For 'anything and everything,' this fixture of downtown Wilmington has you covered

If you've been to the Village Market in downtown Wilmington anytime in the past 26 years, it is extremely likely that you have seen Curtis Thompson working behind the counter.

Maybe one of the stylish shirts he favors caught your eye, or you noticed that he wears lots of bracelets and paints his nails. If you were lucky, perhaps you exchanged a few words and he dropped a nugget of his soft-spoken, sage-like wisdom.

People come and go, and Wilmington has seen a head-spinning amount of growth. But since 1997, when Thompson started working at the Village Market, his presence has been a comforting constant, a fixture in the roiling sea of change that is the Port City. (Even the Village Market, located at Second and Dock streets, did renovations recently, relocating the counter but staying open the whole time.)

Thompson — it feels weird to call him that, so let's just stick with Curtis, who is one-name famous in Wilmington — is such an icon that some have taken to calling the store where he works "Curtis' Market," even though he's not the owner. When he gets off the bus at Third and Dock streets in the late afternoon to work his evening shift, members of the waitstaff at the trendy Dram Yard restaurant at Second and Dock make sure to clock Curtis' outfit as he's walking by.

When the StarNews did a Q&A with Thompson back in 2006, he was already a local legend after having worked at the Village Market for just under a decade.

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In 2023, "I just feel connected with the infrastructure" of Wilmington, Curtis said from his tastefully decorated, plant-packed home in Sunset Park, sipping coffee as electronic club music played softy in the background.

"I tell people there are two options," Curtis said. "One, be here and be unhappy, or be here and have fun. When having fun, work does not feel like work. And when people see that I can be happy at work and looking like I do, then it is all right to be who you are even if it is not like everyone else."

'You know the drama'

Asked what's kept him behind the counter at the Village Market for more than a quarter-century, his answer is twofold.

"It's easy. Well, it's not easy, but it's comfortable," he said. "I don't think just anybody else could step in and do what I do. It doesn't seem that involved, but it is."

More importantly, he said, "I enjoy the interaction with people. I think that's what keeps me there. There's such a variety of people and they're interesting in different ways."

As one might imagine, Curtis sees a broad cross-section of Wilmington society, from famous actors to downtown's better-known panhandlers and everyone in between.

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John Travolta, Vince Vaughn, Paula Abdul, Whitman Mayo (better known as Grady from "Sanford and Son") and Marla Gibbs (of "The Jeffersons" and "227") have all been Village Market shoppers, as were the "Dawson's Creek" crew of Michelle Williams, Katie Holmes and Busy Philipps when the teen drama was shooting here in the late '90s and early 2000s. When Williams was dating a downtown bartender, Curtis heard all about it.

"That's the thing about this business," he said. "You know the drama."

Recently, a man dipped into the Market offering to sell patrons what he said were "diamonds" that he showed off.

"Um, we don't do that here," Curtis said disarmingly, and the man quickly left.

The most popular item at the Village Market might be vapes, he said, but "any kind of little random thing that people will be out of, they will look for."

Insect spray is surprisingly popular with tourists, he said, and while you might not be able to get diamonds there, the Village Market also carries such items as tape, cotton swabs and pipe cleaners.

People ask him "anything and everything," he said. "'Where do I go eat?' That's the main thing. 'What's the weather gonna do tomorrow? What's going on at the Azalea Festival?' You see tourists and they're saying, 'Where can I get something to eat at 11 o' clock?' Well, nowhere, because everything's closed."

Of course, he's got stories.

"When you think you've seen it all, something else happens," he said. "You see people that come in, like, maybe they were drunk somewhere and fell down. They'll come in bleedin.' I had one girl that bought a bag of ice. She took it, wherever she went, and came back several hours later wanting to exchange it because it had melted."

From his vantage point, Curtis sees lots of folks on the fringes of society, and he said it seems like there are more of them than there were when he started his job.

"There's a lot more, like, people who are just desperate. They're struggling. They're having a hard time paying their bills. Even people that appear to be doing well are struggling," he said. "When people are stressed, they do what most people do: They use alcohol, drugs or whatever, thus fueling the overall drama."

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Things can get dicey, usually late at night, but when they do the Wilmington Police Department has always stepped up.

"I know they get a bad rap," Curtis said. "But when things get crazy, I mean, who else are you going to call?"

He's so associated with the Village Market that when people see him out of that context, they often know they know him but aren't quite sure from where, at least at first. But Curtis, who's 57, wants people to know that there's more to him than where he works.

Becoming Curtis

He graduated from high school in Plymouth, a small town north of New Bern, in 1984 and immediately moved to Atlanta. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, so there was plenty of fear, but moving out of a small town was what he needed at the time.

"I was introduced to a very extensive alternative subculture that seemed universally accepting of a great diversity of people," he said. "There were amazing drag shows."

Curtis said he gets much of his fashion sense from his mother, who he calls "a flashy dresser." But after living in Atlanta "I have been fascinated with drag, even adding a hint to my everyday look."

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He eventually moved back to North Carolina and in 1997 was working at hotel in Jacksonville. After being fired due to some "work drama," a Wilmington friend said that Ray Collins, who owned the Village Market then, needed some help. Curtis has been there ever since, most of that time working for the Palestinian family Collins sold the business to in 1998.

"Since being in Wilmington, I feel a greater level of acceptance and of fitting in," he said. He used to go out to bars and clubs, but those days are mostly behind him.

"My private life is more reclusive than most people," he said. "I spend more time in my house and my backyard."

The Sunset Park home he's been in for 12 years has a big, shady yard with a garden, a chicken coop he gets eggs from, and a big new shed. ("Everybody needs a shed.") It's like a little paradise, a restful oasis that feels worlds away from the Village Market.

Asked how long he thinks he'll stay at his job, he says, "That's a good question."

He recently earned an associate's degree, with an eye toward getting his bachelor's degree, so college might be in his future. For the time being, though, you know where to find him.

"People leave and come back, you know, and say, 'Oh, I was here 15 years ago. I came by just to see if you were still here,'" he said. "It makes me feel like, you know, something that's permanent in Wilmington."

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Meet Wilmington personality Curtis from Village Market