After a late night-ish trip to the Barnes and Noble in Santa Ana the other day (is there any cooler Tuesday night activity?), I made a distressing discovery: it looks like Go Rilla! Gallery across the street from Main Place mall in Santa Ana with a downstairs vinyl toy shop called Go Zilla!, has closed. And by all indications, has been closed for a while.
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It was nearly 11 p.m., so the store would have been closed anyway, but from looking inside, it looked like it was “closed for good.” The shelves inside were totally empty, and calling the store's number the next day was met with nothing but a “this number has been disconnected.”
Scanning online, I couldn't find anything–not even on their official website or MySpace–that gave any clue to the store/gallery's fate. The latest update was for a sale on June 20 of “up to 75% off” stock, which now seems like a clear hit that they were closing merchandise out. Their last blog post on June 22 announced that the place was under new management, but offered no further details.
I hadn't been to Go Rilla! in a few months, but it was one of the first places I visited during the process of moving to Orange County. The gallery hosted neat exhibits like “Bike Curious,” which OC Weekly wrote about back in August of last year. The story sold fun vinyl toys from names like Kid Robot, without having to actually go all the way to the Kid Robot store on Melrose. Them being gone is a real bummer.
Their MySpace was just logged into a few days ago; I've contacted them on there and am waiting for a response. Keep reading.
