Mar 31, 2025 10 min read

🌀 April Newsletter (Perpetual Brew starts TOMORROW!)

We served 194 cups of free tea in March!

Today's headlines:

🌀 Perpetual Brew starts TOMORROW!!!
🧧 New Perks for Sippers & Steepers
🪂 Second Weekend Takeover

Here's a look at our April calendar:

Volunteer opportunities in April:

We're looking for volunteers to help Perpetual Brew run smoothly! We'll be asking for help bagging tea, running small errands, and taking over The Tea Stand in case of emergency / illness.

Join this WhatsApp group chat if you're interested in helping out!

🌀 Perpetual Brew starts tomorrow...

Yes, yes, it's true, despite the misleading April Fool's Day alignment...

🌀🌀🌀 Perpetual Brew starts tomorrow, April 1st, marking the beginning of 30 consecutive days of serving free tea for all in Maria Hernandez Park 🌀🌀🌀

MOMENTOUS, some have said. ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS, those closest to me ask. OH, LIKE THE SOUP THING, many remark. (Yes, it is very much like the soup thing, shoutout Perpetual Stew for the inspiration.)

**Perpetual Brew flyer! Here's our** **full announcement post**.

Thankfully, it won't just be me out there: I've invited 7 local artists to "take over" the stand on select days. Below are their names, artistic disciplines, and the dates they'll be taking over:

April 5 – Sabina Sethi Unni – performer, organizer, urban planner
April 6 – Nick Deveau – photographer, curator
April 13 – Jayshawn Lee – poet, scholar
April 15 – John Grund – illustrator, ceramicist, organizer, gardener
April 16 – Jean Paul Torre – organizer, dancer, mammalogist?
April 21 – Val Yang – illustrator, multidisciplinary artist
April 25 – Zack Young – writer, director, performer

And it doesn't stop there! Each artist will be creating a work of art related to their takeover experience and submitting it to be featured in a special issue of our zine, bōcha, which will be published on the summer solstice. We'll be distributing copies of the zine at a Teapotluck celebration in early July and shipping copies to Steepers.

**On the summer solstice, we'll be publishing a special issue of** **bōcha** **dedicated to Perpetual Brew and featuring artwork by all the participating artists. (That's** **Adin****, btw.)**

Now for the why...

Perpetual Brew shares many intentions with our regular programming – practicing stillness, cultivating trust, connecting with our natural world – but also expands beyond them.

A major goal of Perpetual Brew is to bring in new perspectives and identities to The Tea Stand. We plan to do this in two ways:

Connecting more with the Hispanic population in Bushwick. We'll be posting flyers in Spanish at local businesses near the park, and Bethania Viana of Mil Mundos will be translating the zine into Spanish, which we plan to distribute for free. We want to be clear to our Latinx neighbors that we are here for them!
Inviting local artists with diverse identities and lived experiences. We hope this will allow new conversations and interactions to take place at The Tea Stand. We look forward to learning with and from all of the amazing artists we'll be collaborating with!!

Another answer to the why question: because it will be fun, challenging, and generative. As with any ambitious experiment – and Perpetual Brew is most certainly an experiment – it's impossible to say exactly what we'll learn from it.

But we expect to learn a great deal: about ourselves, our neighbors, Maria Hernandez Park, and the month of April and it's famed rain showers.

At risk of sounding like a broken record – this is how The Tea Stand came to be what it is today! By sitting outside, serving tea, and listening to the ideas and feelings of our neighbors, this simple idea has evolved into quite the project.

In this way, Perpetual Brew is a more committed, consistent version of what we've been doing for over two years now.

**Home sweet home: the Northwest corner of Maria Hernandez Park.**

If you'd like to read more about Perpetual Brew, check out the public webpage here. Share as you please! I'll also be regularly updating our calendar with the specific times we'll be in the park each day.

