FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Travel

I Went to Denver's Illicit 4/20 Celebration

Denver's Civic Center Park was technically a no-smoking zone on 4/20, but that didn't stop people from gathering for an impromptu toke.

Civic Center Park during yesterday's 4/20 celebration in Denver, Colorado. All photos by the author

There are a handful of qualities I treasure in a person, and one of them is a dependency on marijuana. I have befriended people for decades based solely on the fact that they enjoy the occasional resin hit. Once, when I was 19, I sat down on my dealer's couch to watch an episode of Dragon Ball Z and remained there comfortably for a cool three months. I'm the kind of pothead who drools over zoomed-in pictures of crystallized bud, who frequently finds weed crumbs in the folds of her skin, who still fucking listens to Sublime. I never know when to stop packing bowls. I'm always the biggest stoner in the room—at least I was, until I attended this year's 4/20 celebration/protest at the Capitol Building in Denver, Colorado.

Advertisement

Denver is, of course, the crown jewel in the great bastion of natural beauty and legal weed that is the state of Colorado. You can buy pot here without even having to pretend it's for your anxiety or insomnia or whatever, and because of that, the city has experienced a tremendous boom in weed tourism, particularly on 4/20 weekend. This year, while city officials did allow heavily sponsored events like "Cannabis Cup," the Civic Center Park, which sits directly between the city and state capitals, was officially closed for pot smoking. But that didn't stop thousands of weed activists/life inactivists from congregating there for a traditional 4:20 PM smoke out, as they had on so many years before.

I arrived at around 3:00 PM and followed a gentleman in Beavis and Butthead pajamas pants past a sign that flashed the words "Marijuana Is Illegal." The sign was half burned out; across the street, at the heart of the park, so were thousands of people.

Sunburned middle-aged men with long greasy hair lay prone in the dirt, celebrating their freedom by staring comatose at the sky. "I Got Five On It," played over PA speakers as a woman with a megaphone pointed to photos of men who were in jail for pot-related crimes and was completely ignored by a group of teenaged girls taking selfies of themselves wearing sparkly glasses shaped like pot leaves.

I made my way to the front of the festivities and looked for a place to sit and smoke a bowl when a short man wearing an earpiece physically restrained me with his arm. "You can't go in here. This is reserved for Miguel." I looked around and noticed, for the first time, a velvet rope that had been placed around the planter where we stood and realized that I was, in fact, standing in a VIP section in the middle of a public park.

Advertisement

"Who the fuck is Miguel?" I asked.

"The organizer," Ear Piece replied, rolling his eyes and gesturing towards a large man in a weed leaf cap and a bright yellow shirt that did in fact read "Chief Event Organizer." I was about to attempt contact with Miguel when a stranger in a fishing vest passed me a bowl. I took a long drag and looked out at the sunlit crowd before me: a convergence of virtually every age and race and economic status, all united in this defiant and peaceful moment.

"Excuse me," a girl in an American flag hat tapped politely on my shoulder. "I'm trying to see the fight." I turned to see where she was pointing, but it was too late. The fight had already been broken up, and two state troopers were hauling a teenaged boy through the crowd, who watched on, transfixed by the hypnotizing power of unexpected violence.

I came across a man with a weed top hat and weed scepter and a Colorado flag that he wore as a cape. He smoked from a bowl the size of a large lobster and told me his name was Weed Wizard. I offered him a hit from my bowl, which he turned down on the basis that he was "afraid of herpes," and then proceeded to tell me about his plans to learn how to make acid. A younger guy standing nearby took a hit from my bowl and sagely advised me "never to talk to the guy in the flashiest costume."

Behind us, a circle was forming around a belligerently drunk man, who stumbled with all of his weight on one leg like an elephant who's just been tranquilized. "He's a YouTube star!" exclaimed a guy next to me, "His name is Shoenice. He'll eat or drink anything that people tell him to. He's eaten four condoms. Old Spice. Cigarettes."

Advertisement

"Do you have to pay him?" I asked, as Shoenice stomped his feet behind us and yelled to no one in particular, "I'll suck your tits in front of your boyfriend. I don't care."

"No," said the dude. "You just have to give him attention."

Shoenice then waddled up to the cluster of teenaged boys near by and muttered, "I'll never forget you guys. Or any black people."

The boys all high fived. "I can't believe he wanted to hang out with us!" exclaimed one of them.

Related: VICE meets Arjan Roskam, 38-time Cannabis Cup winner and self-proclaimed King of Cannabis.

The 4:20 hour was drawing nigh and in Miguel's VIP section, a charismatic man in a cheap suit successfully captured the attention of the half-sentient crowd before him by announcing, with a twinkle in his eye, that it was "ten minutes to 4:20!" We all stopped our individual conversations and joined to cheer when he announced that his weather forecast for ten minutes from now was "sunny with a chance of a giant cloud above us!" He went on to quote a Bible verse about God giving us seeded plants and then asked us if we knew what kind of paper the Declaration of Independence was written on.

"Hemp!" chanted 2,000 people, all of whom were "that guy" in college, in unison.

It was then that he announced that we had in our midst a presidential candidate. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, then took the stage in a purple pantsuit and wished us all a happy 4/20. She then attempted to shoe horn in some business about the importance of access to health care and education before appeasing the glassy eyed crowd with some exciting news, "I've just been informed that it's two minutes to 4:20!"

Advertisement

I finished smoking the bowl I was already smoking so I wouldn't miss out on also smoking at 4:20.

Then, it was time for the countdown. In broad day light, at the foot of the state building, we counted down in unison "5-4-3-2-1!" It was our own New Year's Eve. It was our payback for the oppressive years we'd spent in hiding, getting stoned in our cars, and being forced to blow smoke through dryer sheets and toilet rolls like some kind of animals. We took a collective hit before exhaling "Happy 4:20!" and then gleefully cheered for the thick fog above us that we had created with our very own lungs.

The music swelled, the smoking continued, and a genius marketing man from the Kettle Chips company showered us in free samples of potato chips.

On my way back to the car, I miraculously remembered which parking structure I was in, but could not find a pedestrian entrance anywhere. I circled the entire city block twice and remained calm. I decided long ago that the inability to retain important parking information was a small price to pay for the joys that marijuana has brought to my life. On my third trip around the block, I came across a group of people, all in various marijuana themed head gear, who were staring, confused, at the auto exit of the structure.

"Are you guys looking for the entrance too?" I asked.

"I thought there were stairs," offered a man in weed Mardi Gras beads, knowing he wasn't bringing anything to the table

Advertisement

"I'm really high," I told him unnecessarily.

Behind us, a van had pulled up out of the structure and had somehow become perpendicular at the exit.

"I think they are too," said Mardi Gras Beads, as none of us stopped the van from backing into a pole. The driver of the van flashed us an undeserved thumbs up before finally successfully peeling out of the driveway.

I turned to my newfound compatriots. "Are we doing this then? I think it's safer as a group." We all sized up the ramp ahead of us, where a steady stream of cars was driving out, and charged up hill as a pack, like a phalanx of soldiers going head first into ammunition.

Together, we made it safely upstairs and I bid the group adieu. I sat in my car and decided I'd read some literature I'd been given by a woman in a Guy Fawkes mask until I was sober enough to drive. I looked up from my reading to see that next to me, a librarian looking woman was contentedly sitting behind the steering wheel of her Volvo, also with no plans to go anywhere soon. Her seat belt was caught in the door of her car, and I knew it would remain that way until she finally got home.

Follow Tess Barker on Twitter.