From "NYC’s disgusting pot stench is keeping tourists away" (NY Post).
Also at the NY Post: "Brazen NYers are smoking weed everywhere—Saks, subway, US Open."
On a recent weekday afternoon, the high-end flagship’s shoe department smelled less like Manolo Blahnik leather and more like a head shop, a stylist told The Post.“It’s jarring when you walk into a high-end department store where you used to smell Chanel perfume and now it’s weed... Everywhere you go in New York City smells like weed. It’s not just Saks — it’s at Bloomingdales, at the movies … there’s no high-end anymore.”
There’s no high-end anymore. Leave it to marijuana to make everything seem low class. Truly tragic when you can't feel upscale in the Saks shoe department.
Ironically, these days, marijuana gets you low, not high.
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79 comments:
Unexpectedly
You ain't high class
that was just a lie
You ain't high class
that was just a lie
You ain't nothing but a pothead
Stinkin' all the time.
Why are the wealthiest USA cities so dysfuntional? Do the libtards at the US Open love the stink of weed? Do the well-to-do females who shop at Sacks, get a thrill at smelling weed?
YOu ain't allowed to smoke indoors or in crowded sports venues. And the department stores, US OPen, etc. could enforce the rules, IF THEY WANTED. But they don't. Maybe someone could explain why.
But there's one good thing about NYC and SF. you don't have run around looking for a bathroom - when you can't hold it. just take a whiz on sidewalk. No one cares.
I thought smoking - of any kind - was illegal in NYC?
This is what you get when the Rule of Law is abandoned.
"Can we just get it over with, and open up opium dens?" said the slippery slope.
Come on. That's the "crystal energy" the mayor used to brag about
"NYC’s disgusting pot stench is keeping tourists away"
Oh you poor poor sweet summer children...that ain't the only thing. Not by a long shot.
I have no idea what weed smells like. Somebody said once that it smells like weed in here and I didn't smell anything, which may explain it.
If it smelled like coffee I would have noticed it.
The lack of tolerance by the left is well known. It still disappoints me that so many on the left will disown long-time friends for merely expressing disagreement with the then current leftist orthodoxy.
This level of ignorant stupidity is unrepairable. These idiots will continue to vote for this shit in perpetuity. Worse, some of them breed.
If you want to destroy a city's atmosphere there is no quicker way than to remain silent about antisocial, offensive behavior in order "to avoid upsetting your progressive friends" - witness Amsterdam or San Francisco. Perhaps one of our "progressive" commentators can explain exactly what is "progressive" about that kind of social negligence. Next thing you know people will be pitching tents on the sidewalks, defecating and urinating on the sidewalks, and harassing the citizenry. Oh, wait...
Teh Stench is making them clench?
I thought smoking - of any kind - was illegal in NYC?
When so many states legalized medical marijuana first, how can police or store owners question anyone standing out on the sidewalk smoking weed? It's similar to the problem businesses have with untrained dogs that are brought in under the guise of service animal. My pet peeve are the small ones brought into the grocery and put in the cart. Their pets' feet and asses shouldn't be where I put my food.
I doubt the smell of weed is that pervasive or that it's what's keeping people out. Did all the luxury stores in Amsterdam close? (no) It's probably more to do with a couple of generations of "it's classist to impose your rules of etiquette and social behavior on others". For people tired of the rudeness, it's easier to shop online.
If your society accepts bad behavior, you will get it. It doesn't matter if drugs and alcohol are legal. Legal drugs (or alcohol, because this reminds me of the pro-Prohibition propaganda) isn't what is making Times Square seedy.
Disclaimer - I have not been to NYC recently. I have been to Portland after marijuana was legalized there and the stores didn't smell of weed, even the dispensaries, but maybe it's different in New York. Perhaps it's changed in all of those cities over the last few years. People do seem less socialized.
Boston stinks of weed, too but the stink isn’t lawless since pot shops are legal and popping up everywhere…
We had to fire a staffer that was dramatically dropping off in productivity after coming back from lunch. Now I’ve been assured by pot smokers forever pot makes you smarter so that couldn’t be the cause. Either that or the reek of pot after lunch must have been from just walking outside…
When it was less socially permissible weed was a high hobby horse of the masses.
