Tea on Treasure Island
It was a clear, beautiful winter day in San Francisco that just seemed to invite various oddities and curiosity into my head. E. and I decided to head over to Treasure Island. Yarr! This man made island was created entirely of fill for the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition, was used as a naval base, and is now undergoing a massive redevelopment effort by the City of San Francisco.
On the last weekend of every month, the Treasure Island Flea Market takes over the island with food, wine, and a huge number of vendors selling antiques, collectibles, handmade items, clothing, bags and jewelry. It is truly a cacophony of crap and you can spend hours just perusing the wares of the different vendors.
After fortifying ourselves with a deconstructed samosa from a food truck and a plastic cup of chardonnay, we sallied forth to see what kind of jewels we could find on Treasure Island. I wasn’t expecting to find much in the way of tea here, but I certainly glad I brought my camera after stumbling into this idyllic tea scene below.
Local tea sellers T-We Tea had this booth set up with free samples which we gladly slurped down. With product names like “Sexpot”, “Cuddle Bug” and “Bicurious George” they seem very well positioned to introduce their tea to a young and sassy San Francisco crowd. I also liked the very colorful packaging the tea came in. I decided to buy “Foggy Morning Breakfast”, which is a blend of assam, nilgiri, keemun and ceylon scented with vanilla bean. It really is a great morning tea to shake off the wet and gloom. I also got “Renegade”, a blend of Indonesian java, keemun, cacao nibs and sweet cinnamon, a really good afternoon blend.
After chatting a bit with the T-We guys, I found they opened up their first retail store in San Francisco at the Crocker Galleria. I will definitely be going soon as it would make me happy to support a local small business like this one.
Here I am relaxing on some vintage naugahyde 1970′s furniture I did not buy; but it made for a fun photo op, don’t you think?
I met the T-We Tea guys at a shopping event in NYC and they were great. I purchased Chai That and Gurrl Grey and both were delicious
They are really nice!
So nice you have so many interesting places to vist near your home. Fun pics you posted, nice to see one of you too.
As to the teas, I would love to try that Foggy Morning Breakfast with the vanilla bean. Sounds great! Their names are certainly imaginative, but bi-curious George is a real series of books, wonder how they were able to use the name?
Sexpot tea, well – uhm the mind boggles as to what they put in that.
Thank you so much for the kind writeup! It was a pleasure to meet you as well, and please do visit us in the Crocker Galleria. There is a kiki party this Thursday afternoon in the store from 4:30-7pm (tea, tea cocktails, and malicious gossip).
Also everyone, thanks so much for the compliments. From SF to NYC, I am amazed by our tea community and it is inspiring to me to keep on keeping on!
Fun little background for BiCurious George: This tea blend began in 2009 when at a catered event, I accidentally filled my cup (teabag to make English Breakfast) with coffee instead of hot water. The elixir was very interesting but needed to be more for tea drinkers, so back to the drawing board. Later that year, my Halloween costume involved a cute and curious monkey called BiCurious George. Then, it clicked that I needed to create a hot beverage that could woo the curious coffee drinkers of the world over into our tea world of beauty and charm.
I’ve heard of this new book Bi-Curious George, and cannot wait to give it a read over a cuppa tea as I do love a good tongue in cheek parody. I definitely should send some tea to the authors.
Thanks again!
You seem to be waiting for your tea to be served.
And regarding this company, they seem to have really funny names.