If you hung around Main Street in the late 1990s, you probably shopped at Burcu’s Angels or at least walked by the wacky art project-inspired window displays.
You also probably remember (who could forget) the colourful Turkish-born owner, Burcu Ozdemir. It was an edgier time in the neighbourhood – before real estate prices skyrocketed and changed everything. Despite swanky new condos, high-end boutiques, $4 doughnuts, and – gasp – the opening of chain restaurants, Burcu has remained a bohemian fixture in the neighbourhood. This year she celebrates 20 years on Main Street.
Her foray into vintage started on a whim. Burcu opened her business the day after she lost her waitressing job for punching her boss. She was pissed because he accused her of stealing shrimp.
“Frozenshrimp,” she says, her dark eyes narrowing as she emphasizes the word “frozen,” to indicate just how insulting the accusation was. (She laughs about it now, saying they are friends today.)
The day after the blowup, Burcu was walking on Main Street with one of her sons; they passed a store on 21st and Main, called Whatever.
“What kind of store would call itself Whatever?” Burcu thought.
Intrigued, she went in and discovered a vintage store in front, and in the back there were multiple spaces where individuals sold everything from records to handmade soap.
Inspired by the concept, Burcu rented one of the spots; within three days she sold $900 worth of vintage clothing. Eventually, she opened a second location at Eugene Choo, another longtime neighbourhood staple.
By 1997, she convinced the German-born butcher who owned a retail space on Main Street near Broadway to rent it to her. She stayed for 10 years, only leaving because she worried about insurance if there was ever a fire. She didn’t have a proper backdoor, which affected her coverage.
“They burnt down nine months after I left,” Burcu says, recalling the November 2009 fire that took down several businesses on the west side of the block between Broadway and 10th Avenue.
She moved to her current location on 16th Avenue, just east of Main. It’s not the social hub her old location was, but there’s never a shortage of visitors parading in and out. There is also no shortage of amazing vintage pieces, including suede-tasseled jackets, vintage fur coats, leather brogues, dresses from every era, and ever-popular muumuus.
One of the city’s most compelling characters, media personality Nardwuar, who a recent flattering New York Times profile said “dresses like an exploded 1970s Soviet golf catalog,” is a regular customer at Burcu’s.
“Burcu’s Angels not only has clothing you won’t find anywhere, it also has a level of ‘personal curation’ from Burcu, to you the customer, that simply is unmatched in any other clothing store I have ever frequented,” said Nardwuar, reached at SXSW in Austin, where the Vancouver musician was busy conducting his infamous guerilla-style interviews.
On the day we meet, Burcu, who has hot pink hair that is shaved on the sides, revealing her natural salt-and-pepper colour, takes me for a tour of her store. She wears a long, loose shawl and pants, with red-and-white wingtip shoes. Burcu’s mantra – “Colour, Texture, Decadence, Magic” – is what she looks for in the clothes she carries.
She credits her son Alia Ozdemir and the many other staffers over the years for helping her survive two decades.
Burcu is nothing if not a survivor. She was born in Turkey and came to Canada – Orangeville, ON, of all places – alone at age 16 to see the father she didn’t know, and that she would eventually flee from. She made her way from the small Ontario farm town to bustling Montreal, then BC in 1990.
Like others, she worries about the erosion of the neighbourhood as she watches the challenge people face in finding affordable housing.
“It’s affecting us all, because now 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, when they are at the age where they want to have children, they can’t – it’s too expensive,” she says. “They can’t actually dream.”
She describes an “exodus” that she sees, and if it wasn’t for her store, she would probably leave herself.
But Burcu carries on, even expanding to a second location around the corner on Main Street, Burcu’s Angels II, which sells menswear. The new spot also has a backroom space where Burcu, a musician in the band Something About Reptiles, now holds community events – meaning there will be even more of her colour and character in the neighbourhood.
