 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show, where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. So in keeping with the All Things LGBTQ Plus tradition, we have invited to join us for this interview show, one of the new out LGBTQ Plus representatives. And this is the representative from the Bennington Rutland District, and I'm going to look so I include all the correct towns representing Danby, Dorset, Landgrove, Mount Tabor, and Peru. So please welcome for a first time visit with All Things representative Mike Rice. Welcome, Mike. Thanks, Keith. Good to be with you. It's nice having you here, and thank you for finding time because I know right now you're in the second half of this of this year's session. There's a real push to get bills through. So let's start by talking a little bit about you and how a charming young man from upstate New York ends up in Vermont. Yeah. Well, I'm down here in the southwest corner of Vermont, the southwest Queendom, we like to call it. And so not too far, actually, from where I grew up outside of Albany, but I did, you know, my partner and I first landed in Vermont up in Barnard, and I had gone there to work a season on a farm and cider making project. So we moved into a little cabin that came along with the apprentice job that I had, and I was spending the time, you know, gathering apples and helping to press cider, learn how to make cider and vinegar, and helping to get the farm property ready for the winter. It was, you know, the fall and into the early winter that we were there. And that season ended and that job ended and our tenure in that little cabin ended, but we both sort of looked at each other and said, we've got to figure out a way to stay in Vermont. We just love it here. So it took a little while as I think is common for two of us to find jobs, you know, somewhat related to our fields or the fields we wanted to be in and to find housing. And the combination of those things and landed us down here in the top of Bennington County. And, you know, first we're renting a place for a couple years and really got to know the community that way. And then just before COVID we're fortunate enough to be able to sneak in and buy our place here in Durset where we live now and where I was able to start this journey from. I was going to say housing seems to be the, you know, universal. It's either what allowed the transition to happen is what inhibited it. You know, it's we're still looking. And if you know something, could you please share that information? In that process though, you also went to the Vermont Law School. Yeah. So yeah. So I finished up on the farm and then knew that I wanted to stay and engaged in food and and and ag work. But I also had this, you know, sort of long held interest in the policy side of things. And so when we were in Barnard, I met a bunch of Vermont law students, both law students and master's students and got to know the programs there a little bit. And it just turned out to be the perfect program for me because it was this food and agriculture specific policy master's program that I ended up doing. So I got to really dig in on the on the law and policy specific to food systems and the way we farm and the way we use the land. So it's exciting. So when you're not at the legislature, what is it that you do to support yourself? So for the last few years, I've worked for farming nonprofit advocacy group NOFA, Northeast Organic Farming Association, has a presence in seven northeastern states. So I actually tend to work not for the Vermont, not for no Vermont, but for the Massachusetts chapter, sort of by happenstance started working remotely for them even before COVID and have continued to do so. For the first year or so that we live down here, I was working on a dairy farm in Creamery. So got a little taste of that, that very specifically Vermont part of the farming world too. Nothing, nothing takes you further than that experiential sort of hands-on. I really know what this is like. So if you were working, have been working for NOFA, then you've been involved in sort of policy development and looking at what is our governmental institutional responses to the agricultural industry. Is that what led you into a more formal political role? Well, you know, I knew that I wanted to work on some policy stuff. I had had the opportunity to work on the farming policy a little bit through NOFA. My role there is both developments of doing, you know, finding the money to support lots of the great programmatic work that the organization does. And then also sitting on the interstate policy council, so sort of developing the broader policy goals of the whole northeastern organic farming collection of organizations. But you know, specifically, so I knew I wanted to work on policy and living down here in this corner of Vermont, one path to being able to do that is to decide to jump in and run to represent your community and be able to sort of bring the, what you see, what I'm seeing on the ground down here up to Montpelier, which sometimes feels like a different world entirely from this corner of Vermont. And, but there, you know, it sort of went beyond my interest in farm policy specifically too and just seeing what the makeup of the legislature was and really feeling passionately about the fact that I thought there should be more younger voices, you know, just voices that weren't