Heists, Sweat-Wicking PJs, and Traveling Bookstores with Jo Piazza
Prolific writer Jo Piazza is back! She joins Doree and Elise to chat about her latest book, The Parisian Heist (out 7/14), everyone’s general fascination with heists, and using perimenopause as her superpower. They also get into her latest venture of becoming a local traveling bookseller and why she thinks sleep is more important than night sex.
Photo credir: Andrea Cipriani Mecchi
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Transcript
The following transcript is AI generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to Forever 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:18):
And I'm Elise Hu, and we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Doree Shafrir (00:21):
And today we have a return guest on the show, Jo Piazza, one of my favorite people, favorite authors.
Elise Hu (00:30):
Prolific author.
Doree Shafrir (00:31):
Prolific author, someone I've known for a very long time. We were in college at the same time, at the same college.
Elise Hu (00:39):
Oh, I didn't know that. Were you friends in college?
Doree Shafrir (00:41):
Oh yeah, we knew each other.
Elise Hu (00:43):
Okay.
Doree Shafrir (00:43):
She's a couple years younger than me, but yeah, we knew each other. And then we sort of had parallel careers after college. Okay. So I've known her forever. So Jo is on the show today and she's talking all about her new book, which is so fun. I just love her books, The Parisian Heist, which is out tomorrow, July 14th. Whoa. Yeah, you can check that out. But before we get to Jo, Elise, how are you doing?
Elise Hu (01:14):
I'm good. I don't know how I'm going to be in the future since so much happened in June, but I got to interview recently and I feel like this is such a champagne or such a humble brag or just a brag brag, but I got to interview Anne Patchett again because she's now on tour for her new book Whistler, which I read, I just inhaled over the weekend. So cool.
(01:39):
And Anne is just, and she actually says this, she's like, "I know I get accused of being too Pollyanna-ish and too hopeful about the world and just believing in its decency." And it comes out in all her books, of course, but she really is so buoyant and she embodies that kind of goodness and this belief that things are going to be better. And so after the end of my very long June, during a time I am grieving a friend and I'm grieving a cat, it meant so much to get to talk with Anne Patchett and she shared a few things that I'll just share as part of this catch-up because we're also going to be talking with an author later in the show. One is that she still lives without a cell phone, so she has no cell phone, exists without one. And the way that it really gets in the way of her life, not having a cell phone, it's mostly great, but one is it really pisses off her husband.
(02:36):
Her husband's super annoyed that she doesn't have a cell phone. And then two, it's for parking. Oh
Doree Shafrir (02:43):
Yeah.
Elise Hu (02:44):
So many of the parking meters these days are apps or a QR code in order to park. And so she ends up having to park a lot farther out than she might want to park because she doesn't own a cell phone. So I wouldn't have thought of that. And then the other thing she shared, which is related, is that smartphones are kind of killing book tours in a lot of ways because now she's on this giant book tour, multi-state swing for Whistler. And so many of her anecdotes are already shared out in the universe on TikTok or on Instagram reels. Oh,
Doree Shafrir (03:24):
Wow.
Elise Hu (03:25):
So it's kind of like killing the In Real Life event that made it worthwhile to go to an In Real Life event because a lot of the side stories and peek behind the curtain and explanation of the cover and all of that has already been shared by other people who have attended different stops on the tour. And this is related to conversations that we have had about live events and how so many live events are just being inside Instagram now because by the time you attend the concert, you've already seen the concert filmed from every seat in the stadium or you know the set list already. And she says that her tour for this book, and it hasn't been that long since her previous book Tom Lake came out, but her tour for this book, it's making really clear the way that live events have now been mediated so much by our screens.
Doree Shafrir (04:23):
That's so true. I mean, yeah, we touched on this a little bit in the live casual chat that we did a couple weeks ago. Yeah, it is really interesting. I have been thinking about how I can force myself to get away from my phone. It's hard. It's really hard.
Elise Hu (04:42):
Are you using those apps? Kate has used these, right? Freedom and those other apps to brick your phone?
Doree Shafrir (04:49):
I don't really use them. I have them. I could use them. I have downloaded them. I should. I should go back to using them because I feel like it's gotten out of hand.