From r/unpopularopinion (now locked after only 20hrs) : “I liked it better when weed was underground and not socially acceptable or tolerated in public.”
Popular comment over there: “For as long as organized society has existed, when people change something that was once illegal or looked down upon into a socially acceptable commodity, then it removes the mystique that surrounds it and eventually it loses it's taboo appeal.”
It's so much worse than that. It's the rats that have entirely lost their fear of humans, or even the sunlight. It's the used needles you suddenly notice in the most odd places, such as under your shoe when you sit down in a restaurant. It's not just the smell of weed, but the smell of crack cocaine, a smell that once you realize what the smell is, you suddenly realize you smell it everywhere. It's the abject realization that the quiet schizophrenic that used to pick through the garbage quietly is no longer quiet, no longer picking through the garbage, and that no longer keeps to themselves might in fact kill you at any moment. It's the acknowledgment the person slumped over in the alley is probably in fact dead, not just nodding off.
I used to be what most people would call progressive. I used to believe that society was only as well off as its least well-off person, that it only moved as fast as its slowest citizen and that we had a duty to help. I don't anymore. I will never forgive "progressives" for what they've done or my own naivete. As a philosophy and a problem solving strategy it does not work and never will. There are people that do not get better, and progressives are sacrificing everyone's quality of life for the hopelessly incorrigible, and insulting you as they do it.
Never again.
I lived in downtown Seattle from 1982 until 1990. Each move after that I went further away until 1999 when I moved into my house in the woods. I don't know of anything that would ever get me back into a city. Seattle surely has not improved since I left, and the example in this post is simply more justification for my conviction.
“Their pets' feet and asses shouldn't be where I put my food.”
Sounds like a reasonable expectation, lol.
Nah, I can believe it actually smells like weed everywhere. It does in Denver.
i keep saying, that pot smokers smoke.. ALL THE TIME;
and the wise people here KEEP saying i'm FULL OF IT, because THEY don't Personally smoke all the time.
So, Serious Question
If the pot smokers in NYC aren't smoking ALL THE TIME? Why does the city stink SO MUCH??
I'm so sorry, but you aren't selling me on the "it's just a few one hits when i get home"
I don't see a city reeking of weed, 24/7 unless the smokers are smoking.. 24/7
jaydub said...
"Perhaps one of our "progressive" commentators can explain exactly what is "progressive" about that kind of social negligence."
I've had a prog friend/acquaintance try to explain the attraction of social dissolution from his point of view:
-It's urban and edgy and hip. If you don't like 'real' cities you should stay out; they are for cool people like me.
-A lot of what you honky middle-class people want represents pure racism.
-Stick it to the bourgeoisie, because God help me if anyone thought I was one of them. (He is one)
-Who are you to tell people the 'right' way to live? They have their freedoms too.
-Capitalism won't provide a nice life for everyone, so this is what you get.
-What's a little shit on the sidewalk when there are real problems facing us (climate change, guns, Trump).
It made little sense except maybe the part about him being cooler than me, but he brought his own definition of cool. "Anything you don't like" is probably the definition.
Blastfax Kudos said "There are people that do not get better"
-------------------------------------------------
That truth right there is liberal kryptonite. It destroys everything about their entire political philosophy. The entire ethos of progressivism is a kind of pseudo Christianity in which every person can be saved by the healing power of redistribution from people that have more of something to those who have less. Well guess what, there are people who have a giant hole inside them that can never be filled with enough of anything. They have always existed and people warned others in myriad ways throughout history of their existence and what can happen when they're everywhere.
The progressive mind does not have a solution for the people who do not get better. They cannot wrap their heads around something needing to be done with those people that crosses into unpleasantness, and they will absolutely never do anything about it themselves.
I want a person that will not get better outside every progressive doorstep. I want one outside every congressional office in D.C. I want one in every coffee shop and bistro. I want one in every hair salon on 5th Avenue. I want a person that does not get better in every boardroom and at every trading kiosk on Wall Street. If normal people cannot have peace, fucking no one will.
