“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a movie released in early 2022, jump-started Joel Baker’s spiritual journey.

“That movie, at the time, was pretty influential with a lot of other things that were going on in my life, bringing in syncs to expand my consciousness,” Baker said.

In the movie, an everything bagel is a vehicle for universal destruction. For Baker, bagels are literally his life: He and his wife, Jane Baker, own the Mister Bagel location on Forest Avenue, a franchise of the Mister Bagel brand.

The themes of family ties, trauma and mental health in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” resonated with Baker, who was going through his own struggles.

He felt that no one in the city cared about Mister Bagel. He points to a 2017 Press Herald article, where a panel of judges tasted six bagels to find the best bagel in Greater Portland. Mister Bagel was not included, while some of the shops in the article have since closed.

Today, Baker still feels like he’s overlooked compared to buzzworthy bagel shops like Rose Foods and Forage Market.

“When you’re the business owner of some kind of negative energy like that from society, what do you do? You don’t give up, you just show your own light,” Baker said. “You try to educate people that what we do matters, and that we’re not just a bagel store. After 47 years of being here, we are a community beacon.”

He realized he needed to declare who he is and what he stands for, and the sign outside Mister Bagel on Forest Avenue was the perfect place to do that.

In April 2022, he pulled out a ladder, climbed up to the sign and posted the message:

HELP THE LIGHT
DO YOUR
SHADOW WORK
PEACE TO ALL

 

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His wife remembers being nervous about how the community would react to the first sign. But as soon as the next day, customers were already coming in voicing their appreciation.

Joel Baker said, “The understanding was, don’t promote what your bagel is, promote what you are for the community.”

Baker said he doesn’t put up the signs for recognition, but his signs have gone viral anyway.

Someone started a fan account on Instagram for the signs in April 2023, @mister.bagoracle. It has almost 900 followers, and the account’s bio says it’s “dedicated to the affirmational musings from Maine’s bagel lord.” Baker also has his own Instagram accounts, @bakesmindset and @bakesrackadough.

In February 2024, one of Baker’s signs was reposted by music artist SZA on her Instagram story.

MISTER BAGEL

The original Mister Bagel has been in business at its Forest Avenue location since 1977. The sign was installed in the early 1980s, and the original Mister Bagel owner, Rick Hartglass, Jane Baker’s father, used it to celebrate important events, like his daughter’s graduation, and advertise menu items. Hartglass died in 2010, but not before his daughter and son-in-law purchased the business in 2008. There are now seven Mister Bagel locations in Maine; the others are franchises.

Joel Baker continued to utilize the sign in much the same way his father-in-law did, paying special attention to marketing the super bagel, an onion bagel coated on both sides with onion, garlic, sesame, poppy and salt, which he calls “the most different bagel in the world.” That was, until he posted his first message in 2022.

Since then, he has continued to post messages, captivating drivers, passersby, customers and even celebrities.

One of his messages read “DISCERNING SMALL STEPS FORWARD TO A BETTER WORLD,” and another read “EVERYTHING IN FRONT OF YOU IS MEANT TO HELP YOU GROW.”

 

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The signs have helped bring in business as well. Cait Vaughan lives around the corner from the shop and said the sign is one reason she became a Mister Bagel customer.

“It’s nice to do something unique that’s a little personalized for our town. And I’m always curious what the person who put it up there meant,” Vaughan said.

The sign has led her to have her own spiritual conversations. When she drives by the sign, she points it out to her passengers and they discuss its meaning.

Mister Bagel gets about a dozen customers each day who talk about the sign, Jane Baker said, and the response has been positive. She doesn’t always understand the meaning of her husband’s messages, but supports him anyway.

“It’s a little over the head. But it’s OK. That’s what makes it work,” she said.

GOOD MATERIAL

Joel Baker said the messages often come to him in the middle of the night, when he’s tossing and turning at 2:30 a.m.

“I really don’t know where they come from, other than I can say that it’s my higher self or my guides,” Baker said.

People send Baker messages they want him to put up, and even his employees try to come up with their own quotes. But it’s Baker’s sign, and he’s the one who gets up on the ladder to put in his messages.

Insight into Baker’s philosophy is visible on his wrist, where he’s tattooed a wristwatch with a clock face that simply reads “NOW.”

The idea stems from a Jimmy Buffett song, “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.” The song goes “It doesn’t use numbers of moving hands, it always just says now,” and “this watch is never wrong.”

“The reason why the universe made me get this tattoo,” Baker said, “was because I was too worried about being something in the future. I was too worried about being successful. I was too worried about wanting to be recognized over Rose Foods or Forage. My ego was too interested in having an image as opposed to me being just me.”

When writing his messages, Baker also has to take into account the limited space on the marquee. Some messages come to him just right, while he tinkers with others to get them short enough.

“There are times when the message comes clear, boom, boom, boom, boom, and it fits,” Baker said. “And there are other times where it can take a day, where I’ll write out the message, and then I will streamline so that it will fit.”

 

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Baker is thinking of upgrading to a digital sign, so he can display longer messages and end the hassle of manually changing the sign. He said his feet aren’t doing well from falling off too many ladders. During the snowy winter months, he isn’t able to get out his ladder as often, so the messages tend to stay up longer.

Baker’s most recent sign reads:

WHEN ONE GIVES
PEACE AND LOVE
HEAVEN IS MADE
IN THE GAME

“The belief is that if we are that beacon of light, if we focus on negativity and we focus on all of the things we don’t want in life, that’s what we will attract,” Baker said. “If we fake it to make it, and we believe that there is faith in having love and being capable of handling the now in the moment, at all times, we then practice heaven in the game.”