Jacob Bell
New Member
A telltale stench filled the air as thousands of stoners milled around Frank Ogawa Plaza at the foot of Oakland City Hall. Brazen hustlers openly hawked pot seeds, clones, cannabis-infused slushies and pot-chocolate-covered bananas while onlookers hit joints and bongs and vaporizers - even a reverse gas mask.
A few feet away, tight-lipped Oakland PD officers busied themselves with the logistics of traffic flow, indifferent to the flagrant, widespread consumption of a Schedule I controlled substance. Welcome to Oaksterdam, circa 2011, site of the third annual International Cannabis and Hemp Exposition.
Recession? What recession?
On this glorious three-day weekend throngs of medical marijuana patients, activists, workers, and curiosity seekers eagerly paied $20 (or $60 for VIP access) to run the gauntlet of bong vendors, dispensaries, hemp clothiers, and food trucks that lined the five-block open air street fair. Vendors, for their part, paid anywhere from $1,000 to $6,000 to pitch their tents, then pitch their wares.
In most cases those wares were predictable: Bongs, bongs, and more bongs. Hemp fashion. Medicated edibles. Hash bags and hydroponic equipment. More subtly but no less abundantly were Proposition 215-friendly doctors, lawyers, and accountants who advertised their availability.
Viewed from that perspective, it was easy to conclude that if you've seen one overpriced cannabis convention, you've seen them all.
But the real draw took a little more walking, up the block and around the corner to the designated outdoor "215 area" where patients could choke with relative impunity. With City Hall as a symbolic backdrop, this fenced-off urban park and pro-smoking zone was the pot of gold at the end of the expo rainbow.
Oakland native Nigel Ayres, 41, waited a long time to get there - 40 minutes to enter the expo grounds, another half-hour in line to verify his med-pot card and, finally, a third line to enter the 215 area.
At first he was disappointed.
"There was supposed to be a hash bar where you could smoke on the steps of City Hall," he explained. "But there was never any hash bar that I saw. When I first got to the smoking area there were a couple of vendors selling hash, but somebody squashed that real quick."
Nonetheless, in Ayres' estimation, "The event itself was cool." The opportunity to medicate and socialize with so many fellow patients offset all the waiting and the sales pitches.
Most denizens of the 215 area seemed unaware of, or unconcerned by, the spot's proximity to the federal courthouse, just one-half block down Clay Street. The U.S. attorney who works there stubbornly refuses to recognize the legitimacy of cannabis as medicine.
"F*** it," shrugged one ginger-haired, 20-something scofflaw who identified himself only as John Boy. Buoyed by safety in numbers, and too young to remember Prague Spring, he wasn't about to give in to paranoia over federal party crashers.
"What are they gonna do?" he asked rhetorically, nodding over his shoulder at the hundreds of smokers crowding the 215 zone as he carefully broke up a pungent Sour Diesel nug and stuffed it into the business end of a pipe.
Security took a relaxed attitude toward transgressions such as passing joints and smoking on the manicured grass. They followed a zero-tolerance approach, however, when it came to photographing patients medicating in front of City Hall.
Assistant City Administrator Arturo Sanchez, in an interview with KTVU-TV, rationalized thusly: "It's not that we don't want the picture. It's really that we try to keep this area of City Hall, this public park, free of smoke and inhalation."
Never mind that on this day the only people who could enter that park did so for the express purpose of smoking.
Take Jenni Flowers, for example. The 27-year-old Oakland resident, med-pot patient, and veteran of just about every pro-cannabis festival held in the Bay Area over the past three years, reveled in the opportunity to spark up in the sunshine.
"The music isn't that great, and the exhibits might be the same-old same-old, and it didn't look like anybody was really into the panel discussions," she acknowledged between puffs.
"But still -- here we are, on a beautiful day, surrounded by cool people, in the middle of downtown Oakland," she said. "Smoking pot. Out in the open. And the cops aren't harassing us, they're protecting us. It's kind of amazing if you think about it."
News Hawk- Jacob Ebel 420 MAGAZINE
Source: blogs.sfweekly.com
Author: Todd Anthony
Contact: Contact Us
Copyright: SF Weekly, LP.
