🌱 March Newsletter
We're changing our newsletter naming convention – instead of "February Recap", this is now "March Newsletter." Let us know what you think.
Today's headlines:
🐍 Steeping at Formosa
🔮 Survey Takeaways
🌀 Something BIG is brewing...
Here's a look at our March calendar:
Volunteer opportunities and limited capacity events in March:
🥬 Volunteer for Distro (reply via email)
🗓️ March 8 – 10:30am – BedStuy
🫖 RSVP to Tea Talk (topic: childhood)
🗓️ March 19 – 7pm – Bushwick
🪷 RSVP to Silent Sanctuary
🗓️ March 25 – 7pm – Ridgewood
See all events on our Calendar.
🐍 LNY-themed Steeped in Sound at Formosa
A couple weeks ago, we hosted Volume 13 of Steeped in Sound at Formosa, a beautiful and delicious Taiwanese restaurant in Bushwick.
This volume of Steeped in Sound was Lunar New Year themed – all the DJs and Tea Friends were AAPI, we had prints by Tiger Balm Press, people played mahjong, and we handed out red envelopes with stickers and tea to everyone who made a donation toward the event!
The event was incredible!!!
Formosa was the perfect venue for Steeped in Sound – spacious, warmly lit, and plenty of seating and surfaces for folks to sit, sip, and enjoy Formosa's legendary dumplings, which they served all event long. (Seriously, the food is so good, you must try it!)
People came early, filled their bodies with tea and dumplings, enjoyed the live DJ performances and games, and stayed until the event ended at 8pm. See for yourself: videos of all the DJ sets can be found on our YouTube channel.
We had our biggest turnout ever (we estimate ~150 people came) and served over 200 cups of free tea! We actually ran out of tea at one point, but Shawn, who was helping out as a Tea Friend for the event, just happened to bring some extra jasmine green tea to the event! He bagged the tea on the spot and kept the tea flowing. What a guy.
COOL SCHOOL FM's set at Steeped in Sound, featuring some live flute and guitar! Declan is a friend of mine from college!
For those unfamiliar, Steeped in Sound is a bimonthly event series we co-host with LEEWAY, a local Chinese-American rapper, DJ, and producer. Our intention with the event is to create an intimate, warm space where people can chat and connect, local creatives can showcase their art, and everyone can enjoy free tea and music. Read more about Steeped in Sound here!
We've been hosting volumes of Steeped in Sound consistently since May 2023, but this was just our second time taking Steeped in Sound "to-go" at a local venue (we steeped at Mood Ring last year). Usually, we host the event in LEEWAY's Greenpoint loft or in public parks around Brooklyn.
If you know of any spaces around Brooklyn that could be a good venue for Steeped in Sound, let us know!
We are so grateful to Formosa and its owner, Chuya, for opening up the space for a community event like ours. And I highly recommend visiting the restaurant, they're making some of the best Taiwanese food in Brooklyn!
A warm thank you to all the DJs for performing – COOL SCHOOL FM, nie, LEEJAY, and Bea Trinidad. You can check out their full sets here.
Nick, Anqi, and Bender captured the energy of the event in photo and video, thank y'all so much. And one more thank you to Shawn and Jess, the Tea Friends, and to Noah, Tanya, and Joyce, who helped set up and clean up.
Our next Steeped in Sound event will probably be on May 18 or May 25, and it will be our 2-year anniversary edition! Stay tuned for some exciting announcements...
Can't wait to steep with y'all again soon, happy Lunar New Year!!
🔮 Charting a path forward, together
In the January Newsletter, we shared a survey dramatically titled "The Future of The Tea Stand." The intention was to learn more about what you all would like to see from The Tea Stand – whether that be new collaborations, what we write about in this very newsletter, and the perks received by Sippers & Steepers.
(The survey is still open; we'd love to hear from you!)
Y'all really delivered. Like wow... So many thoughtful critiques, brilliant suggestions, and compassionate words. I feel so honored to have you all as friends and comrades.
Let's get into the specifics of what we learned, broken down into three sections below.
Programming
Of the three potential 2025 events we asked people to rank (screenshot below), the top pick was to serve free tea to people just released from jail. So that is now our #1 priority! We'll likely join NYC Jail Support during one of their Friday resource shares in mid-late March. We'll be looking for a volunteer to help us serve, be on the lookout!
More broadly, a few people asked for more interactive, outdoor events. We hosted a few outdoor crafting events last fall (like this cyanotyping & mending event and this drawing event) and we'll prioritize hosting more as the warmer weather approaches. If you'd like to collaborate with us on an event like this, reply to this email!
Some other fun places y'all suggested we should serve tea: the ping-pong tables at Seward Park (which we're doing today), Hamilton Park in Jersey City, and community gardens. Remember: Sippers & Steepers can vote on where we serve tea once a season!
Newsletter
For a while now, I've been wondering what the focus / themes of this newsletter should be. Generally, I just pick the three most prominent experiences and/or opportunities of the moment and go from there.
However, y'all had clear desires related to the newsletter: more upcoming events, more opportunities for community participation, and more information about our collaborators and the folks behind-the-scenes. Thank you for this feedback!
From now on, our plan is to start every newsletter with a calendar graphic showing all of the events of the upcoming month. Alongside this, we'll list some volunteer opportunities and events which require RSVPs. (Naming this newsletter "March Newsletter" instead of "February Recap", which we plan to continue moving forward, also reflects a shift toward focusing on the future!)
We'll also share the link to our calendar page more often – this is the best place to see all of our upcoming events at a single glance. You can also add it to your own calendar, but like... we're not expecting y'all to do that.
