biggest fans.

“I’m very, very sad,” Waters told the Baltimore Sun. “Is that what the gay liberation movement was about in the first place—to assimilate? Maybe it did it too well.”

Maccubbin is keeping open his Lambda Rising stores in nearby Washington, D.C., and Rehobeth Beach, Del.