is pot still cool?
I don’t know, ask this beer.
I like the marijuana place next to the Girl Scouts on Broadway in Denver. They are careful to warn you not to park in the Girl Scouts’ parking lot after they ask if you’re there for medical or recreational.
The bright colors on the left is the Girl Scouts’ entrance:
They’ve got quite a few locations (9?), but I’ve only been to the LivWell on Broadway.
Very professional, friendly and informative staff. Seemed like all female staff that I could see, mostly young (20’s), but a few that were older as well, I think. Modern, but relaxed atmosphere that has the feel of an art gallery with a clean, minimalist décor. They’ve got macro photography of righteous buds showing their thick, white trichomes glistening in the light on the walls.
The clientele was of all walks of life.
A bearded, young, newcomer guy came in with a tie-dye shirt asking if he could park in the Girl Scouts’ parking lot. “No, please do not. There’s parking on the south side.”
A seasoned partaker that dressed and looked like a 30’s-ish woman you’d see behind the jewelry counter of Macy’s at Cherry Creek mall was walking out with a friend. They seemed pretty upbeat.
A sheepish, attractive 20-something woman slinks out to her car with sunglasses on trying not to make eye contact with anyone outside of the building.
A demure, stoned woman in her late 30’s relaxes on the clean, stylish couch and sizes people up while a young, well-kempt, somewhat hipster-ish, skinny-jeaner guy floats around looking like he’s got a purpose beyond just looking for something he’s probably lost.
Total opposite experience of going to many bars where they serve alcohol. No rowdy yelling or bravado. Everyone seemed quite alert for the most part. Polite and intelligent.
Even if you don’t partake in marijuana, I suggest you pay them a visit and ask for a little tour. Tell them you’re curious about it, etc. and check it out. I think you may be pleasantly surprised how nice it is.
When weed is no longer illegal, does it cease to be part of the counterculture? When the counterculture becomes mainstream, what is it?
The counterculture isn’t becoming mainstream, the mainstream is becoming counterculture.
We’ve been working on this for decades. Unlike flash in the pan attempts to influence culture, our efforts have slowly and steadily kept pounding on what (at first) seemed like an almost impenetrable fortress of corporate attitudes and rampant conformity (see the 80’s).
This isn’t an overnight sensation and the legalization of marijuana is only one small piece of the bigger, counterculture picture that’s shaping the American experience from within.
I think many people who are disappointed that things haven’t changed more dramatically and quicker don’t necessarily realize how wickedly and solidly ingrained corporate culture has indoctrinated many others. It’s a herculean task to inject things that run counter to corporatism when the corporatists own the keys to the mass media and can throw pesky things like ethics to the side whenever it suits the suits.
Counterculture started the internet.
Counterculture is the only reason we don’t have an outright ground war following airstrikes in Syria right now.
Counterculture is why this moronic drug war is being slowly dismantled despite the incredibly powerful corporatists who would continue to keep it profitably in place indefinitely.
Counterculture has little to do with whether pot is still “cool” after it’s legalized. In my opinion, what makes counterculture “cool” is that despite enormous, crushing, corporatist power that manufactures consent and oppresses all of us… the counterculture still manages to subvert them by outsmarting them, outthinking them and out-loving a pretty hate machine.
I know it’s hip and pseudo-cool to focus on all the downsides of the Internet, the counterculture’s apparent absorption by the mainstream, etc. - but I think many aren’t looking at the bigger picture.
Hipsters freak out and ask… what happens when a subculture becomes assimilated by the mainstream?
What happens? More kids get exposed to alternative music with messages about thinking for themselves. Maybe get exposed to some punk bands that expose kids to political ideologies they’d never heard of before nor get from their parents, their friends, their church, their conservative community… their schools and sure as hell not from their news.
Some hate punk fashion being “absorbed” by the mainstream…
If the appeal of the punk fashion lifestyle somehow leads to one more American picking up a book on Banksy at Urban Outfitters in their midwest suburban mall, great. If that later leads to a book on Chomsky then more power to those that try to exploit punk. It’s called blowback.
If someone gets into punk through vapid marketers because it looks hip and “rebellious” but it leads them down a path of thinking more for themselves and looking into alternative news media, then more power to the “word” punk.
If one beer company or some mall shops can kill “punk”, then punk wasn’t ever very strong in the first place. I’m secure in the underground influence that still reverberates today in various forms. When it infiltrates the mainstream, I’ve got no problem with it. The underground is strong enough to not only survive it, but also subvert the mainstream in the process.
Maybe what’s really happening when you see an Urban Outfitters or Hot Topic in a suburban mall is a process where a subculture is subverting the mainstream?
Embrace it and work on your own subculture shit so when the kids reach deep into the rabbit hole you can offer them something worthwhile when they get to your “true” counterculture.
If kids get inspired and reach into the counterculture only to be told they aren’t worthy because their path was through the only things they were exposed to like Hot Topic, etc. - Then you’re the elitist in the equation here. You’re the problem. Not Hot Topic. Not Urban Outfitters. You are.
I should note that this rant wasn’t directed at Maggie! And, no, I’m not stoned while writing this.
