This San Diego Christmas store is one of a handful in SoCal open year-round
SAN DIEGO — Throughout December, San Diego embodies the spirit of the “most wonderful time of the year,” coming to life with sparkling lights and Southern California winter wonderlands.
But, nestled in a quiet cul-de-sac right at the edge of San Diego’s Bay Park, there is a store that has been bringing the cheer of Christmas to shoppers all year long for decades.
The family-owned City Lights Collectibles, located on Knoxville Street, has been selling holiday collectibles to locals and visitors alike as one of the only year-round Christmas stores in Southern California for over 30 years.
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Founder Brian Young opened City Lights as a small retail store in Mission Bay in 1991. He moved to the area over a year prior with his wife and then-12-year-old son from the United Kingdom to retire, but a few months in, he started to feel an itch to work again.
“I was retired for about 15 months, got very bored and decided to open a small Christmas store just to have a destination somewhere to go in the mornings,” Young told FOX5SanDiego.com.
As he explained, he thought a Christmas store would be a perfect gig to balance the ease of retirement with a bit more of an active routine since it would only be busy for a handful of weeks out of the year prior.
When City Lights first opened its doors, the business was intended to only have three working days and two collectible lines available: Department 56, which is known for its Christmas village collections, and Annalee dolls.
What he soon discovered, though, was that the holiday collectible business was not as seasonal as he anticipated.
“It quickly hit a niche. There was no competition for a Christmas store in San Diego, and it quickly grew,” Young said. “Collectors are always looking for new pieces, so every time it’s a new introduction, we get a swatch of orders coming in.”
After the store’s first holiday season, City Lights became swamped with orders for the newest collectible items.
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The demand prompted Young to expand his modest retail business in nearly every sense, including adding new lines from dozens of brands — like Christopher Radko and Jim Shore — to its offerings and multiple location changes to have larger storefronts for their growing inventory.
After three decades of transformation, City Lights now has a 40,000 square-foot brick-and-mortar location and over 30 regular full-time employees. They now also have an online shop where they ship their collectibles all over the world.
“Over the last two years, we’ve shipped to 56 different countries around the world,” Young said. “We carry every contemporary collectible online and on many of them, we are the largest dealer in the nation.”
As a purveyor of unique seasonal collectibles, Young says the holidays are one of the busiest times of year for people looking to find a specific item — whether to add to an existing personal collection or to give as a special gift to a loved one.
“Usually whoever comes in will find whatever they were looking for and go away happy, become a regular customer,” he said. “There’s so many special items, so many special occasions.”
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But they still occasionally get people who are simply browsing as a way to immerse themselves in the spirit of the holidays, whatever time of year it actually is.
One such instance happened just a few weeks ago. As Young recalled, “we had a lady in a wheelchair being pushed around by her great granddaughter, (she) came into the store the day before her 99th birthday … she didn’t buy anything, but she had a day out.”
Through the end of December, City Lights is open at 1212 Knoxville Street in Bay Park from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday, as well as 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each Sunday.
During the rest of the year, the store’s weekday hours are slightly shorter from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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