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uildings, including the former Melrose Liquors, which will soon house a café/<br />
restaurant called The Googie on Melrose.<br />
Durkin is a busy man. When his phone refused to cease buzzing during our<br />
interview, he switched it to airplane mode, only to have his iPad instantly start<br />
ringing. But this kind of intense activity wasn’t always the case for Durkin.<br />
Durkin grew up in South Scottsdale and then Cave Creek. After high school,<br />
he bounced between SCC and ASU while he tried to figure out what to do.<br />
“Everybody always told me I was an entrepreneur and that I should be in<br />
business, because I’ve just always been that way,” Durkin said. “That wasn’t<br />
very helpful because then I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll be a business major.’ That sucked.<br />
Giant classes of microeconomics and macroeconomics. I hated it.”<br />
“I wanted something more artistic. So I started a clothing brand. That didn’t work<br />
out, so I started a different clothing brand. That was better, but I was young and in<br />
college and that ended up becoming a screen-printing and embroidery business,<br />
which I still run today. It’s called Retro Fashions, because when I started, it was<br />
vintage t-shirts,” Durkin said. That was in 2000.<br />
Durkin was still in school when he started making money and decided to drop<br />
out. His parents were less than convinced when he told them his plan. “They<br />
weren’t pumped about it. They’re thrilled now, but they weren’t then,” Durkin<br />
recalled with a laugh. “They were like, ‘No, you’ve got to finish.’ I was like,<br />
‘And then what, I’m going to have a degree to show to myself, because that’s who<br />
I’m going to work for?’”<br />
Durkin did odd jobs while getting his businesses off the ground, everything from<br />
delivering pizza to working at a spa, to being employed at a now-defunct, high-end<br />
fashion boutique in North Scottsdale called Electric Ladyland, “like the Jimi<br />
Hendrix album.”<br />
Then he met and married Kylie, MM’s co-owner and lead designer. The couple<br />
will celebrate their tenth anniversary in November. After getting married, they<br />
got a condo and needed to furnish it.<br />
“We didn’t want to go to Ikea,” Durkin said. “We wanted different stuff. I’m just<br />
a natural-born collector. I love to collect because I love the history of things. I<br />
love things that are hard to find. My wife is a natural-born designer, and she’s<br />
really good at it.”<br />
Nearly every weekend, they would drive out to places like Sun City to “bomb<br />
around estate sales and go to auctions.” They furnished their condo but<br />
inevitably found more than they needed, and usually at a price too good to not<br />
buy.<br />
“This was before everybody jumped on the Mid-century Modern thing –<br />
just before. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not like, ‘I’m old-school man, I’ve been doing<br />
this forever,’” Durkin said. “There are lots of people who’ve been doing it longer<br />
than me, but we did get in before it really blew up.”<br />
Durkin recalls deals were easy to come by then. The couple would fill their<br />
garage, sell everything on Craigslist or eBay, and then fill it again. It was a hobby<br />
that became a business. Eventually, they got a booth at an antique mall.<br />
Success built on success, and April 1, 2010, they opened the doors of Modern<br />
Manor, roughly a block west of 7th Avenue on Hazelwood Street. Despite doing<br />
virtually no advertising, the business has thrived.<br />
14 JAVA<br />
MAGAZINE
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