Elise Hu (05:02):
Well, the call of Reddit can be so alluring. Rob just recently discovered Reddit and how great it is and what an awesome community it is for camping stuff because he's like, "I'm headed into the Sequoias." And the gear that people have recommended, the trails, the tips, the hacks, he's like, "I love this place."
Doree Shafrir (05:22):
That's so funny. I could see camping being Redditors being very helpful
Elise Hu (05:30):
Because
Doree Shafrir (05:32):
The niche interests are so intense.
Elise Hu (05:36):
And that I just appreciate the full range of humanity that's on Reddit.
Doree Shafrir (05:41):
Totally.
Elise Hu (05:41):
And so that is one of the things I really love about it. Plus the internet or the good old Google has been so inshittified as they say by profit motives and whatnot that Reddit still feels like it has corners or glimpses and glimmers of the old internet, like the old WWW days when we first went online. So yeah, I celebrate that and yet I'm sure it can be hard to turn away from when you're scrolling on your phone.
Doree Shafrir (06:12):
Totally, totally.
Elise Hu (06:14):
Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (06:14):
All right. Well, let's introduce our guest. For those of you who don't know her, Jo is the national and international bestselling author of The Sicilian Inheritance: We Are Not Like Them. You Are Always Mine. Charlotte Walsh likes to win The Knockoff and How to Be Married. Her latest book, The Parisian Heist, is out, as we said, tomorrow, July 14th. Her work has been published in 10 languages in 12 countries and four of her books have been optioned for film and TV. Jo's podcasts have garnered more than 25 million downloads and regularly top podcast charts. An editor, columnist, and travel writer, her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour, and many other publications. She lives in Philly with her husband, Nick Aster, and three feral children. I should say that is her description of her children, not ours.
(07:09):
We would
Elise Hu (07:10):
Never. We would never. We would
Doree Shafrir (07:11):
Never. I would describe them as her three adorable children, which adorable and feral are not mutually exclusive. Right. Before we get to Jo, just a reminder, you can call or text us at 781-591-0390. Email us at forever35podcast@gmail.com. You can visit our website, forever35podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mention on the show. We are also on Instagram at forever35podcast. You can join our Patreon at patreon.com/forever35. We have a free level where you get access to our semi-monthly newsletter where we talk about pod highlights, product reviews, exclusive discounts, giveaways, and more. But then at $5 a month, you get access to our weekly casual chat, which is now on video. You get our live casual chats. We just did one a couple weeks ago that was super fun. Access to our community chat and the Patreon app and more. For $10 a month, you get ad-free episodes and a shout-out on the podcast each and every month.
(08:11):
So head over to patreon.com/forever35 to check all of that out. And whenever we mention our favorite products on the show, we put them on our Shop My, which is basically just a place where you can see all of our recommended products. So you can check that out at shopmy.us/forever35, and we will be right back with Jo.
Elise Hu (08:34):
We'll be right back.
Doree Shafrir (08:42):
Jo Piazza, welcome back.
Elise Hu (08:45):
You're back. Number
Doree Shafrir (08:46):
35, you're back.
Jo Piazza (08:47):
I'm Back. I'm back, babies. And this is better than ever. All three of us are better than ever right now, to be honest.
Elise Hu (08:55):
I was telling Dora I had amazing acupuncture and so I feel changed.
Jo Piazza (09:00):
Oh, that sounds so nice. I'm desperate for some acupuncture. My old lady neck right now, it just really needs some loosey-goosey. So yeah, I need acupuncture. I need some massage. I'm also due for my annual Botox. I only do Botox right before book tours. So that is something that's on. I'm looking at my to-do list right now and it's starred on my to-do list. It's like, do not forget to schedule Botox, or you will look like a monster if you have to get it two days before you go on television for book tour. Oh,
Doree Shafrir (09:33):
Except, wait, can we just talk about the fact that you get Botox once a year when you go on book tour because you go on book tour once a year?
Elise Hu (09:41):
That's how prolific you are. That's how prolific Jo is when it comes to writing books. It's wild. It's wild. I mean, how do you do it? What is your practice? We want to get into your self-care practice obviously, but let's talk about your writing practice too, because I feel like you're turning out more books than anyone else we know in real life.
