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| Hempfest Memories, as best I can tell The gates open at ten, and the great rumpled sea of overnighters shake off their mummy bags and make their way into the festgrounds to scoop up the free giveaways and claim the best squats up by the stage. Takes an hour. At noon the next wave, the old vets who know it's wise to sleep until the sun is warm before harvesting giveaways and bitching about the Man. Anyway, my point is: go at eleven. - By the way: what's with the pat-down? They went through our bags. The pragmatist in me wonders if they were looking for pot. Because, you know, it's Hempfest. And they want to make sure you have some.
"Didn't their parents describe to them the reality of the hippie life-style? It is not sustainable.
- So we stroll into the grounds. And I was struck by a wave of scents indescribable. Oh wait ... no they weren't. "That's the smell of marijuana smoke, Fredericka," I said to the baby, because teaching is what I do. Pot smoke comes from hippies, of course, and there they were, tucked into smoke warrens spaced at regular intervals amongst the trees. And what trees! Hempfest situates itself every year at the 80-acre waterfront arboretum called Myrtle Edwards Park. And as the combustion cloud rose above us like a gray-green thought balloon, you could kind of see the tamaracks, larches and Chilean fire-trees lean into it, swaying as if in some groovy breeze. I know that if old Ms. Edwards is dead she is smiling down from heaven now because of how her bequest has been repurposed. - If I were the sort of person who was victimized by crimes I would head to Hempfest, because cops are everywhere there. The good kind, too, smiling and useful, badge numbers legible, giving directions -- "The Bong Hut? It's over there." -- and personal advice, slurping noodle bowls and otherwise floating past on a bodacious contact high. - I notice a couple of hippie kids walking through the crowd carrying a sign reading, "Free Hugs." But come on, man. Nothing in life is free. Best to keep moving. - If Hempfest is basically a mall for hippies, then bongs are the over-priced pantsuits: carbureted water pipes of every shape and nature, every color in a crazy-quilt, race-car sleek, dish-washer-safe, celebrity-endorsed. Listen. In my day we rolled our scavenged weed into thin joints of old newsprint, or threw it directly onto glowing embers and drew in whatever smoke we could muster, and counted ourselves lucky. Today's hippie kid has a different bong for every mood in him that requires getting stoned. I think something's been lost. - And did I mention the hippies? Hippies-in-training, weekend-hippies, hacky-sacking dread-lockers, goth-punk-hippie polymorphs, hippies-in-name-only. Zoinks! Didn't their parents describe to them the reality of the hippie life-style? It is not sustainable. It leads to communal living, hygiene diseases not seen since the Middle Ages, inability to communicate, children who do not listen or pay attention ... say, is that a noodle bowl? Regarding that thought balloon mentioned earlier: the thought inside it was "munchies," and many a vendor had them on offer. Noodle bowls, meat tarts, chocolatine wedges, flavor pasties, cans of cake frosting, deep-fried salt lollies to touch all the taste points with maximum efficiency. And look. I'm not a lecturer, or gatherer of life lessons, but I did have one food encounter that raised a moral concern. As we transited the grounds, having our pictures quietly taken, being put on certain no-fly lists, we were occasionally extruded from the pedestrian path, until at one point we were squared up with a goon pushing a tray of brownies. "This is what you're looking for, man. This is the stuff. This'll set you up. You know you want it." And I thought: hold on. "Brownies"? Let's say you've got someone strolling by who's basically a newbie at all this. Not street-savvy. Unskilled at sorting through the veiled words and the wink-winks. He buys a "brownie" and promptly feeds it to his borrowed baby. What would be the repercussions then, "brownie" man? Anyway, no harm done, the baby just sort of nodded off. 
A security fence kept the police safe and relaxed.
- In years past, Hempfest pushed products like hemp-wear and hemp paper as a way of softly rebranding pot in the campaign towards legalization. But people who don't smoke pot are closed-minded and saw through that bullshit. So now it's Medical Marijuana. About half the booths were dedicated to that cause: clinics, dispensaries, political groups, advocacy tabloids. Mary Jane did not have a booth because everybody already knows about us.Smoke warrens, hippies in leisure suits, noodle-flavored soup bowls -- I dunno. I seem to recall making the excursion while sober, which can't possibly be right, so all these memories I submit to your discretion. But this much I know: Hempfest is going broke -- this year's fest might be the last -- and yet somehow they can't manage the high hubris to charge attendees a dollar a head. And founder Vivian McPeak is ailing; as he puts it: "An earlier party life full of chemical debauchery took a serious toll on my internal organs and I have paid a dear price for my previous excesses." That's quite a morale-buster. To most people, Hempfest is the largest festival in the country dedicated to a drug hobby; someday it will be a bleary memory. And I'm guessing people will look back and ask the same question I asked as I pushed the baby-wheels out of Hempfest 2010: what was the point of all that exactly? - Mills Rackley Curmudgeon and native Seattleite Mills Rackley has not smoked pot since the winter of 1986. --- This story originally published in Mary Jane Magazine #3, Winter 2011. |
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Firing up the "Loch Ness Bongster" at the Bong Hut, Seattle Hempfest 2010.
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