Another afternoon out and about.

Puff Puff Protest was held today in College Park and Hank and I felt it was an effective use of our time to go out and tell you all about it. First of all there were pot fairies, you heard me, girls in hemp shaped or just green fairy wings. There was a Super-Bong, basically Superman, as a bong. On top of that was the topless girl in a Cannabis Lei, more on that later.

To start with, I was walking north from Queen and I passed Dundas Square, there was an early Tree Hugger convention going on. The fact that someone somewhere decided this needed a police presence is laughable.

I got to 420 Younge just before people began filtering there in any significant numbers. Hank got there shortly after I did and we made our way over to the park. We drifted around, an interesting array of people filtered in behind us. In no time at all there were pot-smokers of every possible stripe rolling and smoking while the police and security looked on. The numbers of police and security would become practically nonexistent over the next hour.

By 2pm police presence was zero, at least uniformed officers, this proved to be a matter of clever placement when one malcontent attempted to agitate building security into assaulting him. Security guards appeared out of nowhere and in seconds they were joined by 2 uniformed officers, the last ones I saw present for the rest of the afternoon. Much earlier in the afternoon I found myself the target of an interview attempt by another blogger, one who'd done no research on the internet apparently and was looking to uncover the source of the use of 420 by cannabis culture. Google motherfucker, Do You Use It? The blogger approached us with his camera pointed at us, now, he did ask if he could take pictures, but he did it with the camera already on us. Rude.

The day proved nothing if not the generosity of the local pot smokers, as Hank and I never needed say any more than that we'd all ready gone thorough our own supply, which was true, and we'd find ourselves being handed a joint from people who had just approached us.

After 3 hours amongst them with only one additional person I previously knew running into us, Hank and I called it an afternoon and walked off towards Queen street. When we got to John we came across another gathering of the tree huggers, chalk Earth's in blue hearts drawn on the barricaded street. A child of six or seven was running about blowing bubbles with a mass-produced bubble maker, adults hula-hooping feet away. The topless woman in the marijuana lei now handing out Earth Day fliers, Happy 420 written across her chest. Some days, I love this city.

-James