Jo Piazza (10:04):
It's mostly me and James Patterson, to be honest. If James Patterson wants to collab with me, he should just call me or my DMs are open to him. Yeah, here's my honest answer. I could actually write books all day long. I'm very good at it because, and Doree knows this because she was with me when I used to do this. I was a newspaper reporter and a digital news reporter for so long. I just had to write. I don't get writer's book. I sit down and I churn it out. And also, if I get a great idea and I know that it's a good idea, then I will sit down and just write it. Guys, I got the most bananas idea the other day, and I'm going to share it with you here first so that my publishers let me do it because I love it so much.
(10:45):
And if I say it out loud, they won't have a choice. And so if I have a great idea, I just sit down and I write it. So I can very easily write the books. That is not stressful to me. I know it is for a lot of people, but it's how my juices work. What gets me, what makes me so tired and cross-eyed and crazy is the marketing, publicity and the publicity and the selling of books. I find that very tedious, and so doing that on a book a year schedule is a lot for me also as a secret introvert. But the writing is just pure joy. I love sitting down and making these characters that are secretly trying to take down the patriarchy while having spicy sex in unusual places.
Elise Hu (11:24):
Love, love. Tell us about Parisian Heist or tell the listeners about it.
Jo Piazza (11:29):
Oh, I'll tell the listeners about it. Yeah. So Parisian heist is so much fun. It's a dual timeline kind of like Sicilian inheritance was. Although I keep saying, I'm like in the modern day, and I'm like, actually our modern timeline is 1996, which is apparently historical fiction at this point because it was 30 years ago. But in our modern timeline, which feels like yesterday, we have an all-female art heist. I don't think that we see enough women pulling off heists, probably because women get away with it because we're better at doing this than men. So it's an all women art heist trying to take down the largest art dealing family in the world. They are just awful billionaires behaving badly, a subject close to Doree and I's heart. It truly is. And it's a lot of fun. So they're pulling off a heist in the Mose de Orse in Paris, but the past timeline is so awesome.
(12:23):
It's the untold story of Jo Van Gogh, and she was Vincent's sister-in-law who inherited hundreds of his paintings that were totally worthless when her husband died just a year after Vincent did, and she had to make him famous. No one was buying these. The art critics didn't like them, buyers didn't want them, and she had to make him famous and create this mythology around him, this brand around him in order to support herself and her one-year-old pretty sick baby boy. She was a widow in her 20s, and what she did is incredible. She's the reason that we know Vincent Van Gogh's name today. She's the reason that so many of us lost our virginity underneath a poster of the Starry Night in a dorm room. I just don't think that after you hear her story and all of the labor and the work that she put in to elevate this man who was barely even though about at the time, I don't think anyone's ever going to look at a van Gogh the same way ever again.
(13:24):
So this one is delightful. And like I said, we have a very spicy scene in the Louvre.
(13:29):
Hot. Hot.
Elise Hu (13:31):
You had to do some research in order to paint these scenes and paint these pictures. Was it hard having to go to Amsterdam in the Van Gogh Museum? Oh my God. Guys,
Jo Piazza (13:45):
I
Elise Hu (13:45):
Only
Jo Piazza (13:46):
Set books
Elise Hu (13:46):
To the Musee d'Orsey.
Jo Piazza (13:49):
I only set books in places that I want to go to. Okay. Yeah, it was really hard. Okay. I had to go to Paris, not once, but twice for research without my kids and also Amsterdam. Oh, bummer. And also Alver's outside of Paris where Vincent painted his last batch of paintings. Yeah, it's a tough life. It's funny though, because I went to kick off the writing of the book, which ended up being my best friend, Glenis McNichol, also friend of the show.
Elise Hu (14:21):
Who knows Paris very well.
