03/29/2024
It’s National Mom & Pop Business Owners Day, & we’d like to take a minute to thank you for your support and introduce ourselves to anyone who’s new around here.
We’re Gary & Denise, a husband & wife team who opened Two Birds Books in Eastside Santa Cruz during the pandemic. And this is Marsh, our sometimes store dog (in his old age he prefers the couch to the sales floor most days).
We both grew up finding a lot of solace in books—Denise at her local library and Gary at his local used bookstore, where he was a fixture for his entire childhood/young adulthood. We’ve had other gigs—Gary worked for many years in animal welfare and mental health care, and Denise still works as a college instructor and book editor—but opening this store has been a lifelong dream of ours because it’s allowed us to offer our community the same kind of friendly, bookish space we enjoyed in our formative years. We try to stock a little something for everyone, carrying both new and used books for all ages, and are known for our unique curation.
Being a mom & pop business means we are vetting, reading, & reviewing books; liaising with customers and vendors and our community; unpacking boxes & stocking shelves; serving as the retail/marketing/janitorial staff, etc. as a team of two. It’s quite a juggling act but a very satisfying one, largely thanks to the amazing community we live in.
THANK YOU for considering locally owned businesses when you shop. It makes a huge difference in keeping our communities vibrant, and in the book world, shopping locally helps protect the entire industry from (ahem) hostile takeover.
If you haven't checked us out yet, stop by sometime! We're here 10-6 every day but Wednesdays.
🛒 Prefer to shop for books online? You can support our store by shopping at Bookshop.org/shop/TwoBirdsBooks
🎧 Also consider switching from Audible to Libro.fm; support your local bookstore instead of Am$z$n, and get a better interface, broader recs, and the ability to own your audiobooks: Libro.fm/twobirdsbooks
