Tea Lounge Heads East...WAY East

Left image via www.streetlegalplay.wordpress.com

In early May, we learned that Park Slope coffee & baked goods-slinging breeder/freelancer hangout The Tea Lounge (who've seen themselves go from three locations to a single one on Union St over the past decade), have plans to start franchising the Tea Lounge name. Owner Jonathan Spiel, who has built The Tea Lounge into a "community" since opening a dozen years back, feels he has a unique franchise model in a café that engenders this community spirit, with entertainment as a healthy part of the mix.

Last week, we finally learned of the first franchise location in the expanding Tea Lounge empire. Where would it be? Willyburg? Perhaps an up & coming NYC neighborhood like Sunnyside, Queens? How about someplace hip on the West Coast: Portland or Olympia, perhaps?

Nope. Not even close, Maynard. Instead, The Tea Lounge is pulling a lil' Sex and The Shitty II & heading to the Middle East! That's right. As was first reported last week, Mohammed al Arbash, a Kuwaiti businessman, will be opening the first Tea Lounge franchise in a Kuwait City mall. OBVIOUSLY.

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Watch Out For Those Artful Nip Slips At Tea Lounge

Image by Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal

These days The Wall Street Journal has decided to focus less on economic reportage and more on daring exposés about artistic censorship at Park Slope's own Tea Lounge. Here at FiPS, that news is OUR organic meat and potatoes. We relish nothing more than a good story about bare burgers and bare breasts, and this one falls into the latter. According to the house that the Dow Jones built, some Park Slopers were recently offended by Tea Lounge's forcible acts of artistic modesty.

The Tea Lounge on Union Street, if you didn't already know, is a hot spot for tea, coffee, snacks, mix'n match old furniture and child rearing in all its many forms. Whether you're a mommy, a daddy, a nanny or a manny, you and your child are welcome at Tea Lounge. Want to breast feed your kid child over a latte? Go for it. Want to hang up art depicting the nude human form? Ahhh, sorry. Not so much. 

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[What To Do In Park Slope When...] Your Manhattan Friends Come For A Fall Staycation.

Image via Eric Ryan Anderson

The word "staycation" is maybe the worst atrocity that marketers have committed in the last hundred years, but I'm using it here because it's the only appropriate word for when your friends from Manhattan "come all the way out" to Brooklyn for some rest and relaxation time. Fall is a particularly frequent time for Manhattanites to travel the full fifteen minutes it takes to get to the Slope, expecting a full on autumn Festival as soon as they haul their asses off the R train. 

Rightfully so. People actually decorate shit for harvest/Thanksgiving/Halloween in these parts, and no one loves a cornucopia like this girl. 

SO, what do you do when you being asked to provide a relaxing fall-themed day for your Manhattanite friends?

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Let's Send Tea Lounge's Josh Ricchio to Latvia!

Photo via Austin NelsonYou may know Josh Ricchio as the cute guy behind the Tea Lounge counter who wears the orange t-shirt and talks about his adorably rambunctious puppy. Well, he's ALSO the lead singer and guitarist in a band called Freak Owls.

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Who Gives a Shit: Trusting Someone To Watch Your Laptop While You Pee?

"Excuse me, would you mind watching my computer for a minute while I use the restroom?" 

I work in coffee shops five days a week and am asked this question no less than twice a day. "Sure," I shrug, and as the person skips to the loo I stare at their MacBook Pro for exactly three seconds before going right back to my own computer. I'm happy to keep it in my periph and all, but I'm not going to completely halt writing insightful mediocre FIPS articles or perusing Steve Guttenberg's IMDB page to stare protectively at your Macbook while NOTHING THE HELL HAPPENS TO IT. No one will notice it's been left alone, nor will it grow legs and crab walk out of the coffee shop. 

Once two iced coffees have coursed their way through my body I too will ask someone sitting nearby to keep an eye on my belongings while I use the restroom. This will often be the same person whose laptop I just listlessly guarded, as the role of babysitter and babysitee are interchangeable. And most of the time when I get back from reading snippets of sage advice scribbled on the bathroom wall (see: "Love thy butt, for without it how would you poop?" -- Tea Lounge), I notice that not only is my laptop's babysitter completely engrossed in their own work, but when I sit back down and say, "Thanks!," they look up with furrowed eyebrows as if to say, "Wait, thanks for what?" 

In four years of playing and witnessing this common trust game I've never seen a theft, nor has anyone ever stolen any of my possessions (knock, knock). I may be naive, but because I frequent the same coffee shops and regularly see the same faces, I feel a sense of comradery amongst my fellow Park Slope latte sippers and bagel munchers. We're all here to enjoy our caffeinated cups and exist in harmony. We've all got each other's backs, right? 

Then we received this embittered email from a FIPS reader, and my life got flipped turned upside down:

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