What’s a Picture Worth

photo credit: Thadeus Greenson

I noticed this image most recently in the North Coast Journal, but I’ve seen it, in one variation or another, in most of our local media outlets. Pretty much anytime the cops evict people from an “illegal” encampment, the press report appears beneath, or at least includes, a picture of a trash strewn field. We treat human beings like garbage. We force them into impossible conditions, harass them, abuse them, and then forcibly evict them. Then we show the picture of the trash strewn field, as though the purpose of the whole cruel, violent, unconscionable operation were to clean-up litter.

That picture is enough to incapacitate most liberals, who’s feeble minds freeze at the sight of it, caught in the cognitive dissonance between wanting to help the poor, and wanting to protect the environment. Liberals like to think that they are smarter than gun-toting, bible-thumping, immigrant-bashing red-neck conservatives, but they’re not, not by a long shot, and liberals fall for this stupidity every time.

Liberals watch well-fed, well-equipped and well-armed police officers forcibly evict the most wretched of the wretched from the most squalid of squalid, and treat them as though their condition amounted to criminal behavior, and the cops say “See, it’s not about the violent oppression of local citizens; it’s about cleaning up the environment.”

Liberals hear that and think, “Look at all that litter. That’s a real problem. I hate litterbugs.”

Fascists 1, People 0.

In truth, it’s worse than that. It’s about economic pressures forcing all of us into impossible situations. It’s about watching our neighbors crumble under the stress, and then stepping around them, and avoiding their gaze. It’s about looking around, and wondering “How did it come to this?”

 

“I know! You can tell. Look at that.” the guy would say, flipping to another picture, and then showing it to the person, adding, “Have you ever seen that much of anything come out of a dog.”

“Ewww” the person would say.

He mounted some of the pictures on poster-board and brought them to town meetings, and he regularly called our community radio station to tell us, angrily, always angrily, that those people living down on the river bar were ruining our community.

To be fair, the guy did clean-up a hell of a lot of garbage, and he did pay a some of the people living in these encampments to fill bags with garbage and clean-up the area. I know he cleaned-up a lot of trash, because he would leave impressively large piles of it along Redwood Dr. between Redway and Garberville. He used these massive pyramids of garbage as fund-raising tools, to solicit donations from passing motorists. A lot of people supported this man’s efforts with cash donations, even though he offered no accounting of how much money he raised, or how he spent it.

I cheered when he moved out of the area. He rubbed me the wrong way for three reasons: 1. He was always angry. 2. He blamed poor people. 3. His wife sold real estate, and he had a contract to clean-up foreclosed-on houses after the housing bubble burst. In other words, he and his wife, made money by making people homeless. Still, I felt sorry for him, in a way.

I could see that the guy was genuinely upset. He wasn’t happy. He looked like his head was about to explode. You could tell that it was more than he could take. He could not fathom the depth of the problem, and it all came out as displaced aggression. I can relate. It’s fucking brutal out there, and we’re all in over our heads. We’re all looking for someone to blame.

 

Democrats blame Republicans. Republicans blame immigrants, Muslims, women, liberals, the media, “welfare queens,” the poor, and anyone else they find, and all of those people blame the government. We all know it isn’t working, but we all blame different people for it. Our problems are much bigger than these petty quarrels. Much, much bigger.

For instance,when it comes to housing, we have two choices:

1. Standard Housing, which costs an astronomical amount of money, requires ridiculous amounts of maintenance, and practically demands a high-consumption lifestyle.
2. Homelessness, which is ridiculously cruel.

Between those two ridiculous options, we have nothing. We know from statistics, that most people who live in Humboldt County cannot afford a home here. Either they spend more than they can afford on housing, skimping on necessities like food, medicine and utilities, while they work themselves to death, or they find themselves without housing and learn to survive that way.

