THE 420 PHENOMENON
WHAT STARTED AS A STONER JOKE HAS BECOME A HOLIDAY AND BIG DAY FOR BUSINESS.
BY STEVE BLOOM
It was a warm day in Oakland at the end of 1990. Grateful Dead fans were all over the Bay Area for the last shows of the year at Oakland Coliseum. As I walked around the colorful parking lot, fans hawked tie-dyed t-shirts and special brownies. One Deadhead was handing out flyers. It was a half-page and had a handwritten headline, “SMOKE POT AT 4:20.” THE FAMOUS 420 FLYER The flyer went on to tell the first story of 420: “420 started somewhere in San Rafael, CA in the late ‘70s. It started as the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to herb – ‘Let’s Go 420, dude!’ After a while something magical started to happen. People began getting stoned at 4:20 am and/or pm. There’s something fantastic about getting ripped at 4:20, when you know your brothers and sisters all over the country and even the planet are lighting up and tokin’ up right along with you. Now there’s something even grander than getting baked at 4:20. We’re talking about the day of celebration, the real time to get high, the grand master of all holidays: 4/20, or April 20th. This is when you must get the day off work or school. We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais. Just go to downtown Mill Valley, find a stoner and ask where Bolinas Ridge is. If you make it to Marin, you will definitely find it. HELPFUL HINTS: Take extra care that nothing is going to go wrong within that minute. No heavy winds, no cops, no messed-up lighters. Get together with your friends and smoke pot hardcore.” That was the first time I’d ever heard of 420. I brought the flier back to the High Times office in New York where I worked and showed it around. No one seemed to have a clue about it, but gradually we adopted the idea of getting high at 4:20 and generally having celebrations that coincided with that time of day. But 420 eventually become another code for smoking pot, as in, “Let’s 420, dude.” It began to catch on. I just generally assumed that the Deadheads had a collective brainstorm and decided that 4:20 was perfect time to toke. But there was actually more to the story. ENTER THE WALDOS Several years later, Steve Capper contacted High Times. He claimed he and four friends (they dubbed themselves “ The Waldos”), who all attended San Rafael High School in California’s Marin County in the late ’60s and early ’70s, had coined the term. 14
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