giving directions to their three employees and
calmly navigating the festivities — there were
a dozen or so people in line, more than one of
them dancing to the music from outside.
S., wearing a cardigan draped over a T-shirt
that clearly stated in Spanish her progressive
feelings about immigration, showed off the
store to me. It resembledIn the last year, S. and C. have become fi rmly
entrenched in New York’s underground canna-
bis culture. A few months after the opening of
their store, they hosted a local fashion design-
er’s pop-up show there. This January, they held
a grow clinic over Zoom that 35 people attended.
Some of C.’s favorite events are what he calls
stash-n-dash competitions, or scavenger hunts,
for which he emails clues to club members,
who, on a specifi ed night, ‘‘dash’’ through the
city searching for free, hidden cannabis. These
are not the only handouts. Sometimes they put
out word that a free ounce is available outside
the store; the fi rst person to show up gets to keep
it. ‘‘It’s kind of cool to see somebody get blessed
with some deliciousness,’’ C. says.
When I stopped by their store earlier this
year, C. was holding a joint. He apologized for
the smoke, fanning it away, but this was their
4/20 celebration, and he had a store to run, a
party with a D.J. out front, a block in Brooklyn to
get high. ‘‘Today’s mad crazy,’’ he said. A Coach
baseball cap worn backward kept his shoul-
der-length hair out of his face, and a neck tattoo
peeked above the collar of his sweatshirt. He and
S. were passing out free pre-rolls, or already-
made joints, and half-hugging neighbors and
strangers alike. Pickup orders that were called
in earlier were being handed out to customers
over the counter in brown paper bags. S. wasTampa, where they had friends making deliv-
eries to their remaining customers, to rent an
apartment in a largely Ecuadorean neighbor-
hood in Brooklyn. ‘‘My dad’s Ecuadorean,’’ C.
says. ‘‘My family’s Ecuadorean. In Miami, there’s
not that many Ecuadoreans, so it was nice to be
in a neighborhood where things that people talk
about or say or the news that might be going
on, I can kind of relate to.’’
Once settled, they spent their life savings —
thousands of dollars — to buy a package of can-
nabis from Colorado, hoping that would enable
them to establish their New York business. It
didn’t. ‘‘I’ve been selling marijuana since I was
like a teenager in Miami,’’ C. says. ‘‘Every now
and then I would do a rookie mistake.’’ This deal
was one of them. They had planned to both sell
the cannabis and use some of it for giveaways
— which they thought would help them gain a
following in Brooklyn — but it was lost in trans-
port. They had to get cannabis on credit in order
to have something to sell.
During their fi rst winter, C. sold cannabis for
a friend and then used his cut of the profi ts to
buy more to sell on his own. ‘‘I’d meet people
up in the park,’’ he says. ‘‘I would serve up the
taco workers.’’ The couple were getting used
to the new city, walking their dogs, eating at
the same taco shop every day, letting the bor-
ough’s rhythms dictate theirs. One of C.’s favor-
ite aspects of city life was sharing tacos and a
smoke with neighbors at the end of a day.
When legalization became offi cial last year,
they felt that their gamble had paid off. Less
than a month later, they were ready to plan a
4/20 celebration, an event like the ones they
used to put on in Tampa. They had become close
with the owner of a taco truck, and together
they organized something like a block-party
happy hour. Because that 4/20 — observed as a
cannabis ‘‘holiday’’ — fell on a Tuesday, they hit
upon a Taco Tuesday twist: free infusions as taco
toppings. It was their Brooklyn debut.
The success of the event, and their grow-
ing love of Brooklyn, increased their desire
to give up selling at festivals and on corners.
They wanted the heart of their business to be
a brick-and-mortar store. After they found a
small place, C. explained to the landlord during
negotiations that their company was a holistic
lifestyle brand. The landlord seemed to like
what he heard about the couple’s desire to use
cannabis to help people and be a part of the
community. S. was nervous about the fi nancial
commitment to the space, but they signed a six-
month lease anyway. Even if it stayed open for
only a month, C. says, they thought that would
be worth it. They could get their name out there,
get involved with their block, ‘‘build community
with a few people in the neighborhood.’’Cannabis
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