trendwatch
Back in my day, weed was bought from shady characters standing on the corner, or at a weed spot where shady characters gathered. There was none of this ordering on the phone and having some aspiring male model type roll up to your front door on his bike to deliver your quarter ounce. That's that bullshit. Just another sign of dwindling
grittiness, like getting our
tattoos in malls. So it's no surprise that our city's weed dealers have morphed from streetwise hustlers posted up in the shadows to fancy-free longhairs who
give interviews about their business to the
Observer under their
real names:
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Dudemeister
Awesome dude
Matthew MacConaughey is a man of simple pleasures. He likes to smoke a little something, enjoy a frosty beverage, play some bongos, and ride some tasty waves. So why are his Malibu neighbors getting all, like, uptight and totally hassling bro in the press? His surf buddy fans already did them all the favor of clearing the beach of pesky paparazzi by handing the shutterbugs
some righteous beatdowns. Well, it seems the no-fun-loving neighbors are worried about the children. Won't someone please, please think of the children?
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usa
Shed a patriotic tear, fellow Americans: we are the most drugged-out nation in the world. A
new study (of 17 nations) shows that more than 16% of Americans have done coke, and more than 42% of us have smoked weed, absolutely
blowing away second place finisher New Zealand and the rest of the civilized world. Suck our woolie blunt smoke, Kiwis! Fetch our crack pipe, Netherlands lightweights! All it takes is one look at this handy chart to see... did you lock the front door? Did you
hear something? Click to enlarge. Dude, awesome.
dude
Which is funnier: hippie college kids engaging in a weed smoking festival, or the local paper trying to cover that event in respectable language? You decide! In honor of 4/20, 10,000 kids at the University of Colorado hit the quad for a massive smoke-out, and the Boulder
Daily Camera was
on the scene to record all the magical high-ass quotes that spilled forth from the participants. Here is just one, from freshman Emily Benson: "We're at the starting point of a movement," she said. "This is a big part of the reason I applied here — for the weed atmosphere." Ha, yes you did! And there are so many more:
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crime
One of the biggest weed-selling crews in New York was also behind a record label that distributed Wyclef Jean and a slew of reggae stars. The
John Shop Crew was a violent, murderous gang moving a literal ton of marijuana per week from California; John Shop Records was the label they started with the profits. I see the subtle connection! Eight members of the crew were found guilty on gun and drug charges yesterday and could face up to life in prison [
NYDN]. According to a
2002 article, John Shop was one of the three top weed crews in the city, and was locked in an ongoing drug war responsible for at least a dozen murders. Perhaps a reason to give your record label a different name. The label's motto was "Being real to the music, never hustle the music." No time to hustle the music when you're hustling all that REEFER, ha. John Shop's personal history [
MySpace] of how they "made the music and they made the party" is below—inserting "and we passed around unlimited weed and cash" helps it all make sense.
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drugs
New York governor
Eliot Spitzer is getting pilloried left and right for his kind of stupid proposal to tax illegal drugs. He introduced it as a (serious? Nobody really knows) proposal to close the state's budget gap by laying taxes on coke, weed, and smack. In reality, many states use these drug taxes as a tool to seize assets from dealers under tax evasion charges [
WP]. Right-wingers hate the idea because it appears to be soft on crime. Left-wingers hate the idea because it reveals the underlying hypocrisy on the war on drugs. But why should you, the average Philly-rolling person on the street, hate the idea? Because if it actually happened, those dime sacks would get a
lot smaller.
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Gawker
A retired police officer and microbrewer in the town of Weed, California has won the right to use the slogan "Try Legal Weed" in his marketing material—though he's never touched the herb himself. The news gives the LA Times the chance to use up all those weed jokes it had laying around. [LAT]
Best Weed Ever
publicity stunts
video