They’re both shitty options, and I wouldn’t even call it a choice. More like, you try Option 1. You give it your best shot. If things don’t go well, you discover Option 2. Meanwhile, if you listen to the County Supes, the Eureka City Council, and their special consultant on homelessness for long, you realize that government will never solve this problem. In fact, the government exists specifically to create this problem, which is why there are cops out there evicting people from their squalid makeshift camps in the first place.

It’s not working. Government doesn’t work. Democracy doesn’t work. If you think the 2016 presidential election will change anything, you’re an idiot. Were you born yesterday? Don’t you remember all of that “Hope and Change” bullshit. Democracy doesn’t work. It never has. Stop believing in it. Stop teaching it to your children. In fact, stop having children, because you have nothing to teach them, and no future to offer them.

Capitalism doesn’t work. Capitalism gave us Global Warming, endless war, and poverty. Civilization doesn’t work. Civilization gave us overpopulation, deforestation and the extinction crisis. Technology won’t save us either.

 

A hundred years ago, we built innovative new technologies that allowed us to exploit the Earth’s resources more efficiently. We built new mining equipment culminating in the giant drag-lines used in mountaintop removal coal mine operations. We developed new oil technologies, leading to innovations like the Deep Water Horizon deep sea oil drilling platform, and the latest craze sweeping the nation, “Fracking.” Inventions like the chainsaw literally changed the face of the Earth. Today, we see the disastrous consequences of the enormous success of these technologies all around us.

Right now, technology revolves around exploiting you, the user. How are they doing on that? Do you think there’s still room for improvement? Is there anything left of you? I wonder. No, technology won’t save you. There’s no “app” for that. We inhabit a culture that has run out of options. No one, sees any realistic hope that things will get better, and it only goes downhill from here. That’s the story.

When you see cops intimidating, harassing and evicting people who have nothing, and nowhere to go, you are looking at the end of civilization. You are watching the interests of capital, crush your neighbors last refuge, and pitch it into a dumpster. That picture shows the brutality of the system, and that’s the picture that tells the story.

When you see that debris strewn field, it means they missed the story completely. It’s like they went to cover the Superbowl, but the only picture we see is the empty stadium, strewn with beer cups and fast-food wrappers. Unless they wanted to remind us that sports fans are a bunch of drunken slobs, which is true of most of us, by the way, they missed the story.

…after the tailgate party

It’s About the Laundromat

I know a few of the business owners in Garberville, and I even consider a couple of them friends, but when they all get together, it can get ugly, and a few of them make our greed-bag dope yuppies look like Mother Theresa by comparison. I’m not a big fan of the black market marijuana industry, but if you buy a bag of weed from one of our local growers, at least it will get you high. On the other hand, if you try washing your clothes at either of our local laundromats here in SoHum, you’ll pay a premium to use the machines, but your clothes will come out of them dirtier and smellier than when they went in.

Whether you go to the laundromat in Redway or the one in Garberville, it’s the same story. Those machines will ruin your clothes and charge you for the service. I don’t know where she finds those machines, but I’ve never seen weaker, more anemic agitator action in my life, and they just give up if you try to put more than about five socks in one load. You will find no running water at either facility, so if you get laundry soap on your hands, there’s no place to rinse it off. God help you if you need to use a restroom, and the places couldn’t be uglier.

A friend and I were talking. We both live off-grid, and so we both understand the real cost of conventional luxuries. “My washing machine uses a lot of juice.” he said.

“You have a washing machine?” I replied.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “I had to get one. It didn’t matter how much it cost or how much electricity and water it uses, I absolutely had to get one.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I can’t go into that laundromat. I had to stop. I kept getting into fights.” he told me, adding, “I cannot go into that laundromat, either of them, without getting into a fight. I mean, I’m not a violent guy. I could be totally plastered, at a rowdy bar, and I will have no problems, but if I walk into one of those laundromats, stone cold sober, I swear, within fifteen minutes, I’m ready to kill somebody.”

