His name is Stavros, just like Niarchos, the Rockerduck rival of Scrooge Aristotle Onassis. And like them, he has built an empire—not of dollar bills, but of spinning tops. The thing is, when you step into the realm of Stavros Kaminakis, in a narrow alley in the center of Naxos, you feel as if you’re in another world—and this happens to anyone between three months and a century and a half old.
A native of Athens, fifty-nine years old—“but also sixty…,” he whispers with a satisfied little smirk—he has a wife and two children. And like any great dad, he wonders what toys can bring his kids true joy. Of course, not many dads solve this dilemma by searching the world over for simple, deeply traditional objects, which nevertheless have the audacity to compete with increasingly sophisticated video games—and beat them, even humiliating them.
Because electronics eventually grow tiresome and are doomed to constantly have to outdo themselves, surviving for ever-shorter periods, while colored wood has none of these problems and aspires to near-eternity. It may sound like the consolation of old-timers defending the values of their own childhood, but Stavros’s micro-marketing proves that there are many worlds out there—far more than we imagine.
In short, he wanted to entertain his children and discovered many objects that would later fillSunray, the store he opened in Naxos eighteen years ago. And they’ve entertained a couple of generations by now.
But the first one to have fun is him, and besides, let’s face it, no one would buy a toy from a grumpy person, and Stavros captures your first smile the moment you look at him: short in stature, a bit chubby, but he seems light because he looks like a woodland creature—an elf, a gnome, a sprite, a faun.
His smile is restrained—the kind that reveals almost nothing, waiting for the burst of joy from someone who has walked into a store expecting an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Without ceremony or introductory rituals, without flowery explanations, he picks up a tiny spinning top, tosses it onto a wooden tray with the most natural gesture in the world: the little object spins for a few seconds, then flips over, top-side up, continuing to spin.
Children and grown-up kids alike change their expressions; they would have found the launch of a missile simpler and more logical, but that two-millimeter-long stick that dominates the spinning top’s body is a hero—it’s proof that physics is open to debate.
Like a little boy eager to show off his toys to his friends, Stavros isn’t satisfied with the first smile of wonder, and immediately tries another spinning top, this one easier:try, try, try, try!
The little boy succeeds—or almost does—while his dad is a bit less successful; he encourages him, “Look at this one.” One after another, another family arrives, but this isn’t a store—it’s an amusement park—and he wants to finish his game of building a tower with blocks, a tower so tall, and until it collapses, no one can help him. And then he proves how a tin monkey is the best arithmetic teacher in the world.
Stavros isn’t a sociologist, a moralist, a nostalgic, a traditionalist, or a philosopher: he simply welcomes those who enter his vibrant world with the smile of a child meeting friends eager to play with him.
He has no customers, only visitors who, after just a few moments, will dream of recreating, at home, the playroom on Odos Exarchopoulou—a street that one day, surely, will be named after the svoùres, spinning tops.
In his magical den, there’s a little bit of everything, and over the years, he’s secured exclusive rights to the world’s most prestigious brands: few people know them, but when a layperson finds themselves playing with these objects, they realize they’re not dealing with trinkets, but with playfully professional tools.
And there he is. With a sly smile, he keeps unleashing a veritable army of spinning tops—with or without strings, small or large—and points out which ones are easy and which are difficult, watching everyone with a mischievous glint in his eye.
One of the most complicated ones to spin defies perpetual motion: Stavros is unstoppable, unleashing all the colors of the world and more, but the record-breaking spinning top never stops.
Two couples—one with a child, the other made up of forty-year-old “kids”—wander among the wooden fairy tales.
He, discreet, stands on the sidelines, but he’s very attentive and steps in to dispel doubts—occasionally making a mistake. On purpose, surely: a professional elf isn’t inspired by the superman, but rather by the child of any age who has the right to mess up ninety-nine times and smile on the hundredth, when the little game finally gets going. Wobbly, but he proves that the god of spinning tops exists and loves us.
Some customers feel awkward at the thought of not buying anything, but Stavros’s grin is reassuring: “The spinning top is sometimes as round as the world, but it isn’t the world, and you can live without it.” “
He knows full well that children and adults will turn back on their smartphones to search for cartoons or complex geopolitics. But he also knows that they’ll come back, because only his little wooden tops have the power to bring that funny smile to their faces—the one he, as a child, received as a gift from a forest gnome, and which he has never let fade, even as an adult.
