Kathy Benjamin
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As soon as something taboo goes mainstream, businesses will find a way to attract the money of your Aunt Doris. And with the legalization of marijuana building momentum, the future of pot smoking is going to be a lot more mom-and-pop friendly than you could ever imagine. What the hell are we talking about?
B&Bs are those adorable little inns where your parents go on vacation when they want to totally do it. And a B&B in Denver called Get High Hideaways is now charging $200 a night in the hopes of attracting high-end clientele whose idea of a good time is contemplating infinity while staring at doilies and Hummel figurines for hours on end.
Matthew Staver/The New York Times
Just imagine this as a GIF.
The B&B's goal is to separate the discerning cannabis connoisseur from the patchouli-scented dross who must wait in dispensary lines downtown. Furthermore, Get High Hideaways is a nudist-friendly "textile-free" space, which makes it possibly the funniest and/or most scarring place on the planet to celebrate your grandparents' golden anniversary.
Marijuana cuisine has come a long way since that infamous day years ago when gravity was just too powerful and you ate a spider-web-wrapped Cheeto you found under the couch. Last year, one critically lauded New York restaurant fooled around with a private tasting of an entirely THC-infused menu -- which basically incapacitated one critic -- whereas certain Colorado foodies are experimenting with BYOC events that pair vaporizing with haute cuisine.
Cyrus McCrimmon/The Denver Post
"Hahaha, yeah, there's no way this portion size is going to work."
Hell, you know jazz cigarettes are catching on with the squares when a Colorado sushi restaurant starts encouraging patrons to match pot blends with different raw fish and the random guy who sells marijuana truffles out of a copper bucket in a San Francisco park has a 4.5-star Yelp review (out of 67 reviews).
Some of you may have indulged in a leisurely afternoon wine tasting, one of the few occasions in polite society where it's socially acceptable to get roaring drunk by noon or spit merlot all over the place like a tuberculoid cowboy. Well, Colorado and Washington are giving Napa Valley a run for their money with guided marijuana tours that highlight such facets of the local pot economy as pot dispensaries, glass-blowing artisans, and presumably the most secluded high school bleachers and "that pond where Ron saw a duck walk backward."
Medioimages/Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images
"If you pay for the premium package I'll kick it up to a moonwalk."
But can you get stoned on the tours? In Colorado, at least -- for anywhere from the low $100s to over $1,000, the tour operator will furnish safe spaces for smoking (remember, you can't just smoke anywhere in Colorado) and shuttle you around from destination to destination until time has no meaning. And to top it off, these tours have seasoned chaperones on hand to reassure first-time tokers that they're not dying or secretly shitting their pants.
Alcohol has been a staple at weddings ever since dads needed a few whiskeys to convince themselves that they could dance. But it looks like, with the increasing public acceptability of marijuana, wedding speeches will soon be more rambling, esoteric, and likely to feature the best man air-guitaring to the Alan Parsons Project for no discernible reason whatsoever.
tanialerro/iStock/Getty Images
"To the bride and groom, and the starting lineup for your Chicago Bulls."
Colorado wedding planners are already coming up with creative new ways to charge their clients more money, such as weed bars and -- we quote one planner:
"... 'bud-tonnieres' where their boutonniere is made with a small cannabis bud of the wedding party member's choice -- sativa or indica [...] after the formalities of the ceremony, they can remove the item, put it in the wedding party gift, which is a pipe, and smoke it."
This sounds expensive, but at least the bride and groom will save money by not hiring a band and instead entertaining guests with nothing but a laptop languidly looping the iTunes visualizer.
Kathy wrote a very funny book and you can buy it here and here.
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