total time: 7.08 minutes
total words: 77
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey Medford Bites listeners, I hope you're all having a happy and healthy beginning to 2022. Today on the podcast, you'll hear some updates about City Council from Councilor Nicole Morell and an interview with the owners of Reimagine. I hope you enjoy.
[Nicole Morell]: Nicole Morell, Medford City Councilor. The first guiding question you have is what am I proud of from this year? And I think what I'm most proud of is really fighting for issues that matter to me and matter to residents, even though it may have been clear that we didn't have the votes to get that issue through. So one example is fighting to give ABCD the full funding they requested through their CPA request as far as funding the emergency rental assistance program for those facing housing insecurity in Medford as a result of the pandemic. This was something that other Councilors really wanted to kind of chunk this money up and make ABCD come back to us, you know, every few months asking for more money, asking for more money as part of that full request. And, you know, For me, seeing the dire situation we were in and are still in, it made the most sense to just get that money to ABCD, help them facilitate the programs and support residents without adding additional bureaucracy. So that's something I fought for when it came time for the budget. pushing for an increase in the tree budget, which the mayor responded to and increase the budget there. And then also advocating for increased pay for the diversity director position. So these positions got separated out. We now have the chief people officer and the diversity director position. And I saw in the budget that the diversity director position was the lowest paid, one of the lowest paid, if not the lowest paid, directors in the budget. And I advocated for an increase in the salary of that because we can't say we value something and then underfund it. Particularly this time, diversity and inclusion officers are incredibly in demand. And if we actually value this in Medford, we need to pay those positions and demonstrate that, live our values. And I attract people that have top talent doing this work who really want to do great work in Medford. I also push for monthly updates and information on Medford's fight against the coronavirus and really advocating for sustainability and transportation and walkability issues wherever I could. So any project that came before us, whether it was a zoning recodification or there was another large project regarding the old Whole Foods Bakery, saying what are we doing for sustainability? What are we doing for making sure this is pedestrian friendly? How are we getting bike lanes out of this? How are we getting protected bus stops out of this? And just really seeing every time something came before us, trying to view it through the lens of sustainability, through the lens of a multimodal Medford. So another issue you talked about is inclusivity. So when I think about inclusivity, I think about speaking and being heard and represented in the chambers specifically. as that's where, you know, my job requires me to spend a lot of my time. And as we look at the new term with two new Councilors, I'm really excited about the voices that will join us officially behind the rail. So Manfred's first Asian American Councilors serve and a vast increase with, sorry, a vast increase with a renter representation through both Councilors, both new Councilors, as well as different neighborhoods having that South Manfred representation and also having that experience growing up in Wellington. but also what this means for residents. So I'm hoping that this new term offers a much more welcoming space for people to attend when safe to do so, offer their insight and share their unique lived experience. So the chambers and the procedures of meetings can be intimidating. And I'm hoping that's something that we can change in this new term as a new council. And I really want us to operate in the way of nothing about us without us. I mean, we've seen recently how that's happened. Decisions being made at different levels with, you know, decisions about people, decisions that affect people, and not having those people in the room or part of the process or offering insight to make sure we're doing things right and make sure we're not harming people in the process. Another topic you mentioned is charter review. I remain hopeful for charter review. This goes back in my mind to inclusivity and representation. I see, and I'm really excited to see more folks mobilizing around this. And I know that it has my support and I'll do everything in my power to see that we get a strong vote on this through the council. You know, what are other Councilors looking for? What concerns do they need to have addressed to get a yes vote on this? as we've seen time and time again as this comes before the council, demonstrating that strong support from the council has an impact on what the statehouse decides. So we want this vote to get to them and have, you know, as strong a vote as we can to say this is something that the people of Medford want. This is something that is just simply long overdue. I mean, it's just good politics. It's just good policy to review an operating document that has been unchanged for decades at this point, when the city has vastly changed. And priorities for next term. My biggest priorities, you know, as I said before, the lens I view things through is sustainability and transportation and I view these as two sides of the same coin. So a more sustainable Medford is a Medford that we have less emissions and less fossil fuels. and less traffic or more ways to get around. So doing everything I can to support bike lanes and multimodal streets and public transportation and making public transportation easier to take, which, you know, advocating for increased bus service or just the return to the bus service we once had, doing everything we can to make sure that everyone in the city has safe pathways to get to the new Green Line extension, they can use that. Improving our streets and sidewalks, improving our sidewalks so that people with strollers and wheelchairs and mobility devices can use the sidewalk because parking and traffic enforcement so there's not cars blocking the sidewalk or bike lane so that people, regardless of their dependence on vehicles and I know you know different life circumstances require you know different transportation needs but those who can not, you know, can avoid using a car, can avoid adding to those emissions, can get around Medford. And there's things to do around Medford on foot. So really just supporting a more sustainable Medford in the sense of climate change or in the sense of individual sustainability, making it a sustainable place for families to live and people without cars and people who can't drive, people who are too young to drive to get around the city. So really trying to view everything from the budget to zoning changes to ordinances through that lens of how do we make Medford more sustainable and more multimodal. I think a lot of stuff comes from that and hearing from more people and hearing from people who have different experiences with traveling throughout the city. Yeah, that's all I have. Thanks so much.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you to City Councilor Morell, and congratulations to her and her husband, who recently welcomed their first child. Up next is an interview with the owners of Reimagine. On to the interview. All right, thank you so much for joining me today. If you could start by saying your names and your pronouns.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Yes, my name is Teresa Racicot, and my pronouns are they or she, or she or they. Either one is fine.
