[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. Hey, thanks so much for being here with me today or having me into the store. If we could just start out by introducing yourself, so just say your name and pronouns and a bit about who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so my name is Brian Smith. I'm a middle school history teacher. I use he, him pronouns. And with my wife, Michelle, we are the owners of Moon and Back Bookstore here in West Bedford.
[Danielle Balocca]: Great, thank you, and we might hear some background noise because we are at the bookstore right now with your two kids and one of mine, so apologies for any disruptions.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want the store to be a place where kids can be kids, so they're going to be kids.
[Danielle Balocca]: Right, yeah. Great. So if we could start out by answering the question that we ask everybody on the podcast, and you're like nicely situated here in West Medford amongst a lot of restaurants, but what is your favorite place to eat in Medford and what do you like to eat there?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the place I go the most is right around the corner in West Medford is Lola's Coffee. Probably every time I come into the bookstore, I grab an iced coffee from over there. But the food that I'm most excited about is the Honeyaroni Pizza at 4 Pizza. They do a tremendous bar pizza. Also, my wife and my son are gluten-free. Their gluten-free crust is really good. But the Honeyaroni is my favorite thing in the city.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's like pepperoni with honey on it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a pepperoni pizza with a spicy honey sauce, so it has like a perfect amount of sweet and spicy mixed together.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, hot honey is very on trend these days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know it really is. It was the first time I think I had it was from there, and I get it every time I can.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, you did share before we started recording that you're from the South Shore, so I imagine that's the bar pizza.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the bar pizza. Between that and the gluten-free, it's a perfect spot for us.
[Danielle Balocca]: And so, so speaking of the moon and back, could you share a little bit about kind of how you and your wife arrived here? What made you decide to have it a children's bookstore?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so after, I have two sons, ages six and four, and so my wife was deciding, you know, okay, going back into the workforce, you know, what are we going to do? And she had worked in a variety of industries before. She was a pastry chef, she was a project manager, and she just wasn't excited to join either of those two fields again. So it was like, all right, what should we do? What is, what's exciting for her? And she kind of casually said to the boys, like, what should mommy do? And my older son Oliver was like, you should be a book helper. And Michelle started thinking about it more and more and was like, well, I love books. You know, the West Medford area doesn't have a bookstore and maybe that's something that we could do. So she started kind of We would spend our evenings, you know, background TV on and looking at spreadsheets. And Michelle was doing all the background work in advance of the bookstore. We were like, all right, five, six years down the road, you know, we'll do it then when things settle down and get easier. And... this location came available and it was the absolute perfect location I mean we were so excited for it to be so close to us so close to the boys school so close to an ice cream shop as you you know as you mentioned West Medford has so much to offer and one thing turned into another, and it came through actually really, really quickly. It was gonna be a five-year plan turned into a six-month plan. We got the keys on January 1st, and we were open for business on February 1st.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and then maybe you can hear outside. My son is very interested in the books here. And so I guess, you know, I think that books, there's like a lot of meaning, right, to books, especially books for kids, especially like at a time like we're going through right now in our country and politically where books can be sort of a hot, sort of hot button issue and talking about like book bans and what we teach our kids through reading. And so I'm wondering if there's any sort of like mission that's driving your work for this bookstore or anything that you want people to get out of coming here.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want it to place, I mean, if you look at the bags that we have, I think it's, they say, you know, to be loved or, you know, where every kid feels like there's a book they can feel loved by in this store so that whether they are, whatever their feelings are, whatever their, they're reflected in this store, they're identified in this store. And so we make sure that there are, you know, a variety of books that you don't get to see in, you know, you're not going to see them at kind of a big box store. The authors are a different, you know, a little bit different and a little bit more unique and you get a better selection of stories. When we go through the, you know, we really try to make sure that our books are eco-friendly as best we can for our toys and for our books. We try to make sure that, you know, if we have any, make sure that we're getting just a more unique style of author that you might see at a Barnes & Noble or another kind of big box store.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, just browsing, I saw like you had different books for like gay pride. I saw on your Instagram that you were doing something for like allergy awareness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we have, we have, I think pride reading is coming up on, we have a book called Pride is Love. And we're doing Pride is Love story time, I believe on this Wednesday. So that's 1030 every Wednesday. I just recorded. I probably won't be out by then. But so we have yeah, we have that sort of time coming up. We have two shelves that kind of to reflect different. I don't see different identities, but different whatever different groups are being celebrated, you know, so whether it was I think right now, I think May is Asian Pacific Heritage Month as well as Allergy Awareness Month. We have two shelves for that. So kind of there's often a group and I work at a public school. So there's often a group that we're kind of trying to raise more awareness of, more knowledge of. And so there's two shelves for that all the time. And those books don't, they don't go in the, you know, back in the box afterwards. They just kind of re-enter the shelves. You know, they're always there in the shelves. But there's moments they get kind of pulled out and celebrated. given more visibility.