I know how he feels. My partner Amy washes most of our clothes at home, by hand, rather than use those machines. Truth be told, we have no place to wash clothes in Southern Humboldt. Instead, we have two facilities offering coin-operated, wardrobe ruining, anger generators. This we all learn, over time. Pamela Van Meter owns both of them. This petite, elderly woman also owns The Paper Mill, the only copy shop and stationary store in town, and the place where I buy pen refills when I need them.

I would describe Ms. Van Meter as a perfect lady. She always dresses nicely. In the summer, she loves to wear white. I distinctly remember her, strolling down the fairway at Summer Arts and Music Festival, all dressed-up in a crisp, spotless white dress, with a lacy white parasol over her head. She looked great. Many times I’ve seen her stepping out of her spotlessly clean white luxury SUV in a spotless white pantsuit. You’d think she knew something about doing laundry.

She knows something about doing business though. I’m sure those laundromats help her “clean-up” more than they help her customers clean anything. She knows that she’s got us over a barrel, so she lets her attendants catch the shit, while she skims the cream. You can’t help but feel the contempt for the customer when you’re in there.

Even if you arrived at the laundromat in a good mood, by the time you’ve pushed your quarters into the machine, spent an hour or so in the bleak, depressing interior, staring at the cracked plaster walls, and then noticed that big oily stain across the front of your new shirt, the big oily stain that wasn’t there when you put the shirt in the machine, your mood has changed. You could walk into the laundromat as happy as Spongebob Squarepants, but by the time you leave, you feel like Mad Max.

When a merchant sets up a vibe like that, it’s bound to reverberate through town in various ways. Imagine some tourists, who, after emerging from two weeks of backpacking in the King Range, spend their first hour back in civilization, at one of our laundromats having the clothes they hope to clean, ruined, while they wait. They’re pissed about the big oily stains. They want to wash the laundry soap off of their hands. They need to use the bathroom, and they can’t wait to get the hell out of that place.

They’re not happy. If they go to a restaurant after that, they’ve already forgiven about as much as they’re willing to forgive for one day. If the restaurant screws-up their order, there’s going to be hell to pay. It becomes a vicious cycle, as the employees who absorb all of this dissatisfaction, become dissatisfied with their jobs, and the more dissatisfaction people feel, the more hostile they become.

I recall remarking to my partner as we drove through Garberville for the very first time, almost 20 years ago now. “This seems like a very sad little town.” I said. I don’t think it’s gotten any happier. Happy people spend more money, but once you’ve been ripped-off, you’re out for revenge. In this way, a few greedy merchants can suck the goodwill right out of a town.

Personally, I think the Garberville/Redway Chamber of Commerce would do much better to focus on solving these kinds of problems within the business community, rather than scapegoating and harassing the people who live here. The new No Loitering, No Panhandling, No Smoking signs that just went up all over town don’t make the place any classier. If anything, those signs make me want to take up smoking, just so I can lurk menacingly on the sidewalk, in my stained shirt, blowing smoke in people’s faces while I beg them for spare change.

Keep this in mind. If you have an unpleasant encounter with an obnoxious person in dirty clothes on your next visit to Garberville. Don’t take it personally. It’s not about you; It’s about the laundromat.

Thank You Jentri Anders

I noticed that Jentri Anders chimed in with a comment a couple of weeks ago. I’m flattered that Dr. Anders took the time to read my column, and write a comment, even if she only did it to promote her book. I’m happy to recommend Beyond Counterculture: the Community of Mateel, by Jentri Anders to everyone, and to every pot farmer hoping to cash in on “the Humboldt Brand,” I can assure you that Beyond Counterculture is worth it’s weight in gold.