Jo Piazza (14:24):
I mean, she's mostly there to enjoy herself in Paris part of the year. I went for her 50th birthday to kick
Elise Hu (14:30):
Off
Jo Piazza (14:31):
The book writing, and that was fantastic. And then I went when I was mostly finished to nail down everything to be like, "Did I get all this right?" I just mentioned it in passing to a bunch of the school moms from my kids' school, and they're like, "Great, we're going to come." I'm like, "What?" All of a sudden I had this gaggle of women coming with me on my research trip to Paris, which actually made it so much more fun. But I did get crazy access. In the Van Gogh Museum, I got to go through the library and got to read Jo Van Gogh's original diaries and see her handwriting and really see all this crazy work that she put in to make this man famous. It just makes you question everything about who we elevate, who we culturally care about, and all of the labor that goes into that that we just never see.
(15:22):
I love talking about the invisible labor of women, but it's packaged in a delicious art heist, just glittering art world bag of fun is what it is. It's a big old bag of fun.
Doree Shafrir (15:37):
Why are we just fascinated by heists as a culture? Yeah, I love a heist. And also, can you delineate the difference between a heist and just a burglary?
Jo Piazza (15:49):
A heist is a large scale robbery typically of an institution. So it's not like burglariing someone's home unless that person were say Elon Musk, that would probably be a heist when a person is elevated to the level of institution. And there has to be a huge monetary value at stake. So heists are typically art museums, jewelry heists, that is a heist, or just massive amounts of money such as a casino heist, which we saw in All the Oceans movies. But you're not wrong. I think that a heist is the perfect true crime gateway drug. We could all imagine ourselves as heisters. People have though how they would pull off a heist and they don't feel guilty about it because it almost feels like Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, and it feels like a victimless crime. It's like, oh, whatever.
(16:50):
These museums are so rich anyway. It's not a place for me. And the bummer about it, because I spent a lot of time with art heist experts, is that museums are the place where the public gets to see these things, where the public gets to experience these things. Most of the time they're nonprofits, they're not actually making money, but there is this sense of eating the rich when it comes to big heists. I think that we're often always rooting for the heisters as well. It was crazy because you guys remember the Louvre Heist, obviously,
(17:23):
Which I didn't do it. I didn't orchestrate it, but it came out. Well, it happened the day that my book cover was supposed to be announced after I'd already written the whole book. Wow. And I called my publisher and I was like, "We have to release this cover immediately." And they're like, "Well, it's totally ready." I'm like, "No, immediately right now." I think we were all just kind of rooting for these louvre heists because we're like, "All right, these royal jewels, why should one family even have this much wealth? Isn't it kind of ridiculous and ostentatious anyway?" And then it turned out that the Louvre heisters were kind of hot, and that made it even more fun for all of us.
Doree Shafrir (18:00):
Let's just go back and ask you, do you have a self-care practice? You seem to be doing a million things all the time, so what do you do to chill out?
Jo Piazza (18:11):
Yeah, and it changes, right? I think that my self-care, I'm firmly in perimenopause right now, but I also hate it, and I also think perimenopause is my superpower because I just do not care what other people think anymore. And so part of my self-care practice is just massive ease, right? If I'm going to go to school, drop off in my pajamas carrying a mug of coffee and not a to-go coffee with no makeup on, I do not give any Fs anymore. I think leaning into that has really released me from a lot of stress and a lot of pressure. I also sleep so much. I'm a sleep maxer. I need between nine and 10 hours of sleep. And people ask all the time because I write a lot of books and they're like, You must never sleep. I'm like, no, I prioritize sleep at the cost of everything else.
(19:06):
It is my biggest self-care practice. I'm in bed as soon as I get those kids. I've got three kids, so putting them to bed is like an opera at night. I have to do so many things and it's different with all of them. It's so annoying, but I'm in bed right after them, and I'm in my pajamas and I'm like, no one is going to touch me. I'm not having night sex. That is going to really disrupt my sleep. There are times during the day for that kind of thing, friend, but not now, not when I need to get my rest. And then I'm also, I'm a freak about moisturizing and my red light mask. I love my red light mask, so I do that right before bed. Also, to put me to sleep, because I'm a bad sleeper, I have this Manta sleep mask, which has built-in Bluetooth headphones, so I can listen to very esoteric history podcasts spoken by old British men.
