“Hooked a left into Popeye’s and bailed out quick, if it’s going down, let’s get it over with.” A favorite line of mine from legendary “Geto Boy” rapper Willie D, not only because in this verse he is facing his imagined killers, but because of its reference to my favorite fast food restaurant, Popeye’s.
Oh, Popeye’s. How I loved thee.
And how I would have continued to love thee, until the day I asked myself, “Where did this chicken come from?”

Essentially,whether in a drive-thru or a grocery check-out line, we should all be asking “Where did this food come from?”
There has been a swell of information and discussion on the manufacturing and corporatization of our food. Only a select few Americans can trace their meal back to their local farm. The rest of us are busy hustling through the city and can only trace our meals back to marketed name brands.

The search of how my packaged meal came to be, led me to investigate the culture of industrial farming and the unknown impact of what a simple 2-piece meal has on my health, society and the environment.

According to definition, commercial farming is an agri-business with a high density of stock, utilizing antibiotics, growth hormones and pesticides. So, basically my deep-fried wing and thigh came from a commercial farm where chickens were kept in a production house devoid of light, injected with growth hormones (advancing from baby chick to adult within 3 weeks) and had their organs mature beyond the capacity of their skeletal frame, making them too heavy to walk and flutter. Then the “juiced-up” chicken is left standing in its own feces until gathered onto a truck by undocumented workers and transported to a processing plant.

The altering of nature does not stop with chickens. Cows, pigs, vegetables, and fruit are also getting in on the action.

I sat down with Local Chef Monica Pope who owns the celebrated restaurant, T’afia. Pope is passionately committed to local organic ingredients and she expressed concerns over our detachment from our food. “We all have to eat, and we don’t realize what we support. We don’t think about how it was packaged, where it came from, how it got here…”

A month before meeting with Monica, I was ablaze in my quest to track the clandestine pilgrimage of my 2-piece and its origin. To familiarize myself with the practice of industrial farming I home paged F.D.A. watch dog sites, read books critical of America’s agri-business and watched numerous films including the harrowing documentary, “Food Inc.” The documentary immediately curbed my addiction to fast food and my waistline dwindled two sizes. I expressed my surprise over my weight loss to Monica, because even though I had stopped eating fast food. I was still eating staples like hamburgers 3 times a week.The only difference was, instead of running to Jack in the Box for my hamburger fix, I was cooking the meat myself.

Monica explained the conundrum: “I eat whatever I want here (T’afia). Some people ask how Mac and Cheese can be healthy. Well, the way I make it, it is. Now Michael Pollen (author of Omnivore’s Dilemma) has written that you can eat whatever you want as long as you make it. I don’t go to McDonald’s or Taco Bell. I go to other chefs and eat good food and good ingredients.”
Still confused how two burgers are not alike?

Well, the difference between the patty from McDonald’s and the organic beef patty I purchased from the butcher is that, in general, processed meats are higher in saturated fat and lower in protein than pure red meats. My three hamburgers a week were also covered with fresher ingredients like romaine lettuce and tomatoes, and when I prepared the meat I did not include excess fat to boost flavor.
That excess fat would steer me to obesity.

Numerous studies show obesity has increased among American adults and children, and those percentages are even higher within the great state of Texas. A 2008 study shown 28.3 percent of adult Texans were obese. That’s a lot of fat people.

Aside from the unsightliness of swollen guts and muffin tops, obesity leads to life-threatening health problems. I expressed my shock to Monica that it isn’t illegal to sell people a product that has been genetically altered to “appear” as food, and is chock-full of hormones, coloring and corn-syrup leading to detrimental health.

I mean, on the street, if you purchased an eight-ball only to discover it was Gold Medal flour, I’m positive there would be repercussions.

Monica agrees with the banning of this sub-par food: “In the last 120 years the system has fallen apart and we just let it. We have to take more responsibility. Where’s every layer of society involved in where the food comes from and how good it is. We are in a crisis. I’m 47 and I’ve been cooking for about 30 years, I started cooking when I was 17 with my grandmother and I got involved because of family traditions, and at some point about 20 years ago, I felt it. My restaurant is not just a farm to table concept and here’s my menu. I live and breathe and feel it. I feel a lot of responsibility and the weight of it.”

