Nimbin: Australia’s Answer to Woodstock

by Mike Barish on

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Sydney, Australia visiting my good friend Sarah. Rather than hang around in Sydney, we elected to road trip up to Byron Bay. Byron is a great little beach town in the northern portion of New South Wales and we had a great trip. But that’s a post for another day. Because, while we were in Byron Bay, we took a side trip to Nimbin. Everyone in Sydney had told us that if we were heading up to Byron Bay, that we had to go to Nimbin. It’s a “must see,” they told us. And it has that reputation for one reason and one reason only. Marijuana.

It’s about an hour drive to Nimbin from Byron Bay. As you leave the coast, you enter a landscape made up of farms, meadows and rolling hills. It’s breathtaking. The trip is along winding country roads and you wonder if you’ll ever encounter a town as things become more and more rural. Eventually, though, seemingly out of nowhere, the village of Nimbin appears.

We pulled right into the village and parked on the main street. The street was lined with shops specializing in hemp products, organic foods, information on medical marijuana and tourists. By no means were the sidewalks packed, but we certainly were not the only out-of-towners popping into Nimbin to see the hippies, snap some photos and check out the cannabis-crazed town.

It’s worth noting at this point that marijuana is illegal in Australia. Penalties and policies vary by state, but typically possession of small amounts can result in nothing more than a warning. For years, police looked the other way in Nimbin as marijuana sales grew more and more common. The annual Mardigrass festival brought tourists (and money) into Nimbin as people gathered to promote the repeal of cannabis prohibition. But as the drug trade grew and gangs took over the trafficking, police began to crack down and close establishments that allowed the sale or use of cannabis.

Still, everyone I spoke to said that you could buy marijuana with great ease in Nimbin. One person even told me that he was accosted by a girl with a suitcase full of cannabis looking to make a sale. Of course, neither Gadling nor I promote or encourage drug use or the violation of the laws of your country or a country in which you are traveling. I’m telling you this story purely for entertainment and educational purposes.

We strolled the main street for a bit, poked our heads into shops selling hemp clothing and pot leaf necklaces and mostly laughed at how Nimbin looks like the set of a bad movie about a hippie town. But Nimbin is very real and people take their cannabis products and promotion seriously. No one offered us drugs while on the main street, though. In fact, a police car was parked right in the middle of town and officers were walking amongst the tourists. And shopkeepers will thank you not to ask them about where you can purchase narcotics.

We were about to head back to Byron Bay, feeling a tad like failures for not having had the “true” Nimbin experience of having been offered marijuana, when I noticed a sign next to a cafe. It pointed towards “Mingle Park.” On a whim, I decided to walk into this back alley behind the cafe. American hip hop music was blasting from the speakers inside. Immediately upon reaching the “park” (it was more of a vacant lot), two young men asked us if we were looking to buy.

Discretion being the better part of valor, I played dumb. “What are looking for?,” one of them asked us. “What do you have?,” I replied.” In response, he unfurled a large plastic bag filled with marijuana. Clearly, he was comfortable with public transactions. I inquired some more about prices, quality and the like. We did this all under the clear blue Australian sky in an open space loosely occupied by about ten people leisurely milling about. I felt exposed. But I also felt like my trip to Nimbin was complete.

What happened next? Did I leave Nimbin with a special souvenir? Whoa, are you a NARC?

I guess some stories are best left unfinished. And I think this is one of them.

Check out some of my photos from Nimbin in the gallery below.
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You, Rolf Potts, are a Contemptible Jackass, Part I: Stoner movie redemption

by Rolf Potts on

Around the time Marco Polo Didn’t Go There was set to debut in bookstores, I began to wonder what kind of negative comments it might attract. I wondered this not because Marco Polo is a bad book (to the contrary, I’m as proud of it as anything I’ve written), but because some degree of knee-jerk negativity is inevitable in the instant-reaction atmosphere of the Internet Age.

I learned this when I debuted Vagabonding five years ago. For the most part, of course, reader reaction to my first book has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. But every once in a while I’ll get an email or a blog comment that basically claims I’m a contemptible jackass because of some theme or observation in the book. One rather perplexing criticism that recurs from time to time is that Vagabonding is “preachy.”