necessarily, it didn't look like they were represented quite as much as I thought they could be in the legislature. And I decided that if I was going to think that and complain about it, I might as well try to do something about it too. So when you were running for office, did you have an idea of the types of legislation that you wanted to help introduce, support, see passage, you know, your legislative priorities? Yeah, I mean, my, I would say my legislative priorities were really dictated by the conversations I was having here. You know, I'd knocked on a lot of doors. I'm relatively new to my community as far as expectations of Vermonters tend to go. For how much time you or your family might have spent in a place. And so I really committed to knocking on as many doors as I could in all five of the towns that I was hoping to represent and really having conversations and hearing what was on people's minds, what people thought we needed to be doing better. And it almost always came back to these sort of intersecting crises of housing and child care and workforce and climate, right? And how they all interconnect and they're all related and we're not going to solve any of them without trying to attack all of them from all the different angles. So when I started thinking about what legislative priorities might be based on those conversations, it came down to things like, you know, investing in housing on all levels, investing in child care so that, you know, parents can afford to go back into the workforce, investing in paid family and medical leave so that, you know, folks can afford to take the time they need to take when they're ill or when a loved one is ill or when they're welcoming a child and know that they can go back to work and their employer can know that they're coming back to work too. All those things started to really sort of rise to the top. Now, following Representative Kate Donnelly's resignation, you know, I have been asking her out legislators and, you know, you've talked about going door to door and meeting the people in your district. You were supported by the Victory Fund, so you were an out candidate. What was the community? What was your constituents response to you? And what has that been like now that you're serving? Yeah, I'm hearing a lot about social media and it's not necessarily all that pleasant. Yeah, I would say the response in my community has overwhelmingly been positive, you know, and I was very open about who I was as I was running. I talked often about my, you know, how my partner and I had come to wind up here and what he does for work in the community and all of that. You know, I'll say that it was something to navigate, you know, mentally for me as a candidate in a place, in a rural place, you know, five small towns spread out over mountains and valleys where, you know, everybody said that the thing that I had to do, the thing that was most important was knock on doors and drive down those long driveways where you can't see the house from the road and all of that. And I committed to doing it and I did it and I'm glad I did and I had a lot of really great interactions through doing it. But I'd be lying if I didn't say that sort of my identity was not something I considered as I was doing that and as I was sort of making that turn to see what was at the top of the driveway or knocking on the door where I didn't know who was inside or hadn't met the folks who were there. It's an interesting thing to navigate to I think as somebody who sort of holds marginalized identities and obviously, you know, not marginalized identities, you know, as a white man who is gay, you know, sort of trying to deal with all this in a rural part of the state. I think it's perhaps a lot easier for me than it would be for other folks, but also, you know, definitely not something to be ignored either. So in the legislature, you were serving on the agriculture, food resiliency, and forestry committee. So what is the work that you are doing in that committee that the people who are watching this interview should know about and should be supporting? Yeah, so it's a really exciting committee this year specifically. We got a couple of new jurisdictional charges in this biennium. It used to be agriculture and forestry. They dealt primarily with, you know, things that went on on farms and wood forest products industries. We inserted food resiliency in the middle of those two things in the name of the committee, and that's a huge task for us to examine how we can build more resilient food systems in Vermont and in the region, how we can make sure that our communities are more food secure. And then we also added specific language about responsibilities for climate adaptation and mitigation, sort of really naming the fact that farming needs to be a part of the solution when it comes to climate change and how that can happen and all the pieces that go into that from building soil health to being responsible for pollinators, and then obviously the sort of long held water quality pieces in Vermont agriculture. So those two things just I think really sort of sparked the committee gave us a lot of energy that, you know, also lots of new members were I think majority new members on the committee. It grew in size. I think it used to be eight members. It's now up to 11. We have a new chair, a new vice chair. So just lots of really exciting new energy and lots of inspirations