Monica’s restaurant is also the home of the Midtown Farmer’s Market which is in its seventh year running. I spend a Saturday in its throes, ogling produce, eggs and artisan breads before stopping by Monica’s cooking class. It’s a mish mosh of people all looking for pure ingredients to craft their daily meals. Monica speaks highly of the farmer’s market but expresses distress over a recent comment about the popularity of her efforts. “Someone made a comment about my trendy farmers market or my trendy restaurant, and I’m like ‘What is trendy?’This is something more, and it’s the fact that you can change the world by the way you eat.”

Monica and I discussed whether this disconnect from our food can be turned around and she ends our interview with a bit of advice, “Start a relationship that is going to be satisfying to you. Eat where your food lives.”

Monica’s advice launched me to find a farm near my crib, only to discover there wasn’t one. There are community gardens and such but no one raising or willing to sell me a cow. I googled “organic farms in Texas” and discovered the nearest one is Jolie Vue Farm in Brenham. Jolie Vue has an alarming disclaimer on its modest website – “you’re always welcome to see our operations at Jolie Vue Farms. We’re proud of it, and we have nothing to hide. Just call.” Can you imagine? When I asked a former Popeye’s worker where the chicken came from, he laughed and said “a plastic bag off a unmarked truck.”

I made the trek out to the Jolie-Vue Farm to tour the grounds and meet owners, Glen and Honi Ann Boudreaux. Glen doled out delicious mouth-watering bits of barbecue made from the meat raised on his farm while Honi conducted a tour of her farm to us city slickers. During the tour I learned that Jolie Vue was acquired by the Boudreauxs with the goal of restoring the farm to its original state of native grasses, clovers, and wildflowers. In the beginning, restoration was implemented without the use of artificial chemicals. Now, the farm has been transformed from an over-grazed, chemically-sterilized environment to its native vegetation and the wildlife that subsists on it as well.
Truth be told, I was excited to visit a “real” farm and see happy, and healthy animals like the ones I imagined lived on the Old McDonald’s farm of my childhood.

Looming over the idyllic farm’s landscape was a menacing oil rig that never was. Honi Ann recounted to the tourists how the Boudreauxs stopped the company from drilling because drilling would have destroyed their farm. Seeing how the catastrophic oil spill in our Gulf will reap a lifetime of damage of unknown proportions to our environment, I commend Glen and Honi Ann for choosing to produce a healthy sustainable farm over an oil residual paycheck.

Leaving the farm to return home, I passed plenty of rest stop signs all advertising that a fast food restaurant is just a pit stop away. The glimmer of hope I had began to teeter. My stomach growled louder as I read familiar names like Taco Bell, Wendy’s and even Dairy Queen. But I kept driving, and mentally prepared the delicious meal I would prepare once I arrived home. I recognize that refraining from fast food is a minuscule contribution to curbing this expanding crisis, but this solitary act is going to have an impact on the overall consumption of fast food: demanding better quality of produce and meat and a more humane treatment of animals and workers.
I’m making a change by cooking my own 2-piece, one meal at a time.

Comments

“Hooked a left into Popeye’s and bailed out quick, if it’s going down, let’s get it over with.” A favorite line of mine from legendary “Geto Boy” rapper Willie D, not only because in this verse he is facing his imagined killers, but because of its reference to my favorite fast food restaurant, Popeye’s.
Oh, Popeye’s. How I loved thee.
And how I would have continued to love thee, until the day I asked myself, “Where did this chicken come from?”

Essentially,whether in a drive-thru or a grocery check-out line, we should all be asking “Where did this food come from?”
There has been a swell of information and discussion on the manufacturing and corporatization of our food. Only a select few Americans can trace their meal back to their local farm. The rest of us are busy hustling through the city and can only trace our meals back to marketed name brands.

