Shopping, Smoking & 4/20ing in NYC

By Friday, I meant Monday. 🙃

Monday, April 29, 2024
Time to read: About 8 minutes. Contains 1,871 words.

[Sorry for the funky schedule. I was sick and needed to get caught up—we’re back on track now. Today’s newsletter is long, with lots of pictures. Click “View entire message” to keep reading at the bottom.]

For being one of, if not the most, written-about cities in the country, New York’s cannabis coverage has been pretty narrow. Much of it has been centered on the complications with the rollout of their ambitious social equity efforts and licensing process, plus the intense competition with unlicensed retailers. Those issues are ongoing, but this spring has brought a lot of positive momentum that suggests smoother sailing ahead. At the end of March, the number of approved adult-use licenses rose to 223. The costly per-milligram potency tax has been swapped out for a flat wholesale tax of 9%, taking some pressure off cultivators and some serious dollars off of customers’ carts at checkout. Cannabis consumption lounges come in a variety of forms across the city, and the freedom to legally consume wherever cigarettes are allowed remains a novelty rare anywhere in the world. The smell of which, by the way, is nowhere near as bad as the news stories made it out to be. Or, the allure of smoking in public has faded and it’s just happening less/people are eating edibles—I smelled it three to four times, tops. And I was there during 4/20 weekend.

Today’s dispatch shares my observations venturing into the NYC cannabis scene during the highest holiday, from shopping in town to an experiential 4/20 dinner way up the Hudson River.

A necessary disclaimer: The following are all super subjective opinions of mine based on one short trip to the city. It will take more visits and adventures to assess the scene more definitively—these are merely my immediate takeaways.

A butter bust accompanied by charcoal salt—surprisingly not the most memorable element of Wolfhouse’s 420 dinner.

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About Those Illegal Shops

Re: the 2,000ish illegal shops operating in New York City—yep, they’re as prevalent as you’ve read. So prevalent that most of the friends I visited who work in or around the industry admitted to shopping at unlicensed stores. It’s just so much easier and cost-effective. Even with the membership fees some of the bigger chains require. Although after visiting one myself, I personally would go out of my way to find a more trustworthy legal shop every time. 

I went into one in Bushwick with a friend for a joint before dinner. It looked like the most basic suburban smoke shop in Portland: fluorescent lighting, packed, unorganized shelves, posters of Bob Marley and big-breasted weed girls hung up on the walls. I snapped a couple of quick photos before someone told me not to. While it was undeniably more accessible and cheaper (and nice to be able to just light up in the store), it was overall sketchy as hell. 

My friend was able to haggle down the price for 5 king-size pre-rolls down to something like $40, but when she went to use the ATM, it had a max withdrawal of $20 and a $4 fee for every withdrawal. When she asked for more product or a discount to compensate for the added fees, the budtender said, “no worries, I’ll swipe your card instead.” Great! Until she noticed the total being charged didn’t match what they’d agreed to. She ended up checking her bank account on her phone there at the counter to confirm the right charge before walking away. I never would’ve known to be on the lookout for getting scammed. This wasn’t my friend’s first time at this rodeo, so she was on high alert, and it’s a good thing she was. 

The joint was mid at best—it didn’t taste great and didn’t get me very high. It was pleasant to be able to grab an ashtray and smoke it right there, but it wasn’t an ideal environment to smoke in. I’d ultimately rather stroll outside than sit under fluorescent lights, surrounded by bad art and bad music. 

Of course, I’m not the average cannabis consumer, and many of them don’t care about environment as much as cheaper, faster weed. That’s why these sketchy spots are doing so well that even $20,000 fines aren’t enough of a deterrent. Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced a new game plan to take enforcement up a level. The Office of Cannabis Management and city officials will be given the authority to ‘padlock’ businesses, landlords found turning a blind eye to an illegally-dealing tenant will face a $50,000 fine, and a new statewide task force will be there for support. 

“Just turn off the lights,” suggested Lulu Tsui when I caught up with her at a pre-420 happy hour put on by Bloom vapes. “You could do it through the city, just shut down their electricity. That’s how the cartels do it in Mexico, and it works. You don’t walk into a shop without lights on.”

The Real Deal

When I went to Gotham dispensary, a licensed shop in the Bowery neighborhood of Manhattan, the difference was night and day.