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Four-twenty. Supposedly it's the number of active elements in marijuana. Or the criminal code for possession. I think all that's all just urban legend material. All I know is that on April 20th, back when I was in college at Santa Cruz, it was a very special day.
I remember one April 20th when I was hitchhiking up Bay Street to campus. A VW van picked me up and a blue cloud rolled out when the door opened. "Happy four-twenty, said the driver, handing me a joint. It could have been 1969, but it wasn't. It was 1992. Santa Cruz was like that.
I can't remember Santa Cruz without thinking about the Fish Rap – a gonzo alternative newspaper I worked on in college. Hell, my UCSC career was basically devoted to the Fish Rap. I started as a photographer. Then photo editor. Then senior editor. Then editor emeritus. Then I had to graduate.
It was the Fish Rap that put me on the road that lead me here. I bought my first Mac so I could learn PageMaker to design the paper. I taught myself about layout and editorial. I learned how to manage a staff of crazies. But most of all, I learned that anything was possible. I learned that a bunch of stoners with macs could create a newspaper that was every bit as real as the ones in the newspaper racks that seemed to appear there by magic in the night. I learned that everything, the whole world, had been created the same way – by people too inspired (or too stupid) to let anything stand in their way.
And remembering the newspaper, today, on four-twenty, made me remember Doctor Harry Buds. Half a spoof on the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, and half an actual agricultural guide, the good doctor wrote a biweekly marijuana advice column for the Fish Rap. The "Dormitory Doobage" series was especially groundbreaking.
The true identity of Harry Buds is a well-guarded secret to this day. But I can tell you that the good doctor, later in life, became especially inspired by carnivorous marine mollusks.
So I'm sitting here on this rainy Friday, in an apartment in San Francisco, almost ten years later, looking out over the rooftops of the city. And I'm wondering if ten years really is a long time or not. I'm wondering if this is the kind of melancholic nostalgia that old people feel.
Which, of course, brought me to Google. All it took was one search to bring it all back. The original Fish Rap web pages are, amazingly, still online, time-stamped: "Last updated: May 22, 1995 at 12:16 AM." It's all there. Doctor Harry Buds. The Founding Flounders. And all the people I called my friends and heroes when I was a young, stupid, inspired college muckraker.
Happy four-twenty to all the stoners, dreamers, and crazies out there. You're going to change the world, you know. Like my friend Jodi's sig file used to say:
"Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed, that's all who ever have."
–Margaret Mead
{ 4:05pm }
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