The search of how my packaged meal came to be, led me to investigate the culture of industrial farming and the unknown impact of what a simple 2-piece meal has on my health, society and the environment.

According to definition, commercial farming is an agri-business with a high density of stock, utilizing antibiotics, growth hormones and pesticides. So, basically my deep-fried wing and thigh came from a commercial farm where chickens were kept in a production house devoid of light, injected with growth hormones (advancing from baby chick to adult within 3 weeks) and had their organs mature beyond the capacity of their skeletal frame, making them too heavy to walk and flutter. Then the “juiced-up” chicken is left standing in its own feces until gathered onto a truck by undocumented workers and transported to a processing plant.

The altering of nature does not stop with chickens. Cows, pigs, vegetables, and fruit are also getting in on the action.

I sat down with Local Chef Monica Pope who owns the celebrated restaurant, T’afia. Pope is passionately committed to local organic ingredients and she expressed concerns over our detachment from our food. “We all have to eat, and we don’t realize what we support. We don’t think about how it was packaged, where it came from, how it got here…”

A month before meeting with Monica, I was ablaze in my quest to track the clandestine pilgrimage of my 2-piece and its origin. To familiarize myself with the practice of industrial farming I home paged F.D.A. watch dog sites, read books critical of America’s agri-business and watched numerous films including the harrowing documentary, “Food Inc.” The documentary immediately curbed my addiction to fast food and my waistline dwindled two sizes. I expressed my surprise over my weight loss to Monica, because even though I had stopped eating fast food. I was still eating staples like hamburgers 3 times a week.The only difference was, instead of running to Jack in the Box for my hamburger fix, I was cooking the meat myself.

Monica explained the conundrum: “I eat whatever I want here (T’afia). Some people ask how Mac and Cheese can be healthy. Well, the way I make it, it is. Now Michael Pollen (author of Omnivore’s Dilemma) has written that you can eat whatever you want as long as you make it. I don’t go to McDonald’s or Taco Bell. I go to other chefs and eat good food and good ingredients.”
Still confused how two burgers are not alike?

Well, the difference between the patty from McDonald’s and the organic beef patty I purchased from the butcher is that, in general, processed meats are higher in saturated fat and lower in protein than pure red meats. My three hamburgers a week were also covered with fresher ingredients like romaine lettuce and tomatoes, and when I prepared the meat I did not include excess fat to boost flavor.
That excess fat would steer me to obesity.

Numerous studies show obesity has increased among American adults and children, and those percentages are even higher within the great state of Texas. A 2008 study shown 28.3 percent of adult Texans were obese. That’s a lot of fat people.

Aside from the unsightliness of swollen guts and muffin tops, obesity leads to life-threatening health problems. I expressed my shock to Monica that it isn’t illegal to sell people a product that has been genetically altered to “appear” as food, and is chock-full of hormones, coloring and corn-syrup leading to detrimental health.

I mean, on the street, if you purchased an eight-ball only to discover it was Gold Medal flour, I’m positive there would be repercussions.

Monica agrees with the banning of this sub-par food: “In the last 120 years the system has fallen apart and we just let it. We have to take more responsibility. Where’s every layer of society involved in where the food comes from and how good it is. We are in a crisis. I’m 47 and I’ve been cooking for about 30 years, I started cooking when I was 17 with my grandmother and I got involved because of family traditions, and at some point about 20 years ago, I felt it. My restaurant is not just a farm to table concept and here’s my menu. I live and breathe and feel it. I feel a lot of responsibility and the weight of it.”

Monica’s restaurant is also the home of the Midtown Farmer’s Market which is in its seventh year running. I spend a Saturday in its throes, ogling produce, eggs and artisan breads before stopping by Monica’s cooking class. It’s a mish mosh of people all looking for pure ingredients to craft their daily meals. Monica speaks highly of the farmer’s market but expresses distress over a recent comment about the popularity of her efforts. “Someone made a comment about my trendy farmers market or my trendy restaurant, and I’m like ‘What is trendy?’This is something more, and it’s the fact that you can change the world by the way you eat.”

