That works with pretty much ANY magazine, from SPIN to MAD…

This tends to happen to any counter-cultural entity that achieves a modicum of success or popularity.

I don’t know that I necessarily agree with it, but I also think it might be worth pointing out that another thing that inevitably happens to counter-cultural institutions when they achieve popularity is that they become the target of all kinds of rumors and criticisms - some of them warranted and some of them not. Success often breeds discontent among those who catapulted something into that position.

Hell, I mean one time on a message board, somebody actually accused me of being a disinformation agent. As if disinfo agents had such awesome websites and writing styles!

By
Rodger Jacobs

“There’s nothing up there except dead bodies and plane crashes,” Benny muttered.

“Maybe you wouldn’t know marijuana from manzanita. They obscure the shit, you know. They use dry brush and all kinds of other plant canopy to keep the gardens from being seen.”

We’re sitting in the cramped kitchen of Benny’s modest apartment north of Sunset Boulevard, up the hill from Tower Records and from where Spago’s used to be.

It’s a miserable, sweltering afternoon in July with temperatures hovering in the triple digits, the sort of heat that can cause one’s attitude to adjust to thoughts of homicide, which might explain my friend’s taciturn complexion when I try to talk to him about the marijuana plantations that abound in his favorite hiking space.

Benny took another long pull from his cold bottle of Corona.

“Dead bodies and plane crashes,” he repeated with grim finality.

“Why do you hike in the Angeles? Wouldn’t Griffith Park be safer?”

Benny hiked his shoulders and drained the last of his beer. “I don’t feel threatened up there. Besides, there’s more to do and see in the Angeles.”

The 696,000 acres of lush pine forest and scrub oak that is the Angeles National Forest receives more than 3.9 million visitors a year. That’s more visitors annually than any other unit of the national forest system.

This urban mountain range – hemmed in on all four sides by major earthquake faults – is a favorite day-use forest for mountain bikers, hunters, fishermen, backpackers, off-road enthusiasts, rock climbers, bunjee jumpers, and, in the winter months, skiers and snowboarders.

Early Californians referred to the rugged Angeles Forest as “Bandito Country”. In the 1870s the infamous bandit and horse thief Tiburcio Vasquez holed up in the steep ravines and foreboding canyons and passes of the Angeles while maintaining clandestine pastures of stolen steeds.

The Angeles National Forest still is Bandito Country.

Today’s outlaws aren’t horse thieves, though. They are dope desperadoes who cultivate their holy herb under the cloak of darkness, working rich soil that is stained with blood and misery.

Breaker: The Dance Instructor In The Trunk

“Can you imagine any native Angeleno in his or her right mind who would go up in the Angeles Forest for four months and baby sit a crop of pot?” I asked Will.

Will is a director of “high-end” adult videos. When the business is slow, as it has been in the last few months in reaction to the most recent AIDS scare, he supplements his income by selling weed to a handful of trusted friends.

“That’s why they hire Mexican Nationals,” Will says. “They don’t know any goddamn difference.”

If you scratch beneath its recreational surface, the Angeles National Forest is the exact antithesis of the Disneyland motto. It is The Scariest Place On Earth.

Los Angeles, with its graffiti-scarred palms and bullet-strewn walkways sits at the epicenter of man’s enduring quest to achieve order from chaos. Yet it is in the nearby Angeles National Forest where man’s primordial impulses are known to bubble to the surface with all the stark violence of a flash of lightning across a serene desert sky.

They bought a pitch from me on the illegal growers in the Angeles Forest here in L.A. and they knew it was going to be a first-person journo feature with an emphasis on the odd nature of the Angeles Forest itself.

Next I’ll present the feature in its unfinished form before my editor, Annie Nocenti, bailed from the magazine and told me not to bother finishing it because “No one here will like it becauase it’s not about marijuana enough.”