At first this observation baffled me, since I urge flexible open-mindedness from the opening Preface chapter (“Add what is specifically your own…The creating individual is more than any style or system”), and the only things I preach against are postponing your travels, micromanaging your itinerary, or traveling too fast to truly experience your cultural surroundings.

After a bit of follow-up, I’ve discovered that most of these critics were upset by my “anti-marijuana” stance. The thing is, I never come out and tell people to not smoke it on the road; all I say is to (a) not get caught traveling with it in places where it could land you in jail, and (b) don’t get into the habit of using it all the time, because it will separate you from the more mind-blowing experience of unfiltered reality. That’s as anti-drug as I get in Vagabonding — and in fact (while I’ve never much been into smoking it myself) I’m all for marijuana legalization in the United States.
Moreover, I’m of the belief that stoner movies are one of America’s greatest contributions to world culture. In fact, from my personal DVD collection, here are four stoner movies that I make an effort to watch at least once a year:

4. Dude, Where’s My Car? Admittedly, one reason I love this movie so much is that I first saw it on the big screen in Bombay’s Colaba neighborhood, and it proved to be the pop-cultural equivalent of time-travel amid a very intense sojourn in India. But even better, this is a stoner movie that (unlike, say, Smiley Face) doesn’t try too hard to be a stoner movie: It’s just a delightfully pointless and juvenile comedy that features occasional marijuana use, an idiotic sci-fi sub-plot, and a million quotable lines. And then? No more and then!

3. Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle This movie has already been praised for its effectiveness in capturing an ebullient, almost patriotic vision of the American Dream without having any white guys in starring roles (unless you count the genius cameo by Neil Patrick Harris). This munchie-driven comedy might even qualify as an iconic American road movie, since Harold and Kumar’s epic burger quest shows how any destination is made that much sweeter by the challenges of the journey itself. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!

2. Dazed and Confused Richard Linklater’s pot-laced tribute to 1976 might be hilarious and quotable, but it’s also startlingly well observed. Indeed, this is no madcap stoner fantasy — it is (to me, at least) a wonderfully evocative look at mid-American teenage life in the pre-cell-phone age. A nice reminder that, at the end of the day, you just gotta keep livin’ man — L-I-V-I-N.

1. The Big Lebowski The first time I watched this movie I laughed myself silly — and nearly 20 viewings later it keeps getting funnier. To try and explain why I love this movie so much is beside the point: Either you know what I mean because you love it too, or you’re one of those people who just couldn’t embrace its stoner-Zen absurdity (and if so, then, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.). The Dude abides! Fire up the Ford Torino and take me to LebowskiFest.

So there you have it: My admonitions in Vagabonding don’t mean I’m against marijuana; I’m just saying you should save plenty of psychic space for unmediated reality as you travel. As for Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, it remains to be seen which aspect of the book attracts the most grumpy emails. I’m guessing it’ll either be the “Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age” blurb on the cover (which might attract the ire of Beat movement fundamentalists), or use of the word “postmodern” in the subtitle (which could attract the fundamentalist ire of pasty academic guys in black turtlenecks). We’ll see!

Big in Japan: Home to the best homegrown

by Matthew Firestone on

Let’s be ‘blunt’ for a moment…

While Gadling does not in any capacity promote the smoking of copious amounts of ganja, a good number of us know that sometimes you need a little toke of Mother Nature’s sweet, sweet herb to get you through day.

Of course, wrapping your salivating lips around a hand-blown glass water pipe packed to the brim with Pineapple Express is something of a difficult proposition in Japan, especially since there are some incredibly Draconian drug laws on the books here.

While a good number of people in North America and Europe tend to have a relaxed attitude towards smoking a bit of reefer from time to time, the Japanese are extremely averse to drugs of any kind.

Indeed, all of us resident foreigners here in Japan are used to hearing that drug use is something of ‘Western problem.’

Or so we were led to believe (^_^)

According to a recent report by the Associated Press (AP), it seems that a good number of Japanese have been tuning in and dropping out, thanks to the easy availability of marijuana seeds on the Internet for home cultivation.