to really dig into this new pieces of our work, which we did right off the bat by taking on this Universal School Meals Bill, which really touches that food resiliency part of our charge. So you're also one of the leadership of the Climate Solutions Caucus, but you just mentioned, you know, the school food programs. Yeah. Could you talk a little bit about that because that's something that personally people have been asking me about. And if I knew what was happening with that piece of legislation. Yeah, absolutely. So Universal School Meals free breakfast and lunch accessible to all students in Vermont has been the reality for the last three school years, the first two years with federal funding, you know, that came out of COVID. And then last year, the legislature approved one time funding to cover this current school year. And so this bill that came to our committee was introduced by a couple of members of the Education Committee and a couple members of the Ag Committee to say, let's make this permanent, you know, we're not going back. Why do we treat food differently than we treat all the other things that are just built in as a part of what we know to be a successful educational experience for our kids, whether it's the textbooks or the teachers or the bus ride in, you know, why would we treat breakfast and lunch any differently. So the bill, we took a lot of time with it in our committee. We took a lot of testimony from teachers and administrators and food service directors and school nurses and parents and students and advocates and unanimously they said, this is an incredible program. It's made huge changes in our school communities. Please make it permanent. So our committee passed it. And then the full house passed it two weeks ago. And now it moves on as journey goes to the Senate. And I think we're all really hopeful that that we're going to get this done. If I'm hungry, I can't learn. And if the stigmatization of I'm the one kid in the line getting the free lunch keeps me from being in the line, you know, we supported our youth. That's right. And one, you know, one thing that we heard a lot about was how big the the sort of missing middle is in this, you know, there are kids whose families qualify for free and reduced lunch. And then there are perhaps, you know, a small percentage of the top kids who it's no problem, affording, you know, food. And there's a huge section of kids, you know, over a third of the kids in Vermont, whose families are in that middle income bracket, where they're not necessarily qualifying for the previous free and reduced lunch programs. But it is sometimes a struggle to put enough food on the table for the family, you know, for three meals a day, seven days a week, all year round. So if we can just take this piece out and say, you're not going to have to worry about your kid eating breakfast and lunch during the school day, it just makes it that much easier and that much more possible for those families to make sure everybody's fed, you know, for dinner and on the weekends and when when when folks aren't in school. And the committee you're serving on has the highest number of LGBTQ legislators with three serving on the committee. So what is it that we as members of the LGBTQ plus community can do to support you and to support the other members of the Rainbow Hopkos in being our face, being our voice in the legislature and creating room for those coming up behind us? Yeah, you know, that's a great question. And one, I might need a little more time to reflect on just having been in the building for a few months. I've been really excited to see how broad the Rainbow Caucus is, you know, the different perspectives that are brought to the table when we gather around it, the different interests and and professional backgrounds that people come to it with, you know, we have, as you said, three members in our committee, one of whom is a farmer, and one of whom comes to the committee through more through work in the food security and food pantry world. And then myself, and then we have, you know, Rainbow Caucus members who are, you know, health care workers and former journalists and nonprofit folks that, you know, just just really runs the gamut. And so that's what's exciting to me is sort of to see all those different backgrounds and perspectives brought to the table and also have, you know, being a member of the LGBTQ community be a be a piece of their perspective too. And we can make sure that that perspective is in every committee room in both in both chambers. That's sort of the real goal, because it does touch everything we do in every committee. And I was gonna say, and it's the members of the Rainbow Caucus that are some of those new younger members who are stepping up and coming into the political system and saying, I have a voice and I have a vision. And there is change that we can work on together. So in our remaining time, you, you intend on running for re-election when that comes around. What, what would you like to see the legislature accomplish before the session ends? Yeah, I mean, obviously, lots of the priorities that we've already touched on. And, and I'd also like to, I'd really like to see us put together a budget that speaks to all the values and priorities that, that we've mentioned and some that we haven't too, you know, to, to really meet the moment with, with a budget that matches those