Lastly, we'll shift our focus toward spotlighting more of the local artists, organizations, and spaces which we are inspired by and/or collaborate with. Putting together a Resource Hub webpage is also officially on my to-do list!
Membership
Oh boy, lots of good feedback here!
First off, more transparency. Many Sippers & Steepers mentioned forgetting what their perks were, how to access them, etc. So, I cleaned up the perks dashboard and will be sharing the link to that page much more often.
You should visit the perks dashboard if you're looking for your discount codes, bōcha archives, or just want a simple place to see all of your perks at once. If you're not a member, you can still visit the perks dashboard and explore our offerings.
On a similar note, folks wanted to hear more about existing members. Who are the people supporting and sustaining The Tea Stand?
With this in mind, we'll be making some changes to our recently renamed 🏠 Town Halls, formerly known as "Livestreams". In accordance with the name change, we'll be opening up future Town Halls to all Sippers & Steepers, whereas past versions were just for Steepers. (If you're a Steeper and feel shortchanged, keep reading!)
We want 🏠 Town Halls – seasonal livestreams hosted via YouTube – to serve as opportunities for members to ask questions, feel more connected to other members, and learn about community ongoings. We'll be modifying the structure of our Town Halls in alignment with these intentions – less rambling recaps, more spotlighting of collaborators and community opportunities.
We'd love for you to join us at our upcoming Town Hall, currently slated for March 16th! Sippers & Steepers will receive a link via email a few days in advance.
Another way we'd like to celebrate our members is by listing all of their names on our membership webpage. If you're a Sipper or Steeper and DO NOT want your name listed on this page, please email me and let me know. I'll send a couple reminders to give folks ample time to opt-out before making this change, but know it's coming soon!
We really appreciate the desire for more transparency in the membership program, both in terms of the perks offered and those who participate. I've let my fear and shame related to asking for support/funds get in the way of communicating clearly about it and celebrating those who are actively sustaining this project. I'll do my best to avoid this moving forward!
If you have any other ideas related to the transparency of the membership program – maybe a member spotlight series? – let me know!
Lastly, we've got some VERY EXCITING PERK UPDATES coming very soon. We'll be introducing a brand new perk for Steepers and announcing a new business joining our discount program. Based on y'all's input from the survey, I think they will be very well received :)
Closing Thoughts
To everyone who submitted the survey – thank you so much for sharing your ideas, thoughts, and feelings about The Tea Stand!! You should've received your tea bag in the mail by now, let me know if you haven't. (And if you didn't fill out the survey but still wish to, it's not too late.)
I so appreciate being in community with all of you curious, engaged, and radical folks. I know that you all will give me the feedback I need to hear, hold me accountable to our goals and intentions, and inspire me to continue serving FREE TEA FOR ALL!
🌀 Something big is brewing...
Have y'all heard of perpetual stew? Also known as "forever soups," they are defined as stews which are continuously cooked for long periods of time using the same pot and foodstuffs. Some perpetual stews have been ongoing for decades.
A couple years ago, Annie Rauwerda (the person behind the popular @depthsofwikipedia page) began cooking a perpetual stew in her apartment and hosted weekly public gatherings in a Bushwick park to sample the stew and contribute ingredients. It turned into quite the spectacle!
Sadly, I never made it to one of the perpetual stew gatherings (I was traveling at the time), but the project has obvious parallels to The Tea Stand and has been simmering in my mind since summer 2023.
At last, the simmer has reached a boil...
🌀🌀🌀 Introducing Perpetual Brew: we'll be serving free tea in Maria Hernandez Park every single day of April 🌀🌀🌀
That's right... every, single, day. April 1st through April 30th, you can find us in Maria Hernandez Park serving free tea at some point during the day (calendar with exact times coming soon). Rain or shine, morning or evening, exhausted or enlivened, we'll be there.
Our main intention with 🌀Perpetual Brew is to celebrate public spaces and the people of Bushwick. By being in the park every single day for a full month, we seek to inspire folks to re-imagine our relationships with our neighbors, ourselves, public spaces, and the natural world.
Perpetual Brew is also a big experiment... it's hard to predict exactly what will come of serving tea in the park for 30 days straight! And that's part of the point – The Tea Stand's evolution has been an ongoing cycle of being open, receiving ideas, and following them. Being a consistent, familiar presence has been essential to building relationships in Bushwick, BedStuy, and Brooklyn more broadly.
As part of 🌀Perpetual Brew, we'll be inviting some local artists to take over The Tea Stand for a few days throughout the month. Through these takeovers, we can explore how different identities and personalities lead to different neighborhood interactions while simultaneously celebrating our creative community.
At the end of the month, each participating artist will submit a work of art inspired by their experience of serving tea to strangers in the park. We'll collect all of the submissions and feature them in a special edition issue of our zine, bōcha. This special edition zine will be the singular physical output of Perpetual Brew.
Hopefully, we'll be publishing 100 copies of the Perpetual Brew edition of bōcha, half in English and half in Spanish. This is one of the ways we're working to engage more directly with the Hispanic population here in Bushwick.
While designing this project, we're doing our best to be intentional and considerate of the community. We're also looking for help translating and printing the zine! If you have any suggestions or considerations related to this, please let us know.
This is by far the most ambitious project we've ever embarked upon. We've never hosted more than 12 events in a single month, so we're expecting that this will be quite the challenge.
We'll be spending much of March bagging tea, designing graphics, practicing our Spanish, coordinating with collaborators, and praying we'll be able to make it through to the end.
Much, much, much more to come soon. AHHHHH!!!!
Thank you for reading!
And thanks to all those who donated tea in February: Spy, Shawn, Tanya, Jacquilyn, Katie, Darren, and Waverly.
Keep Steeping,
Miles 🍵
Member discussion