Color, humor and the trends of the moment used to populate the shelves of Aahs! The chain of outrageous novelty shops has dwindled down to one last store in Westwood Village, which closes on Tuesday after celebrating one last Halloween.
The madcap chain started selling dinosaur T-shirts, glow-in-the-dark masks and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker masks in the 1980s when goofy stuff like that was hard to find and in high demand. Pop culture stores like Heaven and Wacko were thriving in the 1970s and Jim Greenwood, who founded the Licorice Pizza record store chain in Long Beach in 1969, wanted to get in on the action.
“We feature an eclectic grouping of contemporary paper products and gifts,” Greenwood told Gifts & Decorative Accessories magazine in 1985. “We want what’s coming,” his wife and co-owner Patty told Sales & Marketing Management two years later. “Not what has been or what is.”
The avant-garde couple originally planned to open an art gallery before opening the first Aahs! at another location on Westwood Blvd. in 1981. The chain soon expanded to Thousand Oaks, Torrance, Santa Monica, Sherman Oaks, Encino and West Hollywood. The Westwood store is the sole survivor.
The property at Kinross and Westwood still sports its 1990s postmodern façade, and banners featuring a bondage cop and off-model Freddy Krueger are draped over it. The store is selling its remaining inventory at up to 80% off through the weekend. The real estate was sold to UC Investments in September. That company, tied to the University of California system, recently acquired more than a dozen other properties in Westwood Village.
“It was really a fun era,” Jack Bhasin, the store’s second owner, told The Daily Bruin. “It made shopping fun. It made buying something for a loved one fun, and I think customers are going to probably miss that aspect of us.”
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