{"id":25553,"date":"2018-04-20T16:00:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T00:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2018\/04\/20\/the-waldos-420-a-commemorative-beer\/"},"modified":"2018-04-21T00:38:16","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T08:38:16","slug":"the-waldos-420-a-commemorative-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2018\/04\/20\/the-waldos-420-a-commemorative-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Waldos, 420 & A Commemorative Beer"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n
\n

If you squint hard enough, at the right places, Marin County, California in 2018\u00a0can <\/em>resemble the Marin County, California, of the early 1970s.<\/p>\n

If Hunter S. Thompson was right, and the ethos of \u201cSan Francisco in the middle sixties\u201d was a great wave of different, resistant energy that would break, crash and recede into the hedonism, selfishness and cynicism that marked the decades to come, at least\u00a0some<\/em>\u00a0of the refugee flotsam from that idealist crest survived. And it did so by clinging to the hills and redwoods located just north across the Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n

There is evidence that this happened. Richard Brautigan fled to Bolinas. Unironic tie-dye is found in Fairfax. What \u201ccounterculture\u201d our society produces ends up commercialized to a degree, sure \u2014 and sometimes obscenely so \u2014 but what\u2019s not marked for sale in a market economy?<\/p>\n

At the least, when you drive away from the Best Buys and the Peet\u2019s coffees and the other trappings of 21st century suburban life in America, away from US-101 and up St. Francis Drake Boulevard, going west, up narrow country roads winding through the green hills spotted with dairy cows, you get an idea of what it might have felt to be here, then. Physically, much of the landscape is the same: cows behind ancient rail-and-wire fences, period farmhouses, rustic cottages.<\/p>\n

The setting is a key part of the ethos, and is part of the idea (I assume) as a school bus full of beer, weed, me and some new friends chugs, wheezes, but rolls nevertheless inexorably up and through the hills towards Point Reyes, the coast, the essence of 420 culture and its headlong collision with mainstream consumerism.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I should explain. I don\u2019t fully understand myself, but here goes. Lagunitas is a beer brand that got its start in Marin County. Lagunitas is probably the most marijuana-friendly beer brand in America \u2014 a fact that would be evident even if someone hadn\u2019t just handed me a Lagunitas-branded bottle opener that also has a roach clip on it. Cannabis still would be part of the company\u2019s aura, if not its stated corporate culture, even if Lagunitas weren\u2019t preparing to market its beer, internationally, with 420 (itself an old Marin County legend) as the hook.<\/p>\n

420. Right, everybody knows, but here goes, again: 420 is cannabis, cannabis is 420. This happened because the Grateful Dead and because legalization activists hijacked a Kinko\u2019s and leafletted most of the United States. However, before that sometime in the early 1970s, a pack of teenage goofballs at San Rafael High School (their parents and older siblings being exactly the kind of people who surfed Hunter\u2019s wave before and during raising children) would gather after school at a statue of Louis Pasteur, at twenty minutes past four p.m.<\/p>\n

Part of the legend involves a guy who worked for the Coast Guard, planted a plot of weed, and made a treasure map marking the spot. The group was named\u00a0the Waldos<\/a>\u00a0because they used to hang out by a wall. They then loaded into a smoke-filled car and went on long drives looking for a plot of unattended, illicit pot. Through this, 420 became the call sign to gather and venture forth, but then became shorthand for gathering and getting stoned. Then it became the code for weed \u2014 getting some, smoking some, whatever.<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s a good thing I know this already, because the adventure Lagunitas has devised and lured us on, is to follow in the Waldos\u2019 footsteps on a sunny Saturday\u00a0morning<\/em>\u00a0(I note with concern as a bottle of far too delicious bourbon is passed my way, before we\u2019ve left the San Rafael High parking lot). This idea is based mostly on theory, for there are no Waldos here. They\u2019re all still\u00a0around<\/em>, just good old dudes in their 60s now, mostly in and around Marin, but they\u2019re not on this bus. They also aren\u2019t at the bars and restaurants we spend the next few hours visiting, in between beers and dabs and pulls of CO2 cartridges infused with hops on the bus, a cross-promotion between Lagunitas and a local cannabis brand,\u00a0AbsoluteXtracts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Right. The beers. At least some of them\u00a0are Waldos\u2019 Special Ale, a limited-release \u201cone-hitter\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(the company\u2019s description, not mine) that is as close to officially sanctioned Waldos merchandise as this universe will get. It is also an 11.3 percent ABV monster of an Imperial IPA that renders observation-making and note-taking all the more challenging. What I can assure you is that it is strong and it is good.<\/p>\n

