Some 7 or so years ago, on this very day, my son’s Cub Scout Troop had scheduled an outing to tour the USS Pampanito in San Francisco. The USS Pampanito is a historic submarine, moored on the pier at Fishermans Wharf, available for self-guided walk-through tours and even overnight campouts. (The troop had done an overnight once, and while visiting for this day trip, it was clear why they never returned. It was small, dark, dank and reeked of machine oil to the point it felt suffocating.)A small group of us had carpooled up. The tour of the ship itself was over in less than 30min and we ended up wondering what other fun options might exist for our time in the city, given that we were already there. I proposed we grab sandwiches from nearby Boudin bakery and take them to the very-cool kids' playground area in Golden Gate Park. The playground has an awesome setup, with a wide sprawling climbing wall, a massive ‘spider web’ style rope structure, slides, and much, much more. All agreed to the idea, we grabbed our grub, piled into the large SUV driven by one of the dads, and headed to the park.
As we weaved our way into the park and towards the playground, it became evident that we’d not considered the weekend crowd. The density was unlike any I’d experienced before. After about 15-20 minutes of circling throughout the parking areas, slowly, in a caravan of others also looking for spots, the driver suggested just dropping us and he’d continue looking for a spot to open up.
My friend and I, along with about 6-7 cub scouts, all jumped out and weaved our way through the crowds to the playground structure. It became obvious as we got close that there was an event of some kind at the neighboring field and thus, we better understood how the poor timing of our ‘spur of the moment’ idea to go there collided with a throng of others who’d intentionally planned to be there was well. But we made it, the kids started in on their sandwiches, and then… it hit us. My friend and I suddenly recognized a familiar scent in the air.
It’s San Francisco and the playground is directly adjacent to what’s known as “hippie hill’ - a place where ‘stoners’ would congregate, and clearly, we’d found one. Or two. Or several hundred. Because once we caught a whiff and consciously looked about, we began to realize we’d stumbled directly into a massive marijuana event.
I mentioned above that this was on this very day some 7 years ago. April 20. “420”. Yep. We took a small group of cub scouts to one of the largest pot smoke-out events in the nation!
Of course, as any parent and scout leaders would do, he and I quickly accessed the situation and promptly determined who would stay with the kids while the other make a quick run around the event, just to see what it was all about. And it was incredible. There were people selling "baked" goods (pun intended), rolled joints, people were opening sharing hits, talking and laughing, and it was a total thrill to find myself in an area and at an event like that, unintentionally, without a sense of anything more than adventure and excitement at the chance to take in something so unique.
I made my quick run, he made a run-around the event after I returned, during which time the kids finished their lunches, played a bit, and we shepherded them to the waiting SUV to return home by around 3pm. Well ahead of the unified puff scheduled for 4:20pm.
The SUV driver had failed to find a single spot, so he’d just circled around, unaware of the reasons for the crowd until we returned and brought him up to speed. He laughed to realize the irony of the timing as well, and his not being one to imbibe in such undertakings made it easier for my friend and me to divvy up the brownies evenly. ;-)
Today is the 1st time it’s a fully “Legal” event in California. I have my own mixed feelings about the legalization, but I would still find it great fun and fascinating to return with my camera and a sense of adventure and experience it again, but without the kids or time constraints.