September Smoke Rings & Virgo Season OCD Content Dump: Rituals & Erotic Thrillers So Hot You’ll Quit Your Job
Plus: NY Cannabis takes off with Gov. Hochuljuana, Kacey Musgraves new weed line and album, NYFW and other hateful New Yorkisms
This is The Weed Witch. Feeling stuck somewhere between the real world and the spiritual world? Where truth is stranger than fiction? This is a newsletter dedicated to lifestyles of the credit poor and un-famous. For the healers and dealers, saints and sinners. The friendly guide to cosmic survival in the Age of Psychic Death. Stream-of-consciousness tales, scrappy DIY craft ideas, and divine wisdom from free-thinking societal outliers, a.k.a. the weed witches. An idea sampler platter and content wildcard for your inbox.
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Hello,
First of all, if you just showed up, welcome. Glad to have you. For everyone else, it’s next Tuesday and I said I’d C-U then! And here we are.
The other day, I realized it’s been a year and a half since I started doing this and I’m starting to receive questions, such as: “Where is your media kit?” and “I don’t get it. Can I explain this in a sentence?” and “Psychic Pisces Weed Witch? WTF?!” “Why aren’t you hopping on your weed broomstick?” “That’s nice but what I really want to know is it Hen of the Woods season yet?”
Then, I scrunch my face like Kristen Stewart and mumblecore my way out of having to explain anything because the strategy was not to have one. So, now I have to do that.
Apparently Substack is now the go-to place for notable writers and brands to start carving out their space as a futuristic RSS feed during the apocalypse rather than just bring back RSS feeds. Sharing space does not bother me, it just requires a different touch and I’m working on that… I’ve just been busy gallivanting within the depths of my own psyche and amused by whatever is going on over in the metaverse while trying to suck the last of this season dry. Forgive the delay.
Point being: this little content sampler platter is undergoing some seasonal menu development so you can expect some familiar favorites alongside limited edition offerings. Just like Denny’s!
What’s next for Weed Witching season? I have some podcast experiments with author Alia Volz of the book, Home Baked, and filmmaker Patrick Letterii of The Land of Owls on the way, a dispatch from Door County, Wisconsin, a.k.a. “the Cape Cod of the Midwest” and a whole lot of atoning to do. Also, a shout out to Josef Reyes because I am featured in the second installation of his small batch Day + Night series currently selling at Casa Magazine in New York and MagCulture in London, as well as online.
Also, more Hudson Valley and the Catskills! Permaculture! Travel and adventure? I just downloaded a ghost hunting app approved by 36,000 ghost hunters. An improvement from a year ago when I realized the joys of hibernation and had to actively beat the shit out of myself to try to socialize again.
Honestly, can’t believe I’m alive right now so still coming to terms with that. There’s probably an astrological explanation in Neptune to explain this.
The next time you’re in the East Village, hit up The Butterfly Club for The Weed Witch lighters. The next five paid subscriptions will get custom ones in lieu of New Yorker totes. For O.G. subscribers, hit the heart button, tell me your favorite strain in the comments, and I’ll send one your way!
On a final note, there are so many causes but I love ones that make you look and feel good. I’ve spoken about Gifted by Free From before, but they’re a great way to give to others while supporting new pathways for survivors of gender-based violence. Free From received over 5,000 applications for financial-based assistance, and this is an incredibly awesome way to provide freedom via a transparent and progressive economic model that supports independence and interdependence. ❤️
Yours,
Carly
Legal Weed Update: New York’s First Lady of Hochuljuana Lights A Fire Under Legislators
This was was a big week for legal weed in New York as the Senate voted to confirm two of new governor Kathy Hochul’s picks to oversee legal weed: Brooklyn Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright as chairwoman of the Cannabis Control Board and named Christopher Alexander, a former policy coordinator for the Drug Policy Alliance, as executive director of the Office of Cannabis Management. This is basically your legal weed D.A.R.E. Council for Taxation. Hello!
In some positive news: Possession arrests are down and the New York Post is still using bad puns. And cannatech company TILT Holdings has announced a new partnership with the Shinnecock Indian Nation to establish vertical cannabis operations on their aboriginal tribal territory in Southampton, NY.
Meanwhile, California’s legacy market is looking like a mess. Woof.
Astromotional Update: Sashaying Through Virgo Season and Rosh Hashanah with Wedding Crashers
IT’S VIRGO SEASON. Technically I was supposed to warn you to have your OCD in check by hitting up the Labor Day sale at the Container Store and finding some nice organizational boxes for your displaced emotions and collection of niche rolling papers, which you will undoubtedly categorize by shape and color while putting together a spreadsheet of how each item makes you feel.
