⏳ January Newsletter

Happy solstice, happy holidays, happy new year! I am well-rested, full of babka, and ready for National Hot Tea Month (seriously!). Hope you are too.

Today's newsletter topics:

🔮 The Future of The Tea Stand
📦 Tea Boxes
🗣️ Thank You!

But first, our January calendar:

RSVP for upcoming events:

🫖 Tea Talk on "Beginnings" (RSVP)
Jan 15 – Bushwick – 7pm

Volunteer & takeover opportunities:

🥬 Distro with Riders4Rights
Jan 10 – BedStuy – 10:30am

🪂 Tea Stand Takeover
Jan 18 – BedStuy – timing flexible

Housekeeping:

• We opened an online Marketplace! You can check it out here. We'll be adding another goodie & "officially" announcing the Marketplace soon.

🔮 The Future of The Tea Stand

Once again, the time has come for us to take a step back, slooooow down, and check our bearings before continuing forward. We'd love your help.

Here is the link to our annual community survey. Please (!) consider taking 5-10 minutes to share any feedback, ideas, or questions through this survey.

As a community project, we care deeply about all of your perspectives and seek to incorporate your input into our programming and decision-making. Remember: we are here to serve!

Last year, we thoroughly reviewed each and every survey response and took direct action based on your input, such as...

• Served tea at 2 resource distributions organized by BK Jail Support
• Partnered with Black- and Asian-owned tea shops (here)
• Created an online Resource Hub (here)
• Served tea and shared an educational presentation at a senior center
• Made our newsletter more future-oriented (e.g. upcoming events)
• Opened our Marketplace of goodies (here)
• Created a webpage dedicated to Adin, our in-house "chashi" (here)

All of these actions were directly inspired by YOU!

(Pretty much every good & cool thing happening at The Tea Stand started as a suggestion by someone in our community.)

This year, we're asking questions like:

• Why do you come to Tea Stand events?
• Who should we collaborate with?
• How do you feel about your perks, or the membership program in general?

So, once more, please consider filling out our survey here! Take a lil peek, click those buttons, remind yourself how fun surveys can be...

The Tea Stand is special because we're all building it together, and this is one of the most tangible ways you can alter its structure & function.

📦 Celebrate winter with a Tea Box!

Our Winter Solstice batch of Tea Boxes are almost gone – we have only 3 left!

Here's the link to sign up as a (Big) Steeper to receive one.

Each Tea Box includes:

• 3 unique teas – a smoky Sagittarius black tea, a complex "jade cloud" green tea, and a wintry herbal blend formulated by local herbalist Serena Kleeman!
• Issue #4 of bōcha, our biannual zine. This issue features community contributions like an herb guide & ritual, a bird comic, and a book review.
• An adorable postcard illustrated by local artist Miki Surma (photo below)

And if this is your first Tea Box, you'll also receive a collapsible travel cup in your box (see here)!

We're so happy with how these Tea Boxes came out, especially the new issue of bōcha.

At 24 pages, bōcha issue #4 serves as a simple yet rich celebration of our work & community.

Inside the zine, you'll find:

• an insightful & inspiring book review of The Dispossessed written by writer & dear friend Adin Vashi
• a map visualization of where we've served free tea across NYC
• a playful & worm-forward bird comic illustrated by fiber artist & my partner Naqiya Motiwalla
• photo collages from the past year at The Tea Stand
• an educational & mindful guide to the winter solstice tea blend by local herbalist Serena Kleeman (Serena also formulated the herbal blend for this Tea Box, and added some pine bark which she foraged herself!)

Making these Tea Boxes is truly a labor of love – all the tea is bagged (and tagged!) by hand, the packaging is designed to be both beautiful & eco-friendly, and we deliver about half of the Tea Boxes by bike.

We couldn't have prepped all these Tea Boxes – 80 in total – without significant volunteer support. Shoutout to Eliana, Nikki, Noah, Juno, Aidan, and Naqiya for all the help. (To help with future Tea Boxes, join our volunteer group chat here.)

And another thank you to Miki for illustrating the postcard and the text on the info sheet inside the Tea Boxes!

Here is the link to sign up as a Steeper to receive a Winter Solstice Tea Box and every future box – a total of 4 Tea Boxes per year.

Please keep in mind that, as with all the perks offered through our membership program, these Tea Boxes are offered as an act of reciprocity for your financial support. They are not meant to equal the dollar value of your contributions (though they are certainly getting closer...).

Thanks for supporting me & The Tea Stand 🧡

🗣️ Thank You!

Another full year of serving free tea in the books!

We served 4,400 cups of free tea in 2025 – at community centers, outside libraries, on sailboats, in a park in Australia, on rooftops and mountain tops, in a frat house (dw, it was the anti-colonial frat), in the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the sun.

As we all know, that number is both impossible to comprehend and beside the point.

"4,400 cups of tea" doesn't capture the hour-long conversations we had with strangers in the park, the collective re-wiring of our brains to believe that things can (and should) be free for all, the many moments of joy & serendipity & grief we've shared with neighbors.

When reduced to a number, it's easy to lose track of all the people who received those cups of tea – people in need of warmth, human connection, or just a small gesture to restore their faith in humanity.

So yes, we are celebrating the awesome feat of serving another few thousand cups of tea this past year, but more importantly, we are celebrating the people around us, the distraction- and judgement-free spaces we cultivate, and the innumerable meaningful connections that have transpired.

I'm honored to receive all of your support – samplers & members alike – and wish to continue serving the people of New York toward a more loving, trusting world.

Stay tuned for more exciting Tea Stand developments as we enter year four of this bizarre, impractical, ever-evolving community project.

thank you !

That's all for now! Thanks to...

Jeanette, Nickon, Jan, and Mateo for donating tea (and coffee!).

Hannah, Thinh, and Yelena for becoming members.

You, for reading! Hope to see you at one of our January events (calendar here).

Keep Steeping,
Miles 🍵