DENVER — SO you want to get high in a high-end way in the Mile High City.
You could call Dale Dyke and his wife, Chastity Osborn, a massage therapist, who run Get High Getaways. They gutted their brick house in Bel Mar and let it go to pot, refashioning it as a clothing optional, or as Dale calls it, “textile optional” bed-and-breakfast.
They’re still waiting for their first big booking, but Chastity says they’re busily adding amenities to create a “resort environment,” like a stone labyrinth with a tether ball, a camera in the living room to Skype your friends stoned, an outdoor swing “where you can have a good time and catch a buzz,” and “maybe a nerf horseshoe court.”
They charge $199 per person per night — you have to be over 21 — and offer two rooms, 24/7 car service and a hot tub. They can give, rather than sell, their homegrown pot to guests.
Chastity will even serve her marijuana-infused “yummies” textile-free, if you like. (The couple are proud members of the American Association for Nude Recreation.)
“We want the higher-end clientele,” the 38-year-old Chastity says. “Comedians. Adult film entertainers. Musicians.”
Dale chimes in: “We’re trying to keep stoned tourists from getting lost in Denver and causing mayhem. Our motto is ‘Don’t come on vacation and leave on probation.’ ”
The blooming pot industry here is still more seedy than glossy. Yet the budding bud growers are eager to help Denver elude the stigma of Rocky Mountain Low, a shadowy place overrun by “The Dude Abides” hippies and Jeff Spicoli stoners.
“People are learning not to be ashamed,” the 45-year-old Dyke said. “No more talking in whispers. We’re moving away from the image of dumb stoner teenagers to older successful businesspeople who can admit they’re stoners.”
They want it to be a better Amsterdam. “That whole city,” Dyke said, “smells like pot.”
Some relatives are still leery. “My mom won’t befriend me on Facebook,” Chastity says.
But they are thrilled to be part of the huge social experiment transforming Colorado as jittery politicians press on the gas and brake at the same time, state government builds a regulatory system from scratch, entrepreneurs deal in “Breaking Bad” cash, and towns decide if they will allow retail pot stores (Aspen) or not (Vail).
“We want to be the Napa Valley and the Silicon Valley of weed,” says Matt Brown, who co-founded My 420 Tours, which will shepherd guests to marijuana-friendly hotels and host special events like Stoner Bowl and a Valentine’s Weekend Tour that includes a “Threesome With Mary Jane” party and a trip to glass blowers, where couples can design their own bongs.
Could there be a Facebook effect, where young people lose interest as older people rush in?
“There is something not cool about a 22-year-old,” the 31-year-old Brown admits, “who has to wait in line for an hour with people his parents’ age.” Much less his grandparents’ age.
Now that Coloradans can buy recreational pot, the mood has shifted from self-consciously therapeutic, medicating “patients,” to self-consciously scientific and capitalistic, serving consumers. “Education managers” in white lab coats and marketing executives in suits are swarming in. Many use the more formal term cannabis and refer to themselves loftily as “the 420 community,” so intent on setting a good example they could be Shakers.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘pot’ or ‘weed’ or ‘smoke’ or ‘joint,”’ says a pretty 37-year-old event planner who uses the nom de pot Jane West (Mary Jane in the West) and owns a company called Edible Events. “If we redefine it as consuming cannabis, then maybe people will be more open to that. There are only so many hoodie-wearing stoners in town. This needs to be opened up to other demographics.” West is especially interested in wooing women, getting them to equate cannabis with a glass of wine.
“Many women think it’s something that makes you dumb,” she says, arguing that women should leave the Valley of the Dolls — anti-anxiety pills and Ambien — and switch to “the Napa Valley of cannabis.”
She wants to arrange corporate events, but concedes she may only attract cannabis corporations for a while. Her first big party, aptly held at the (nonsmoking) Space Gallery, was Friday night. Guests could “blaze,” as West put it, in a bus parked outside, which she had decorated with peacock feathers so it would look less “cheesy.” They could smoke, vape and nosh on savories soaked in sauce and cream to alleviate dry mouth. “Munchies for foodies,” she calls it.
At a warehouse under construction in a spot that used to be a bakery, Dixie Elixers is cooking up edible, drinkable and topical pot treats, trying to become the Coke of toking. With a big foil-covered Willy Wonka machine, they extract the THC from the plant and whip up products from chocolate truffles to bath soaks to massage oil, all in modern silvery packaging meant to scream “safe.”
Nonetheless, Denver is the Wild West of weed. And things will be confusing, evolving and dicey for some time. As Dixie Elixirs Chief Operating Officer Chuck Smith tells his team, “We’re building the airplane while we’re flying it.”
댓글 안에 당신의 성숙함도 담아 주세요.
'오늘의 한마디'는 기사에 대하여 자신의 생각을 말하고 남의 생각을 들으며 서로 다양한 의견을 나누는 공간입니다. 그러나 간혹 불건전한 내용을 올리시는 분들이 계셔서 건전한 인터넷문화 정착을 위해 아래와 같은 운영원칙을 적용합니다.
자체 모니터링을 통해 아래에 해당하는 내용이 포함된 댓글이 발견되면 예고없이 삭제 조치를 하겠습니다.
불건전한 댓글을 올리거나, 이름에 비속어 및 상대방의 불쾌감을 주는 단어를 사용, 유명인 또는 특정 일반인을 사칭하는 경우 이용에 대한 차단 제재를 받을 수 있습니다. 차단될 경우, 일주일간 댓글을 달수 없게 됩니다.
명예훼손, 개인정보 유출, 욕설 등 법률에 위반되는 댓글은 관계 법령에 의거 민형사상 처벌을 받을 수 있으니 이용에 주의를 부탁드립니다.
Close
x