(19:56):
So the rest is history is my go-to, and I fall asleep to the rest is history every night, and Nick doesn't have to listen to it after I just lather on all of my CeraVe moisturizer over my French A313 retinol and crawl into my cocoon of my fuzzy Lola blanket. I have a favorite fuzzy blanket brand. I use the Lolas, and I put myself in a cocoon every night and then sleep for nine to 10 hours.
Elise Hu (20:25):
What are you doing for work when you're not writing the book? Is that a good balance for you? Do you want to do more of it? Do you want to do less of it? Where are
Jo Piazza (20:34):
You at? It's an interesting balance right now, and I think that we're all kind of in a world of an interesting balance, teeter-tottering on the seesaw of precarity. Writing books is my full-time job. I'm lucky enough to be able to do it as a full-time job. I mean, that said, I've also kind of created this entire media ecosystem that includes podcasts, newsletters, and some levels of consulting in terms of digital storytelling, narrative, things like that. But I'm also at a place where I will only take on clients that are not dickheads. And so I genuinely will not work with assholes these days. I don't have the time for it. I have no threshold for toxic individuals. I'm very lucky that I get to choose that, but I do like having all of these different spokes of the wheel of what I call a media storytelling company because we just don't know what the world is going to look like five minutes from now or five years from now.
(21:41):
I mean, I'm hedging all of my bets. In a perfect world, I don't want to do that. I would love to just write books, and also to be able to just write books and then not be the person 75% responsible for those books selling. But that's not the world that we live in right now.
Doree Shafrir (22:00):
What do you want to work on next? Like you said, you have an idea -
Jo Piazza (22:04):
Oh my God, guys.
Doree Shafrir (22:05):
That you want your publisher to hear. I
Jo Piazza (22:06):
Need them to greenlight this 100%. Yeah. Are they listening now? Okay, so the one that I need to get green lit is a retelling of the Sound of Music from the Baroness' perspective. Whoa. Because she's the best character in The Sound of Music. She truly is, but we don't have her backstory. So in my conception of this, the Baroness, she's a young, ambitious woman. She marries an older man, a Baron, just to try to pull herself up from her bootstraps and make something of her life, and then he ends up dead and she has to figure out who killed him because everyone in Austria suspects her. And so there's this whole murder plot, and then as she becomes the Doyen of high society, she meets a sad widower who has never enjoyed passion in his life, and she has this massive sexual awakening with the captain all over Europe, and then they get engaged, and she realizes she doesn't want to be trapped by seven children, even if they're in boarding school some of the time.
(23:14):
So she orchestrates his love affair with a sweet young nun who just wants to wear clothing made out of curtains.
(23:20):
And then she has a final affair with a young Nazi sympathizer named Ralph and pulls him back from the edge and brings him to the side of the resistance, and then retires happily with her best friend Max in New York City and produces Broadway Plays.
Elise Hu (23:38):
Oh my goodness.
Jo Piazza (23:39):
Wow.
Elise Hu (23:39):
This retelling could then, and this could be Meta, and I will just yes and you and say that this retelling after it becomes a book could become a musical.
Jo Piazza (23:50):
A hundred percent. I love that you're on my wavelength because I'm like, no, this is the sound of music, sequel, pre -
Elise Hu (23:56):
Think of the IP. Right goodness. Of the
Jo Piazza (23:59):
IP. Think of the IP. And the coolest part about it is that in my mind, the baroness is actually loosely based on Pam Harriman, who was Winston Churchill's daughter-in-law, who was also kind of a cortisone and secret spy for Churchill. She slept with all of these - Of course. Really, really well-connected men and brought all of this information to Winston during the war, but then she married the man who created The Sound of Music.
Elise Hu (24:26):
Oh my goodness.
Jo Piazza (24:28):
I know. Mind blown. Okay? I mean, I want to write it right now, but there's just not enough time in the book release schedule for me to do it, but I'm now obsessed.
Elise Hu (24:41):
If anyone can and just churn it out, it would be you. And this is very exciting.
Jo Piazza (24:47):
Thank you. From your lips to the book people's ears.
Elise Hu (24:50):
Yeah. I wonder if we can just make a social clip of your pitch here, and then it'll already be out there. Exactly. And then it's sort of like, well, it's already out there.