Cosmic country chanteuse Kacey Musgraves just dropped a line of weed-friendly swag called Slow Burn, including some rolling papers, grinders, tie-dye kit, tarot, a mood ring, and heart-shaped Magic 8 Ball that looks like a cuter version of an everything-must-go sale at Spencer’s.
Strain suggestion: I just smoked some Wedding Crashers and was disappointed that Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn didn’t show up to crash this party. Instead, it was more like being at a wedding and then crashing.
710 Labs is using pasta for joint filters?! Thank you to Kush Queen CEO Olivia Alexander for introducing me to such brilliance. More on this soon.
Cannabis fintech drama. It is all along the West Coast. Oklahoma, New Jersey, and New York are just boppin along and happy to be here. Just go read anything over at Benzinga or The Dales Report since psychedelics are an ETF now if you want to bro down with how other bros ruin everything. 💅
Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are finally developing personalities now that there are finally some brands to watch. If I missed you, it’s no disrespect! The licensing process has been taking awhile. #Shrug-Emoji.jpg.
This isn’t really a weed newsletter anymore. It’s more of a lifestyle generalist publication. I think everyone just wants to get back to luxuriating in weed baths and not having this damning climate crisis that makes me cry and want to throw up.
My book “Easy Weekend Getaways in the Hudson Valley & Catskills” is being sold at Hudson Books at Newark International Airport, Shakespeare & Co., and so many cool places where books are sold! Send me photos when you spot it!
Dispatch: West Village Weed Witching
Greetings from Washington Commons, a tiny alcove nestled within the exceptionally quaint and très chic Greenwich Village within Manhattan’s West Village neighborhood. This is not a very good smoking spot, for the record, even though I routinely ignore these kinds of social cues. The better location is Washington Square, which is also a place I try not to hang out for very long because I don’t own a skateboard.
The return of NYFW felt…weird. I picked up some TribeTokes Birthday Cake Kush from Come Back Daily in the East Village despite the fact I have not been about that vape life lately, but was curious about New York Delta 8 and our vaporizers. The packaging is pretty cool and kind of reminds me of a JUUL.
(I still prefer Delta 5 and THC).
Coincidentally, Washington Commons is just down the block from The Standard in Chelsea, where their bathtub-themed nightclub, Le Bain, is a filthy little spectacle that sounds utterly boring and looks like a replica of the early Vice parties in Montreal: shallow evenings out while nonchalantly humble-bragging about doing poppers and bad cocaine. Overall it just points to one, undeniable fact: it is still cool to look like a burnout in New York. And that’s…sad.
If you’re in search of tragic poetry and mismanaged expectations, go to the iconic The White Horse Tavern and try this exercise: imagine Dylan Thomas and Jack Kerouac in modern times at the world’s most insufferably basic sports bar trying to formalize a Substack algorithm. Then, envision the takedown pieces.
The good news is nothing was open this time last year so we’re in a much better place. Realistically, there was no need for city guides and I appreciated just kickin’ it along the water and doing things that didn’t require spending gobs of money. You’re more likely to find me writing poetry by the Hudson or going for a long bike ride (thanks to ZIZZO for sending me this folding bike I’ve been scooting around on) and CityBike, which I love. So if you have FOMO, you didn’t miss much and it’s all coming back (hopefully more of the good stuff and less of the bad).
Erotic Thrillers So Hot You’ll Quit Your Job
Speaking of fresh seasonal starts, a Spanish Catholic bishop who supported conversion therapy and performed exorcisms resigned from the church last month—for an erotic fiction writer, BBC News reported. When I think of what a farce the publishing industry is, it’s that Silvia Caballol’s The Hell of Gabriel’s Lust is not instantly a New York Times bestseller as life imitating art—or the other way around. Her writing is allegedly so hot (how hot?!) that he quit his job! Witchin’! Book club?!
In honor of Caballol’s sexy conversion, I present seven Erotic Thrillers So Hot You’ll Quit Your Job
Inventing New Traditions of Rituals of Awe
Yom Kippur is this week, which I appreciate because I’m tired of shoving challah in my face and ten days of awesome matrilineal guilt. Can’t wait to atone fabulously with intermittent fasting. Purim is basically the Halloween of the Jewish calendar—but in spring—and Weed Witching season is next month for Samhain and Halloween, so shout out to God-optional/queer-friendly Lab/Shul for a beautiful newsletter full of moonlight mikvehs (ritual baths) for our Virgo maidens performing tashlikh (letting go) during the month of Tishrei (September-October) for developing the portmanteau of Yom KiPurim that feels like a useful seasonal shift without an excessively .
