Giant Robot Silverlake’s closing sale

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In all-too-familiar news, another Los Angeles bookstore is shutting down: Giant Robot in Silverlake will close its doors on March 28. Until then, its stock -- which includes toys, T-shirts and ephemera as well as books and periodicals -- is on sale, 20% off.

Giant Robot has three other, larger stores -- in San Francisco, New York and West L.A. -- which will stay open, along with the West L.A. restaurant, gr/eats, and Giant Robot the magazine, now 15 years old.

Publisher and co-founder Eric Nakamura explains on his blog that the closure was partly the result of the economic downturn but also the end of a sublease. ‘It would still be easy to keep it running until the end of time,’ he writes. ‘If all we did was a Giant Robot Silver Lake store, then you’d see us sitting ... in that exact shop a year from now. But when an exit strategy presented itself, we decided to take it.’

Giant Robot has always been adaptable, first making the move to launch retail stores based on its Japanese/pop culture magazine, then adding the restaurant, even shifting what sits on its store shelves. ‘With changes in cool things, come different types of products,’ Nakamura told Jacket Copy. ‘Books are still important. We publish a magazine, and that’s important too.’

All of the above will be found at the Silverlake store -- until it’s gone.

-- Carolyn Kellogg