Ah so! The plot begins to thicken…

According to a public report that was recently released by the Japanese National Police Agency, the number of marijuana cases in the first half of the year rose 12 percent from the same period last year to 1,202. If this rate of increase continues, the number of cases will reach an all-time high this year, passing the 2,288 recorded in 2006.

Compared to amphetamines and other synthetic stimulants such as ecstasy, marijuana police cases are still very, very low, especially in comparison to other countries. However, police are attributing the rise in marijuana toking to the increasing prevalence of Japanese homegrown.

In the immortal words of the rapper Styles P: ‘I don’t smoke the weed if it ain’t purple or blue.’

So what’s the loophole? Good question.

While Japanese law doesn’t exactly make for light reading, the gist is that people are prohibited from growing or possessing marijuana for recreational drug use, though seeds are excluded from the law. Capitalizing on this ambiguity, Japanese web sites are quick to state that they are selling marijuana seeds ‘only for research, food or collecting.’

Yummy. I loves me some pot seed brownies…

In a country consumed by fickle trends and fads, it seems that Japan as of recent may be suffering from a bit of reefer madness.

Last month, a government worker was arrested after police raided his personal marijuana greenhouse in western Japan. In May, customs officers at Tokyo Narita International Airport misplaced US$10,000 worth of hash after it had been slipped illegally into a random traveler’s luggage in a failed attempt to test the noses of the canine sniffers.

And…let’s not forget about all those Harajuku girls decked out from head to toe in hemp-based fabrics, which have a long history in Japan as traditional clothing.

In the immortal words of Jon Stewart, the enhancement smoker from the movie Half Baked: ‘Have you ever seen (Japan)….on weed?! That’s the way to see it. It’s just wacked.’

** All images courtesy of the WikiCommons Media Project, and NOT from my non-existent personal collection of homegrown herb and associated paraphernalia **

Denver group trying to allow pot smoking in airport lounges

by Grant Martin on

Denver recently approved a measure making possession of a small amount of marijuana legal, so the next logical step in opening places in which to smoke the reefer was obviously Denver International Airport. That’s what a group of activists called Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER) are trying to do.

Their argument is that it’s a great alternative to drinking at the airport, which often leads to stress, passengers flipping out and causing a ruckus aboard aircraft — things that we seem to report on weekly here at Gadling.

To that end I suppose they have a point, but for the fact that pot is still illegal on the state and federal levels, under which persons possessing can still be prosecuted.

However, in the farcical world where all good intentions lead to results, I can see a brave new world where passengers happily pile into a plane with zero legroom, no overhead space and 12$ soft drinks, happy as cows grazing in a pasture where children don’t cry and nobody cares if they can’t open their laptop on postage-stamp sized tray tables. Food sales onboard would skyrocket, complaints would plummet and the flight attendants would hug you instead of asking you to return your seat back to its upright and locked position.

The airlines should get behind this legislation immediately.

From the New Europe: Three hemp plants? No problem in the Czech Republic

by Iva Skoch on

On Friday after a hearty Czech meal, my Mom popped the question. She asked me if I could somehow manage to get her a hemp plant or two. At first, I thought it was a trick question. What do you answer? So I said what any good Czech daughter would say. “Sure Mom. I think I can manage that.”

I know she has no intentions of actually using it for “marijuana-smoking purposes,” but her request still surprised me. She explained she wanted to use hemp for medical purposes, because she believes hemp products have magic powers. I don’t know about magic powers, but I do think it is kind of cool to be the daughter of a Czech hemp grower.

Drug possession has been top of mind in the Czech Republic in the last couple of weeks. Historically, the laws here have been very vague. Until now, it was illegal to carry “more than a small amount of drugs.” Yes, you get the point. The definition of a “small amount” varies greatly and opens doors for all kinds of bribery.

Finally, it looks like the Czech Republic will settle on limiting punishment to a fine for growing up to three hemp plants or carrying up to 20 joints, a gram of hashish or 0.5 grams of methamphetamine (pervitin). Any caught exceeding those limits would face criminal prosecution and a possible prison term, the Prague Daily Monitor reports. Soon, I might be the daughter of a woman who had to pay a fine for drug possession.