values. And, and let's Vermonters know that we have actually heard all of what they're saying about the intersecting crises that we face and that we're going to invest so that we're not just constantly in this crisis posture, so that we're not just, just continuing to sort of mire in a housing crisis that leads to, you know, in part a workforce crisis, a childcare crisis that's deeply connected to both of those things, a climate crisis that we've been talking about for my entire life and still haven't taken the action we need to take on it. So I think that, you know, we can do these things programmatically, but it really means a lot when we step up and put our money where our mouths are and say, if we mean it about solving these crises about moving on about lifting Vermonters up, we've got to do it in our budget. That's, that's what I'm hopeful for, for this session, and, and then to keep, to keep working, you know, in the trenches on the, on the rest of the policy as well. And I understand you have ongoing forums with your constituents, so you would be continuing to hear what they have to say. So thank you for spending this time with us, and it'll look forward to your next visit. Thanks so much, Keith. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Krista and Eli Hawkeland, Albreth, and Miko, who is how you may hear in the background or see in person. They are both involved with a project called Shapeshifters, and you've been, you just celebrated your ninth anniversary, so please continue. Let me welcome you. Thanks, happy to be here. Yeah. It's great to see you. Eli and I met in out in the open summit how many years ago, maybe before the pandemic. It must have been. And we talked about an interview. Time has marched on, and here we are happily. Let me tell you a little about the business, if I may, from your website. It's fashionable, self-inclusive, gender-affirming clothing. Since 2014, Shapeshifters has led the way for fashionable, size-inclusive, gender-affirming clothing. From its start on a shared Etsy store in the living room in Brooklyn, and that's a colorful story, too, that you began with. Shapeshifters has grown into its own studio in Southern Vermont, employs four people. Is that still right? Still four people? Five total. Oh, great. And has customers all over the world. We offer the largest range of skin tones available on the market, the largest size range, and the widest style range. Let me continue about that your customer base. Our products are quite deliberately offered for everyone who might want to compress or flatten their chest for any reason. This includes non-binary people, trans men, trans women who want to alter their presentation or style, gender-fluid people, cis women who want to alter their presentation or style, cis men experiencing gynecomastia, anyone with a large chest who participates in physical activities in which their chest hinders their movement, and I'm sure customers who fit none of these categories who buy and wear chest binders for their own reasons, which we all may never know. So that's a great description and a wide customer base. As I said, you've just celebrated your ninth anniversary. Congratulations on that. Thank you. How did you start the business and has it grown totally? I started the business when I came out and discovered that I couldn't find a binder that fit me. Or that was fun looking. Or that looked fun at all. And I happened to know a little bit about sewing spandex, so I made my own. And Chris and I were living together at the time and we were in that shared Brooklyn apartment, which had a shared Etsy store. Every roommate in the apartment had a few products on the Etsy store and the binders sold. The binders are the only things that sold. So we split them off. And Chris had joined in helping to cut fabric and ship things. And lo and behold, about a year later, we went viral on Tumblr. That's great. Yeah. And I would not say that it grew steadily. It grew in fits and spurts. And has grown much more steadily, I think, since we moved to Vermont and found some lovely people to come work for us. Well, you have moved all over the country or all over the northeast. Force of your relationship. How long have you been involved? We met online in 2008, met in person in 2010 and started dating in 2011. When I got married in 2014, I want to say. So gosh, that's a solid 15 years since the first AOL Instant Messenger chat room. Well, you were living Eli in Brooklyn and Chris was living in New Jersey. Is that right when you first got together? Actually, when we first met online, Eli was in Japan. I see. That's true. Impressive. I see words as a Japanese translator for a law firm. Yeah. Very impressive. I too worked for a law firm. Oh, yeah. And I started out as a proofreader, was promoted to being a paralegal, and then was fired. I'm all street. So it was a year. And then I moved on to the things that were more to my liking. Yeah, that sounds like Manhattan law. I know. I know. And, you know, they were all about how you should dress. And it was many years ago. But in the course of researching your interview, I learned a little about the history of binding and how draconian that in the old days, people used ace bandages and sometimes ribs were broken. You know, I wouldn't say it was that far in the old days. I remember hearing about ace bandages and broken ribs and saran wrap with duct tape on top in the late 