An editor at Esquire recently requested an interview about the origins of 420. Since I claim to have "discovered" 420 nearly two decades ago, I agreed to the interview. The resulting story, filed in the mag's "Answer Fella" section, is less than flattering.

Here's how it appears in the Jan. '10 issue:

Everybody knows that 4:20 is the time to smoke pot. And everybody knows that 4/20 is the international pot-smoking day. But nobody I've talked to, not even the oldest and most ardent pot smokers, knows why or how 420 became linked to pot smoking.

Huh? 420? Like, did it ever cross your mind that maybe those old ardent potheads forgot? And "ardent" - where'd you come up with that one? "ardent" - you know, if you keep repeating it, it sounds funny as hell. Ardent. Our dent. Hardbent. Same with "nondominant arm": Say that five times and you won't even remember what you were talking about.

You know who knows? Larry "Ratso" Sloman, author of Reefer Madness: A History of Marijuana. But it's a really long story, man. It's sooooooo long. It starts with some high school kids in San Rafael, California, back in 1971. Seriously, man. Ask Sloman - he says it started as 420 Louis, meaning "at 4:20 [they'd] meet by the Louis Pasteur statue outside the high school" and get high.

From there, this group of kids - "they called themselves 'Waldos,' " Sloman says - started getting high with the Grateful Dead at their rehearsal studio in San Rafael. Around 1990, High Times magazine senior editor Steve Bloom saw a flyer at a Dead concert that "told the story of 420, and that was news to me."

That was Steve Bloom saying that last thing, man. But the story on the flyer - about how "420" was California police code for smoking pot - was horseshit, man. Bloom says "after about five years," the Waldos story emerged.

"A few of these Waldos" - um, this is Sloman talking again now - "surfaced and contacted High Times to set the record straight in 1997." Which is "about five years" if you're baked. So it checks out. Thanks for asking, man. About the pit-bull attack, too. Such a gritty question, man. Nondominantarm nondominantarm nondominantarm nondominantarm nondominantarm.

I quickly wrote back to the magazine:

I knew I shouldn't have bothered to do the interview with Esquire regarding the origins of 420 ("Answer Fella," Jan. '10). I don't speak in "like, man" language as you attempted to make me sound. You think you're funny, but you're not. You're just promulgating the dopey stoner stereotype. Go right ahead, if that makes you feel smarter and cooler than me and millions of stoners who embrace the true meaning of 420, which you didn't get. And by the way, I no longer work for High Times. I'm the publisher of CelebStoner.com and co-author of Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language & Life. I clearly told your interviewer, but she apparently forgot to get that right.

The next day I received the following email from Tim Heffernan:

I'm sorry the Answer Fella piece has upset you, but as its editor, I'll defend the piece as it appeared in the magazine.

Regarding the issue of your employment at High Times, the interviewer did indeed note in her transcript that you were a former editor. And by my reading and that of our fact-checking department, the construction "Around 1990, High Times senior editor" is both factually correct (around 1990, you were a senior editor) and efficiently makes the necessary point that the story of the Waldos initially appeared in High Times. To have ID'd you as "Steve Bloom, publisher of celebstoner.com and co-author of Pot Culture, received the story around 1990, when he was a senior editor at High Times" would have been cumbersome, especially in a column of extremely limited length. In any case, this was neither a malicious nor an ignorant decision on our part.

As for the issue of stoner stereotyping, by any fair reading Answer Fella is playing the part of the stereotype himself, and using you and Mr. Sloman as the straight men. This straight man-funnyman construction is virtually always how we generate the column's humor. In this specific case it's a twist designed to highlight the cartoonishness of the stereotype itself, not to shoehorn you or Sloman into it. As you correctly note, nothing you said in any way fits the stereotype in the first place. And I trust our readers to understand that what's funny is the absurdity of the stoner image and the irrational fear many in this society harbor for marijuana. These things are a joke, as I'm sure you agree.

Like, man, whatever. What do you think? Leave a comment

Also see:
The Real Story of 420
More Blogs by Steve Bloom
More CelebStoner Blogs
CelebStoner News