Jo Piazza (24:58):
Yeah, it's already out there. Jo has already just drawn the line
Elise Hu (25:03):
Of the sand. Yeah, she beated it out. All the beats are there, and it's on Instagram if we make a click out of it. It's on Instagram and
Jo Piazza (25:10):
It's going to go viral as the Parisian heist comes out, and then all the press happens, and everyone listens to this episode, and everybody wins. All the women win. See, I don't want rage. I just want all tides to rise all ship and to celebrate
Elise Hu (25:23):
All women. Exactly. You are uplifting all of us. That's my goal, all of us.
Jo Piazza (25:26):
That's my goal.
Elise Hu (25:26):
By uplifting the baroness and her narrative.
Jo Piazza (25:29):
And imagine the dresses, guys. She's going to look like. Oh, the fashion.
Elise Hu (25:36):
Okay, let's take a break and we will be right back.
Doree Shafrir (25:45):
Jo, one of the other things that you do that I wanted to talk to you about is your mobile bookstore.
Jo Piazza (25:51):
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Doree Shafrir (25:53):
The bookcase
Jo Piazza (25:54):
Books.
Doree Shafrir (25:54):
Yeah. Tell us how that came about, how it's going. And I'm also curious, you've been an author and a writer for so long, but what have you learned from being a bookseller?
Jo Piazza (26:05):
Honestly, so much. I've learned more about being an author from being a bookseller. I think it's really, really cool and informative to be on the other side. This is yet another one of my perimenopausal superpowers. I wake up at two in the morning. I'm so sweaty. I'm just wet. I'm drenched in sweat. And I would love, love, love to ask your audience for recommendations on moisture wicking jammies that aren't ugly because I have not found any yet, and I think there's a business opportunity there for us to make moisture wicking jammies that are still cute because I'm just sweaty at two in the morning. I wake up and I change my jammies and pee, and then I have these ideas. But unlike I think what I would've done in my 20s where I just go back to sleep, I now execute on them at two in the morning.
(26:52):
So I'm on Facebook Marketplace buying a vintage book trailer, getting an Ingram account. And my husband who runs our media company with me also helps me helm up the bookstore. But a pop-up bookstore is just so cool because you're not paying rent. And we have a vintage camping trailer that travels around the Catskills. We haven't taken it out of the Catskills yet because Nick is really scared about taking it on the highway, as well, he probably should be. I'll do anything, so I'm not scared. But we pop up in Philly anywhere. We go to breweries, we go to wineries, we sit outside my house. We took over our kids' lemonade stand a couple days ago, and that was awesome because we met so many of our neighbors just selling books.
(27:34):
But I've learned a ton about, first, how readers buy books, how they discover books. People are really desperate to get book recommendations, not necessarily from these celebrity book clubs, which have become super political these days, and also controlled by the publishers who decide which books get pushed towards them. Oh, interesting. I hear the different ways that people want to read too. One of the things that I do is I sit down and I'm like, "Tell me the last book that you freaking loved." And then I'm like, "Oh, okay. I've got one for you." I usually do because I also only stock the store with books that I truly loved and also with authors that I think are genuinely good people. Again,
Elise Hu (28:16):
I
Jo Piazza (28:16):
Don't work with D-heads anymore. And then people also, I'm like, "Let me know what you though of it." And so everyone slides in my DMs and tells me what they though of it. I mean, you could say it helps you figure out trends, like what do readers want to read, but it also helps you figure out how people want to talk about books and how word of mouth happens and how they. And the most important thing I think is people are just desperate to gather in community again. And so by having a place that someone can talk to an author and talk to a bookseller, and I see this a lot from men because we go to breweries, and I think that a lot of bookstores do not often feel like a safe, cozy place for a man to just mess around. Oh, interesting. But a brewery, it's true.
(28:58):
They're like, "I haven't been in a bookstore in years and it's not bookstore's fault. I think it's just our culture." But at a brewery, they will sit down and chew my ear off for hours and also pick up books by women. I think it is true that men do not often read books by women, but I also think books by women are not being sold to men. I got so many guys reading The Correspondent and then Sixworth and also Americaly Right Creatures, so many men into my book, The Sicilian Inheritance, and it's just because they want to be told what to read and they want to have a conversation about it. They're like, "All right, what am I going to like about this book?" And there's not enough places for them to get that. And so that's been super, super cool. We just bought the domain too.
