Coming soon! Silver Lake Gun Shop! Or not . . . (courtesy laist.com)

“Nestled in the heart of Silver Lake on Hyperion Avenue is the shuttered MJ’s gay bar that sits next to a busy Trader Joe’s,” laist.com reports. “And over the weekend, local folks got punked into thinking that a new owner would be taking over the spot, namely the Silver Lake Gun Shop. Is this another Nathan Fielder prank?” Perhaps so. Only this one’s way better than the Dumb Starbucks deal . . .

A huge banner hung over the gray facade of the building, with clip-art quality pictures of the American flag, fireworks and guns, accompanying the text: “Coming Soon, Silver Lake Gun Shop, (844) 340-GUNS, www.silverlakegunshop.com.” If you went to the website, you’d get a barrage of 90s-style gifs of fluttering American flags and soaring eagles—like something you might find on an Angelfire or Geocities webpage.

Needless to say, there’s not going to be a gun store – a gun store! – in the ‘hood famous for its gay leather subculture (and the final resting place for Tom Mix’s Wonder Horse). More’s the pity (about the gun store, not the horse). If anyone needs a friendly neighborhood gun store, it’s the LGBT community. Or anyone who remembers Joe Gatto’s home invasion murder.

Anyway, I like it! The banner gets everyone thinking about guns and gun stores without a single person strolling into a store carrying an “assault rifle.” It’s not gun normalization per se, but it’s an awareness-raising device nonpareil. It would be even better if the web address linked to a family friendly pro-gun website like . . . I can’t think of any at the moment, but I wonder . . . time for a little guerrilla marketing?

21 COMMENTS

  1. Oddly enough, a fair number of LGBT people have decidedly libertarian mindsets. I think a bigger percentage of the LGBT community is pro-defensive-firearm than the general community.

  2. “guerrilla marketing”
    I like it. There’s an empty storefront in my town…. Just sayin.
    About 40,000 cars a day pass by.

  3. For anyone who hasn’t been in that Silver Lake area, that place sort of has that new age feeling to it. Kind of like that holistic section in Whole Foods. At least for me, anyways.

  4. my 80 y.o. aunt lives over there in Silver Lake – the gay community has really helped raise housing prices. Her 2 bedroom bungalow is worth over $800k and she paid $39k for it. . . . that is called appreciation. I wish they would put in a range there so I could go visit her and take her shooting

  5. Not sure I get what the “prank” is here. A sign for a gun store in a somewhat unexpected place? Not exactly uproarious hilarity, is it? Sound less like a prank, and more like “real world trolling”.

    • Based on the voicemails they have posted on their page, I’d agree… it’s real world trolling, and it’s brilliant.

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