My column advocated using the archetype of “The Hippie” as a marketing tool, to propel the Humboldt Brand to commercial success in the newly emerging legal market for cannabis products. The Hippie is a marketing goldmine, and Jentri Anders staked our claim to it when she wrote Beyond Counterculture. Someone has got to reprint that book. We should treat Beyond Counterculture like the bible, meaning that we should point to it, thump it, wave it in people’s faces, and even illiterate people should carry it piously wherever they go. If you can read a little of it, and remember a couple of quotes, so much the better. And, finally, when the economic storms ahead have proven me right about this, we should erect a bulletproof statue of Jentri Anders on the Town Square in Garberville.

Beyond Counterculture describes the hippie phenomena in the formative years of the “back to the land” movement in Southern Humboldt. This book, written as a scholarly work of social science, explains what hippies were, how they got that way, and describes what they were doing here in Southern Humboldt, before the marijuana industry took over. She portrayed hippies positively, because she could see what they aspired to, and understood what they were attempting. In other words, she was one of them. Even if hippie culture has gone extinct here in SoHum, we still have its fossilized DNA in the form of Beyond Counterculture.

By no means, is Beyond Counterculture about drugs, and it’s been a long time since I read the book, but I’m pretty sure there’s a page, early on, where she acknowledges that many of the subjects in her study reported that they had been influenced by their experiences with psychedelics. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Big Deal! Hippies took acid. Everyone knows that. At the time, however, psychedelics were perceived as a serious threat to national security. People took these drugs, and whatever they experienced, shook their belief in The System, and made them want to try something else.

Psychedelics, including, perhaps especially, marijuana, became a threat to political control, which is why Richard Nixon declared war on them. Meanwhile, corporate interests co-opted the psychedelic movement, reducing it bright colors, flashing lights and hypnotic images drained of meaning. Products and price-tags replaced psychedelic values and ideas and what once looked like a social revolution, collapsed into fad and fashion.

The hippies were probably doomed from the beginning, for a lot of reasons, but the black-market demand for marijuana changed the dynamics of Southern Humboldt, as people discovered that big piles of cash could influence them even more than psychedelic drugs. Dr. Anders describes some of those changes in her book, including how the War on Drugs, and the emerging black market for California sinsemilla that it fueled, undermined the hippie experiment going on here.

Of course, in the ensuing years, wave after wave of stupid, greedy, ethically challenged social parasites invaded SoHum to exploit the injustice of cannabis prohibition. Still, SoHum remained one of the last strongholds of hippie culture, and you could still find old hippies around here as recently as the turn of the last century. Some say there’s still a few hippies out in those hills, but they say that about Bigfoot too.

The story is all that matters now. Once upon a time, kids got so high they thought they could change the world, and they came here to do it. They tried to live differently. They gave us solar power and micro-hydro, organic gardening and permaculture, straw-bale and cobb buildings, geodesic domes and tree houses. And, they gave us California sinsemilla. Although much of the hippie experiment failed on its own, hippies succeeded in scaring the shit out of the government, who crushed them brutally. That really happened, and it really happened here. Jentri Anders’ book, Beyond Counterculture: The Community of Mateel testifies to it.

Why is that story important? Try to imagine, I know it won’t be easy for a lot of you, but try to imagine what it is like to be someone who likes to get high, but doesn’t want to make a career of it. Around here, when people see cannabis, they see dollar signs. They see profit, because that’s what greed sees. People get so used to equating cannabis with money, that they forget that the people who buy the stuff, value it differently.

Cannabis, along with other plant and fungal agents, alter our perception. When we see things differently, we sometimes feel differently about the things we see. When we feel differently about things, we may choose to act differently, based on how we feel about what we see. That’s what made hippies into hippies in the first place. The pot has only gotten stronger since then, and it continues to alter consciousness in the same way.

Sure, people have gotten dumber in the ensuing years, but the dominant culture has gotten uglier, harder and crueler as well, so even though today’s kids have been brainwashed more thoroughly than their grandparents, they know, even more painfully, how bad the dominant culture sucks. In our hearts, we all know that the dominant culture is killing us, and it’s killing the planet. We’re all still looking for a way out, and “The Hippie” remains a symbol for that quest.

