T. Kid Goes to Denver

It’s hard to miss the one weird guy who walks around terminal five at JFK striking up conversations with unsuspecting travelers. As I ordered a medium-awful chesseburger in the food court, I heard him ruin a family's layover behind me. “Crazy night to be traveling. You just getting in?” he asked them. “Oh, I’ve been to Detroit before. It seems nice.” When he crept up next to me to pick up his order, I could feel his eyes on me. As I blocked him from my vision, I felt the last lump of a cheeba chew dissolve into my bloodstream. I had been nibbling on it during the entire train ride to JFK and realized I had a lot left by the time I reached security—I gulped the cheeba chew down, smoked a cigarette, and forgot about it until this guy finally broke the ice. “Woah, cool pants, bro,” he said. (I always second-guess myself before traveling in my evergreen camouflage sweatpants, but comfort always outweighs style at the airport.) He asked me where I was headed, and I told him Denver. “Business or pleasure?” he asked. “Well, technically, business,” I told him. At that point, he asked me, “Now, why would you be flying to Denver on New Year’s Eve? You won’t get there till well after midnight.” I was getting more and more stoned by the second, so I could only stay silent and wait for him to put the pieces together. My burger came out. I grabbed it off the counter and looked back at the guy. “Denver is gonna be pretty cool tomorrow, huh?” he said. I gave him an awkward smile and scuttled away to my gate, so I could eat before I slept through the holiday.

In case you haven't already realized, I hate New Year’s Day—at least I hate every component of its celebration. I always find some way to escape the typical festivities, and this year I had the perfect excuse—I wanted to be one of the first people to buy legal weed in America. In order to do so, I had to arrive at sunrise on January 1 at a dispensary in Denver called 3D Discreet and sign my name on a clipboard sitting by the front steps. This was the place chosen for the first legal sale of cannabis in America. While surrounded by flashing lights, boom mics, and gigantic cameras, a veteran suffering from PTSD ceremonially made the first purchase. I believe this is called a “press junk fest.”

I rolled into the press area with David Bienenstock, who was reporting on the historic weed events for VICE. He had promised me that he’d cry at some point that morning, so I was watching him more closely than the other weed pioneers proclaiming victory in front of us. He admitted that he hated junk fests, but that this one was special. Right when it looked like he was about to crack, I was suddenly struck with altitude sickness. I darted outside, where the crowd had grown in number but not in noise level. It was starting to snow and every member of the expanding New Year's Day mob was smiling and waiting patiently. I ran to the chain-link fence at the side of the building ready to barf when a wolf-sized dog charged at me from the other side of the fence. He scared the nausea right out of me and left me wondering why a canine monster was being caged at the back of a dispensary. I ran to my car and ate the one banana I had on hand. (I always buy at least one banana if there is a basket of them available at a point of purchase, which is often.)

By the time I came back around, the junk fest had turned its focus onto the line of customers snaking into the dispensary. Amazingly, they were actually following the sign-up sheet that was sitting on the steps earlier in the day. After waiting for the people in front of me to make their purchases, I became the 51st person to buy legal weed in America—and from what I saw, I was probably the first non-white guy to buy legal weed in America, and I was definitely the first brown guy to buy legal weed in the states. When I got to the front of the line, I entered a smaller room where enthusiastic dudes behind glass counters were showing people the product. (Typically, this room is reserved for one person at a time, but the first few days of recreational legalization have dispensaries looking more like stores than pharmacies.) I smelled around a little before settling on an eighth of Bubba Kush, an eighth of C4, and a couple of truffles.

As I walked out, I coincidentally heard a 50-something white woman read out the same strains to her husband, telling him what she had picked up. When she told him the purchase came out to $170, he muttered, “Shit.” By local standards, weed has actually become expensive, equaling about what you’d pay for an eighth in any northeastern city—that has been thanks to a 25 percent tax on recreational weed. I got a quarter (my legal limit from one store as an out-of-state consumer), and it cost me a $100. Maybe that’s why my friends in Colorado were not leaping up at sunrise to engage in this historic ceremony. Although a lot of locals are lining up at dispensaries all over town for recreational weed, the real heads have been buying weed with their medical cards for a few years. Although January 1 was a legal landmark for the nation, most of blazing Denver viewed it as another sunny New Year's Day.

I brought my legally purchased goods back to the Chamberlains’ pad. (The Chamberlains are my friends who are weed growers in Denver; I've been staying at their place.) My half-ounce looked paltry in comparison to the Chamberlains' mason jars full of their home-grown weed. The older Chamberlain gave me a grand tour of his office, a 500-plant grow operation complete with a high-tech extraction lab and a massive kitchen that pumps out activated treats under the label Beyond Mars—I also got to see a couple of smaller operations that were just picking up steam. Everyone has been talking about expanding, anticipating the massive demand that’s going to come from tourism. Colorado recently legalized weed, and people are already flocking to Denver. Imagine how many college stoners will inundate this city come summertime.

But for now, quiet enthusiasm is in the air. Smoking in public is still illegal, and the law forbids public places like bars and coffee shops from allowing smoking, so the only visible differences are long lines at some dispensaries.

Today was my last full day in town, and the younger Chamberlain drove me to one last dispensary called Citi-Med. It was like a crowded deli with two counters: one called REC for recreational sales and one called MED for medical sales. The difference was that the REC line had way less strains available and an eighth cost $60. Everyone in the REC line kept looking over at the MED options, and I imagined a weed riot breaking out right there in the store. Instead, every customer calmly bought their weed and walked out holding their stapled paper bag.

On the way back to REC, we stopped to buy rolling papers from a gas station. A young black dude and a frumpy middle-aged white guy worked behind the counter. “Do you guys have any hemp papers?” I asked. The young guy said, “Yeah, I know what you mean, but we don’t have those. But yeah, it’s legal now.” I said, “Hell yeah!” and asked him if he’d smoked legal weed yet. In a half second of body language, he expressed that the old guy next to him was totally not down and that he would like to keep his job. I looked at the old guy and asked him the same thing. He looked disgusted and said, “I want nothing to do with it.” I said, “That’s understandable,” although I didn't understand his perspective—he was the first guy I met in Denver that was unhappy about weed being legal. Thank you for the reality check, you sour, old bastard.

Check out my Instagram to see more photos from Denver. Shout-out to Flosstradamus for sampling Weediquette Episode One on the intro of their new mixtape!

@ImYourKid