90s, early OOs. Oh my gosh. Yeah, no. There were still conversations happening about it. When we first started ShapeShifters, I think it's been really recently that the larger conversation has been, please don't do this. It's very dangerous. But when we first started, there was like half the conversation was, here's the things that you can do. And half the conversation was, no, don't do it because it's dangerous. Please don't. We started in 2014, which was the same year as GC2B. Which is another binder company. Another binder company that also makes things in colors and stripes now. Now, before that year, the binder options were white, black, and ugly beige, and they were marketed towards cisgender men with gynecomastia and other hormonal things that might grow their chests. And that was it for actual chest binders. I think Tumblr really played a huge role in binder education and binding safety education because that was where a lot of these conversations happened in the early to mid-20s. Actually, what I just realized was probably a major, I think was a major turning point. There was a music video that came out. I believe it was Lady Gaga where she was binding her chest with duct tape or ace bandages or something. And the immediate reaction to this music video was, no, no, no, this is really dangerous. Please don't do that. Somebody get in contact with her people and explain how this is really damaging. No, I don't know if the conversation ever reached her. It was in our circles, but I don't think it hit mainstream well enough to get through. Yeah, she wasn't actually doing it. It was just part of a performance. But I think that really put it into the mainstream trans mask conversation. Yeah. It's like, don't do this thing. Lady Gaga had a music video binding with duct tape. And shortly thereafter, Ruby Rose did a music video binding with ace bandages. And both of them provoked a lot of talk. Yeah. I hate to pause, but on our screen, we have another visitor who's sitting between you. Oh, this is Remy. Remy on EMY. Yep. This is the cat who allows the baby to pet him sometimes. Or bodies like that. You should have a family photo. Back to the subject at hand. Eli, when you came out and started using binders, you said it was pretty uncomfortable and part of the reason for you to start making your own was for physical comfort. Is that right? It was. The trouble that I had was that I turned out to be between sizes. A medium was too small and a large was too big. And that was it. That was all that I had for options. So I took the large and I took my seam ripper to it and I took it apart and I turned it inside out and I tailored it to myself. And I looked at the construction and said, you know, I can do this. Well, speaking of sewing, I just saw a film called the blue calf tan. I don't know if you've seen it. It's from Moroccan LGBTQ film about Taylor who custom makes calf tan. And there are so many screenshots of sewing. It kind of opened my eyes to what an art sewing is. So you have been sewing for a long time. You mentioned that you had a relationship with your aunt who taught you this. So I would, yeah, my, the whole of my mother's side of the family has been involved in fiber arts in some way or another. And one of the really delightful things about shapeshifters has been getting to meet and get in touch with a whole lot of different queer tailors and the small but growing queer tailoring community of people who are altering clothes in ways to make it easier to express ourselves. And you're an online business, right? Yes. So it's got to be a challenge when people send in their measurements. We had a lot of, of hiccups, especially part of the reason that we got our own website was because we needed a way to kind of force people to put it to first of all put in their measurements at all. And second of all keep them within a range that makes sense for a human being. We had a lot of trouble in the early days of people mixing up their inches in their centimeters or measuring from the wrong side of the measuring tape. So we'd end up with somebody claiming we had a torso that was like 12 inches in diameter. Or 300. Tell me, you emphasize community. You're not, you know, trying not to be competitive with other industries. And I think that's a really selling point for most of us in the communities. What is the average cost of a binder? For us, we start at around $80. 80 to 85 is our lower end. And we go up to typically 120, 130. For special orders, we start at 200. People who want something really special and customized themselves. If I'm making a pattern from scratch and doing and doing something on that level, it's it's more. We, I would say that typically, you know, we're on the higher end. Across the field, you will see things more in the $50 to $60 range, because they are made by folks who set specific sizes and turn them out in factories, as opposed to making them to measure. And doing my research, I was able to look at some of your binders. And they're really a work of art. And that's what reminded me of this film, the blue canth can, because they are so crafted and colorful. And, you know, they really grew with me as a potential customer in. And I would imagine that's part of their wide appeal. What's the turnaround time? For most binders, our turnaround time is currently four to five weeks. And you do this. And Krista does the business. Is that the way it's