That’s why “The Hippie” continues to inspire young people in a way that dope yuppies do not, and that’s why “The Hippie” remains a marketing goldmine for cannabis. No matter how stupid, ridiculous and foul smelling you find hippies, they’re a lot more attractive than the marijuana industry, believe me.

Industrial agriculture is just too ugly to look at, and too boring to care about. Once we make the transition to a legal market, even the mystique of our outlaw status disappears. Legalization eliminates the last exciting, illegal and subversive aspect of the marijuana industry, while it sheds light on this whole festering disease that hid in the shadows for so long. No matter how you look at the marijuana industry it all boils down to this: the greed, the boring and the ugly. Nobody wants to see it or hear about it.

So, don’t remind people that it’s all about pounds of weed and piles of cash. Instead, you’re selling a lifestyle, an aesthetic, and an attitude, steeped in history. Beyond Counterculture: The Community of
Mateel, preserves that history, so that Humboldt’s dope yuppies can cash in on it today. Thank you Jentri Anders.

My Doctor Got Busted

 

I’ve never understood people’s fascination with pharmaceutical drugs. I’ve been prescribed narcotic pain meds, and found their effects nearly as unpleasant as the pain they were meant to relieve. The only pharmaceutical drug I ever remember enjoying was something called a “pink lemon stat.” At the time, roughly 30 years ago, I played bass in a hard working rock band.

We played two or three gigs a week, and I waited tables at a restaurant to pay the bills. Our guitar player had an overweight girlfriend who had a prescription for 90 of these beans every month, to help her lose weight. She shared them with her boyfriend, and he shared them with the band. Half of one of those pills would keep me energized all night.

One weekend, however, after playing gigs on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, plus an after hours jam after the gig on Saturday, and then working the Sunday Brunch shift at the restaurant, I remember walking home after work. The whole world seemed impossibly gray, bleak and depressing. I knew I couldn’t bear to feel that way for long, and I never, ever want to feel that way again. I never took any more of those little pink pills after that.

At the other end of the spectrum, I discovered cannabis and psychedelics as a teenager, and my relationship with these mostly plant and fungus based compounds has been entirely positive. Although I am not a doctor, I recommend them to everyone, despite the fact that you cannot get any of them from a pharmacist, and your insurance will not cover the cost.

This is how I see the world of drugs in America: All of the good drugs are listed under “Schedule 1” and prohibited to everyone, including doctors and scientists. You can buy all of the bad drugs you want, at the pharmacy, so long as you have a note from your doctor, and the worst drugs, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and sugar are heavily advertised, ubiquitous, and all but crammed down our throats. As cruel and perverse as it seems, the logic behind our nation’s drug policy is impeccable, in that it maximizes the potential for harm, and the profitability of all drugs.

Other people might see it differently, and apparently, I’m in the minority here in Humboldt County. It seems that here in Humboldt, our enthusiasm for prescription drugs nearly eclipses our passion for cannabis. We don’t have big colorful festivals to celebrate our love for prescription drugs, but according to a great piece by Ryan Burns at LoCO, we consume the equivalent of 14 Vicodin tablets per day, for every man woman and child in Humboldt County, “including babies and people in comas.”

At that level of consumption, it’s a wonder we’re not all in comas. I also read recently that we have more active prescriptions for pain meds in Humboldt County that we have people, by about 20%! I guess Oxycontin alone doesn’t cut it anymore. Does it really hurt that much to live here? Or, do local doctors nurture our enthusiasm for narcotics by prescribing them as freely as I recommend weed?

Recently, my doctor, at least the last real doctor I saw at Redwoods Rural Health Clinic here in Redway, made the news because of her enthusiasm for prescription drugs. Dr. Wendi Joiner pleaded “no contest” to DUI and drugs charges, and had her license to practice medicine suspended. A state medical board disciplinary investigation determined that Dr. Joiner had written 33 prescriptions, for a wide range of drugs, to a fictitious patient.