I kind of love RH because it’s an excuse to reset the clock in the middle of the year with a certain nonchalant flex like the beginning of Soylent Green, “It’s the year 5782 and there’s disease, war, famine, and civil unrest.” Did you know that Soylent Green actually took place in 2022?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. (Please see here for a reminder about how to do primal scream therapy).
One thing I love about multi-divinational practices is there’s no wrong way to find meaning and light intentions to create your own sense of rituals. I believe ritualistic practices all have different origins worth nodding to, thanking, and using shared gifts to pay homage to those who help and heal. Some of that is with plant medicine, drawing a bath, sowing seeds, baking bread, spinning wool for knitters, treating yourself or a friend to nice soaps, incense, or collecting flowers and sticks to bring nature into your home. Whatever brings you comfort and pleasure.
I like to do my rituals while thinking about the fact Gweynth Paltrow does the same ones, and has that vagina handle that was so hot that it exploded wax onto that girl’s face in England. Look it up if you don’t believe me!
Over the past week, I started a little bit of a ritual in the form of making soft boiled eggs as a luxurious topper for a very simple salad: spring greens, red wine vinegar, Spanish olive oil, crumbled garlicky Boursin cheese, a sprinkle of finishing salt and a crack of black pepper. I do this with my instant pot at 4 minutes on high pressure, quick release, run under cold water and peel. That’s it, and it makes me feel like a million bucks. Why? It’s about the ingredients. The simplicity of silky soft boiled eggs with just the slightest gumminess and run of yolk slathered on a bed of crisp greens. Can’t go wrong. Unless you keep Kosher. There was nothing Kosher about mixing my cheese and eggs.
When I first moved into my flat last September, stretching my legs and finding a place to call home amid a pandemic and housing crisis wasn’t easy. The city was a shell of itself in turmoil as many escaped to second homes or making new lives elsewhere. A year later, I am eating a stunning Greek salad drizzled in the West Village with a huge hunk of feta…and it’s still a pandemic. But at least we have salads! That’s why I like soft boiled eggs and lettuce—keep it simple. You can even do this if you’re on a budget.
I want to send a positive note to many of my friends and readers who are struggling right now. Letting go takes practice and time, maintaining a sense of humor and a healthy sense of forgiveness. I’m not great at it because I do love a good cursing and hexing, but working on it.
Can you believe it’s going to be Weed Witching season in a month? Something to look forward to after such a cruel summer. Grab your lighters because gourds will be lit. Who needs to fear feminism when there are so many other scary things happening, right? Oh wait. Thanks, Texas.
In the meantime, COVID is one of those topics you hope would be over by now. But it’s not. I highly recommend working on your immune systems now and rethinking your plans for MTV Real World Party Time Excellent Fest 2021 or whatever keeps attracting gobs of people to test the waters of the Delta Variant. By the way, doesn’t that sound like a cool band name? I’m sure someone grabbed it by now. At least someone exercised some social responsibility when buying thedeltavariant.com.
Navigating school districts and Trapper Keepers already sounds like a nightmare, but now there’s an added layer of COVID. My heart goes out to teachers, students, and strong percentage of parents who are all secretly smoking because they’re so stressed out and somehow less chill disciplinarians. I highly recommend a hyper-focused hybrid strain leaning heavy on indica to keep you grounded, sane and pampered getting back to business while trying to harness every last drop of summer before the decline into autumn.
If you’re having “revenge vacation” or whatever this pandemic nonsense is, I am proud to announce I am doing a very reasonable escape to Door County, Wisconsin, which is beautiful even without weed (but in reality it’s like an AmEx card because you should never leave home without it). More on that later.
FAQ: "How Do I Make Weed More Equitable?”
Interested in helping to right the wrongs of the past towards a more equitable future for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ forerunners? Check out these organizations;
The Last Prisoner Project: Let’s get people out of jail for minor cannabis crimes and help reform the War on Drugs.
Cage Free Cannabis: Make sure your weed is doing some good to the environment, economy and repairing communities.
Cannaclusive: Calling for racial justice in corporate cannabis.
Women Grow: Creating safe, inclusive pathways for women in weed.
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