🌱 March Recap

Happy Spring! Happy Daylight Saving! In March – in addition to two ⛩️ Popups, one 🎁 Distro, and a grant application – I spent a great deal of time planning for future events as warmer weather slowly approaches (then recedes, then approaches again). Big things are coming, some of which I announce below! I also spent two weeks traveling in Turkey – a rare vacation from The Tea Stand.

In March, I served 107 cups of free tea. Also...

❄️ I was featured on an experimental podcast called Into The Ether!

🇹🇷 I spent two weeks abroad drinking Turkish tea and coffee!

⛩️ I hosted a lively, picnic-full Popup in Herbert von King Park!

More on these updates in the recap below!

But first, some announcements:

🆓 I'm organizing a vendor market in Maria Hernandez Park on April 28th! The twist: all the vendors will be offering goods/services for FREE! I'm calling it "The Free Market." Current vendors include free Polaroid portraits, free clothing, free poems, and of course, free tea. If you or someone you know is interested in vending, fill out the form here. No prior vending experience required!

☮️ My friend Matthew featured The Tea Stand in his Substack newsletter! The piece features an interview which took place during Matthew's visit to a Popup earlier this month. We chatted about how The Tea Stand got started, how the set up works, and the types of interactions which are most memorable for me. Read the piece here!

... and some upcoming events:

🫖 Tea Talk | Dreams
A small-group conversation over tea hosted in my Bushwick apartment! This month's topic is "Dreams." RSVP here.
🗓️ Wednesday, April 10 // 7pm - 9pm

⛩️ Popup | Collaboration w/ Chris D'Ostilio
Chris is a senior at Parsons studying the use of public spaces for building trust and connection. He'll be setting up a "living room" next to The Tea Stand for this Popup to learn about equitable community engagement.
🗓️ Sunday, April 14 // 11am - 4pm // Maria Hernandez Park

All events can be found on the Calendar.
Updates are shared via Instagram.

Now, to the recap!

❄️ Into The Ether we go: a podcast episode about the cold

Into The Ether is an experimental podcast hosted by Nick Deveau, whom I met back in May 2023 during a Popup in Maria Hernandez Park. I served him a cup of white tea (his first!) and that was that. Then, during another Maria Hernandez Park Popup a couple months back, we crossed paths again. No tea this time (he was mid-jog), but he asked if I'd be interested in being interviewed for a podcast he hosts. I absolutely was.

Nick hosts the podcast as a character named Kid Nicoleman, a mysterious entity / alter-ego which inhabits a space called "The Ether." The Ether is somewhere between Earth and spirit-realm; characterized by a detached curiosity of the ongoings of our daily lives. Perhaps it'd be better to let Kid explain it to you himself in the intro episode. (Or try out the podcast's weekly playlist, which I'm listening to as writing this.)

So, Nick (or Kid, rather) and I talked about the cold and how it relates to The Tea Stand during an eerie phone interview. We discussed how I stay warm during particularly cold Popups (I don't), what it means to be cold, and whether I'd rather be warm and alone or cold and with a friend. Some of the audio clips from our conversation are featured in the episode which you can listen to here. It's a nice way to bid farewell to the cold as we enter spring.

Inspired by our conversation, I hosted a Tea Talk with the topic "Winter and The Cold," which Nick participated in! Separately, Nick took some beautiful photos at Volume 6 of Steeped in Sound, completing a trifecta of collaborations! And it doesn't end there: we're planning a Tea Talk x Into The Ether event in mid-April!

It all started with a free cup of tea in Maria Hernandez Park :)

🇹🇷 Two weeks of Turkish tea and coffee!

Taking a vacation from The Tea Stand is a new and strange concept for me. Outside of a ten-day silent meditation course this past December – which I'd hardly call a vacation – I haven't taken an extended break from The Tea Stand in several months. So, during a two-week trip to Turkey with my partner (our first international adventure!), I did my best to separate myself from The Tea Stand, something which is becoming increasingly difficult (a beautiful thing, but also, that scary word: burnout).