A few years ago Dr Wendi Joiner left Redwoods Rural to take a job in Marin County, but in December of 2014, a State Trooper pulled her car over in Sonoma County, and that’s when things began to fall apart for Dr. Joiner. When the cops pulled her over, she appeared intoxicated and failed a sobriety test. In her car, they found two full, and one mostly empty bottles of booze, a whipped cream dispenser, charged with nitrous oxide, along with NINE CASES of nitrous oxide cartridges, or “whip-its,” AND over 100 prescription pills, ranging from Norco and Xanax, to Ritalin. Apparently, perhaps ironically, she had no weed on her.

The article I read, suggested our good doctor was using the nitrous oxide to inhale the other drugs. I still cannot imagine how that would work, but maybe she knows something I don’t. She is, or at least was, a doctor, after all. Either way, she had enough drugs to get a lot of people really fucked-up, even without the novel delivery system.

The Whip-its surprised me. First, because, being a doctor, you’d think she could get her hands on one of those nice refillable nitrous tanks, rather than waste all of those stupid disposable metal cartridges. Second, I remember seeing lots of those spent whip-it cartridges on the side of the road, all over SoHum, back when she worked here, and not so many since. I would have never guessed that she dumped them.

I remember noticing a Burning Man sticker on the back of her Subaru in the parking lot, which told me a little about her, but for all of her, now famous, enthusiasm for prescription drugs, she did not seem particularly interested in practicing medicine. I recall she spent most of our time together in the exam room looking at her cell phone. I also recall that she did not look well.

She was relatively young and slender, without any major deformities. She should have been attractive, but her hair looked particularly dull, and her skin had no glow. I attributed it to overwork, because I assume all doctors work too much, but everyone else I know who looks that way, has health problems. I hope she gets the help she needs, but unfortunately, doctors seem to be much better at creating these kinds of problems than solving them.

The Humboldt Brand

At the Supes’ meeting recently, a witness put it like this: “When you tell someone that you are from Humboldt, the first question they ask you is, ‘ Do you have any cannabis.’” I can attest that this is at least partially true, but I think it belies our poverty, more than it speaks to our strength. Often as not, when I tell someone I live in Humboldt, they say something like: “Oh yeah, I’ve been there. Ain’t nothin’ but pot farmers up there. What do you do for culture?”

Sure, we’re famous for our weed, but mostly because the black-market marijuana industry has choked-off and snuffed-out everything else around here. That said, why should people care more about their pot coming from Humboldt County, than they do about their corn coming from Iowa? Drug dealers always want to tell me where the pot they’re selling me comes from, but as a cannabis consumer, I’ve never really trusted street dealers, so I’ve never put much stock in their stories. Really, as long as it looks like weed, smells like weed, and get’s you high like weed, who gives a fuck where it comes from?

Ask yourself, “What is it about the name ‘Humboldt’ that cannabis consumers will pay a little more for?” Pot smokers sure won’t pay extra to help kill off the last wild salmon or poison the last Pacific fisher. We won’t kick down our hard-earned cash to help put sub-literate rednecks in brand new trucks, or send dope yuppies to Phuket for the Winter, at least not if we have a choice, and can pick up a sack of Willie Nelson Weed, or Marley’s Marijuana for less. Those things could just as easily convince people to boycott the Humboldt brand, rather than patronize it, but we’ve got one thing that makes the name “Humboldt” a goldmine for marketing cannabis. Can you guess what it is?

 

I’ll give you a hint: Like the salmon, they come back, year after year, despite the abuse we heap on them. I refer of course to the bipedal primates colloquially known as “Hippies.” Hippies. Marijuana created hippies, and hippies made marijuana famous. Marijuana turned people into hippies back in the ’60s, and it continues to turn people into hippies today.