[Mike Denton]: I'm Mike Denton. My pronouns are he, him, ish. That was the question, right?
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. Thank you. So my first question that I've been asking everybody that I talk to is their favorite place to eat in Medford and what they like to eat there.
[Mike Denton]: My favorite is Goldilocks Bagels. And my favorite thing to eat there is any sort of cheese bagel with egg, bacon, and cheese.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: We're really big breakfast people, so we also live right next to Colette, so we do go to Colette quite often. If I'm not eating a croissant, a chocolate croissant, I'm getting a quiche.
[Danielle Balocca]: Ooh, delicious. Yeah, we actually just got bagels from Goldilocks this morning, so I would have to agree. Okay, so we're sitting here today in your gym, so I wondered if either of you could tell, or both of you could tell a little bit about the gym, the mission that you all have here, and a little bit about that.
[Mike Denton]: Sure. We're Reimagine. That's Reimagine and gyms mushed together. We opened We opened the gym because we've been involved in the fitness industry for about 20 years, and increasingly over the last decade or so, because this has been a breakfast or dinner table conversation for a long time now, like, we should open our own place one day. And we opened, the whole reason behind it was that increasingly over time, we were noticing that There are large swaths of the population that are either not being seen by the fitness industry at large, like mainstream fitness, and they're certainly not being made to feel welcome. And fitness is not an accessible thing for people, but it's a thing that can make such a powerful difference in people's lives. And we just thought, well, what if we open a place for all of those people? A place where we kind of make fitness an enjoyable thing.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I think our slogan on our website is the gym for people who don't like the gym. And again, just to reiterate what Mike said, it's sort of like all of the people that don't see themselves in that mainstream media about fitness. So we're just really inclusive here of everyone and from all backgrounds, whether you've ever tried fitness before or not. Yeah.
[Mike Denton]: Yeah, I would say that as a general feel, our goal is to meet people where they're at. So there's no wrong place to start. There's no such thing as too out of shape. There's just where you're at now and where you want to go and the fun journey that we'll have getting there. I think that's all I wanted to say.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, I guess one of our main focuses is sort of making sure that we are meeting you where you're at, but making sure that everything, we're always checking in with people, making sure that everything feels good, that you're feeling it in the muscles that we're intending to use, and there isn't any pain. That's a big thing, because we want to always move in a place where you feel good about it and your body feels good doing it, regardless of the movement that we are doing.
[Mike Denton]: Oh, that kind of brings me to, that reminds me. So, secretly, there's two things here that I think are like the secret sauce. One is that through what we're doing, we're maybe not so secretly trying to help people develop a better connection and relationship with their bodies. Because, well, because we live in a world and a society that kind of actively discourages distancing yourself from your body or developing feelings of shame around your body and And our goal here is to create an environment where we can kind of subvert that expectation by having people feel good about moving in their bodies. And then the second element of the secret sauce is that our goal is to build a community of people who are all on on a similar journey towards bettering themselves. And where I'd like to say we're explicitly trying to subvert that is that bettering yourself is not developing a kind of body you'd see in mainstream magazines. There's nothing inherently better about being in a smaller body. There's just that feeling of growing stronger physically and mentally and emotionally and and developing a comfort level with your body and moving in it.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: And I think to speak to that community part of it, much like you do, we open each sort of small group training, group class with, and even our private personal training, we always check in with how your body is feeling. Do you have any aches or pains or ouchies we should know about that's gonna affect your workout for that day? But in the group setting, we're always like, let's share, you know your name because we might not all know each other you know kind of let me know how your body is feeling and how that might influence your workout today if you want to share your pronouns and then we always answer a fun question the other day was prefer to think of it as an important question yes it's fun and important like would you rather be a rhinoceros-sized hamster or a hamster-sized rhinoceros So at that part of the building community, and then we also try to, we've done, you know, we've only been open like. 18 months or something like that. So we've planned a couple of community events with our members, where in the fall we did a hayride up in Lowell area, and then we've done a picnic in the park together with everybody. So trying to just bolster that community, because I think most people are looking for those kind of things, especially after being stuck at home for so long.