developed at this point? Sorry, can you say that a bit louder, please? Sure. You do the sewing and Krista started out cutting because she could handle the scissors. And I could so much relate to that comment that you made. I used to fail crafts and camp all the time. So, but you've evolved to taking care of the business operation. You designed the website and, you know, you handled the on. Oh, we actually, sorry, because we were off of like, sort of really easy template websites, we have hired a website designer. Yes. These days, we have our own web designer, which is wonderful, because we have so much extremely specialized needs. As for the current division of labor, we've got three folks in the studio doing a lot of the sewing and manufacturing. And we are mostly at home due to various reasons. And our, yeah, running the business side, marketing, customer service, and shipping. And we're the shipping department. You're the shipping department too. So, you drive the vehicle around you have a truck or a car? No, I put things in a bag and I, Eli holds them up to the post office or to the maverick. That sounds like a plan. It seems like you're involved into a very efficient. So, let's switch, if we may, to your relationship. I see you have a great family there with you. How did you have to expand from the two of you? Sorry, can you say that one more time? Sure. How did you have to decide to expand your family from two? We've been talking about having kids for a while and it was sort of a matter of being in a space where we felt comfortable and also you know, the biological factor for figuring that out. It was about, yeah, I would say it was one part financial stability, one part location stability that we figured we really like it here in Brattleboro and we're going to stay for the long haul and yeah, one part biological availability. We had to figure that piece of the puzzle out. Oh, we got there. Well, one of the reasons I moved to Vermont was healthcare because it was easier to get healthcare. You know, so many people stay in 95 jobs because they don't want to lose their healthcare. So, I was able to take the leap and move here. How did you find the healthcare as you during your pregnancy here in Vermont? I mean that's, you mentioned that as kind of a challenge. Yeah, I had a really lovely experience with some personal healthcare with a specific local healthcare with specifically the queer midwife scene here in Brattleboro. Aces, wonderful. They just sent me to go on a birthday card. Yeah, his first birthday is coming up. And just having home visits from midwives who got it and knew what was going on was great and fantastic. Yeah, and they could like sort of suggest places to go and like, you know, this place is generally good as long as you, you know, explain to them exactly who you are and what's going on. Get us on a gram here where your pronoun pin, it'll be fine. On the systemic level, it was not so great. Blue Cross, Blue Shield of Vermont, and I logged according to my spreadsheet 58 hours of call time over the last three months, over the final trimester. You can imagine, I was not as patient with them as I might have otherwise been, but to be fair, I was facing a complete denial of all of my health insurance. Why are you getting all of these pregnancy tests done? In the final weeks of a pregnancy, it was an entire epic. I got Vermont Legal Aid involved. Which that was a game changer. Bless them. Yeah. Was it Vermont Legal Aid? Vermont Legal Aid has an office of healthcare advocacy and they assigned me a rep to just sit on hold with Blue Cross and Vermont Health Connect for a while to get everyone on the same conference call to figure the crap out. And eventually it all got sorted, but Blue Cross still hasn't reimbursed me for midwife care that they said they would. So, you know, Nico's going to be a year old in two weeks. It's kind of been a while. Oh, I know. I know. I've had trouble to hear Vermont more than I expected. Yeah. Because of health care. Utopia for LG. You were able to prime for Nico's here with us. I was also remarkably lucky in that I was able to have a home birth with midwives. I did not need to go to the hospital. I didn't need to deal with anybody I didn't know. Which that's luck. Yeah. And so besides that, your time in Vermont has been good. You're happy to be here. Love it. We landed here and promptly joined up without in the open and haven't looked back. Well, you tell an anecdote about sort of the culture shock and it reminded me I moved here from New Orleans and I went to make it back in this nail mail days. I went to mail a letter and I pulled up next to a mailbox and a policeman came over and I thought, Oh God, he's going to give me the ticket. He's going to tell me to move. And he took my letter and mailed it. This is a new scene. When we were still coming up to visit for summers because Eli's grandfather has a house in Townsend. We got pulled over for a speeding ticket, which was fully valid. I was absolutely scooting. You know, it's that part where you come off of the highway and into town. And he after we finished up, he apologized for taking up our time. I know it's like, I was here for my career. We didn't have to go to the court or anything because we weren't disputing it. But we did mail the ticket with the payment a little bit late, but nobody cared. I know, I know. It's a very different experience to New Jersey. I