Search Engine with PJ Vogt

A smoke shop in New York City / Getty Images

Hello!

We’ve got a new one for you. The conclusion to our two-part series on the absurdly large proliferation of illegal weed stores in New York City. Despite there only being something like 40 legal shops in the city, there’s thousands of illegal ones. How’d that happen?

In part two of our story, we explain how we got here.

We watch the state of New York try to pull off something we rarely see in America: a kind of reparations. A very ambitious dream encounters a thicket of details and complications. The whole time, cameras roll, broadcasting the meetings on YouTube.

If you want to support our show, you can sign up for our premium feed, Incognito Mode.

You get ad-free episodes of Search Engine, you get the periodic bonus episode, and you help support ambitious reporting projects like this one, which take more time and resources. We are so grateful to anyone who has been able to sign up. Thanks everybody.

Ashley Southall at the New York Times is always great on the cannabis beat. Here’s a recent piece from her summing up the status quo: ”What’s Going on With Legal Marijuana in New York?”

It didn’t make it into our story, really, but I enjoyed reading this book Grass Roots: The Rise — and Fall — of Marijuana in America by historian Emily Dufton. I hadn’t realized how close the country had gotten to something like federal legalization in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It’s a good tale, and a fascinating lesson in how groups that weren’t politically activated can suddenly become so. I learned a little about America just reading about the alliance between Nancy Reagan and mostly suburban, middle-class parents with marijuana concerns.

Budega NYC -- I thought listeners who finished the story might be curious about this. Budega’s Instagram is the best place to follow Alex Norman and Luis Colon. They’re zeroing in on a new location for their shop. Once they’re open, if you want to visit, this’ll be the place to locate them.

Also, Alex, in a past life, started a podcast company called PNC Radio. The great Combat Jack Show first aired there. If you want to learn more about Combat Jack, and the late Reggie Ossé, you could start here.

A question this week for you Searchers… I just read The Hepatitis Bathtub, the NOFX autobiography. I have not enjoyed anything this much in years? It’ll show up on the show, in some form, soon I hope. In the meantime though, if you have great music autobiographies, please hit me in the comments. I’m trying Scar Tissue next…

Thanks for listening, we’ll have a new episode for you on Friday.

PJ

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