Why Turkey? Great question. Neither my partner nor myself can remember how we decided on Turkey for our travels. But, shortly after purchasing flights, I read that Turkey is the largest consumer of tea per-capita in the world (source), a good omen. I was shocked to learn this, especially considering the (seemingly superseding) popularity of Turkish coffee. Turkish tea, or çay (pronounced like chai), is also a relatively recent phenomenon – it wasn't until the 20th century when Turkey began producing their own tea and it became the beverage of choice over coffee.

We enjoyed many glasses of Turkish çay during our trip – at seaside teahouses, outdoor cafés designed for people watching, and guesthouses (pansiyons) along the Lycian Way. We loved the aesthetics, hand-feel, and size of the tulip-shaped glasses which çay is served in. The small size, combined with the ubiquity and affordability of çay, allows for constant café visits throughout a day. For 15-50 Turkish lira (about $1 USD), you can pause, sip, read a book, watch people, chat with a friend, etc. In this way, çay creates an abundance of accessible third spaces in Turkey, something we'd do well to imitate in the US (hence The Tea Stand!).

Most of these positive qualities of çay apply to Turkish coffee, too. Everywhere which offered çay also served Turkish coffee (Türk kahvesi). It was similarly affordable (about $2 USD) and the small quantities encouraged mindful sipping. At last, a culture in which tea and coffee felt equally celebrated! I'm certainly guilty of framing my coffee consumption as some kind of confession (the tea guy drinks coffee?! How dare he!!). Tea and coffee need not be enemies.

On a non-caffeinated note: I actually preferred the few herbal teas I was able to sample over the Turkish çay (which is a black tea), notably the linden and sage teas. I brought some linden tea back with me and served it at my ⛩️ Popup in Herbert von King Park (recapped below) – it's already gone!

⛩️ Settling back into Brooklyn at Herbert von King Park

48 hours after landing at Newark Airport, I biked over to Bed-Stuy to serve some free tea in Herbert von King Park on a sunny Saturday. While Maria Hernandez Park remains my "homebase" for The Tea Stand, I cannot get enough of Herbert von King (HvK) Park and recently decided I'd host at least one ⛩️ Popup per month there. Very few parks rival HvK in terms of its loving, communal energy – it really feels like a refuge, a meeting place, a safe haven.

All of HvK's magnetic, magical effects were enhanced by the springtime sunshine. Save for 20 minutes of no visitors at the very start of the day, I didn't have a single second of alone time during the five-hour Popup. Dozens of familiar faces came by (some planned, some serendipitous) and even hesitant passersby couldn't help but stop and ask what's going on here?

Val was the first visitor. She sat by my side and walked me thru her dilemma of the day – whether to savor some rare alone time or go on a group run. She told me about her "Little Things" postcard project – a series of illustrations of the small joys of her life. After 15 minutes of conversation, she seemed resolved: I came here unsure how to spend my day, but this is exactly what I wanted. She grinned and laid out in the sun.

Later on, Dean came strolling by with a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – a book I'm about to finish – and we chatted about the dearth of accessible third spaces in New York City, a truth easily realized when you're inhabiting one. Dean has spent the past year searching for places which offer stillness and neighborhood interaction. The nearby bookstore / café / bar Dear Friends is the best he's found thus far (but the tea is $5!).

Friend Amanda, who I met at the recent Steeped in Sound To-Go at Mood Ring, told me about her transformative journey via The Artist's Way, a renowned book for unlocking one's creativity. Everything is so much lighter, she says. It's easy to fixate on the negative things in this city; there's not enough nature to remind you of the world's expansiveness. I smile and nod, imagining the tiny white buds on the surrounding trees unfurling.

It was a lovely day and the perfect re-introduction to Brooklyn following two weeks of traveling. I served 49 cups, which is the third most for a Popup, only behind the first ever Popup and the Teapotluck (the celebration of The Tea Stand's one-year anniversary).

Thank you for reading!

And thanks to those who donated tea which I served in March: Peter and my Grandma.

As always, upcoming events can be viewed via the Calendar and announcements are made via the Instagram.

Keep Steeping,
Miles 🍵