"Well, they’ll stone ya when you’re trying to be so good"
r/NYC sub has been complaining about the smell ever since legalization. Evidently illegal shops popped up all over town to sell sans license.
So it's exceptionally bad.
There is no such thing as a “Progressive friend.” No Prog will like you or even tolerate you one nanosecond past your saying something that could be interpreted as straying from Prog orthodoxy. A friend is someone you can share a beer with after you’ve answered his Biden lawn sign with your Trump sign.
finally -- smoke that is holy - hallelujah amen
I spent opening day at the US Open last year, did not see or smell pot even once. Just one anecdote, maybe it's much worse (different) this year. Very enjoyable day by the way, the GF is a big tennis fan/player.
NY Post writing disinformation again. It's not the smell of pot smoke keeping me from wanting to visit NYC. It's the crime and the likelihood of going to prison if you decide to defend yourself from the crime. Add in the disdain New Yorkers have for people from most parts of the country, and I rather go anywhere else but there [and California for same reasons].
I have a well developed sense of smell. Strong unpleasant odors bother me until olfactory plasticity kicks in at 10-15 minutes. Forcing others to smell your cannabis, tobacco,bad perfume or anti shave, etc. is rude, and it is rudeness, not cannabis, that is perceived as low class.
This is an instance of "tragedy of the commons".
Shorter NY Post: Progressivism creates submissive sheep.
I grew up in the town where Tommy Hilfigger was from. He had a little shop on Water Street, and it smelled like this sometimes, which was kind of a scandal in the 70s. We didn't know then that we were being given a glimpse of the future.
But sure, the bourgeois should leave NYC. Get out while the prices are high. In a few decades, you will be able to buy it up again at pennies on the dollar.
I for one prefer the smell of weed in midtown, covers up the smell of urine
Smoking is illegal in NY unless its an approved product- cannibis.
Rioting is illegal in NY unless it's by an approved group: BLM or Antifa, or possibly even Black Hebrew Israelites.
Knocking out senior Asians or Jews is approved action. Arresting a looting mob is not.
Wearing masks in NY is a sign of intelligence and correct thought. Not wearing one is a sign of possible White Supremacy.
For the past 10-13 years, New Yorkers have displayed a preference to party loyalty over competence and civil society in their selections for Mayor and Governor (and city council, state legislators). The results are all around them. That they are beginning to voice their displeasure out loud is new. But worry not. They will continue to elect incompetent Democrats. Addicts cannot help themselves.
I mean...Kathy Hochul and Eric Adams to run New York? Seriously?
New Yorkers probably thought they were stepping back from the de Blasio abyss by electing the police chief as mayor, but he's been no better. Just more of the same preening decline.
I'm sympathetic to the commenter's lament that "there's no high end anymore," except I think the loss she's grieving is actually not of "high end" places and things, but rather the value Americans used to place on personal appearance and good manners. It seems we've become a nation of boorish slobs. Consider how people dress these days compared to a couple generations ago. Most people don't seem to give a damn how they look when they go out in public. The idea that one should "dress up" for any occasion short of a wedding or funeral is viewed as outright oppression.
Similarly, people routinely drop the F bomb or worse in casual conversation, oblivious to the possibility that anyone else might take offense. And they carry on loud cellphone conversations at restaurants and other public spaces without the slightest concern over how annoying this is to other people.
Evidently, because it's not actually illegal to be rude and annoying, or to dress like a homeless person or a child who's just rolled out of bed, then these things are perfectly okay. The idea that one's own comfort or convenience should ever yield to the aesthetic or behavioral standards of society as a whole has been completely lost.
Forcing strangers to smell your marijuana smoke is just the latest manifestation of this attitude.
They say “brazenly” smoke in public as if it wasn’t legal to smoke outdoors.
I doubt this is affecting tourism.
Maoist Castro-Marxist-North Korean totalitarian left, rule.
& remember - anything negative about a precious Democrat in power = Russian disinformation.
Dede, that's not the smell that's keeping them away.
New York City dwellers getting what they voted for good and hard. Not going to be alarmed or concerned for their fate. They are adults, they voted, they deserve everything their city has become. If they don't like it. Change those who have the power to make the needed changes.