[Danielle Balocca]: sure yeah I'm hearing kind of like a mission that is like one maybe connecting helping folks connect to their bodies in a different maybe more like healthy way than what we see about that like I think what we typically see in like mainstream media about like you know what like no pain no gain sort of like striving for this one type of body image right and then also like connecting to the community connecting to a to other people that are searching for that sort of relationship to themselves as well
[Mike Denton]: Yeah, exactly.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so since I'm in the space and, you know, podcasting is not a visual medium, do you want to describe at all what the space is like for folks?
[Mike Denton]: Well, maybe we should start with the exterior. I think that we are the only business on Salem Street with a painting of a rainbow wave that goes across the front. We have fitness for everybody. written on the exterior. We also have our well-dressed skeleton model. Our skeleton's name is Glenn. Glenn O'Humeral. For you fitness nerds. Glenn also has a fun wig that we got from a Cirque du Soleil show.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: On the outside also is the, there's like two figures of people doing kind of fitnessy moves, but we purposely made them to look more like kind of a regular person, not those traditional fitness shapes that you always see where it's muscularly built people or super thin people. And we have our pride flag in the window inside when you walk in. We have our trans pride flag and the... I don't know if I can swear, so... We have the important stuff board. Where we hang up all sorts of stuff, whether it's going on internally here or externally out in the greater kind of community. And then after you walk in, it's one big space in here. So we have, you know, some dumbbells and kettlebells in the space. And we have off to the left side turf or fake grass that we do some exercises on or use some, I guess, for lack of a better word there's sleds on there so it's for cardio equipment like sort of pushing them back and forth to get your heart rate up and then we have along the right side some big fitness racks where people can do various exercises over there. We still work in the pod system, so everyone gets their own pod, and we set up all of their equipment in that pod. You don't see the squares on the floor anymore. You can see the remnants of the tape. When you first look back towards the back of the space, the same friend of ours who painted the windows for us also painted a mural on the wall of what ended up looking like, in her words, a jazz cup. if you remember those from the 80s. I had to look it up because I didn't know, but I knew what the look was, but I didn't know what it was called. And then kind of looking back, you can just see where we have some TRX hanging on the wall. And it just looks back to, in the back of the studio is where we do a lot of our group fitness classes. The group fitness classes we offer vary from like cardio type stuff to body weight and weight training and then some stretching and relaxation classes.
[Danielle Balocca]: So you offer group fitness classes, do you also do like one-on-one sessions?
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so we have one-on-one personal training and then we have small group personal training which is a max of three people. Each person in that small group is doing their own workout. It's a program that we've designed for you based on how your body's moving and your goals. Same thing with the personal training. And then the group fitness classes, everyone's doing the same workout, but we do, because we keep them small, we do modify for people and change up. Like if we know that someone's like, oh, you know, I don't have weights at home because we still do stuff on Zoom and in the studio. we can change it up very easily based on what people have or even just how their body is feeling today. If someone came in and was like, oh, my knee doesn't feel great. We're like, great, we won't do any squats with you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. So I'm wondering what the sort of challenges have been in setting your gym up in this way and starting your business.
[Mike Denton]: Well, we opened in August of last year. So still kind of the maybe just when we were waiting out of the shutdown. So it meant that we had to change our original plan quite significantly to accommodate for smaller numbers and more spacing of people. But at this point, it's all we know. So there was a period of time where I think the biggest challenge was helping people to understand that this is a rather safe environment. On the one hand, there's an international, I always get the acronym wrong, it's the International Health Racket and Sports Club Association, or Health and Racket Sport. It's IRSA. It's IRSA. They have done a whole bunch of data collection worldwide, and what's reassuring has been that when there are fitness facilities that have been taking precautions, like here we have the great overhead fans that are on constantly when people are here and we maintain spacing and we've taken a test of the, sorry, a temperature of the community, not literally, but I mean we collectively decided together that we would stick with mask wearing, even when Medford's mask mandate said it was okay for gyms not to. But when gyms do that, they have been a very, very, very small source of COVID spread. So in the beginning, a big challenge was helping people feel at ease with the idea of coming in here. And we had a couple of nurses who were members early on who accused us of being cleaner than the hospital. But we did all of that so that we could let everyone know just how committed we were to the idea that we can still do this fitness thing, but in a way that is quite safe, or a way that feels safe.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: And I think having this building isn't brand new, but before we moved in, our landlord basically tore down everything inside and then rebuilt it. So we have a brand new Havac system with like a special filter that like, you know, kills viruses and bacteria and stuff like that. And we do have this, the one thing I didn't describe when describing the space, we have this gorgeous like high ceiling with beams. It's really beautiful. No one knew it was under the drop ceiling and it's just gorgeous. But yeah, we have high ceilings and the fans that push all the air down to the floor and that really brand new Havac system, which is really great. And like Mike said, we just keep Like, everyone still works out in a pod, so we're still, like, distanced. Even when we teach the group classes here, it's a max of four people in the space, and then everyone else would have to be on Zoom. So yeah, we just keep the numbers smaller than need be, just for the comfort of the community, because we've attracted a lot of people who that is really important to them.
