The Society of Fast Talkers and Fast Walkers

On Stoner Hobbyism

I think when somebody asks you what your hobby is, it’s a provocation. They’re insinuating that you work too hard, or worse, that you’re boring. Still it’s a good question— what is it that you do purely for your own pleasure and satisfaction? One day while walking around stoned with my friend Andrew (who I would characterize as a hobby “jock” because he willfully ran across the Rocky Mountains last year), I declared that my hobby is people and pot. I like walking around New York City briskly for at least 20,000 steps and having an animated conversation with a stoned friend.

Andrew and I stoned at Carnegie Hall

Last week, I met Andrew outside of Carnegie Hall because he had an extra ticket to see Rachmaninoff’s Symphony 2. I don’t know anything about classical music, and to his surprise, I had never been to Carnegie Hall in my twenty three years in New York. We got extremely stoned in front of Carnegie Deli before settling into our booth, where two women of a certain age listened to Andrew and I discuss the possible paranoid side effects of our heavy consumption. Andrew warned me that our respective work-related anxiety might be exacerbated by the supposedly calming effects of classical music. He was right, and he was wrong.

On our walk home, Andrew suggested that I use my new substack to expound upon my volunteer position as a marijuana “taste tester” at a new upscale dispensary. That may have been a bad stoner idea, but I’m doing it, and hopefully I won’t lose too many subscribers. I joke that I’m an emerging pot influencer, but for better or worse, I’m becoming a pot snob. I don’t want to be that annoying wine person, who keeps sniffing the glass and makes the waiter bring multiple options. Or worse, I once met a tea-head, who travelled with rarified tea sourced from private Japanese purveyors in tin foil bundles that looked like narcotics. That said, the tea was quite good.

Carl pointed me to a marijuana geek resource called Leafly, which includes this excessively detailed rundown of the chemical compounds of marijuana and their desired effects. They call the dispensary employees “budtenders,” but next time you patronize one of those high end shops, try one of my top selects:

Florist Farms Ri Ri Joint - THC 19% Hybrid

Shawn and I smoked the joint in Tompkins Square Park, and while he briefly felt too paranoid to sit next to the dog run, the sensations of bliss and happiness set in while we remained sociable. We went to a restaurant known mostly for brunch, which to our relief was completely empty inside at 7pm— a telling sign that our burgers would be disgusting— and then we wandered further east towards my house. By 9pm we were smoking more of the joint at the strangely desolate Corlears Hook Park, feeling bubbly and chatty. A young Hasidic man walked past us, and I whispered loudly, “There’s only one reason why he’s in the park this late at night.” Then a salty looking fisherman walked past us (with a fishing poll, presumably to catch polluted flounder from the East River). I speculated to Shawn that they were “meeting up.” We sat on the park bench to finish the joint, and fifteen minutes later my suspicious were confirmed when both the Hasidic man and the fisherman emerged simultaneously from a bathroom, almost certainly postcoital. The giddy feelings brought on by the Ri Ri joint and witnessing the old fashioned “cottaging” between the “seafood” and “kosher omie,” to use Polari parlance, was the highlight of our hyped up, chatty evening.

Weekenders - Glow Hybrid - THC 34% - Hybrid

I was borrowing a car for the weekend, and Tavi and I spontaneously decided to go to Brighton Beach to eat Russian food at Tatiana on the boardwalk, even though Tavi— a Jew with Norwegian heritage—dislikes smoked fish. After toking up furtively in a vestibule (it’s hard to remember that pot is now legal), we experienced a strong body high and we were still socially cogent enough to have rousing conversations. Definitely under the guise of munchies, we ordered an enormous platter of smoked fish despite Tavi’s aversion, and when an engorged Khachapuri arrived at the table I felt nauseous. We paced up and down the boardwalk to feel the strong effects of the Glow Hybrid body high. Yet after sparking up once more, we were accosted by hostile “carnies” at Coney Island, who were hawking a nearby haunted house. So we retreated to the cloud covered beach and calmed down before boarding the Cyclone rollercoaster. Tavi is petite, and I hadn’t warned her that the Cyclone was built in 1927 and that three people died on it in the 1980s. After being smashed around and screaming, we “sobered up” with some soft serve from a truck. I’d rate this as a medium-strong body high, but not euphoric with minor paranoia in the context of a carnival.

Drew Martin - Sativa Be Bright - THC 30% - Sativa

I smoked the joint on the steps of a West Village church, and appreciated its fragrant organic accents of ginger root, lemon balm, and damiana (no idea what that means, it was on the packaging). I gossiped on the phone for an hour, and then went to see Lizzi Bougatsos’ (of Gang Gang Dance) excellent, witchy art show in the basement of an apartment building, which is now the location for Tramps gallery. It was Earth Day, so I sat in Jefferson Market Garden blissed out before rambling to The LGBT Center for a queer archivist panel. A new friend August Bernadicou of the LGBTQ History Project spoke alongside Gay Liberation Front activist Flavia Rando from The Lesbian Herstory Archives, and the prolific chronicler of the Meatpacking District and fetish communities Efrain Gonzalez, whose photos feature prominently in the film I produced called The Stroll. I felt contemplative and blissed out as I took the M14 bus home in the rain, sending sentimental and earnest texts to friends about community under the influence of Sativa Be Bright.

Smoked Fish at Tatiana, Queer Archivists, Collears Hook Park

Florist Farms - King Sherb - THC 27% Indica with a Senior Moments 20mg CBD, 5mg THC, 5mg CBN chaser

If you’re noticing a trend, it’s Florist Farms. They advertise themselves as being female-led, which to me pointedly means not female-owned, but at least it’s all “grown in sunlight.” I’m not much of an Indica fan because I’m what might be called a Chatty Cathy, and Indica is a notoriously sleepy strain, but this “flower” as the hobbyists say, was both physically relaxing and euphoric in its own unique way. While stoned, I like to watch a lot of teen shows— my favorite being The Fosters and its spin-off Good Trouble (which I do not recommend) on Freeform. Emily Nussbaum has written about each show at length, and once tweeted that The Fosters is like extra syrup on your pancakes. Carl came home, and we had an absorbing conversation about something. While I’m generally not a gummy person, I had to eat a Senior Moments edible to slow down my chattering mind, and I blissfully fell asleep to awaken 8 hours later without a hangover.

Those are my favorites, and I hope this helps you to narrow the selection at your local dispensary. I should also plug my friend Rachel Berks of Otherwild glory, who is now working with the high end dispensary Gotham, slated to open on my birthday May 11th at Bowery and 3rd. It’s right across the street from my yoga cult, which is a whole other story you may or may not want to hear.

Thanks for reading, and if you didn’t see my first post after subscribing, here it is:

Avoiding The Artist's Way