[Danielle Balocca]: It's always striking to me whenever I travel somewhere and visit the local library to see what they have on display, I think it tells you a lot about who's welcome there, right? And so it sounds like you're all trying to create this really welcoming space. And I think that's like sort of my interest here and like whenever I talk to somebody about what they're doing in Medford It's usually there they've identified some sort of need or something that they're interested in that Maybe they don't see enough of in the city and wanting to kind of bring that to us. And so I'm wondering sort of what you're hoping That the city gets from having a bookstore like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean a bookstore is a It's it's the bookstore is a place where anybody can come in. And I mean, people who read books are like the nicest people in the world. Whenever I find myself working in the store and I, you know, I find myself, I say I joke to my wife that, you know, if I make a mistake, well, you've read a bookstore. It's the nicest people in the world. We're going to be here. And so we think for what Medford can gain from a place like this is a place where kids feel welcomed, where kids are celebrated. You know, there's a lot of places that they accept kids and they tolerate kids, but they don't necessarily celebrate kids. And so, you know, sometimes parents will come in and the kid will run to a, you know, will start running over and they're starting touching stuff and they're grabbing stuff. And the parent's like, hey, like, you know, don't grab everything. And it's like, well, we want people to be respectful of the stuff we have here. Like we want the kids to be kids. The shelves are purposefully designs that kids can explore themselves. You know we have multiple chairs and places where hopefully kids will sit down and thumb through a book and learn about it or we have one of my favorite spots is the couch where you see you know younger kids reading with their parent or grandparent or just another kind of loving adult in their life and it's just a nice thing to have that in a That's basically kind of a good spot to hang out in there. Michelle is, we're organizing, my wife Michelle is organizing a few other, trying to make sure that our events that we're doing are representative of the full city. You know, so that if, you know, on one day that there is a space where over the course of say a two month period, Every kid feels like, oh, that's a story time that's for me, that I feel happy with, that I feel reflected in. The person who's doing the story time and the story they're reading, you know, I can see myself in that story time.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's cool. I think, yes, in addition to kind of supporting like young readers we did have we had Kat Bacardi on the podcast a couple weeks ago and she's like a local teacher and author and so yeah I think it's it's also cool to see that like local folks are writing books that you guys are selling here and doing readings which is really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah we also had Kat Bacardi in to do a reading here so we have a whole local author section and we've had a lot of the local authors come through and you know, do readings here and do other kind of events here. Um, we are, we're, we're doing our second, um, our second week, we have a community table where we're hoping that kids will start to come in and be able to pick their own, um, their own recommendations. So we did, I mean, we're, you know, my niece did the first one and my son did the second one, but we're eventually going to open it up to, you know, just people that have come into the store a few times and say, Hey, these are the, eight stories that I really like the most and here's what I, you know, they get to pick them out, they get to, you know, write out why they like them if they want and, you know, kind of have that space where they feel a little bit of ownership over the, over what's being reflected here and what's being offered in the store.
[Danielle Balocca]: I love that. That's kind of like, like an alternative to like staff picks and you see like, yeah, yeah, it kind of is exactly that idea is that, you know, let the kid feel so,
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, you get to be excited to come back in here and be like, hey, this is, it's not just a place I go to buy books or a place where I feel like I have a part of what's going on.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah. I remember like growing up, we had like an ice cream store that displayed all the like local sports teams, like if they won something. This feels equivalent, right? It's like, this is like an honor to have your books, like to have your opinion reflected in the local books.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. And it, you know, while as, I think it's a really big deal to a six or seven or eight year old to pick their books out and it's important to say, all right, what's important to me? I want to put it up on the table and hopefully other people will find it to be important as well.
[Danielle Balocca]: And as a parent whose kids get really fixated on like one or two books, it's nice to see like what other kids are reading and enjoying to expose them to as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's, yeah, I mean you end up end up falling into the trap of okay my kid likes trucks and then all you get are truck books and it's like I want exposure to something different with other kids of this age enjoying and liking. Do you have a favorite book? Favorite kids book? My favorite kids book and maybe it's because we had this book called Digger, Dozer, Dumper. And when you're in the truck book stage, the books can get a little monotonous. And this was like 15 or 16 different poems and different styles of poems for each truck. So it was a way to kind of break some of the monotony of like the dump truck dumps and the excavator digs. It was a really cool way to not only It was a way to introduce my kids to some poetry. Unexpectedly, you know, instead of being here, read poetry. I was like, nope, we're gonna read this book about a skid steer. And it just happens to be, you know, very poetic.
