It’s a Start

Humble Beginnings...It’s starting to feel like the universe is at seventeen or eighteen after four, just a couple of minutes till the momentous twenty after four when the golden herb, our Yerba Buena, our original tag, that now could be so fitting as our new role as the American Amsterdam, sorry Oakland.

By the way, 4:20...Whatever you heard, whatever the disputes and late night arguments around the glass bong may occur, this is the real deal. Just like Burning Man, these stoney urban myths all begin from humble origins.  

In the late Seventies, Mount Tamalpais was happening. Alongside with these crazy people who were running and exercising on the mountain paths to the chagrin of passing motorists, were long-haired kids who rode street bikes down the knobby, steep terrain. These Pioneers of the Extreme rode their thin-tired Schwinns and Huffys down Tam, bouncing and falling and going head over teakettle, all culminating with a major smokeout. These wild guys did it almost every day. They’d meet at Tam at Four:Twenty. History never knows what it’s doing until later.

I used to smoke with those guys. No big thing except I can always remember them saying at the end, “Seeing you dudes tomorrow...”then the Dopateers would all chime in... “at 4:20, man.” Then they would hop on their hill-thrashed bikes and split.

We’re still in the Seventies...I moved to City right after The Band held their Last Waltz. My roommate, like many other like freaks around the City would, around the first week after New Year’s, bring dried up Christmas trees to Ocean Beach. There would be groups of people, separately, burning the ol’ Xmas tree, of course accompanied by the Yerba Buena. In a few years those beachstoners enlarged the circle, threw the collective trees in the middle, and lit up. The cool San Francisco cops looked the other way for a few years until it got too big with the amount of people and fires. Hence, backwoods Nevada for all fire and smoke watching.

I understand there’s like fifty Burning Man prototypes going on in America now. Even my Mom knows what 4:20 means. Why? Because people like to get high and have fun...

Back to Legalization... It’s all happening and here in San Francisco, we’re at Ground Zero. As Frissy goes, so will the nation. The ghosts of the Kennedy and Seagram bootleggers must be drooling in their graves. We are going from quasi-legal to getting more legal every day. These are heady times. Yesterday we had a major storm. I had Chinese food delivered and a little later, the grand champion of this year’s Cannabis Cup, Dragon’s Breath, was dropped off by my dispensary’s delivery service. These are great times. Speaking of...

Many thanks to all that made the Cannabis Cup 2009 a success. There were rivers of chocolate twisting and turning around stations of stoners and happy smiles ingesting and eliminating some of the best herb available anywhere on this green Earth. While I doff my wool cap to the producers and organizers behind the event, I’d really like to thank the special people who made that night extra cool for me. Like my dapper dreaded friend who produced a joint of the Tangerine Kush when I had asked him, “Had you see any of that T.K. that was floating around?” My D.D.F. patted ever so gently the breast pockets of his three-piece suit, then the side pockets of said suit. Then my D.D.F. checked his pants pockets with a hesitant smile, then the inner breast pockets once again before finding the mammoth doobie in those notorious deep breast pockets. Success!

There was the Edible Lady who danced around and gave us small amounts of body heat in the cool night air while she dropped brownies and truffles into our collective open mouths...There were dressed-down millionaires who’d been living in trailers in the Mendocino hills coming to the big city to show off their wares. But of all the characters I met and the good staff people I hung out with, the Big Shout Out goes to my new BFF, Josh. Josh, if you ever read this, I can never say the words Diesel or Sour without squirting THC- laden tears and thinking of your big buds, Dudesky. And I mean that in the most manly way...

Josh and I smoked and talked about where Weed was going. Josh’s main point, unless the growers are cool, conscious, and not into it for the money, Weed will always be cool. When it’s about the money... then you’re going to have problems.

This is what this column is about. Where Weed’s going... by a guy who’s been going with it since he found his walking stick at twelve. Humble beginnings, sure enough.

More later...

Jack Rikess

King of Three Leaf Journalism