My Kushy New Job (2010) | Hacker News Reader

My Kushy New Job (2010)

gq.com

29 pointsportobello34 comments

Dutch nitpick: "Dampkring" isn't "Smoke Ring", it means "atmosphere". If you translate the two words separate it literally is moisture ring rather than smoke ring.

Vapor ring would be a better translation, right? Because “vocht” is moisture.

Yes I guess that is slightly better, but only for the two words read separately. The combination is still atmosphere.

So, German pun. Nice.

Having spent possibly the best 5yrs of my life in Amsterdam, I can only feel sorry for the authors extremely limited exposure to the city.

It’s amazing place full of art, history, culture, music - and if you know where to find it - great food.

Dampkring is fairly low on my coffeeshop list

Needs a 2010. Amsterdam is definitely no longer the world's cannabis capitol.

What is then?

Canada obvs

Kashmir :3

Could be Canada, could be California. So many legal places nowadays (and yet very few in Europe :/)

Do these places have actual coffee shops like Amsterdam or only dispensaries?

I was surprised how Thailand embraced it. Almost overnight, the touristy places exploded with dispensaries. Yet, there's not the pothead vibe one can see in Amsterdam's coffee shops.

And yes, it's intriguing how Europe is so conservative with this. You wonder what they're scared of.

Thailand repealed the old laws without putting any new ones in place, hence the no-holds-barred overnight explosion.

It's a matter of time until they clamp down, although given the perennial machinations of Thai politics, which are even worse than usual right now due to the military junta vs election winner squabble, how long it takes and how strict the new laws will be remain a mystery.

>You wonder what they're scared of.

Getting billions in ganja tax...but at the expense of pissing off the Church? Though Germany seems about to stop giving their money to the dutch, with a potential decriminalisation bill, God's representatives on earth still aren't ok with people just getting on with their own business.

Germany is going to legalize it, so expect for the practice to spread.

We have yet to see. I'll believe it when I see it.

Minnesota is rapidly rising in pot culture because of the fact that legalization here was at first an accident last year, so every brewery could make THC seltzers and every bar and restaurant with a liquor license could serve them with no regulations basically. When they purposefully legalized it this year the accident driven free market had gotten so big and popular that they grandfathered it all in, and even added a clause allowing liquor stores to sell the hemp products.

Thailand should be high up there these days.

Pun not intended.

Not a world capital of the stuff exactly but, due to slow-rolled legalization, New York City is having a gray market boom right now - there's some sort of tacit 'they can't catch all of us at once' strategy going on, there's a bazillion illegal (yet formalized) cannabis vendors springing up all over the place into every available empty storefront. You can also find them at farmer's markets, concerts, outside movie theaters, etc.

Most of the gray market is just surplus California pot (it is the cheapest, after all) but if you go to one of the very few legal dispensaries in the city you can buy New York (State) grown cannabis which is pretty neat.

Colorado, California

NYC. You can buy it on almost every corner and smoke it anywhere.

By volume grown?

By number of legal licenses?

Where the new hot strains are bred?

Where the bags for the new hot strains are made?

different answer to every question.

Today I learned that the word ganja comes from Hindi but is unrelated to the Ganga.

This depressing account just made me wish the author could enjoy Amsterdam instead of work in that miserable coffee shop. Try a museum, visit a castle, take a boat ride, have some world class omelette. Like most other places, visiting Amsterdam is what you make it to be.

I sometimes work in Amsterdam. It's near my house. I hate tourists in Amsterdam. They clearly come to my capital for the wrong things. Plus they only visit the capitol; there are so many nice cities in the Netherlands to visit, some are even more beautiful than Amsterdam. To cater to the tourists the city also changed for the worst.

Which cities would you recommend then?

Utrecht is beautiful

You really can go anywhere.

Rotterdam, The Hague, Haarlem, Leiden, Delft, Gouda, Utrecht, Zaandam, maybe even Alphen aan den Rijn. I’d even consider Groningen on this list (although Groningen is a 2 hour journey).

These are all places within approximately an hour or less by train of Amsterdam’s central station, that have fantastic culture (lots of art, history, and other museums), and are (mostly) classic old Dutch cities.

Don’t get me wrong, Amsterdam has some nice museums that I also go to occasionally too, but if you want to go and see Dutch things that are just as nice without the crowds, you can go almost anywhere else.

Nijmegen!

Says every person who lives in a capital city ever. :-)

> I hate tourists in Amsterdam.

I wonder whether that might explain a number of incidents where I've been treated very very rudely when I've visited Amsterdam or Rotterdam, even when I'm not "one of those toursists".

I only had two days to spend in the Netherlands with my family a few months ago, so we went to Amsterdam. I’ve never smoked so much as a puff of marijuana in my life, but I’m still glad I went. I was a bit put off by the prevalence of the whole weed culture thing, but it was a really cool town with some really nice museums and parks.

Probably the thing I found most interesting about Amsterdam was it was the only place in the world I’ve ever seen dedicated traffic lanes for five distinct modes of transportation on one single street—pedestrians, bicycles, cars, trains, and boats.

You're describing tourists since time immemorial.

The wrong things? A visit to the Museumplein, looking into the Beguinhof, shopping, dining at restaurants? Perhaps you can post a list of the right things.

I'd rather they stay in Amsterdam. A few tourists, a bit more in summer, fine, but the droves that Amsterdam attracts, no. Complain to your city council. They're the ones driving the Amsterdam and Holland tourism campaigns.

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