If you'd like to volunteer for Perpetual Brew – bagging tea, running errands, etc. – join this WhatsApp group chat where I'll be asking for help along the way. I'm planning to host a "bag tea with me" session every Friday evening at my apartment.

I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS ALL STARTS TOMORROW! Wish me patience and fortitude. Hope to see you there.

🧧 New Perks: Travel Cups, Discounts, & more

I dare say it has never been a better time to be a Sipper or Steeper.

Steepers just received their Spring Equinox Tea Boxes (happy spring y'all!!!) featuring, debatably, the most exciting Tea Stand merch of all time:

A custom, collapsible travel cup made by Stojo!

**Jada** **with her new Travel Cup :) The cup sleeve is custom-printed with our motto, "free tea for all".**

In addition to being cute and custom-printed, you can also collapse the cups when empty (see here). I've been using my Stojo cup for over five years now and it's still in great shape.

If you'd like a Travel Cup, sign up as a Steeper! We have no plans to sell them outside of our membership program. As with all the perks we offer, these cups serve as a thank you to those who support The Tea Stand and encourage sustainable living.

As we are out of Tea Boxes this batch (incredible – thank you!), new Steepers will receive their Travel Cup in the Summer Solstice Tea Box in a few months.

**Our new Travel Cups featured in our** **recent, sexy IG post** **announcing our Tea Boxes!**

We also have exciting perk updates for Sippers, our more affordable tier which you can join for just $1/month.

Sippers (and Steepers) now have discounts at two new locations:

10% off at Matcha Thomas: a black-owned, sister-led teahouse in Beacon, NY. They just re-opened after a matcha shortage, so now is a great time to support!
10% off at Eighty Degrees: a periodical magazine sharing stories about the world of specialty tea. Issue #14 is out now!

With these two new partners, Sippers & Steepers now have 10% off at five businesses, most of them local and all of them small. Check out the full list here!

**Sisters Haile and Nia Thomas are at the forefront of running the family-owned** **Matcha Thomas** **teahouse! Image via the** **Poughkeepsie Journal**.

Our final perk update is more of a reminder: what were formerly known as "Livestreams" are now called "🏠 Town Halls".

We hosted a Town Hall on March 16th with a new format and set of intentions – more spotlighting of collaborators, more sharing with our community of Sippers & Steepers, and more transparency with the membership program.

It went... okay. Technical difficulties interfered and no questions came our way, but the new format felt more clear and informative... at least from my perspective.

Let us know how we can make our next Town Hall in June more engaging for y'all!

We want these Town Halls to serve as an opportunity for direct conversation with members for the sake of transparency, accountability, and knowledge sharing.

**Screenshot from March's Town Hall. Sippers & Steepers can watch all previous Town Halls by visiting the** **Town Hall Archives** **(must be signed-in).**

🪂 Adin & Laura take over The Tea Stand

The second weekend of the month has become something sacred for The Tea Stand.

There's our "Second Sundays" series: we've been serving free tea in Maria Hernandez Park every second Sunday of the month since January 2024.

And our "Second Saturday" commitment dates back even further – we've been at almost every monthly food & clothing distribution hosted by Riders4Rights since October 2023.

This ⛩️ Popup & 🥬 Distro combo is our most long-standing, committed part of our programming.

So, when my recent trip to Portland meant I'd be 3,000 miles away from Brooklyn on the second weekend of March, I knew exactly who to call...

**Adin (left) and Laura (right) kept The Tea Stand running on the second weekend of March while I was away. Both photos are from over a year ago!**

(Re)introducing Adin and Laura, the two amazing humans who took over Tea Stand operations for the entire second weekend while I was away.

Their responsibilities included...

Biking several miles with 30+ pounds on the rack
Serving 60+ cups of free tea
Coordinating with volunteers (thanks Hugh!)
Housing all of the equipment
Being a warm, calm presence through it all

No small ask! And yet I had nothing but the utmost trust in their ability to hold things down.

