Grant Boys closing landmark Costa Mesa outdoor-gear store

The Grant Boys, the landmark downtown Costa Mesa store chock-full of firearms, clothes, fishing gear and camping materials, is calling it quits after 66 years.

Or, as they describe it, “We are packing it in and going fishing — permanently!”

“We’re ready to just plain ol’ retire and stop working,” said co-owner Randy Garell, 64, in an interview Monday. “That’s the main, overriding reason.”

“It’s hard to leave Costa Mesa and Newport Beach,” Garell added, “but it’s time.”

The Grant Boys doesn’t have a definite closing date, and no future plans for its property at 1750 Newport Blvd. have been set.

“It’s fluid,” Garell said. “No one’s been pressing for the building ... right now, we’re just focused on trying to service customers and get them in and out in a reasonable length of time.”

After news hit over the weekend that Grant Boys was closing and having a “retirement sale,” customers flooded in for discounts.

On Sunday, the first day of the liquidation sale, about a hundred lined up before the 10 a.m. opening. Some waited over an hour to pay for merchandise.

Staff eventually feared about being overrun, so they set up a queue system that filtered customers in as others went out. Things got worse after the air conditioning in the gun room broke. The store’s Facebook page described conditions as “hot and sticky and [smelling] slightly like the locker room in my high school gym class.”

Still, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015, was the Grant Boys’ biggest single sales volume day. Ever.

But “there is plenty of inventory left,” Garell said. “I don’t want to discourage people.”

The Grant Boys was founded in 1949 by Edward “Buddy” Grant and his mother, Minnie Stone. They set up shop near the modern-day site of The Triangle before moving a few blocks down to 1750 Newport Blvd. in 1953.

The 12,000-square-foot store has remained family owned and operated. Garell co-owns it with his wife, Alexa, Edward Grant’s daughter.

For the thousands of customers who come into Grant Boys for guns, ammo, knives, clothing, fishing equipment or any manner of camping gear, many others simply know about the store for its distinctive Old West-style exterior that’s markedly different than everything else around it on bustling Newport Boulevard.

“I don’t think too many other businesses have had the kind of thing, which you’d see on movie sets and things like that,” said Costa Mesa Historical Society member Art Goddard. “That was unique.”

The store’s elevated roadside sign features its mascot, hay straw in his mouth, holding guns and wearing a cowboy hat and jeans — probably Levi’s, which the Grant Boys has carried since its early days.

Costa Mesa resident Jeff Netzer dropped in to the Grant Boys with his children Monday. He’s been going there since the 1970s.

“I was saddened by it,” Netzer said of the closing. “It’s a pretty iconic store of Costa Mesa.”

The Netzers left with a camping picnic table and fishing gear, all discounted.

Standing behind the gun displays, Garell said there just haven’t been enough cashiers to keep the lines short. On Monday morning, customers snaked around the display aisles. The Grant Boys’ parking lots were both full.

Given California’s strict gun control laws, Garell said they’ve made selling firearms more labor intensive, but that wasn’t a primary reason to close up shop.

The Internet has also made operations difficult for small, independent retailers like the Grant Boys, Garell added.

“At times, we feel like we’re a show room,” he said, referring to when customers visit to see items in person before going home and buying them online, possibly for less.

Young people buy online, Garell said, “So where is that future crop of customers? Where are they going to come from? We kind of see the writing on the wall.”

Still, Garell said, it’s been a good ride.

“We like to do all the things that we sell,” he said. “That’s what made the business a great business all of these years. It’s right up our alley.”