Monica and I discussed whether this disconnect from our food can be turned around and she ends our interview with a bit of advice, “Start a relationship that is going to be satisfying to you. Eat where your food lives.”

Monica’s advice launched me to find a farm near my crib, only to discover there wasn’t one. There are community gardens and such but no one raising or willing to sell me a cow. I googled “organic farms in Texas” and discovered the nearest one is Jolie Vue Farm in Brenham. Jolie Vue has an alarming disclaimer on its modest website – “you’re always welcome to see our operations at Jolie Vue Farms. We’re proud of it, and we have nothing to hide. Just call.” Can you imagine? When I asked a former Popeye’s worker where the chicken came from, he laughed and said “a plastic bag off a unmarked truck.”

I made the trek out to the Jolie-Vue Farm to tour the grounds and meet owners, Glen and Honi Ann Boudreaux. Glen doled out delicious mouth-watering bits of barbecue made from the meat raised on his farm while Honi conducted a tour of her farm to us city slickers. During the tour I learned that Jolie Vue was acquired by the Boudreauxs with the goal of restoring the farm to its original state of native grasses, clovers, and wildflowers. In the beginning, restoration was implemented without the use of artificial chemicals. Now, the farm has been transformed from an over-grazed, chemically-sterilized environment to its native vegetation and the wildlife that subsists on it as well.
Truth be told, I was excited to visit a “real” farm and see happy, and healthy animals like the ones I imagined lived on the Old McDonald’s farm of my childhood.

Looming over the idyllic farm’s landscape was a menacing oil rig that never was. Honi Ann recounted to the tourists how the Boudreauxs stopped the company from drilling because drilling would have destroyed their farm. Seeing how the catastrophic oil spill in our Gulf will reap a lifetime of damage of unknown proportions to our environment, I commend Glen and Honi Ann for choosing to produce a healthy sustainable farm over an oil residual paycheck.

Leaving the farm to return home, I passed plenty of rest stop signs all advertising that a fast food restaurant is just a pit stop away. The glimmer of hope I had began to teeter. My stomach growled louder as I read familiar names like Taco Bell, Wendy’s and even Dairy Queen. But I kept driving, and mentally prepared the delicious meal I would prepare once I arrived home. I recognize that refraining from fast food is a minuscule contribution to curbing this expanding crisis, but this solitary act is going to have an impact on the overall consumption of fast food: demanding better quality of produce and meat and a more humane treatment of animals and workers.
I’m making a change by cooking my own 2-piece, one meal at a time.

Comments

By Jehnifer Henderson

FML is a term that keeps popping up everywhere.  At first, I only heard it from the young wealthy kids at my school.  It annoyed me from Jump Street, but I let it go thinking it was just the spouting off of an already spoiled and privileged youth. Then, a website came to be, www.fmylife.com.  I assumed it was more young men and women in the same mindset of the original offenders.  I started hearing it more and more, but still from the usual suspects.  The guy at the end of the bar donning the Ed Hardy shirt (2 sizes too small) would spout something off about how he had to go to work tomorrow and there it was, the perfect storm for a …“Fuck My Life.”

It struck me as odd from the beginning.  People would say the most mundane things or some rather funny things: “I was 5 minutes late to class” or “I walked in on my parents having sex.”  Then they would follow it up with … “Fuck My Life.”  Such harsh words for such normal life occurrences.  Sure, walking in on your mom putting it on your dad is not one of life’s more lovely experiences, but does your entire life really deserve to be cursed for one random instance?  And as for the people that say it for every little thing, grow some balls.  No one wants to hear your whining.

A few months back (note: I have been holding my tongue for months on this one) people started posting “FML” at the end of their status messages on Facebook.  “Paraguay just lost to blah blah blah, FML”.  What the fuck does soccer have to do with your life?  You are sitting on a couch watching TV.  You don’t play competitive sports.

