Dunbar Embraces Darren’s Sparkle

Darren Marshall waters the plants that brighten the front of his antiques store on Dunbar Street.

By Carol Volkart

Just like its owner, Sparkly Darren’s Curated Emporium of Incomparable Vintage Goods at 4315 Dunbar Street, stands out.

In the workaday streetscape of central Dunbar, it glows like a jewel at twilight, reflecting the sparkling treasures within. In the daytime, it’s a sudden celebration of colour, blossoms rioting down from the hanging baskets over the door and reaching up from pots beneath.

The store itself is unusual enough that anyone writing about Dunbar would have to pay attention. But it was my neighbours’ comments about the owner that signalled somebody different indeed had arrived in our neighbourhood. “He’s a hoot,” said one, a senior who’d been dragged into the shop by her daughter and recounted the experience with glee. Another neighbour said she was “thrilled” to see the shop in Dunbar. “His store is lovely and he’s really embraced the village,” she texted me, suggesting a Dunbar News story.

Sparkly Darren turns out to be Alberta-born Darren Marshall, 55, with a background in interior design, experience at a chi-chi West Vancouver home décor firm, and previous ownership of two vintage stores, including Magpie on Main. He got out of the latter about 10 years ago, when two burly men walked in one day and removed two jewelry cases full of real gold, “a really unpleasant experience” that sent him online for a number of years.

“I can buy and sell online and do very well,” he says of his decision to return to face-to-face selling, “but I needed a store because I needed a social life, a reason to get up and get dressed in the morning.”

He looked for the right spot, including on the North Shore, for three years. Dunbar wasn’t on his radar, but as he drove home from Pacific Spirit Park one day, a “for lease” sign leapt to his attention. With two bay windows that could serve as “24-hour advertisements” and a bus stop in front, the Dunbar shop turned out to be a natural. He snapped it up 45 seconds into the showing.

He held a “soft” opening in March and an official grand opening in April, when about 200 people celebrated with live music, four cases of champagne, a long board of charcuterie, and exquisite croquembouches from his “good friends” at the Toña bakery next door.

Ever since, Darren and Dunbar have been locked in a happy embrace.

“I’m a little overwhelmed by the amount of support I’ve found here,” he says, describing Dunbar as super-positive and super-friendly. “People seem so happy to have me here. The positivity is overwhelming,” he says, tearing up a little: “even so far as to say the love.”

Emporium owner Darren Marshall wants his store to be a pleasurable refuge.

Fifty to 60 people come through his shop every day, and buy enough to make him a good –not luxurious, but good — living, he says. Every single day may not be great, but “I’ve had a good week every week.” And in the end, he says, “There’s no question that I’m going to make it.”

He likes the location enough that even if his current building is torn down, he’d try to relocate within Dunbar. He appreciates the low crime rate (especially after his Main Street experience), and it’s a plus to be surrounded by big homes with room and money for his treasures. “If you have an eight-room house, you need stuff to fill it.”

It’s also a great source of the very things he needs for his store. While he buys from auctions, flea markets, vintage sales and thrift stores, he says 90 percent of what’s on his shelves comes from locals. People can call him and ask him to come and see their treasures; out of 15-20 local buying expeditions in the last three months, he says, only one yielded nothing.

His optimism is also fuelled by a couple of other factors. One is the Buy Canada movement: “People are looking for a place to shop that’s not online.” And he’s encouraged by the under-30 generation, who he says make up about 40 percent of his business. They’re turning their backs on mass-produced stuff, he says. “They want things that are unique and beautifully made.”  Antiques are cyclical, he says, and he believes we’re at the beginning of a 25-year upswing.

While making money is essential to keeping his shop open, he also thinks beyond it to the broader community.

The flowers he tends so carefully at his front door have drawn a lot of positive attention, and he hopes other businesses will follow suit (Toña already has added pots and chairs to its storefront for the summer.) “If everybody did a little extra and gave a damn, this could be the best shopping street in the city.”

He’d love to see the Dunbar strip revitalized, and asks why there are so many vacant places when he knows many people who would be happy to rent here. “If you kill stores, you kill the community. I don’t understand how that’s been allowed to happen.”

As for his own shop, he’d like it to be a pleasurable refuge in tumultuous times, as well as a place of friendship and sociability.  “I want it to have the feeling of a salon, a place of escape,” he says. And the friendships are already happening. “I like talking to people. I have people come and visit me on a regular basis; they are turning into friends.”

He also wants to keep his shop accessible, even to those with thinner wallets. To that end, he tries to keep about half of his merchandise under $100. “I want something in my store for everybody.”

But not for those who want vintage clothing or old radios – as requested by two people who came into the shop during my interview with Darren. (His response to the radio request: “No, this store is all about pretty and sparkly things. I don’t know about guy stuff.”) In both cases, he dug into his mental Rolodex and pulled out the names and contact information for shops the inquirers could try.

“All of it brings me business,” he said  after their visits, reflecting on the value of a reputation for being helpful and polite. As opposed, he added, to the store clerks who look up annoyed from their cellphones and snarl: “What?”

For him, he says, “I am the business. Without me, it’s bankrupt.”

Darren is full of stories, but perhaps his best is about how he got into the buying and selling business at the age of six.

It was 1976, and his mother, a “salt of the earth” soul, took him to a farm auction in southern Alberta. Understanding her son’s interests, she gave him $5 and a number so he could bid on the items for sale.

Inquisitive Darren found a box of household items that included some comics featuring Wonder Woman, his great love of the time. “When she spun around like that, I thought it was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen,” he laughs at the intensity of a six-year-old’s crush.

After he’d bought the box, a woman came up to him and asked if she could buy something out of it. It turned out to be a blue carnival glass bowl, which he now recalls minutely, and for which she paid him $300.  “It was a huge amount of money for a six-year-old,” says Darren. Even more: When he got the box home, among the bits and pieces of broken things at the bottom was a blue velvet Birks box containing 12-14 items of “Sears catalogue gold.”  It turned out to be worth $400.

“It was life-defining,” he says. “I have always bought and sold s–t from that moment.”

Exterior of  Sparkly Darren’s Curated Emporium of Incomparable Vintage Goods in June. Several garden ornaments hint at plans for a new garden room within.

Inside the Emporium, there’s a whole table of antique glass that Darren says is coming back into fashion.

Lighting and the careful arrangement of colour turn the Emporium into a kind of jewel box.

Darren says about 90 percent of what’s on his shelves is from local sources.

Darren’s shelves reflect a lifetime’s knowledge of antiques. The way you learn, he says, is to end up with a garage full of stuff that nobody wants.