SO right there it means they’re aiming at a differnet audience, more appreciators of the art form and less “lifestyle tough guys” - also the phoptography is of a much consistently higher quality with less ads . SO thats the only one i subscribe to tough i rea dteh others occasionally

Tattooing is no longer the sole province of bikers, sailors & punks but to read some of those other mags you’d never know it - not sure they realize it either but i look at some of the pictorials and editorials and think “well, if you were hoping to get more women minorities and educated people involved in tattooing yer not gonna do it this way!” - dripping with blue collar machismo and criminal angst is cool and all but also kind of living in the past

http://www.internationaltattooart.com/

i read a lot of tattoo mags and ITA is head & shoulders above the rest in terms of how they present and convey tattooing as an art foprm & profession

tattoo doesn’t come close, its published by easyrider, so that tells you ther demographic, shitty newsprint paper, amateurish photography, idiotic band interviews

skin art has improved a lot but they don’t have a website yet (!)

tattoo revue, same deal.

For example, tattooing has become much more of an upscale thing than it used to be so some tattoo magazines that have done well hired decent writers and photographers, started doing in depth interviews with thoughtful people and got rid of all the misogynistic humor and biker barbeque coverage

That’s a really great point. Do you have any specific magazine titles in mind?

An actual literary, adult-style pot magazine, say a classic Harpers type of thing that just happens to have a hallucinogens and alternative history/spirituality tie-in would make a killing, though, if anyone were to ever bother. Something without weed centerfolds for confused teenage pot heads to jerk off to.

There is that magazine Entheogen Review, a friend wanted to get me a subscription a few years back but i neve got around to taking ‘em up on it

HT sounds like a magazine whose demographic has changed and they haven’t figured out how to make the shift yet

For example, tattooing has become much more of an upscale thing than it used to be so some tattoo magazines that have done well hired decent writers and photographers, started doing in depth interviews with thoughtful people and got rid of all the misogynistic humor and biker barbeque coverage

rolling stone has changed, but is so un-hip its not funny. does anyone read it anymore at all, or is it strictly for dentists offices?

HT huh.. haven’t read it in years. To me “pot culture” such as it is is just plain dumb, not boundary pushing at all. Yes dazed & confused was mildly amusing, cypress hill was OK too, but sheesh… enough with the frat boy fuzzy dice blacklight poster crap, centerfolds of pot, its just plain silly

If yer gonna hgave centerfolds, make’em decent ones at least, like mila jovovich or something, who wants to look at pot? i’d rather smoke it

An actual literary, adult-style pot magazine, say a classic Harpers type of thing that just happens to have a hallucinogens and alternative history/spirituality tie-in would make a killing, though, if anyone were to ever bother. Something without weed centerfolds for confused teenage pot heads to jerk off to.

Yeah, I’m pretty surprised nobody’s really following this avenue currently (that I know of). I think this is sort of what Daniel Pinchbeck might be working on with Metacine/Evolver or whatever it’s called now… but I think it’s got a bit more of a New-New Age style to it - at least from what I’ve heard. It hasn’t come out yet. In general though, I’m really not sure why all the really alternative types of magazines are still so small. I think the market for this stuff is really just beginning to explode at the moment, and it’s only going to get bigger. Lots of ways for people to really take advantage of it.

Enemies of Emery, including some of his business competitors in the marijuana seed sales industry, are spreading information designed to frighten his customers into believing that they could be raided if they ordered seeds from Emery since the beginning of 2004, when DEA says the investigation into his seed sales began.

It’s hard to tell how reliable these reports are. The DEA itself has been known to lie, and it might surprise people to know that the seed business is seedy, with lots of backstabbing that has often involved sleazy spammers placing false negative postings on the Internet about Marc Emery in order to harm his business and activism.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4468.html

Not saying I know how it all went down one way or another, but I imagine it’s all much more complicated than it seems at first glance.

This tends to happen to any counter-cultural entity that achieves a modicum of success or popularity.

but not pop occulture, right tim? unless it’s equally idiotic to talk shit all over the web.

wait a minute, someone’s at the door…

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4468.html

Also, HT readers were the subject of another putsch, operation Green Merchant.

http://cannabisculture.ca/articles/4557.html

This tends to happen to any counter-cultural entity that achieves a modicum of success or popularity.

http://www.rense.com/general68/potlike.htm

Apparently there’s a drug that uses high concentrations of chemicals found in cannabis (appropriately named cannabinoids, 1 and 2). This drug actually STIMULATES neuron growth, in the process known has neurogenesis.

Anyways, it’s a good read and very interesting stuff.