Silver Lake Green Fair

So siptea is helping to put on the 1st Annual Silver Lake Green Fair. It's taking place behind The Kitchen and Akbar in their parking lot. Thanks to PERI, pure eco rag industry, we have the parking lot. So lots of things are falling into place at the last minute and I finally am getting my act together to update my own blog & let people know about what is going on!
Saturday April 23rd from 11am to 4pm there will be a band, DJ, drummers, plus food vendors, drinks, and shopping. Should be fun plus we will be there sampling tea & selling packaged tea.
This is a cash event & please byob (bring your own bag) we know you have one!
"Global starts Local"

Musings on a Rainy Day

Finally got some rain. Not a lot yet, but it is fall in LA & that means the start of what I hope to be a good rainy season, and snow in the mountains. We are officially in a drought and on restricted watering for yards. Since I really don't have any grass, that has not been a problem. I ripped out my front yard slowly, but the change over the 8 years I have lived here are dramatic. I am posting a picture of the house when I first moved in & today. It has been the most interesting thing to witness the changes in wildlife to my yard. I have bees, butterflies, moths, birds, and all sorts of bugs. Some of them are beneficial & some not so much, but being eco-friendly/organic means not using chemicals on my yard. So I hope for ladybugs & use my spray bottle of dish soap & water on the plants. An easy eco-tip is use the dish water from the sink to water any plants with pests on them. You are using greywater that would go down the drain & the soap helps get rid of the pests.
I have lots of testing to do about tea & have to write about what I have found out, but just wanted to put this note in, on this rainy day in LA.

Eco Ideas large & small

I was planning to do a second eco-salon, but the first Sunday of the month was Labor Day weekend & then I just didn't get my act together to do it the 2nd Sunday, so next month will be the 2nd eco-salon.
The reason I didn't get my act together was I was in the Rocky Mountains at the Telluride Film Festival. It was beautiful as always and they are doing some really cool eco friendly things with the fest. I worked the Festival as the assistant manager of the Abel Gance, the outdoor theater in the middle of town. Beautiful to see films under the stars, but it gets cold & there was some rain. That didn't stop us, we still showed movies.
Back to the eco/green ideas. Biggest one was they had Brita as a sponsor & every pass holder & all the staff were given Nalgene (BPA free of course) water bottles. Then they set up Water Filling Stations around the theaters so people could fill up. They lost out on the revenue of selling bottled water, but what a great idea. The water was just filtered town water, filters provided by Brita, naturally. The Wastemasters (trash pickup by the staff) were so happy. They said the worst part of the job was picking up the trash with so many 1/2 empty bottles of water, super heavy & messy. They had to empty them to recycle them.
NOTE: The lids on bottles are usually not recyclable so if you leave it on, it may get thrown in the trash to save time or it has to be twisted off by a sanitation worker to be recycled. So REMOVE YOUR LIDS when recycling plastic bottles. Or better yet, don't buy them & use a refillable bottle.
Ok enough about that, they also had Alice Waters consult on the food provided by the festival. She made a menu that took advantage of locally grown ingredients and organic ingredients. Funny thing is Ann Cooper used to do the food program & is now big in revamping school food programs, check out her lecture on the TEDtalks program. Will try to post a link for that.
So getting back into the swing of things here in Los Angeles. Miss siptea and talking tea, so tonight I am going to see Gail at Algabar, a great place to buy tea in Los Angeles, that is also closing it's doors. I think LA needs to pick up it's game in the world of tea & all things green. Prove me wrong, tell me about green things happening in LA.
Will post soon lots to blog about. Forgot how good it feels to get some of these things out there.

rantings of a tea addled brain

I sit here after basically drinking tea all day long, a lovely Bai Mu Dan & now I need to vent. Customers are wonderful & also weird. Someone came in the other day & asked me, the owner of a tea house that sells bulk tea, if there was any place downtown I would recommend to buy tea. Huh?! I replied fairly politely, "besides here, no." WTF! You can buy tea wherever you want, but our teas are all organic. Think about the fact that tea is picked, then withered & processed, there is no cleaning or rinsing. So if you have chemicals on your tea plant, you are now pouring hot water on those chemicals & drinking them down. Tea should be organic. I think all food should be organic, but I am a crazy eco/green/liberal/tea drinking/prius driving/solar panels on house/greywater/native plant/permaculture/chicken raising/Los Angelino. So there!
Here are some pictures of my chickens, my neighbors are upset with them right now. Well I guess I should say they are upset with me, I was letting them free range in the whole backyard. Now they are coop bound, it's a big coop & they are fine. I need to be a better neighbor, have been at the shop too much, yard is a mess & my garden is in need of some major weeding/tending. Filled up my green bin in a couple hours yesterday on my day off. Well sort of day off, had bills & food to pick up so more like 1/2 day off. I think that siptea may have to become more of a tea/dessert place less of a lunch place. Too much work & not enough pay off. We have changed the hours, opening later in the mornings, 10am and closing earlier 7pm, except on Friday.
Tell me what you think siptea should be. Would like to expand the retail with more eco-friendly products, and cut down on the food.
What do you think?