Now, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to share a little more about these trusted and trusting friends...

**Miles (left) and Adin (right) hosted a chai stand in Irving Square Park last year. We served chai made by Adin using his mother's recipe :)**

If you've read this newsletter in the past, you've probably seen Adin's name or face at some point, but a more thorough introduction is much overdue.

Adin and I have been close friends and creative partners for almost ten years now. We started a club for casual conversation in college (Tea Talks carry on its spirit today), co-created a website inspired by our love for hip-hop during the pandemic, and now have bi-weekly meetings to discuss big-picture-stuff related to The Tea Stand, like the membership program, our manifesto, etc.

We refer to Adin as our "chashi," a Japanese term I came across while reading Stories of Japanese Tea by Kettl owner Zach Mangan. Here's an excerpt from the book explaining the term:

"A chashi, or tea blender, is tasked with creating the "cuvée" blends that represent a company. To do this, the chashi blends the teas that are carefully selected at auction each year in different ratios to reproduce the established flavor of the company's products. It is hard to overstate the expertise required to faithfully match favors by blending. And remember: chashi must make split-second decisions at the tea auction. Misreading the leaves can lead to a company ending with a literal ton of tea that can't be used." (Zach Mangan, Stories of Japanese Tea)

Essentially, Adin helps keep The Tea Stand aligned with its values – balancing out the programming, advising what to keep and what to let go, and helping me make the big decisions.

Yet even this falls short of capturing how important Adin is to The Tea Stand! He's served tea at 5+ Distros, made over 200 servings of chai to serve at chai stands and Flood Sensor Aunty performances, and repeatedly stored all of The Tea Stand equipment in his home while I've been away. And now, a new addition to the ever-expanding list: taking over for a Saturday Distro.

This will not be the last time you hear about Adin, but please know that nearly every single decision, announcement, and project has been and will be influenced by his wisdom.

Thank you Adin 🧡

**Laura took over for the most recent Second Sunday in Maria!**

Now for Laura, who took over the Sunday side of things.

I met Laura almost two years ago while I was serving free tea in Herbert von King Park. Below is the retelling of our first encounter in Laura's own words (written for issue #1 of our zine, bōcha):

“One day last April I was in Bed-Stuy reading up on third places — somewhere you can go just to be with people. Alone in the place I bought something just to have somewhere to sit down, I was uncomfortable and decided to go home.

Biking through Herbert von King Park, I saw a little table set up with some people sitting around. As I reached the exit, it processed that I’d stumbled on a third place, exactly the kind I’d been hoping existed nearby. Free tea! And neighbors I had yet to meet.

I squeezed the brakes and got off my bike, walking back toward the table. I was met with three smiles and a grand knowing of something important. I’m sure glad I turned around.”

Since that first chance encounter, Laura has been a consistent, supportive force in my life and The Tea Stand's journey. Whenever they come to a Popup – and they've come to many, often biking several miles in the cold to get there – they often stay for many hours and sub in when I need a break. No matter how brief the break, I seem to always return to Laura offering someone warm tea and conversation. You can see why they were the perfect candidate for the job.

🍵

As much as I'd love to share more about Adin and Laura's experiences taking over The Tea Stand, we are out of space and they are quite busy people. But just know that the entire weekend was a "smashing success" :)

Thank you Laura 🧡

Thank you for reading!

One more thing: with all of the attention on Perpetual Brew, I've neglected to mention that we'll be back serving free, homemade masala chai at 6 more performances in April of Flood Sensor Aunty, a community play about climate change and knowing your neighbors.

We're so thrilled that Flood Sensor Aunty is back for a 2nd run of shows and highly recommend attending a performance – they're all free!

(Yes, April is going to be intense.)

Thanks to all those who donated tea in March: Serena, Bardo Tea, and Shamile.

**Thank you** **Serena** **for donating a wonderful variety of herbal teas!**

Keep Steeping,
Miles 🍵