Rafael Blunt Walk

Now usually I stay in the city for the most part, but when offered a chance to hitch a ride outta state I’m usually riding shotgun. And this just so happened to be the case as the Happy Munkey Team planned to bus it down to Washington DC in anticipation of the Presidential Inauguration. Now I’m not the most political guy in the world but how many times do you get to participate in history while getting High? I’d say very few, if ever. So I packed a bunch of weed along with a new pack of papers and a crap ton of 35mm film and I was ready to hit the road. On this mission with me was our COO and my brother David and his Girlfriend Danielle and our photographer Origino of the Weekend Warriors. We booked a huge place in Baltimore and we took a 3-hour road trip, which I slept through like a baby.

I woke up as we pulled up to the house in a fancy neighborhood at the top of Federal Hill. The house had had rooms upon rooms, with the cherry on top being a roof patio overseeing the entire city which was perfect for blowing down a bunch of joints (which is exactly what I did when I got there). As we settled in, Danielle and David got to planning taking DC by storm. The plan was to get into DC and hand out free weed to the masses. Danielle made some signs to collect signatures, as David and I rolled cones full of some New York sour glue to keep everyone lifted for what we thought was going to be a crazy day. After we knocked out all the work, we took a lap on the roof patio with a couple of joints before we passed out as we prepared for what we thought would be a war across the aisles.

The next morning David made the rounds of waking everyone up, I stumbled out of bed groggy from smoking most of the night away. As David corralled the team, I went straight to the roof patio for a quick Wake & Bake to get ready for the day, and 15 minutes later I found myself packed into the car on the way to the train to DC. Our train ride from Baltimore to DC was roughly 45 minutes so it gave me a lot of time to load up my camera with film and take a quick power nap that I sorely needed. I was genuinely so high, every time I opened my eyes, we were several stops closer, I felt like I was teleporting into the Capital. When we finally landed we rushed to the closest coffee shop for much needed fuel for the day. As we walked with our coffee, I noticed heavy police & military presence barricading the streets, and if I was feeling homesick the grizzled faces of NYPD were in spitting distance so I felt right back in the hood way out here in DC. And just like in the hood it was time to smoke on the block, to much shagrin of the crowd around us. As we smoked, David and Danielle got people to sign our “Choose Happy” Board as we passed out joints to friendly passersby.

Surprisingly the streets were a lot emptier than I thought they would be, and stores were boarded up tight, so it seemed the city was expecting the worst. Considering that covid is still in full effect, I guess the turnout was reasonable, but I thought a lot more people would be about watching the transition of power from Trump to Biden. But the people we did bump into as the day went on were so friendly and gave off such positive energy (except for a couple of weirdos) it was awesome. Another plus was, I hadn’t taken many pictures of people in such a long time, it was truly missed.

By the time the inauguration was done, It was getting quite cold so we took one more lap around the gated area to fill up any last bit of space on the signature board. Once we reached maximum capacity, as a reward to ourselves, we sparked the last joint we had to give out, and for some reason, it was the most satisfying Jay of the day. As we trooped it back to the train with a whole board full of signatures and enough rolls of film to make a movie, all I could think about is all the positivity to come in the next four years. We finally boarded a train back home just as the last of our energy was giving out, so we passed out as a team and woke up right as we got to our stop, the trip couldn’t have ended any more perfectly.

-Rafael Hernandez