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…