Website: Smoking Dope at City Hall with the Cops' Protection: Welcome to Cannabis Expo
A few feet away, tight-lipped Oakland PD officers busied themselves with the logistics of traffic flow, indifferent to the flagrant, widespread consumption of a Schedule I controlled substance. Welcome to Oaksterdam, circa 2011, site of the third annual International Cannabis and Hemp Exposition.
Recession? What recession?
On this glorious three-day weekend throngs of medical marijuana patients, activists, workers, and curiosity seekers eagerly paied $20 (or $60 for VIP access) to run the gauntlet of bong vendors, dispensaries, hemp clothiers, and food trucks that lined the five-block open air street fair. Vendors, for their part, paid anywhere from $1,000 to $6,000 to pitch their tents, then pitch their wares.
In most cases those wares were predictable: Bongs, bongs, and more bongs. Hemp fashion. Medicated edibles. Hash bags and hydroponic equipment. More subtly but no less abundantly were Proposition 215-friendly doctors, lawyers, and accountants who advertised their availability.
Viewed from that perspective, it was easy to conclude that if you've seen one overpriced cannabis convention, you've seen them all.
But the real draw took a little more walking, up the block and around the corner to the designated outdoor "215 area" where patients could choke with relative impunity. With City Hall as a symbolic backdrop, this fenced-off urban park and pro-smoking zone was the pot of gold at the end of the expo rainbow.
Oakland native Nigel Ayres, 41, waited a long time to get there - 40 minutes to enter the expo grounds, another half-hour in line to verify his med-pot card and, finally, a third line to enter the 215 area.
At first he was disappointed.
"There was supposed to be a hash bar where you could smoke on the steps of City Hall," he explained. "But there was never any hash bar that I saw. When I first got to the smoking area there were a couple of vendors selling hash, but somebody squashed that real quick."
Nonetheless, in Ayres' estimation, "The event itself was cool." The opportunity to medicate and socialize with so many fellow patients offset all the waiting and the sales pitches.
Most denizens of the 215 area seemed unaware of, or unconcerned by, the spot's proximity to the federal courthouse, just one-half block down Clay Street. The U.S. attorney who works there stubbornly refuses to recognize the legitimacy of cannabis as medicine.
"F*** it," shrugged one ginger-haired, 20-something scofflaw who identified himself only as John Boy. Buoyed by safety in numbers, and too young to remember Prague Spring, he wasn't about to give in to paranoia over federal party crashers.
"What are they gonna do?" he asked rhetorically, nodding over his shoulder at the hundreds of smokers crowding the 215 zone as he carefully broke up a pungent Sour Diesel nug and stuffed it into the business end of a pipe.
Security took a relaxed attitude toward transgressions such as passing joints and smoking on the manicured grass. They followed a zero-tolerance approach, however, when it came to photographing patients medicating in front of City Hall.
Assistant City Administrator Arturo Sanchez, in an interview with KTVU-TV, rationalized thusly: "It's not that we don't want the picture. It's really that we try to keep this area of City Hall, this public park, free of smoke and inhalation."
Never mind that on this day the only people who could enter that park did so for the express purpose of smoking.
Take Jenni Flowers, for example. The 27-year-old Oakland resident, med-pot patient, and veteran of just about every pro-cannabis festival held in the Bay Area over the past three years, reveled in the opportunity to spark up in the sunshine.
"The music isn't that great, and the exhibits might be the same-old same-old, and it didn't look like anybody was really into the panel discussions," she acknowledged between puffs.
"But still -- here we are, on a beautiful day, surrounded by cool people, in the middle of downtown Oakland," she said. "Smoking pot. Out in the open. And the cops aren't harassing us, they're protecting us. It's kind of amazing if you think about it."
News Hawk- Jacob Ebel 420 MAGAZINE
Source: blogs.sfweekly.com
Author: Todd Anthony
Contact: Contact Us
Copyright: SF Weekly, LP.
Website: Smoking Dope at City Hall with the Cops' Protection: Welcome to Cannabis Expo