Soon after, I started hearing it from people I knew and respected.  People I loved would say “Fuck My Life” at the drop of a hat.  I began feeling really conflicted.  I wanted to slap the shit out of them, but that would just add to the already over-escalating emotion that had spawned from something as menial as a missed movie time. One day, I forgot my camera bag at a coffee shop.  I realized and told my friend we had to go back. Upon my realization, my friend gave her life a verbal fucking and I wondered why I couldn’t at least get a “Fuck Your Life” out of her.  After all, it was my camera bag.  But that wouldn’t fit with the self-indulgent, self-absorbed mood that a good FML creates.

So, here’s what I have to tell all the grown ass men and women saying “FML.”

Stop.

When you say “FML”, you are whining.  You sound like a juvenile prig, so grow up.  Leave the self-pity wallowing where it belongs: with the angst ridden newly pubescent assholes that deserve to be too emotional.  They have overly active hormones.  You have 2.5 kids and a mortgage. Act like it.  Stop throwing fits.  People are hungry in the world.  They are trying to rebuild their lives from natural disasters and war.  No one cares that you locked your keys in your car or that you were late to work.  Plan better.  It’s not life’s fault.  It’s yours.  Instead of saying “Fuck My Life”, start saying “Fuck My Dumb Ass.”  At least this puts fault where fault is due.  And if you can pull away from the drama altogether, attempt to just roll with the punches.  Let shit go and move on, there’s work to do.

By Jehnifer Henderson

FML is a term that keeps popping up everywhere.  At first, I only heard it from the young wealthy kids at my school.  It annoyed me from Jump Street, but I let it go thinking it was just the spouting off of an already spoiled and privileged youth. Then, a website came to be, www.fmylife.com.  I assumed it was more young men and women in the same mindset of the original offenders.  I started hearing it more and more, but still from the usual suspects.  The guy at the end of the bar donning the Ed Hardy shirt (2 sizes too small) would spout something off about how he had to go to work tomorrow and there it was, the perfect storm for a …“Fuck My Life.”

It struck me as odd from the beginning.  People would say the most mundane things or some rather funny things: “I was 5 minutes late to class” or “I walked in on my parents having sex.”  Then they would follow it up with … “Fuck My Life.”  Such harsh words for such normal life occurrences.  Sure, walking in on your mom putting it on your dad is not one of life’s more lovely experiences, but does your entire life really deserve to be cursed for one random instance?  And as for the people that say it for every little thing, grow some balls.  No one wants to hear your whining.

A few months back (note: I have been holding my tongue for months on this one) people started posting “FML” at the end of their status messages on Facebook.  “Paraguay just lost to blah blah blah, FML”.  What the fuck does soccer have to do with your life?  You are sitting on a couch watching TV.  You don’t play competitive sports.

Soon after, I started hearing it from people I knew and respected.  People I loved would say “Fuck My Life” at the drop of a hat.  I began feeling really conflicted.  I wanted to slap the shit out of them, but that would just add to the already over-escalating emotion that had spawned from something as menial as a missed movie time. One day, I forgot my camera bag at a coffee shop.  I realized and told my friend we had to go back. Upon my realization, my friend gave her life a verbal fucking and I wondered why I couldn’t at least get a “Fuck Your Life” out of her.  After all, it was my camera bag.  But that wouldn’t fit with the self-indulgent, self-absorbed mood that a good FML creates.

So, here’s what I have to tell all the grown ass men and women saying “FML.”

Stop.

When you say “FML”, you are whining.  You sound like a juvenile prig, so grow up.  Leave the self-pity wallowing where it belongs: with the angst ridden newly pubescent assholes that deserve to be too emotional.  They have overly active hormones.  You have 2.5 kids and a mortgage. Act like it.  Stop throwing fits.  People are hungry in the world.  They are trying to rebuild their lives from natural disasters and war.  No one cares that you locked your keys in your car or that you were late to work.  Plan better.  It’s not life’s fault.  It’s yours.  Instead of saying “Fuck My Life”, start saying “Fuck My Dumb Ass.”  At least this puts fault where fault is due.  And if you can pull away from the drama altogether, attempt to just roll with the punches.  Let shit go and move on, there’s work to do.

