The Last Big Smoke
Friday 27th June 2008
I was all ready to go and just finishing a nice joint as the taxi arrived. For a change I had a decent driver who could hold a good conversation. We got so carried away chatting I nearly forgot to pay him as I went to check in. Inside building work of mass proportion seemed to be in progress. I found check in and checked in. Now where did I go ? I asked a lad in airport security uniform. Helpfully, he instructed me how to get around the building works to passport control. I took a look through and decided I had enough time for a cigar outside before dealing with it first. Outside airplane staff and members of the public freely mixed in the shared common bond of smoking. Would it be like this in Amsterdam next week ? I finished and mentally prepared to deal with officious over zealous security at passport control. As I reached the security screening I put everything metal into my leather, took off my trouser belt and my boots and held my breath as I walked through. No bleeps this time. I got re-dressed and ambled about to find the gate screens and the bar. Predictably enough the bar was full. I found somewhere to sit and took alternating sips of black coffee and Jameson. I had a second round wondering what lay ahead of me. I was to meet two members of Virtual Dam forums at 3:300pm Dutch Time in former Pink Floyd. Floyd had been undergoing some major refurbishment as I’d left in November. Word across the wires had it a second refurbishment had just been completed. I was curious about how much Floyd had been altered. Would Dampkring have enough respect for the old building and its art works to have left something of the old place intact or would they have given it the Dampkring designer look ? It wouldn’t be the same, that much I was sure of, but maybe the vibe Floyd had would remain intact. I was expecting some other changes too. One of the Landlords of the Red Light District had been bought out by the city council and they had closed all the ‘windows’ he owned in favour of other businesses. Not to mention the reason I was going, the dreaded smoking laws. Nobody seemed to know just what the situation on the ground concerning coffee shops was. Instead of introducing an Anti-Smoking law the Dutch decided they would introduce a Anti-Tobacco law, meaning that the Coffee Shops would be able to continue to allow their customers to smoke pure marijuana joints or hash pipes, but no tobacco hash/marijuana joints. The idea seemed to be to that coffee shops would be required to provide a smoking room separate from the staff to protect their health. This however would be impractical for a number of the smaller shops such as Grey Area whose entire shop floor is no bigger than my living room. Would these shops be forced to go no smoking ?
On the internet there was stark disbelief that the smoking ban would effect the coffee shops at all. People just didn’t seem to realize what a tobacco ban actually meant. I had other concerns too. Back in March I was contacted by an Ed Connel via Lee Harris. Ed was the editor of a new marijuana magazine based in Scotland called ‘Stoner’. He was doing a piece on Lee and wanted to ask my O.K. to publish some quotes of mine from a review I’d written of Lee’s Party last September. Going with the philosophy that any publicity is good publicity I said yes. A little later I spoke to Ed via a series of e-mails and one very long phone call that lasted around three and a half hours. Ed said he’d been reading my articles here at The Lair and said he’d been very impressed. In fact, he wanted me to do some writing for him. Better still, he said he wanted to pay me for my work and send me to trade fairs on expenses. I said I wanted to let him. A short time later we were talking about me doing three articles per issue, one of which would be a serial fantasy style story. I was looking forwards to that one. Skanks had slept far too long. So, with things looking promising for the first time I started writing a brand new Skankster story. As a first and introductory episode it wasn’t bad, and the full tale could end up novel length. Then the Ice Wars thing kicked off again. In February a notice went up on The Pollinator Co.s web site stating they no longer supported the use of Ice-o-laters or Bubblators. Sniffing a story I contacted Joe Pietri, who gave me permission to publish his Ice Wars chapter. I got back to Ed, and started writing up the feature. The ‘Ice Cold’ article was to run along with my ‘420 Revealed’ article, a six page feature on Lee Harris, and the new Skankster story in Issue 3 expected out in May. Contact with Ed began to get less frequent and I began to feel uneasy. Something was off. After a series of mails and a couple of calls to an answer machine I finally made contact again. Out came the long story I was expecting, the apologies, the ranting, the excuses. I should have seen it coming. Anything to good to be true, usually is. Here had come another wild eyed idealist who’d eaten a large slice of believe me if you like stoners unity cake. Cannabusiness had eaten him alive before he could even scream. He’d found out the hard way you can’t do any hand shake deals in this trade. That there is no ‘stoner unity’. That the folks running the Cannabusinesses are head hunting cannibalistic sharks. I wasn’t going to get my expenses for The Last Big Smoke, a feature due for Issue 4. In fact I wasn’t going to get paid at all. Well that was just fucking great wasn’t it ?
I was fucked again. Worse still I’d gone around promoting ‘Stoner’ and particularly Issue 3. With seemingly no forthcoming issue about to make it to the shelves I was left looking like a complete fucking arsehole. I even began to start feeling some sympathy for Gypsy Nirvana and the whole ICMag shambles.
Right now that left me between a rock and a hard place. I was going out there as a free lance journalist working for ‘Stoner’ magazine. That’s who people were expecting to meet this time. Especially folk over at DNA Genetics with whom I’d been helping get their new forums started. Actually I’d received a text off Mark, EDIT’s former owner, asking me to come help get things going over there. Mark and the former EDIT back room boys it seemed had moved on to fresh pastures, taking on the challenge of building a new forum and building up that forum in the same way they built up EDIT. It’s nice to be asked to be involved in something new, especially from the start. Things were going very well to. Thing was though, they were expecting a nice mention in a magazine. Not my usual Viperslair.co.uk presentation with its cult following. If I told them all before I went, I’d look a cunt. If I told them after I got back, I’d look a cunt. It was a no win situation. All I could hope for was that by staying quiet while I was away I might come back to the good news that Ed got his shit sorted and the mag would be on the shelves. Some hope.
I finished my drinks and ambled over to the gate. I got comfortable on the plane and after an unexplained half hour delay we took off. Viper 11/7/2008 The rest of this article can be read in the Members Library _________________________________________________________________________________________ Ital Bar Library Membership
__________________________________________________________________ First Published 12/7/2008 by Viperslair.co.uk All images & text, except where stated, ©Viperslair.co.uk 2008 All rights reserved. Any un-authorized publication of texts, parts of texts, or images, will result in legal action. Publishing permission in writing, on paper, can be obtained from the Viperslair.co.uk Editor. _________________________________________________________________________________________ Home / Links / The Ital Bar / Editor |
