“Why the fuck would you start a fight with Lou Ferrigno?” A man drunkenly exclaimed at the far end of the bar. His two female companions chortled as they swigged from their bottles.
I sat at the opposite end of the horseshoe-shaped counter lined with video poker machines. A rubber chicken and a mechanical fish hung from the ceiling, which was saturated with desecrated dollar bills and the occasional drum cymbal covered with miniature sombreros. Punk, rock and metal blared from unseen speakers. The walls were thick with layers upon layers of band fliers, stickers and signs touting “the original Bacon Martini” and “Puke Insurance $20. See bartender for details” and a newspaper headline clipping that read, “Drink. Fight. Fuck.” A couple pool tables cut diagonally across a corner of the darkened room with a small stage, under a huge mural that read, “Shut Up and Drink.” Nearby, two unisex bathrooms with questionable door locks were heavily and somewhat artfully graffitied to resemble a piss-soaked alley in New York City’s East Village circa 1981.
I immediately loved it here.
“Well, we’ve all had shitty professors…” The man across the bar was in film school. He and his two young, dyed and pierced cohorts exchanged witty repartee that regularly ended in one-liners that I only heard out of context, like, “I can’t say, ‘iced tea’’ without an ‘a’ on the end” and “A dinosaur never forgets… TO KILL!” and “Girls like you are a dime a sore!” Followed by raucous laughter.
Even though it was a few minutes past 5pm, the bartender extended his noon-to-five happy hour price of $2 for my Bulleit (which he pronounced, “Bull-AYE”) and I was ever so thankful, having come from the overpriced, watered-down drinks of my casino hotel on the Strip. And, well, the Bay Area.
When the bartender asked me if I just got off work, I was momentarily flattered to be considered a local, and hesitated. “No,” I finally responded, embarrassed by the truth. “A conference.”
“A luncheon?” he asked. It was loud. I giggled. I had a mouth full of jerky bits, which I’d bought from the in-house vending machine. I’d picked the jerky bits over the Lay’s Potato Chips I’d originally eyeballed across the room, and the whole-grain Sun Chips I also contemplated, because the bits were high-protein and low-fat. Because I am on a diet. Because I am old. And here I was, wearing a blazer and having just come from a conference. Or a luncheon. Really, what’s the difference?
Meanwhile, the bar erupted in a singalong of a punk cover of the GoGo’s “Our Lips Are Sealed,” replacing the chorus with “Alex Castillo.”
Despite my shamefully apparent, er, maturity, I felt comfortable at this dive. I loved the music and the punk ‘zine aesthetic. I loved the colorful, unpretentious, joyously raggedy people—young and old. It reminded me of my time living in Las Vegas in the early-through-mid ‘80s, just a few years before the Double Down Saloon opened, when Downtown (or “Old Town”) was a bastion for underage clubs and punk shows. Even then, I appreciated the idea of living in that secret underworld of angst and art in a place where glitz and money ruled, along with the nasty smoke-filled, sticky cocktail trays and cheap-cologned scent of broken dreams and desperation, also known as The Strip. At that time, off-Strip Las Vegas was a sprawling suburbia surrounded by desert and supernatural beauty. Subcultures bred prolific in the awkward vortex between the organic and profane, with plenty of distractions for its wayward adolescents. And me.
“Damn, Benny, your cell mate didn’t let you put your clothes on?” The bartender joked loudly with another patron, then poured my second bourbon and soda.
Now visiting nearly 30 years later, I’d just spent the past three days immersed in the exciting, fast-paced, ambitious new world of legitimate cannabis business and innovation. First there was the gathering of high-powered investors and the cannabis entrepreneurs trying to woo them at the ArcView Group forum in Henderson. Then there was the 3rd Annual Marijuana Business Conference & Expo, proclaimed “America’s first and largest national cannabis trade show” at a casino hotel on the Strip.
It was a sold-out Las Vegas-sized convention, with hundreds of vendors and close to 3000 attendees. Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, gave the keynote speech, followed by (free ice cream! and) two full days of sessions—including panels on cultivation tech, election analysis, recreational (or “adult use”) cannabis models, vertical integration, national expansion, banking insights, the future of edibles, Canada, legal threats, the impending invasion of Big Pharma and tobacco, lab testing and labeling, media relations, and attracting women and Boomers to the industry. But the real draw was the opportunity for networking, and potential alliances were formed eagerly with business cards handed out en masse, at the nearby Starbucks before sessions began, on the expo floor and lobby during breaks, at the nightly banquets and rooftop after-parties, of which there seemed a frenzied desire to showcase “the brand”—not to mention, the industry—in the most extravagant, yet socially responsible, way possible.
“How long can you smoke weed?” the film student asked the bartender, mockingly. “How long can you watch me?” replied the bartender.
“All day, e’ry day!”
At the conference, my boyfriend, Andrew, spoke thoughtfully on a panel about expansion into other states, and brought humor to the stage on the closing panel about the future of cannabis. As VP of Harborside Health Center—one of the nation’s largest nonprofit and most well-known medical cannabis dispensaries—Andrew was a popular recipient of handshakes and quick meetings with folks from every facet of the industry. It was good for him to experience, as it was usually his older brother, Steve, recognized as one of the leaders of the industry, who got most of the attention. But with Steve out of the country, Andrew became the DeAngelo Du Jour.
This meant that I was largely on my own in the midst of all this canna-biz. I’ve been to my share of these functions, which, over the past six years have been mostly male-dominated—a fact made obvious by the scantily clad young ladies employed to hawk the latest in cannabis accessories and technology at vendor booths. But I was heartened to see more and more business women in attendance and speaking on panels, and subsequently, more female-based organizations making their presence known.
Cannabis businesspeople were gracious to me, making small talk and only occasionally testing my industry knowledge, but they were mainly interested in speaking with Andrew or his Harborside associate, Elan, my longtime pal from Maui by way of Montana. This was partially my fault, of course, as I regularly downplayed my status; I was not an employee of Harborside but merely Andrew’s girlfriend and a freelance writer. Never mind that I was privy to more backstory and insider information than Lord Varys on Game of Thrones…
“I’m just trying to figure out my place in this world of cannabis,” I had sheepishly told Kyle Kushman, world-renowned grower and former cultivation editor for High Times Magazine, while in line at the hotel’s reception desk. “Figuring out?” he replied with a smirk. “It sounds like you’re swimming upstream. Just let it be. Go with the flow!” He then proceeded to explain how he didn’t set out to be an activist, it just happened. He was called to it.
I was thinking about that, and my lifelong fish-out-of-water ethos, on my solo escape to the Double Down. On the one hand, that outsider mentality helps shape my empathy, inspires my writerly imagination, and protects my overly sensitive nature. On the other hand, I could be using it as a crutch to not engage, and therefore not take responsibility or “worse,” fail. Even though failure is the new black these days—and also, the key to success. Obviously.
Meanwhile, I ordered a souvenir “ass juice toilet” for Sasha from the bartender, while my gleefully unaware compatriots of booze continued espousing their wisdom.
“There’s no place like… I WANNA BE A WITCH!”