[Danielle Balocca]: Sure, sure. And what's been the most rewarding part or the most fun part for you both?
[Mike Denton]: I hesitate only because I'm about to say something cheesy. It's been tremendously gratifying watching all sorts of people grow and develop in ways that have been literally life-changing. There's things like members who have said, oh my goodness, I caught myself walking up the stairs without limping the other day, like I can go up the stairs without pain. Or another member had a, this isn't necessarily a focus of ours, but we did help another member with some fairly significant weight loss goals. But it's more watching the transformations in people. You can see there's nervousness or hesitation in the beginning or things that they're uncomfortable with and as over time there's a growth of confidence and it's been gratifying to just be able to share in that journey with them.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: And I think, you know, we came in, when we opened in August of 2020, we came in and about, Mike and I were trainers out of our house beforehand, so we came in with some members already, I think it was like 11 or so, but to, after we opened, it was slow, because it was still a pandemic, but like people coming in from the community that we didn't know at all based on reading an article in the patch, or just seeing this space, or walking by the windows and seeing our little signs in the window. And so just meeting new people in the community that share our same values is also just really great, because there are people that I never would have met otherwise, and that's really awesome.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, that's awesome. You mentioned a little bit about your professional background before starting this gym. Is there anything else that you want to tell us about kind of?
[Mike Denton]: Oh, we should probably share. We spent, Teresa a little longer, but the better part of a decade beforehand, we both used to teach flying trapeze. And then more recently, Teresa was, I mean, taught aerial silks and fabrics.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Trapeze and a bunch of different kind of aerial apparatus.
[Mike Denton]: We should give a shout out to Ash Circus Arts in Somerville. They're in Somerville, so it's not Medford, but they're still amazing. And while Teresa was doing that, I was doing primarily strength training. strength and conditioning work for circus artists.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: And we do have a large contingent.
[Mike Denton]: I was going to say a medium-sized contingent of circus artists who train here with us.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Yeah, so whether they're, like, they do it recreationally, circus arts, or some of them are, like, perform on a kind of a local and kind of, some of them even branch out further, so it's not just, like, here in Massachusetts or even in New England, but some of them go a little bit further away.
[Mike Denton]: Awesome. That actually brings me, reminds me, the The advantage to our circus background is that both Teresa and I have had some pretty significant injuries that have been also like career trajectory and life altering. Mine was a shoulder, Teresa's a hip. But the consequence of that is that we both spent a great deal of time learning as much as we could about how to manage injuries. So a thing that we're able to offer to anyone who comes in is just a background knowing like, oh, if you have a weird body thing or something that's tough to deal with, either we have some experience working with it, or conveniently, we also have a network of physical therapists that we collaborate with so that we can check in with them.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's great.
[Mike Denton]: And it does make it a lot easier to be like, no, really, there's no wrong place for you to start. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Can I ask a question that's a little more for my own personal curiosity? But one thing that I've found is like a barrier to gyms is the like locker room bathroom situation. So is there like a gender designation for your bathrooms or what's the?
[Mike Denton]: We're not fans of the gender binary anyway, so we have two separate bathrooms. We generally restrict their use to humans. One is larger than the other. It's the ADA accessible one.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: We affectionately call them the water closet. That's the smaller of the two and then the walk-in closet. The other one's bigger.
[Mike Denton]: Cool. But we also, we don't have a shower. Yeah. Technically our locker rooms are the two bathrooms.
[Danielle Balocca]: Good. Great. That's good to know.
[Danielle Balocca]: Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you wanted to share with us?