All you need to do to become a hippie is smoke weed and not cut your hair. That’s it, and millions of Americans do it every year. Some of them stick with it for quite a while, until eventually, they crumple, under unbearable economic pressure, and settle for the grim life of a dead-eyed cubicle rat. Still, they keep their hippie identity with them, in a box on the dresser, where they also keep their marijuana.

Hippies have a long history in Humboldt County, and considering how shameful the rest of the history of this county is, we really should promote it. In the ’60s, hippies from San Francisco came to Humboldt to escape “The Man” and corporate exploitation, by getting “back to the land.” Those hippies learned to grow their own marijuana, and they grew better marijuana. With this better marijuana, Humboldt’s hippies took over the domestic marijuana industry.

Growing marijuana is a proud hippie tradition, like organic gardening, long hair and promiscuous sex. Along with the burgeoning marijuana industry, hippie culture flourished here in Humboldt County, and Humboldt’s hippies came to define hippie culture, especially in the areas of owner built homes, alternative energy and restoration ecology. That’s why so many hippies come to Humboldt, and that’s why “The Hippie” holds the key to Humboldt’s future.`

I know you don’t want to hear this. The county already paid big bucks for this information, not that long ago, but nobody wanted to hear it then. The county hired a PR consultant to help define the county’s image. Those consultants introduced their presentation to the Supes with the old hippie anthem, White Rabbit by the San Francisco psychedelic rock band The Jefferson Airplane. You could actually hear the floor drop out from under them with each note. No one wanted to hear it. I don’t know what people wanted to hear, or expected to hear, but like it or not, those consultants earned their money, and we ignore their advice at our own economic peril. Really, if you don’t like hippies, you should get out of the marijuana industry, because without hippies, there is no marijuana industry, at least not in Humboldt County.

It’s time to face facts. Hippies created this industry. Hippies drive this industry, and hippies hold the key to the future of this industry. As an enduring popular American archetype, The Hippie comes in second only to the cowboy. Think about that. Even though cowboys themselves have mostly disappeared from the American West (which is a good thing, because cowboys smell even worse, and cause a lot more problems than hippies) the archetype of “The Cowboy” still sells billions of dollars worth of cowboy hats, cowboy boots, belt buckles, tobacco and firearms, just for starters, every year.

Next to The Cowboy, The Hippie is the biggest marketing goldmine in America, and the single most essential component of the hippie lifestyle is marijuana. Every hippie carries marijuana, just like every cowboy carries a gun. If you live in Humboldt County, you better learn to love the smell of hippies, because that is the smell of money, and Humboldt County will only remain synonymous with marijuana, so long as it remains synonymous with hippies.

Classic Humboldt Honey Poster.

Hippies have driven the economy of Humboldt County for decades. It’s about time we showed some appreciation. We absolutely must associate the Humboldt brand with hippies, and we need to make Humboldt county, especially Southern Humboldt County, as hippie-friendly as possible. Not only should we cater to the hippies who visit here, we should encourage everyone who visits to become a hippie for the day. We’ll sell tie-dye T-shirts, granny glasses and peace sign medallions galore.

To attract hippies, and earn their patronage, we’ll want to cultivate a vibe around town that feels about half-way between a Rainbow Gathering and the Oregon Country Fair. We’ll need hippie-friendly campgrounds, clothing optional swimming holes, and vegan eateries because we don’t just want hippies all over America to demand Humboldt Grown weed; we also want them to come here to see it grown, and buy it fresh from hippie farmers. We want hippies to come here because hippies will still pay retail price, even after the big wholesalers have beaten the living profit-margin out of you.

People around here like to say that the “back to the landers” had “hippie values” although nobody seems to remember what those were. Well, we better Google them, because we need to preserve, celebrate and venerate our hippie traditions and heritage here in Humboldt County if we want to remain economically viable. I know you don’t want to hear it, but we need those dirty hippies, and we need them now, more than ever.