[Danielle Balocca]: And I imagine as a teacher, I feel like my kids come home saying, like talking about like this, like different kinds of poetry that they're learning of like, how did a teacher get my kid who only wants to read Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Like, how did they get them into that? But that sounds really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think I teach, you know, having, teaching middle school, some of the best teaching is done when you've found a way to make it not feel like teaching or feel like learning. That's the, when you can get the best bar, which again, a book on poetry, but it's, the kid thinks it's about trucks, but they're being exposed to poetry.
[Danielle Balocca]: Cool. Yeah. Well, I'm excited. I think I liked the plug for Lola's in the beginnings. I love a combination bookstore, coffee shop. So it's nice to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The amount of people who have said you should add a, you know, a food or coffee element to the store. And it just, there's so much already in West Medford that we didn't, we didn't need it to be in our space, you know, because we have so many good places between Lola's and the muffin shop. And, you know, we just not, we didn't need another spot. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And I imagine it would have taken you a lot longer to open if you were doing that. And it would have taken us a lot longer to open.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think if you would have talked to Michelle and I, one of the things we would say is instead of doing two things, Averagely, we'd rather do one thing really well. And so the full focus is just on the books. And I think if we had tried to do two things, we wouldn't have been able to give as much energy to this specific book selection. That's one of the things I love when I see kids come in and they've been here before and they just be aligned to the section that they know because the store is organized. If you've got a chance to explore, the store is organized by section, not by author names or anything like that. So, you know, there's a whole bookshelf of just dinosaur books and a whole bookshelf of just truck books and the kids come in and they know like, all right, I'm going straight to the truck, I'm going straight to the sea creatures, I'm going straight to the dinosaurs, whatever it is that they're interested in that month, which is kind of a cool thing to see them open the door and be excited. Yeah, that's great.
[Danielle Balocca]: And, you know, I think it sounds like your sons probably spend a fair amount of time here. I wonder if you've thought about kind of what you want them to take away from being raised in a bookstore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think there's, one, it's the importance of books, which they already kind of get at home, but to see, you know, they're here, they're so much exposed to books. The other thing is that they're seeing, especially their mom, take a big risk in doing this and saying, you know what, I could have gone back into a job that was fine, but that I wasn't excited about. And instead of doing that, I want to do something that not only I'm excited about, but that directly, positively, hopefully impacts the community that we live in. You know, my son can walk to school from here, we can walk from our home to here, like it's not, it is our neighborhood. We walk past, you know, it's our neighborhood and we want it to be, it's exactly what we want inside of our neighborhood.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, it's very cool. I imagine too growing up to like your friends know that like your family has the bookstore and they can visit you there and it's really cool. Right. Well, is there anything that I haven't asked you or anything that we haven't talked about that you think you want people to know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we've said two exciting things coming out. One thing that's planned and one thing we're hoping to do in the future. We are part of in July is like Where's Waldo month. So we are part of this big Where's Waldo celebration. So it's going to be all month. We're partnering with 25 other businesses in the city of Medford. We'll be hiding little Waldo guys. And if you collect all of them, you get to come into the store and get some prizes from the Waldo Corporation as well as us. And it ends with a big party, a big Where's Waldo celebration on August 2nd here at the store. Cool. So it's kind of a fun thing to be kind of connecting with 25 different businesses. You know, so we talk about how great West Medford is, but we obviously want to serve the entire city and the whole community. So we'll be connecting with a lot of different businesses that way, which is really cool. And one thing that we're excited about that we've been kicking around the city and we don't have a plan for it yet, but you mentioned what we want are, you know, for the community. We have this idea to do like a, almost like a kid's maker fair. So that like neighborhood kids that like make their little things almost like a bigger organized like yard sale for kids. So they can make their stuff, come in here, sell it to think it would be the community. But again, to feel like, you know, especially talk about kids being able to be kids, but also that, you know, young people are so capable and are independent and kind of grow some of that independence as well.
[Danielle Balocca]: That's really cool. I'm sure there'll be a lot of interest.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think so. I mean, people come in and they talk about, you know, kids are here that are here regularly telling us of the stuff that they're making, the bookmarks that they're making, the cards that they're making. And whenever we do a craft, kids always want to share the other stuff they're doing at home as well. So kind of a fun way to, I don't know, become more connected with our community. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, I'll be on the lookout for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully you'll be back. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you so much for your time today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. No, thank you. This was really, really fun and really exciting.
[Danielle Balocca]: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Idonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.