(29:40):
This is another middle of the night thing for Catskills Book Festival, so we're going to launch a Catskills Book Festival in August.
Elise Hu (29:45):
Oh, how fun. And talk about bringing people together. So
Jo Piazza (29:49):
Cool. I know. I just want to be in real life.
Elise Hu (29:51):
Yeah. And I'm going to share my acupuncturist offline with you, but also I want to find out the bar, the threshold that you I would have to cross to rent a. Or not rent, buy a camper and start a mobile bookstore because this is so necessary. I know they exist all over the place, but I had this idea to. And ever since I was a little girl, I wanted to own a bookstore or work in one. Yes. Yes. It's a dream. But then as I got older, I was like, I want a bar bookstore. If I were to be a shop owner, I want a bar bookstore because it's bookstore by day, but a bar by night. And we have live music and all these sorts of things. We could do bar book events, but also have a full liquor license. So that was then my idea.
(30:36):
And then over the last couple of years, I started looking at places near me where I could open up a bookstore and make it a bar bookstore. And I was looking at commercial real estate and all these things. And then I kid you not, about six months ago on the very street where I wanted to have a bookshop, a new bookstore opened called Good Girl Books, which I'm very excited about. I actually made a little TikTok about it because I am very excited about Google. I haven't been
Jo Piazza (31:00):
There yet. That
Elise Hu (31:01):
Sounds
Jo Piazza (31:02):
Wonderful. I need to look it up.
Elise Hu (31:03):
Yeah. It's new one and it's not too far from me. I was like, "You know what? That would've been too much." A whole storefront, I can't handle. Not so much. But this is kind of like, "Oh wait, this is another way to live out this particular dream." Maybe not actually be the bar, but just pull up to bars.
Jo Piazza (31:23):
You pull up to the bar. Because that's my dream too. We are constantly kind of like you. We look for a brick and mortar in Philadelphia, but I'm super lazy. So it has to be within a four block radius of my house on the way to my kids school. Exactly. It was by my kid's
Elise Hu (31:37):
School, which is where I was looking for my bar bookstore
Jo Piazza (31:40):
Concept. 100%, 100%. And I think that our neighborhood does still need one, but it has to be a very particular building and the investment has to be right and all the things because I'm also an old Sicilian grandma when it comes to money. I hoard it under my mattress. I am very risk averse when it comes to spending money on anything. But our idea is obviously not a full bar, but because liquor licenses, as Doree knows, are tricky in Philadelphia, but a wine and cheese bookstore. It's a wine bar, probably wine and beer. Wine and beer licenses are a lot easier, but then also cheese to fulfill my dream of also becoming a cheesemonger.
Elise Hu (32:25):
Oh, heyo. Yes.
Jo Piazza (32:28):
Yes. Yes. The number one cheese monger in the world, Amelia Dalbero is actually from Philly and I so creepily slid into her DMs and I was like, "Heyo." Because I read a story that she was like, "Oh, if I weren't a cheesemonger, I wanted to be a butcher." And I'm like, "I wrote a book about a lady butcher in Philadelphia called Sicilian Inheritance. I would like to give it to you." So creepy. And she wrote back, she's like, "Hi, Jo, I already have it on my nightstand, so thank you." And so now I'm trying to hang out with her so that she can teach me all of her cheesemonger magic because yeah, cheese,
Elise Hu (33:04):
Cheese, cheese. Well, and now I will be your Padawan because I need to learn your mobile bookmonger magic because I really like this. I think you'll love it. I
Jo Piazza (33:13):
Want everyone to
Elise Hu (33:14):
Do
Jo Piazza (33:14):
It. No, I want everyone to do it. Our trailer, it was super affordable. We got it from my friend Rose, who's a designer and she had a mobile florist and now it has good juju because that has turned into a brick and mortar florist, so it was already cute. And we're putting up new shelves when we get to the Catskills this weekend, and we're just going to drive it around all day Sunday and park it in weird places and sell books to people. But even sitting at the table outside our house when we took over the kids' lemonade stand, it really was so cool. We probably sold 50 books in a couple hours just to people walking by. Those are good margins for a bookstore. We had such great talks, just such cool talks about. It was election day when we did it. So we were all talking about local politics and stuff, and I'm like, "This is what a bookstore is.