[Mike Denton]: We talk a lot about food. On the one hand, we do offer nutrition coaching, and our nutrition coaching philosophy is explicitly anti-diet culture. That being said, for people who do have weight loss goals, we can certainly help with that, but we're not by any means going to espouse a philosophy that, like, life is better in a smaller body because the messaging around that out there is so complicated, and more often than not, the variable isn't a question of like overall body weight but whereas it's a question of of other factors like physical strength and fitness and health and there's there's the the fun byproduct of of uh improving your nutrition and exercise where where sometimes the composition of your body will change as you develop muscle.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: And even just, you know, like other health markers of like, you know, that can be important to some people, like improved blood pressure or glucose and all that stuff.
[Mike Denton]: But during our small group sessions, especially, On the surface, I guess maybe it's in part because we're looking to encourage a healthy relationship with food as well. But also, I think we just have a number of people here who really like food. And like to cook. And like to cook. We have some very talented cooks in our membership base or in our community. It is not uncommon to be in the middle of a small group training session and talking about The Thanksgiving slash National Day of Mourning provided us with a great opportunity to talk about all sorts of things, from great ways to prepare turkey to favorite side dishes.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: But also sometimes we just get really lost. And one of the questions was, would you rather be in the Matrix universe or the Lord of the Rings universe? And the discussions around all of that were pretty in-depth. So I think, yeah, we just end up sort of all over the place sometimes. And then sometimes, you know, people come in and they're like, I'm also very focused today, so I'm just going to do my thing.
[Danielle Balocca]: Sure, sure. Well, you mentioned a little while ago just that you've noticed being able to connect with people in the community that you might not have otherwise connected with. Are you hoping for like a reverse impact? So like an impact that your gym will have on the Medford community?
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Well, I mean, I think one thing for us, which is, again, sort of back to the mission, is being able to provide a place for people to come that don't generally see themselves in kind of that fitness mainstream media look, and provide a place for people to think about fitness differently than the messages we always hear. kind of create maybe a different story within their own kind of mind and what they say to themselves, and reach more people as well. We're still relatively new, a lot of people don't know much about us, but just being able to reach more of the community in the sense of letting them know that there is a different way to do fitness. Visually it might look very similar, but how we approach it and how we talk about it is so very different than what you normally hear. So being able to just provide, even Mike and I try to post in some of the local Facebook groups for Medford, just free resources for stuff to start to plant that seed of different ways to think about health and wellness than it's generally presented out there. help people do that or assist with the, be a guide on their journey to do that, that, that would be great.
[Mike Denton]: Awesome. I'm going to, I'm going to go deep and philosophical. So if people have an opportunity in here to begin thinking more, thinking and feeling more compassionately about their bodies and their own experiences, then I believe that that's going to change how people show up in the world. And then on top of that, there's the part where they get to meet other people from within the community. And there exists the possibility that out there in the world, they'll see those people. And it's a different experience of, let's say, Medford as a specific example. It's a different experience of Medford to be able to go out and see familiar faces rather than wandering in a sea of strangers.
[Danielle Balocca]: For sure.
[Mike Denton]: On top of that, this is intended to be our contribution to that bettering of and changing the world. And I say bettering where I'll freely admit that my perspective on this one is that what would make the world better is if we're all perhaps more compassionate and understanding of each other and recognizing that For example, here, where we're trying to, in various places, explicitly point out that there are a lot of ideas about our bodies and how they function and how we age and develop that we've internalized from messaging that doesn't serve us. And it doesn't serve the betterment of society, because if we're disconnected from our bodies, it makes it easier to be disconnected from each other. Whereas if we're feeling more connected with ourselves, it becomes easier to feel more connected to other people. And then since we're explicitly challenging one form of oppression, it kind of leaks out into other forms of oppression. Or we hope so. We hope. Admittedly, there's a, at times, conversation also can skew social justice here.
[Unidentified]: Hmm.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow. Yeah. I mean, that's a, I think that's a really lovely way of talking about the difference between your gym and like, I remember those commercials where I pick stuff up, I put them down. Yeah. That's, I mean, that's a really lovely hope I think for our community.
[Mike Denton]: That being said, we definitely do engage in picking up and putting down heavy things.
[Danielle Balocca]: Metaphorically and literally, it sounds like.
[Mike Denton]: Very much so. But here, with a dash of rainbows, unicorns, and We would totally do more glitter, but it's really tricky to do. Yeah, for sure. Imaginary glitter.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. Well, thank you all. Sorry, you both so much for meeting with me today and hopefully we'll see each other in the future. Yeah.
[mbymTt2FVd8_SPEAKER_08]: Thank you.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thank you so much to Theresa, Mike, and Councilor Morell. As always, if you have feedback about the episode or ideas for future episodes, you can email medfordpod at gmail.com. You can also subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.
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