know. And other businesses, you know, they expect you to pay right there. And I'll take a check. If you don't have your check, we'll just give it to me later. I mean, you know, for artworks that we've purchased. The first sewing machine that I purchased in this town, I went to a fabric store on Main Street Brattleboro and asked, where do I find a sewing machine? Where can I buy one? And the proprietor looked at me and said, I got three in the back. Let me pull them out. And I looked at one and said, I would really, I think I would probably really like this one. She said, well, take it for two weeks and see if you like it. And then you can pay me. I didn't know where we were staying. Didn't take a phone number or an email address, anything. I researched. I used it. I liked it. I researched a likely use price for that sewing machine. I came back prepared to make an offer. I made the offer and she looked at me and she took it down $20. I think it was even more of a 20. Oh, I know. Incredible. Incredible. It was amazing. You still get orders. I know you have a background in anime and cosplay, et cetera. Do people order costumes from you? Do people order costumes? Yes. I'm going to grab a couple things for the baby, if you don't mind me pausing for about 30 seconds. For this one. We can talk, Krista. You're originally from New Jersey? Yes. And then you, did you ever, you and Eli moved to Brooklyn at some point and that's where you lived in? Yeah. Eli was living in Brooklyn at the time. When we met in person, Eli was living in Queens and then had moved to Brooklyn. And so I moved in with them in Brooklyn with like five other roommates. And it was only for a few months. So everybody was okay with it. And then, yeah, so we were in Brooklyn for a couple of years. We moved back to Jersey for a year and then we moved up here. And you were a stylist, a hairstylist in another place. That's one thing, you know, I'm having trouble with here in Montpelier. If you want to go back to business, I'll drive to Brattleboro. You could tell if I moved aside, it's not pretty, it's a lovely color. It looks really nice. But, you know, it's the difference between, well, it looks objectively good and it looks the way I want it to, right? Big change though. No more hairstyling. That's got to have been hard to all those hours on your feet. And, you know, I used to teach and one of my students who did it said, you know, it's like everybody's therapist. They gave their whole life story. Yeah, no, part of my problem was that the salon I was working in, it was a chain. It was in the salons and pennies and sears. I'm sorry, macy's and sears. And they don't advertise at all. Like part of the problem was that sears and macy's don't let them advertise outside of the little area that they're renting. But, you know, even the company itself didn't advertise. And the salon I was working in, it was, I lost you there. The salon you were working in closed. Yeah, the one I was working at in sears closed. And the one I was working at in macy's, you know, I was new. I didn't really have a clientele or anything. And I didn't come into it having like this long held passion for doing here. So it was hard to kind of promote myself and build a following. And I ended up getting laid off from that job just because I wasn't doing a lot of work. Most of the work I ended up doing was as a receptionist. I know. And sometimes it's just better to move on. That was my experience on Wall Street. So back to the costumes. You have costume orders. That's the way when you started out, people from the Comic Con world were ordering costumes from you. We used to go to conventions all dressed up in the costumes that we'd made. And friends would then contact us and say, hey, can I do, could you maybe turn me into Superboy? Can you do something like this? The 90s Superboy with the, how many belts? 11. 11 belts. A costume from the 90s. Next 11 different belts. I bought the leather jacket. I need everything else. These days, it is not so much conventions, though we do get the occasional order of those coming up. More recently, we've had wrestling gear ordered that we really like to do because it's something that is going to be, is going to go through a lot of strain. So it needs to have reinforced seams and be ready to be active. Wrestling gear also means that we are working with a character that the wearer has invented themselves. And that's always fun. That's a delight every time because you get to find out new things about, about this person and really work with them to create the persona that they're going to go into the ring with. Most recently. Oh, you're came here. Yeah, lost you. There we go. Most recently, I had a special order to recreate a book cover for the client's favorite book. Oh, how cool. Yeah, which was, it was, it's called Hell Followed With Us. It's by a trans dude author writing about trans dude body horror. And I had a really good time putting together this binder that had a biblical angel on one side layered seraphim wings with eyes in them. And then a bleeding heart on the other side. Is this an example of a costume project? I'd say so. I don't know. I don't specifically know if they're going to wear it as a costume or they're just going to wear it as a binder that looks really cool. The line between the two these days seems pretty thin because, you know, we all wear whatever we want. But yeah, I really