Color

Real Name: Erik Del Rio

Hater: What style do you specialize in?
Color: I wouldn’t say that I specialize in anything particularly. I like to think of myself as a jack-of-all-trades. Most artists nowadays have a tendency to limit themselves to either traditional Japanese or Americana. I like to be able to tackle a broader spectrum. I can do a black and grey portrait, then easily turn around and complete a traditional or Japanese piece without missing a beat. I don’t really like to restrict myself to one style because if you focus entirely on one thing, you will miss out on gettin’ that paper from the guy who wants something different. I can sit at a shop and do flash all day long! [..]

The 1940’s renovated house at 1416 Westheimer turned vintage clothing store, turned almost bakery is now a tattoo shop but you wouldn’t know that upon first entering. There’s not one piece of flash on the walls. Instead, the Jack the Ripper themed front parlor is devoid of tattoo kitsch and the walls are used for displaying the work of rotating local artists. The actual tattooing takes place intimately in the back. “We wanted something different than just a flash shop. We strive to give each client their own original piece. We have bookcases full of art books, so our clients aren’t coming looking at tattoo designs, they are coming in looking at pictures of art and getting inspired,” says Alex Cetina. Cetina, alongside Christina Sparrow and Christopher Malice are the three talented artists that make up the Gaslight Gallery –also home to veteran tattooers Mark Anthony, Kat Adlerz and piercer Paul Tohill. [..]

It never fails that around the time the digits on my blackberry shows the magical time of 4:20, I receive a text from a friend who happens to not be saddled with a 9-5, inciting my jealousy that they are “blowing mad trees.”

I never understood why the time of 4:20 or the date became to be known synonymous with smoking weed, but I recently found this article from Huffpo to help a ninja out.

Check out the article below.

Warren Haynes, the Allman Brothers Band guitarist, routinely plays with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, now touring as The Dead. He’s just finished a Dead show in Washington, D.C. and gets a pop quiz from the Huffington Post.

Where does 420 come from?

He pauses and thinks, hands on his side. “I don’t know the real origin. I know myths and rumors,” he says. “I’m really confused about the first time I heard it. It was like a police code for smoking in progress or something. What’s the real story?”

Depending on who you ask, or their state of inebriation, there are as many varieties of answers as strains of medical bud in California. It’s the number of active chemicals in marijuana. It’s teatime in Holland. It has something to do with Hitler’s birthday. It’s those numbers in that Bob Dylan song multiplied.

The origin of the term 420, celebrated around the world by pot smokers every April 20th, has long been obscured by the clouded memories of the folks who made it a phenomenon.

The Huffington Post chased the term back to its roots and was able to find it in a lost patch of cannabis in a Point Reyes, California forest. Just as interesting as its origin, it turns out, is how it spread.

It starts with the Dead.

It was Christmas week in Oakland, 1990. Steven Bloom was wandering through The Lot – that timeless gathering of hippies that springs up in the parking lot before every Grateful Dead concert – when a Deadhead handed him a yellow flyer.

Story continues below

“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,” reads the message, which Bloom dug up and forwarded to the Huffington Post. Bloom, then a reporter for High Times magazine and now the publisher of CelebStoner.com and co-author of Pot Culture, had never heard of “420-ing” before.
The flyer came complete with a 420 back story: “420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California 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!”

Bloom reported his find in the May 1991 issue of High Times, which the magazine found in its archives and provided to the Huffington Post. The story, though, was only partially right.

It had nothing to do with a police code — though the San Rafael part was dead on. Indeed, a group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos – by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school – coined the term in 1971. The Huffington Post spoke with Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave and Dave’s older brother, Patrick, and confirmed their full names and identities, which they asked to keep secret for professional reasons. (Pot is still, after all, illegal.)