Elise Hu (34:02):
This
Jo Piazza (34:02):
Is a community hub. This is
Elise Hu (34:03):
So cool." Yeah, it's a third space. Yeah, it's a third space.
Jo Piazza (34:05):
It's third space,
Elise Hu (34:06):
But
Jo Piazza (34:06):
A third space can be anywhere. We could create a third space. It
Elise Hu (34:09):
Could be a traveling third space. Yeah.
Jo Piazza (34:11):
We're a traveling third space. Oh my God, I'm going to put that on our website. I'm stealing that right now. Jo,
Doree Shafrir (34:17):
Just before we let you go, you mentioned Philly, a city that is near and dear to my heart. How is Philly these days?
Jo Piazza (34:25):
Philly's good. Philly's good these days. I mean, I think that all cities are having a rough time right now just in the political dumpster fire of our world, but I truly believe Philadelphia is the best city in America. I grew up in the burbs here and we went to college there. I came back here because I needed a village. I knew that when I was having children, I could not do this on my own.
Elise Hu (34:49):
So
Jo Piazza (34:49):
Many of my friends that I grew up with and also who went to college with me had moved back. We have this great village. Our kids all go to school together and I feel really supported. I do not think that women can do all of the things that we are expected to do in this world that offers us no safety net without the help of other women. I moved to Philadelphia. I had been in New York and San Francisco specifically for that, and I got it. I built my village. I was very purposeful in it, and I credit this village with my ability to do all these things that I love and to be able to write these books and make podcasts and do all the things. I could not do it without this support system.
Elise Hu (35:30):
For sure. Jo, you were a delight, as usual, as always. I love all the workshopping and brainstorming we did today.
Jo Piazza (35:39):
Thank you guys. This was so wonderful. I love seeing your faces.
Doree Shafrir (35:45):
All right. It's always so fun to get to talk to Jo. I want to go to Philly to see her. I haven't been to Philly in so long. She'
Elise Hu (35:53):
Such an ambassador. I want to check out her mobile bookstore.
Doree Shafrir (35:55):
I know. She's such an ambassador for Philly. It's really cool. So thank you, Jo, for coming on the show. Elise, did you do some cardio?
Elise Hu (36:07):
I did. I did. And all thanks to my friend, Amanda, who is back from her various summer travels, who I go running with and keeps a schedule. But for her, I would not run as much as I do, which is not much at all. And then this week, because we are in the swing of summer in the middle of July now, I still haven't framed all those kid art pieces that I've wanted to frame last summer. So I'm going to call my intention summer cleaning because not only do I want to slim down my wardrobe, I also want to do some of the sort of various projects that I wanted to take care of a while ago to preserve the kids' work. I'm going to do that as my intention this week and hopefully get to it now that the kids are in a real swing of camps.
(37:01):
What about you? Toss it over to you.
Doree Shafrir (37:03):
Well, I am happy to say I did not go crazy at my parents. Woo-hoo. Yes. Thanks everyone so much for your concerns, your thoughts.
Elise Hu (37:19):
The thoughts and prayers reached
Doree Shafrir (37:20):
You. Your thoughts and prayers. This week I'm getting my haircut and my intention is to kind of use that as a jumpstart. Yeah, to get a little bit out of my rut of blah. So that is my intention for this week. Kind
Elise Hu (37:41):
Of a weird one. Get out of the blahs. Get out of the blahs.
Doree Shafrir (37:44):
I'm hoping the haircut will help get me out of the blahs.
Elise Hu (37:48):
Yeah, it feels so nice, that scalp massage.
Doree Shafrir (37:51):
Such a dream. Totally. All right everybody, thank you so much. Forever 35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hu and produced and edited by Samee Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everybody.
Elise Hu (38:07):
Talk to you next time.
Doree Shafrir (38:08):
Bye.