like doing things like that where whoever sent in the piece to me has like a passion for this object or this design. And you both seem very social and like you like customer interaction. So even though it's all online, are you able to accomplish? Are you able to talk to your customers or interact with them in a way that is fun? Doing it online, like through the customer service line is a different experience than like being in person. We used to go to conventions and pride. Yeah. So we'd have a table because part of the custom making process is that sometimes somebody gets a binder that doesn't fit them. And so they send it back to us. And if we can adjust the existing binder, then we can just adjust it and send that back. But if, you know, if it's too small and they need something bigger, then we have to just remake it from the start. And so that smaller binder will go into our stock. And we usually, we used to take the stock with us to conventions so that, you know, people could try things on and buy things there. And that was a lot of fun. Like being able to talk to people in person and, you know, explain to their parents for them what's going on and give people space to like try out binding for the very first time because they've been kind of interested. But a little, I'm not sure if this is really for me. I don't want to drop $50 on something that I'm not quite sure is something that I really want. Yeah, customer service is different because, you know, most people are either, you know, they're, they're messaging you because something is wrong, right? And so you have to like be in customer service mode and be like, okay, so here's what we can do and here's our options. Or it's just kind of a neutral interaction. No more conventions for a while though, huh? Well, COVID kind of did a thing. Well, COVID was the beginning. Yep. And also now there's baby. And it's, and we don't want the baby to get COVID either. Yeah. And I still have, I still have fantasies now and again about an outdoor event here or there. Yeah. I would very much like to do something small down in Greenfield, Mass. There's a little pop-up shop. I think like we did at Los Angeles. Yeah. An outdoor patio pop-up shop feels like the scale that's possible. Or maybe, maybe even Burlington Pride. Again, it's outdoors. That helps a lot. Maybe. I mean, my patio pride's outdoors too on the State House lawn. And we've never been. Yeah. Yeah. This is where we can be there for a few hours rather than, well, we've got to go to Philly and be at the Philadelphia Convention Center for three days. Philadelphia Trans Health is a very, was a great event to go to. And it was wonderful. And also we can no longer sustain a four day convention with 10 hour days. That is no longer. Well, this has been fun. I was going to ask you all these heavy questions about, you know, trans rights in our time. But let's stop for that to another time. I'm not sure. Tell us any last words you want to leave us with. Well, what would you like to say to potential customers? It's not that scary. Binding is a way to be in the world. It's a piece of clothing that you can choose to wear or not. It's underwear. It's underwear. It makes sense for a lot of people. And you don't have to be a specific way for it to make sense for you. And also it's fine to go with cheaper binders if you're just starting out and you don't want to drop $80 on something that you're not sure you want. If you want to drop $80 on a custom made, made in Vermont binder, you can come to us. And also it's totally fine to just try it out. We couldn't do that. We understand. You don't have to come to us. We won't be offended. I love it. You have the money and you know you want it. Oh, I do have one more thing to say, which is if you don't want to drop $80, but you still want to come to the Vermont makers, try out and make your own kit. Oh yeah, that's right. We have a cheaper option. Our low cost option, which we just started doing and which I'm really excited about is that we sell kits that are the fabric and the pattern and instructions. And you get the kit and you learn how to make your own binder with your own home sewing machine. And then if you need to tailor your other binders or make a binder for a friend, you have the knowledge and the skills already. And that's something that I feel really strongly about is giving the knowledge that we've built out to the community and teaching other people how to make their own binders and what the fabric feels like when it works and how you can get soft fabric that binds effectively. The make your own kits that we now sell are my theory for how to decentralize this knowledge and hopefully someday have a queer tailor in every community who can help out people with shapewear so that people don't have to always send their binders to us. Because sometimes you're in Australia or Tennessee or New Zealand or London or wherever and it's kind of hard to send everything to Vermont and back. Get a kit, develop the knowledge and the skill, become the resource that you need. All right. Sorry, where the binders are like $80, the kits are $30. Okay, very inspiring. And I would add that the binders that I saw were just beautiful, beautiful. Thank you. So thank you. Krista and Eli, thank you for joining us and be sure to come back again. We'd love to hear from you. Absolutely. Love to. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.