The Waldos never envisioned that pot smokers the world over would celebrate each April 20th as a result of their foray into the Point Reyes forest. The day has managed to become something of a national holiday in the face of official condemnation. This year’s celebration will be no different. Officials at the University of Colorado at Boulder and University of California, Santa Cruz, which boast two of the biggest smoke outs, are pushing back. “As another April 20 approaches, we are faced with concerns from students, parents, alumni, Regents, and community members about a repeat of last year’s 4/20 ‘event,’” wrote Boulder’s chancellor in a letter to students. “On April 20, 2009, we hope that you will choose not to participate in unlawful activity that debases the reputation of your University and degree, and will encourage your fellow Buffs to act with pride and remember who they really are.”

But the Cheshire cat is out of the bag. Students and locals will show up at round four, light up at 4:20 and be gone shortly thereafter. No bands, no speakers, no chants. Just a bunch of people getting together and getting stoned.
The code often creeps into popular culture and mainstream settings. All of the clocks in Pulp Fiction, for instance, are set to 4:20. In 2003, when the California legislature codified the medical marijuana law voters had approved, the bill was named SB420.

“We think it was a staffer working for [lead Assembly sponsor Mark] Leno, but no one has ever fessed up,” says Steph Sherer, head of Americans for Safe Access, which lobbied on behalf of the bill. California legislative staffers spoken to for this story say that the 420 designation remains a mystery, but that both Leno and the lead Senate sponsor, John Vasconcellos, are hip enough that they must have known what it meant. (If you were involved with SB420 and know the story, email me.)

The code pops up in Craig’s List postings when fellow smokers search for “420 friendly” roommates. “It’s just a vaguer way of saying it and it kind of makes it kind of cool,” says Bloom. “Like, you know you’re in the know, but that does show you how it’s in the mainstream.”

The Waldos do have proof, however, that they used the term in the early ’70s in the form of an old 420 flag and numerous letters with 420 references and early ’70s post marks.

They also have a story.

It goes like this: One day in the Fall of 1971 – harvest time – the Waldos got word of a Coast Guard service member who could no longer tend his plot of marijuana plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station. A treasure map in hand, the Waldos decided to pluck some of this free bud.

The Waldos were all athletes and agreed to meet at the statue of Loius Pasteur outside the school at 4:20, after practice, to begin the hunt.

“We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis and we eventually dropped the Louis,” Waldo Steve tells the Huffington Post.

The first forays out were unsuccessful, but the group kept looking for the hidden crop. “We’d meet at 4:20 and get in my old ’66 Chevy Impala and, of course, we’d smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Pt. Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week,” says Steve. “We never actually found the patch.”

But they did find a useful codeword. “I could say to one of my friends, I’d go, 420, and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, ‘Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?’ Or, ‘Do you have any?’ Or, ‘Are you stoned right now?’ It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it,” Steve says. “Our teachers didn’t know what we were talking about. Our parents didn’t know what we were talking about.”

It’s one thing to identify the origin of the term. Indeed, Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary already include references to the Waldos.

The bigger question: How did 420 spread from a circle of California stoners across the globe?

As fortune would have it, the collapse of San Francisco’s hippie utopia in the late ’60s set the stage. As speed freaks, thugs and con artists took over The Haight, the Grateful Dead picked up and moved to the Marin County hills – just blocks from San Rafael High School.

“Marin Country was kind of ground zero for the counter culture,” says Steve.

The Waldos had more than just a geographic connection to the Dead. Mark Waldo’s father took care of real estate for the Dead. And Waldo Dave’s older brother, Patrick, managed a Dead sideband and was good friends with bassist Phil Lesh. Patrick tells the Huffington Post that he smoked with Lesh on numerous occasions. He couldn’t recall if he used the term 420 around him, but guessed that he must have.

The Dead, recalls Waldo Steve, “had this rehearsal hall on Front Street, San Rafael, California, and they used to practice there. So we used to go hang out and listen to them play music and get high while they’re practicing for gigs. But I think it’s possible my brother Patrick might have spread it through Phil Lesh. And me, too, because I was hanging out with Lesh and his band when they were doing a summer tour my brother was managing.”

