Jeremy D’Antonio, a rock musician who co-owns and manages the historic Old Western Saloon in Point Reyes Station, thought the Wu Wei Tea Temple in Fairfax might be a little too woo-woo for his trucker-hat, bar-band sensibility. That is until he walked into the place.
“I felt immediately comfortable, and there are very few places where I feel that way,” he said one recent morning at the tea temple as its employees ran noisy blenders and prepared to open at noon. “It’s a completely different energy than a bar because there’s no alcohol. It’s much more positive. The Western is a whiskey and tear-in-my-beer type place. This is a whole different vibration than that. I immediately fell in love with the place.”
He was so enchanted that he bought the tea house in March from its founder, Tracy Brien Ginzburg, who opened it in 2015 with the idea of creating an alcohol-free, all-ages oasis that its website describes as “a gathering place for creatives, wanderers and lovers of life’s little treasures.” She named it after the Taoist concept of “wu wei,” which literally translates to “effortless action.” In other words, don’t sweat it. Just chill.
“This is Marin County, the land of doing, doing, doing and the need to do so much more,” Ginzburg said. “I wanted to play on the opposite side of that coin; I wanted to play in the land of not doing, of doing less. I always felt that I wanted to create a space where people could be themselves versus the persona that they have to put on just to exist in this world. I always considered this space to energetically be one where you walk in and you get to relax into yourself simply by being there. There’s no facade you need to wear.”
Since Fairfax has been affectionately called “Mayberry on acid,” you’d think the Wu Wei Tea Temple would have been an instant hit. But despite its hippie history, the town took a few years to grok the Wu Wei culture.
“It was a nice slow grow,” Ginzburg said. “It took a while for it to take off.”
The Wu Wei Tea Temple boasts a coterie of devoted customers who have been coming in since it opened its doors 11 years ago at 1820 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. in Fairfax.
“It’s had many chapters and gone through its own evolution,” said Ricky Appelbaum, a Fairfax life coach who’s been part of the Wu Wei scene from day one. “I’ve seen how it evolved into what’s kind of like a cultural institution around here.”
Another longtime regular, Olivia Marichi, credits the tea temple’s success to Ginzburg’s “major power to unite people. She knows how to open hearts and let the conversation flow.”
During the day, the place serves as a combination cafe and workspace. You’ll find many folks quietly settled in with tea and laptops. But at night there’s a lot of “effortless doing” that gets done at the Wu Wei Tea Temple, or, as the regulars call it, “the Wu.” There’s Trivia Tuesdays, tarot and astrology readings on Thursdays, a DJ house music dance party on Fridays and a well-attended open mic on Sundays.
“You’ll drive by at night sometimes and it’s the most happening place in town,” D’Antonio said. “It’s got some magnetism to it.”
Saturdays are often reserved for live music on the Wu Wei Tea Temple’s small stage. The place has a reputation for presenting mostly acoustic world music and musicians, such as Pakistani singer Sukhawat Ali Khan, one of its most popular performers. Late to the party, I discovered the place only recently when I went there for the first time to hear a couple of musician friends of mine accompany the West African singer and guitarist Zé Manel.
On that warm night the audience sat on low couches and Oriental pillows along the walls and at an L-shaped bar in the back. Since the place only holds about 50 people, it was comfortably “crowded.” By the second set, the crowd was on its feet, dancing and clapping. There’s no cover charge. A hat gets passed a couple of times an evening for donations for the musicians. A duo called Sonic Bloom, featuring Gabe Harris and Daniel Berkman, is on the calendar for Aug. 6.
Food and drinks, featuring tea from Marin County tea pioneer David Lee Hoffman as well as kava, bone broth, various exotic elixirs and Middle Eastern-style fare, are served on coffee tables made from sliced tree trunks. I had a drink called Golden Milk, a house specialty, that I can’t wait to have again.
A casbah of color, the Wu Wei Tea Temple’s exotic decor features a phalanx of ritualistic-looking masks by Point Reyes Station artist Ernesto Sanchez on the wall opposite the stage.
“My art is spiritual in nature and also has a mystical slant,” Sanchez said. “I see my art as a portal, which falls into the concept of the Wu Wei in that when you’re entering the tea temple, you’re entering another realm.”
Since she sold the business, Ginzburg, 55, who has a home in Larkspur’s Madrone Canyon and lives in Israel, has been on a wu wei journey of her own, hiking the Appalachian Trail for two months with her husband and preparing for a 300-mile canoe trip on the Yukon River in Canada and Alaska.
As the Wu Wei Tea Temple’s new owner, D’Antonio, who’s 49 and lives in Forest Knolls with his partner, Alicia, a Kaiser nurse, and their three school-age children, is delighted to be part of what is a very different milieu for him. He was introduced to the Wu Wei Tea Temple by the wealthy tech entrepreneur Chris Hulls, who can often be spotted playing chess there in the afternoons. With Hulls, D’Antonio is co-executive director of the Point Reyes Good Luck Fund, a nonprofit that Hulls seeded with $15 million of his own money to buy and restore historic buildings and properties in West Marin, including the Old Western. The Wu Wei Tea Temple is not part of that enterprise, which is fitting. The tea temple is a singular entity, unlike anything else.
As a co-founder of the Marin band San Geronimo, D’Antonio, a singer-songwriter and guitarist, has long been a prominent player on the local rock scene. This weekend, he’ll be playing with the Terrapin Roadshow at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre in San Rafael. When it comes to the Wu Wei Tea Temple, though, he has no intention of turning it into anything other than what it is and what it has always been.
“I’m 100% hands off at this point,” he said. “They tried to get me to curate the music and bring San Geronimo in here, but I said absolutely not. You don’t want a rock band. The Wu Wei is not that. I don’t want to mess with the magic that’s going on here.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at [email protected]
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