“It didn’t even smell like weed.” So reports Journal freelancer Zach St. George, who this afternoon trekked up to Arcata’s Redwood Park expecting to find a swaying herd of glassy-eyed stoners and instead found bored APD cops.
What happened? This is supposed to be, like, the stoner’s choicest locale on the stoner’s unofficial holiday, right? Hell, just last year we were named America’s Most Stoned Community (though they somehow missed the bullseye by about seven miles). Where is everybody?
Oh look, there’s someone!
Reportedly the cops just wanted to know if this guy’s puppy was registered.
Ooh! More people!
Police standing by barricades — yes, they barricaded a public park — told the trickle of hoodie fan club members that the party of the past had been canceled. Evidently that proclamation, along with the drizzly weather, effectively harshed Arcata’s collective high. Or at least scared it indoors.
One officer warned the would-be revelers about the smell up in the park — the field was freshly fertilized with manure, he said.
Police patrolled the park perimeter in pairs. A few determined potheads cautiously made their way into the trees, bitterly eyeing the cops gathered under the awning of the Redwood Lodge. Surreptitiously, the made their way up the sodden path and bravely staged their protest against our country’s hypocritical, like, bullshit oppressive laws, man.
Keep that flame burning, bruthas.
This article appears in Wealth Care.
Only pigs in the park…Viva the few that made it through!
Spare us the whiny hand-wringing about these people having their civil rights curtailed… if they wanted to get high, they could certainly have done it elsewhere. If a thousand or more humans (and their animals) descended on that sodden field on a rainy day, it would’ve gotten trashed. Would any of them have contributed to it’s rehabilitation? Doubtful. Instead, it would cost the city a lot of money and man-hours to get it back in shape so the everyone else could enjoy it, and we all know that any municipality is sorely short on cash these days.
If a mass of folks went up there to get drunk, would that bother you? A hundred dogs running freely, pooping in the forest and on the grass? Sure man, freedom!
Come back down to Earth, Ryan… when yer 4/20 buzz wears off!
Fun project, MO: Read the post again and search for hints of satire.
Got the attempts at satire. Not really all that funny, except maybe the puppy joke.
Unfortunately, it reads too much like something one of the celebrants might have said, or what the protesters will say when they gather at city hall on the next sunny Saturday to hurl invectives at the “man”.
Yawn…
mo, the need to keep people off the field on a rainy day is a fine point, but characterizing all the people who enjoy the fact that arcata celebrates 420 as people who yell invectives at the man is pretty dumb
The Arcata Eye reported that the party was off. The cops would be there and the folks of Arcata didn’t want their park trampled. I passed that along I am sure that others did too. This means that before some people went to Arcata to get stoned they listened to the news. Next time you want to discount this crowd of 4:20 worshipers consider that they might be better informed than the average voter.
I got it now. When “normal” people go to the park, they are using and enjoying the park as it was meant to be used.
When the EVIL STONERS come to the park, they’re “descending” on it and “trampling” it.
Thanks for the detailed sociological analysis.
A celebration completely for and by the people, squashed. Our right to informally convene…in a park, no less…for one day in the year, no less…squashed. It’s something the city should applaud and take advantage of, not hire cops to kill. I suspect there’s monetary influence behind the police presence. If this was a commercialized holiday, money could buy the “right” to gather and celebrate our freedom.
Sounds like the cops spread as much bullshit as the maintenance workers! Should have robbed a bank in Arcata on 4/20 since all the cops were in the park! Next time Arcata whines about lack of funds, remind them that they had the funds to pay all the cops to have a nice day in the park while depriving citizens of their right to gather in a public place. In today’s ultra right-wing climate, even Arcata has become a fascist entity.
The City should have just doubled the manure on the lawn and not told anybody.
That would have been passive aggresive, Thirdeye and we all know that would never fly in Arcata… well, actually…
That is one hilarious photo of Tom Chapman.