The Boardwalk of Venice Beach is a dreamland for a fifteen-year-old in 2011. Especially for a fifteen-year-old that’s already discovered weed’s sticky allure, the seemingly unending row ahead of smoke shops and dispensaries could hardly be more enticing.
Is this… is this heaven?
As my eyes glide along the utopian boardwalk wider than a boulevard, I struggle to keep my mouth from watering. Though I’ve smoked my fair share of weed in my adolescent misadventures, I come from a place where most parents fear that a misplaced dime bag could turn a PTA meeting into the next Woodstock. The idea of a fifteen-year-old with pot is still enough to inspire riots in the street from even some of the least conservative of residents.
But here, in the land of stoners, creatives, and dreams — in the mecca of Paris Hiltons, paparazzi, and pot — there’s a bearded man without a shirt standing in front of a store with an arrow that reads “WEED SALE.” In fact, the entire stretch of stores along this beach appears to be lined with his disheveled friends.
It seems that in every single establishment, there’s at least one pot-related item. The clothing stores carry Rastafarian T-shirts, the cafes carry THC-infused cappuccinos, and the candle shops have Purple Haze-scented candles. The little furniture store has — is that a Bob Marley sofa?
It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before in my life.
“Now Ben, you can feel free to stick with us or peruse on your own,” my dad offers innocently, as though he hasn’t noticed that every other store on this street is of the marijuana-selling variety.
“I might… uh… wander,” I say, trying my best to conceal my near-overflowing zeal and the bead of drool slowly rounding the underside of my lip.
“Do you have your phone on you?”
“Yep.” iPhones have only had selfie cameras for a year and this machine and I are already inseparable. I pretend to amble aimlessly for a minute, as though I don’t notice the man in a full-body weed leaf costume dawdling highly along the boardwalk with the clumsy swagger of a Pacific coast drunk. He stumbles past a man in doctor’s attire holding a sign reading, “Kush doctor.”
Once my dad’s fully out of view, though, I begin moving as frenetically as a kid in a candy store. But in all of my excitement, I only manage to get inside a couple of low-end glass stores. Maybe my unbridled fervor isn’t doing me any favors here.
At the entrance to one store, I find myself talking with the afternoon’s fifteenth bearded hippie. This one’s wearing what appears to be a labcoat and he looks at me prudently through his glasses. Apart from a haircut that would make even 1968 proud, he looks almost professional.
“What’s bothering you? Can’t sleep? Anxiety? A little wrist pain? C’mon back and we’ll get you all sorted!” he explains with a voice somewhere in between a Harvard professor and Tommy Chong.
“Even if I’m not 18?” I press, trailing upward hopefully.
“Oh… um…” he hesitates, the professor quickly fleeing from sight. “Yeah… no… sorry bud. Can’t help if you’re not 18, man.”
As reality sets in, I sullenly leave the store. What a cruel world that I should find myself here in California — a haven of sunshine, surfers, and celebrities — the weed capital of the country — and be too young to buy any. It’s a tragic comedy. What have I done to deserve this terrible, terrible fate?
But as I lament the gods that forced this heinous misfortune upon me, I hear a sudden sound. It’s the scraggly voice of a savior in plain clothing — a messiah of Southern California.
“Mixtape! Mixtape! Anybody wanna buy my fire new mixtape?”
Not all saviors speak in parables. I give him a blank stare.
“Hey! How bout you?”
“Oh, uh…”
“Here! Give it a listen,” he says, raising a pair of what appear like Walgreens-purchased headphones to my ears. As I hear an amateurish garage band beat kick into gear, and as I envision the sweaty swaths of stoners who’d been asked to try on these headphones and listen to this mixtape already here today, I nervously search for an excuse to slink away from the scene.
“Actually, to be honest… I’m — uh — sort of in the market for weed,” I admit.
At this, he hunches down toward me. As he nears my ear, I begin to fear slightly for the sanctity of my personal space.
“There’s weed inside the mixtape,” he whispers, creaking open the CD container just a crack.
“Wait, seriously? How much?”
At this, he gives a cautious look left and right, as though preparing to cross the rushing torrent of bodybuilders, skaters, rollerbladers, mascots, face painters, henna tattooists, food vendors and children carted along in wagons clacking boisterously against wood.
“For an eighth here I’ll do — wait, are you a cop?” he asks seriously, eyeing up my prepubescent face, Nike shoes, and grubby ball shorts.
“Uh… no,” I say.
“Do you have ID?”
“I don’t… but I can — uh — show you my… Facebook page?”
He hesitates for a moment and mulls over the idea of selling this weed-laced mixtape to a fifteen-year-old tourist.
“Uh, yeah…”
So at this, we make our way sketchily to the back of the store, my iPhone in hand.
“Hold on… it’s loading,” I say, trying to encourage him. But he looks more and more paranoid by the second.
After a minute that seems to stretch into twenty, I show him my Facebook profile. He scans the page up and down and scrolls through a few of my photos, as though there’s some protocol for determining whether the adolescent pothead in search of sustenance is really an undercover CI.
And with that, I’m $40 shorter and 110% happier on this dull-growing vacation alone with my parents. I make my way impatiently to one of the bathroom stalls that line the beach, eager to check out my wares. I open the mixtape and out pops a sealed bag of weed with a “Grand Daddy Purp” label. I snap the highest resolution photo of it that my iPhone 4 can manage in this dark, damp, concrete enclosure.
After tucking the mixtape and its hidden treasure safely in my backpack, I step back out into the sunlight. As the boardwalk comes back into view, I feel God’s light shine down upon me. I smell Gaia’s gassy grace wafting up at me. The world seems brighter, the colors more vibrant, and the characters even more eccentric than twenty minutes prior. Maybe it’s just the thrill of my clandestine purchase or perhaps Venice Beach simply has that effect on people.