🌼 May Recap
In May, we served 263 cups of free tea!
Today's recap includes:
🧧 Membership program launches soon!
📀 ONE YEAR of Steeped in Sound!
📜 The Tea Stand's Manifesto!
But first, some upcoming events in June:
🫖 Tea Talk (link)
This month's Tea Talk is on the topic of "Home." We'll sit in a circle, drink some tea, and share stories. Limited capacity, RSVP required.
🗓️ June 12 // 7-9pm // Bushwick
⛩️ Popup: Silent Solstice Reading
In collaboration with Long Distance Reads, we'll be serving free tea at a silent reading meet-up on the summer solstice. No RSVP required!
🗓️ June 20 // 6pm - 9pm // Flushing Meadows Park
All upcoming events can be found on the Calendar.
🧧 We're launching a Membership program on July 1!
Over the past year and a half, The Tea Stand has evolved from a casual passion project into my full-time work and a nonprofit organization. To date, we've served 2,513 cups of free tea! Along the way, my only source of income has been small one-time donations – I've been living off of personal savings.
We – myself and the volunteers essential to our mission – wish to continue serving free tea to the community indefinitely. Countless community conversations, connections, and collaborations have resulted from The Tea Stand's programming. But how do we make an operation based on free tea financially sustainable without comprising our values?
Enter the 🧧Membership program! The idea is this: individuals who wish to support The Tea Stand can donate $3-9 per month and receive perks in exchange, such as:
- Discounts at tea shops (Unfound, Dae Tea, The Ridge)
- Vote on ⛩️ Popup locations
- Receive a seasonal tea kit (US only)
- Access to Q&A livestreams
- Receive copies of our biannual zine, bōcha (that's right, we made a zine)
- Free sticker
- And more...
We've been designing the 🧧Membership program over the past six months in collaboration with community members and local businesses and we're SO excited to launch it in a matter of weeks!
To be clear: the goal here is not to profit nor prioritize the 🧧Membership program above our regular programming. The goal is to sustain our programming, offer benefits to supporters, and keep serving FREE TEA FOR ALL!
📀 Celebrating the one year anniversary of Steeped in Sound!
For those unaware, Steeped in Sound is a DIY community event with free tea and music hosted by The Tea Stand and LEEJAY. Hosted bimonthly in LEEJAY's beautiful Greenpoint loft on Sunday afternoons, the event starts with a guided meditation before a lineup of DJs play melodic blends of ambient, jazz, r&b, and other warm sounds. Local artists vend ceramics, charms, and herbal goods. And of course, there's unlimited free tea served all event long!
To celebrate one year of Steeped in Sound, we hosted a special volume with alumni DJs and Tea Friends (volunteers who help serve tea), strengthening the community feel. We also made custom t-shirts – designed and illustrated by the amazing Esther Shin and LEEJAY – and sold them at the event! (We have a few left, reply to this email if you're interested!)
Lastly, LEEJAY put together a lovely video edit with footage shot by local videographer Makeba which can be viewed below. You can also check out this Instagram post – the final slide names all who have contributed their time to making Steeped in Sound what it is. Thank you, we love you!
One year, nine volumes, so much love! Edited by LEEJAY, footage by Makeba.
We've now hosted 9 volumes of Steeped in Sound and have no plans to slow down. With each volume, the sense of community expands and deepens. We're driven by a desire to create the types of environments we – The Tea Stand and LEEJAY – have been looking for in New York. Accessible, social spaces which don't involve alcohol are few in far between, and we're proud to host a recurring event series to help fill this void.
If you're interested in attending the next Steeped in Sound, save the date: July 21. We're taking the event outdoors for the first time – this "to-go" volume will be in Prospect Park!! We'll be announcing the event via Instagram in early July. In the meantime, you can watch and listen to the DJ sets of previous volumes via this YouTube playlist!
Thanks to Alex Bender for the video setup!
📜 We published our Manifesto!
After 18 months of serving free tea, it was about time we shared a more formalized explanation of why we do our work. Anchored by our motto – free tea for all – our 📜 Manifesto is the ideological framework which The Tea Stand operates within.
Miles
Click to view our full 📜 Manifesto!
Guided by concepts such as trust, openness, and accessibility, we seek to create spaces for authentic neighborhood interaction. More broadly, we call for the liberation of all people, and envision a world where everyone can enjoy a free cup of tea as part of a dignified life.
In the full 📜 Manifesto, we also expand upon the various projects and individuals which have inspired The Tea Stand. From the novel A Psalm for the Wild-Built, in which a non-binary tea monk travels a solarpunk world serving free tea, to Free Tea Party, the real-world, now-defunct equivalent of this sci-fi book.
Thank you for reading!
If you've made it this far, I have a question for you: do you remember your first impression of The Tea Stand? For the first issue of bōcha, our zine, we plan to include a community member's response to this very question. Reply to this email if you're interested in submitting and being featured in the zine!
Thanks to all those who donated tea in May: Naqiya, Lissa, Juliet, Megan, Louise, Kiran, Izzie, and The Ridge. Get in touch if you have tea to donate!
June is a big month – 6 Popups and a whole lot of work on the 🧧Membership program. Hope to see you at an event soon.
Keep Steeping,
Miles 🍵
Member discussion