In addition, the arrangement between Lagunitas and the Waldos for the use of their name sounds like vintage Marin. Lagunitas asked one Waldo if the company could use the name. \u201cSure, sounds good to me, but I better ask the others,\u201d went the reply. A few phone calls, and unanimous assent \u2014 with the only compensation a promise to drop off a few cases, according to Ron Lindenbusch, Lagunitas\u2019s chief marketing officer. He is the company\u2019s third employee, and has been aboard since 1995.<\/p>\n

There is nothing but beer in it for the Waldos, a pretty good payoff for silly teenage hijinks 46 years in the rearview. And for Lagunitas? \u201cWe don\u2019t make any money off of this,\u201d insists Lindenbusch, making the argument that the effort and costs required for a limited-run craft brew named far outweighs sales. He says this before (or after, I really can\u2019t recall) noting that Lagunitas is seeking to do for April 20 what Guinness did for St. Patrick\u2019s Day, wrapping its branding and its messaging as closely around cannabis as an alcohol brand will go.<\/p>\n

There will be Lagunitas-themed parties in European cities on 420 this year. There will be marijuana-themed swag like the roach-clip-bottle-opener keychain and the Lagunitas-branded rolling papers someone sticks into my hands somewhere between the Old Western Saloon (one of Lagunitas\u2019s very first accounts, itself a carefully preserved time capsule that manages to feel like the Gold Rush and the counterculture revolution all at once) in Point Reyes and the Paper Mill Creek Saloon in Forest Knolls (a tiny village located along the Lagunitas Creek, the brewery\u2019s original water source before it moved to Petaluma).<\/p>\n

The rolling papers, I want to note for posterity, have a prohibition printed on them \u2014 \u201cNot for tobacco use\u201d \u2014 but don\u2019t seem to complain when I beg one of Lindenbusch\u2019s co-workers for the tip of an American Spirit to roll into the afternoon\u2019s final joint (a desperate and unhealthy grasp at reclaiming some of my faculties).<\/p>\n

Some of the party peels away at the Paper Mill Creek and escapes back to San Francisco. I do not. I am pulled onto the bus, and the bus pulls away from the past, towards Petaluma and Lagunitas\u2019s present. I make only the briefest of cameos here before mumbling my thanks and goodbyes.<\/p>\n

Yes, Okay: The Waldos beer is the commodification of hippie culture. But can it really be called \u201ccommercialization\u201d when the organization is so\u2026 well, non-commercial? Lindenbusch, is from Marin, not Madison Avenue.<\/p>\n

I am reminded that it was Lindenbusch \u2014 whose entire countenance emits \u201cgood times,\u201d with a shrug and a wink and not a shout \u2014 who helped marry Lagunitas with marijuana forever in 2005, after his setup and arrest by agents from California state Alcoholic Beverage Control. This story is also too good not to relate in part: after hearing reports of marijuana smoking at the brewery\u2019s patio parties, ABV officials had been staking out the brewery for weeks, sending underage kids towards brewery employees trying to buy weed, before finally arresting Lindenbusch and shutting down the entire operation for a period of time.<\/p>\n

The company learned from the incident, by brewing and marketing \u201cUnderground Shutdown Ale,\u201d and upping the ante with antics like what I described above. It\u2019s not really shameless so much as guileless, as there is no cynical ploy or Wall Street-level appropriation. It\u2019s a wink, a shrug, and a straightforward embrace. Someone was going to do something like this, eventually. Why not these somebodies, from here, with this and these values?<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0have you tried the Waldos beer?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The post The Waldos, 420 & A Commemorative Beer<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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If you squint hard enough, at the right places, Marin County, California in 2018\u00a0can resemble the Marin County, California, of the early 1970s. If Hunter S. Thompson was right, and the ethos of \u201cSan Francisco in the middle sixties\u201d was a great wave of different, resistant energy that would break,Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[480,148,50,99,1277,3508,126],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25553"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25554,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25553\/revisions\/25554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}