The band that Patrick managed was called Too Loose To Truck and featured not only Lesh but rock legend David Crosby and acclaimed guitarist Terry Haggerty.

The Waldos also had open access to Dead parties and rehearsals. “We’d go with [Mark's] dad, who was a hip dad from the ’60s,” says Steve. “There was a place called Winterland and we’d always be backstage running around or onstage and, of course, we’re using those phrases. When somebody passes a joint or something, ‘Hey, 420.’ So it started spreading through that community.”

Lesh, walking off the stage after a recent Dead concert, confirmed that Patrick is a friend and said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the Waldos had coined 420. He wasn’t sure, he said, when the first time he heard it was. “I do not remember. I’m very sorry. I wish I could help,” he said.

Wavy-Gravy is a hippie icon with his own ice cream flavor and has been hanging out with the Dead for decades. HuffPost spotted him outside the concert. Asked about the origin of 420, he suggested it began “somewhere in the foggy mists of time. What time is it now? I say to you: eternity now.”

As the Grateful Dead toured the globe through the ’70s and ’80s, playing hundreds of shows a year – the term spread though the Dead underground. Once High Times got hip to it, the magazine helped take it global.

“I started incorporating it into everything we were doing,” High Times editor Steve Hager told the Huffington Post. “I started doing all these big events – the World Hemp Expo Extravaganza and the Cannabis Cup – and we built everything around 420. The publicity that High Times gave it is what made it an international thing. Until then, it was relatively confined to the Grateful Dead subculture. But we blew it out into an international phenomenon.”

Sometime in the early ’90s, High Times wisely purchased the web domain 420.com.

Bloom, the reporter who first stumbled on it, gives High Times less credit. “We posted that flyer and then we started to see little references to it. It wasn’t really much of High Times doing,” he says. “We weren’t really pushing it that hard, just kind of referencing the phrase.”

The Waldos say that within a few years the term had spread throughout San Rafael and was cropping up elsewhere in the state. By the early ’90s, it had penetrated deep enough that Dave and Steve started hearing people use it in unexpected places – Ohio, Florida, Canada – and spotted it painted on signs and etched into park benches.

In 1997, the Waldos decided to set the record straight and got in touch with High Times.

“They said, ‘The fact is, there is no 420 [police] code in California. You guys ever look it up?’” Blooms recalls. He had to admit that no, he had never looked it up. Hager flew out to San Rafael, met the Waldos, examined their evidence, spoke with others in town, and concluded they were telling the truth.

Hager still believes them. “No one’s ever been able to come up with any use of 420 that predates the 1971 usage, which they had established. So unless somebody can come up with something that predates them, then I don’t think anybody’s going to get credit for it other than them,” he says.

“We never made a dime on the thing,” says Dave, half boasting, half lamenting.

He does take pride in his role, though. “I still have a lot of friends who tell their friends that they know one of the guys that started the 420 thing. So it’s kind of like a cult celebrity thing. Two years ago I went to the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. High Times magazine flew me out,” says Dave.

Dave is now a credit analyst and works for Steve, who owns a specialty lending institution and lost money to the con artist Bernie Madoff. He spends more time today, he says, composing angry letters to the SEC than he does getting high.

The other three Waldos have also been successful, Steve says. One is head of marketing for a Napa Valley winery. Another is in printing and graphics. A third works for a roofing and gutter company. “He’s like, head of their gutter division,” says Steve, who keeps in close touch with them all.

“I’ve got to run a business. I’ve got to stay sharp,” says Steve, explaining why he rarely smokes pot anymore. “Seems like everybody I know who smokes daily, or many times in a week, it seems like there’s always something going wrong with their life, professionally, or in their relationships, or financially or something. It’s a lot of fun, but it seems like if someone does it too much, there’s some karmic cost to it.”

“I never endorsed the use of marijuana. But hey, it worked for me,” says Waldo Dave. “I’m sure on my headstone it’ll say: ‘One of the 420 guys.’”

source from Huffingtonpost.com

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