Otherwise, make the popcorn and watch it burn.
Where there is no law and justice... vigilantism will give both law and justice... on the street.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/02/we-dont-need-police-the-new-forest-village-taking-the-law-into-its-own-hands
Didn't notice when spent a few days there in late May. Tobacco smoke and smells growing up in Mad Men days and thereafter far far worse. Just got tiny reminder on holday in Europe.
Marijuana is the problem? Bwahahaha!
Progressive rule is the problem. Marijuana use is a symptom. Stupid leaders. Dissolute populations. Lawlessness. What else can go wrong?
Just as Chicago is devolving even more, into gang wars between recent Hispanic illegal immigrant gangs and homegrown ones, NYC is teetering on the edge of a three-way war between the black underclasses (Carribean and homegrown), Mexican and South American Hispanic illegal, and Asian illegal (the illegal Chinese population is massive).
You won't read this in the newspapers. You can map it through City Council races, where identity politics candidates fly their freak flags openly, and through the few remaining police blogs, including the magnificent Second City Cop, which is back after a hiatus.
The rest of the population is caught into the crossfire. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and LA are accelerating in decay. White junkies and black devastate Oakland, LA and Seattle.
All thanks to Democrats. All of it.
In Chicago, a news team reporting on one of that city's daily spree carjackings was assaulted by the same or different carjackers. The fear is everywhere, except in the news and among our left of center (and leftitarian/libertarian) politicians.
All of them. They would sacrifice their colleagues and children to hug a thug or legalize a drug.
The entire ethos of progressivism is a kind of pseudo Christianity in which every person can be saved by the healing power of redistribution from people that have more of something to those who have less.
As T. Sowell calls it, the unconstrained vision: the vision that there is a Solution to every societal problem (as defined by those holding the vision), and that the great Solution will have no tradeoffs. He opposes this view to the constrained or tragic vision, in which there are only tradeoffs and in which we must make decisions based on imperfect and incomplete information.
The latter is indisputably reflective of reality. The former allows people to feel better about themselves and about the world, but TMFIR.
Activists have made inhaling smoke not only socially acceptable, but have given it the perception of being healthy. That is a PR masterclass.
"marijuana gets you low, not high"
LOL. Anyway, another day, another triumph of prog rule. They want to get us all as low as possible, the better to control the hapless stoned potheads and the cowed disgusted deplorables. The devastation of the public sphere is just another tool, accentuated by the prohibiition on complaint.
I wish more writers of this kind of satisfied would take the time you did to explore and compose so well. I am exceptionally dazzled with your vision and knowledge. Financial Market
A pity Mencken didn't live to see this.
I have nothing against it, but at the same time I live in idyllic suburbia.
I probably smoked a metric ton of the stuff in high school, and it probably destroyed my brain cells.
Good thing I had so many to spare : )
Oh boo fuckin hoo! First World problems. Can't go to Saks without the lumpen proles stinking up the place with their weed smoke? Those Saks shopping swells voted for this stuff, so fuck 'em. Bloomberg & Giuliani fixed this stuff for youse guys over a year 20 year period (esp. Bloomie's stop-n-frisk program) but Noo Yawkers pissed their safety & prosperity away. When all this worked. Go figure? Elections have consequences you dumbasses.
You could not pay me enough to go to NYC. I once testified as an expert witness in a med mal case at Bronx Supreme Court. It was right out of "Bonfire of the Vanities." The lawyer whose witness I was won his case and invited me back for dinner. No thanks. That was when I was living in New Hampshire.
Is complaining about the shoppers in Saks Fifth Ave some kind of extremely high pitched racist dog whistle that only expensive kennel bred dogs can hear...By and large the shoppers at Saks are well behaved. There are some rapists that hide in the changing rooms, but other than that the shoppers there are quite mannerly.
I'm finding that the recent escalation of encountering the stench of weed INDOORS (and it seems to be all skunk-stench now, not that the older varieties of weed were delicate) comes from the person and their clothing. That oily-smokey shit gets all over you and stays.
Visiting Manhattan a few months ago, no block was free of the smell of fresh weed being smoked. Walking on the Atlantic City boardwalk last weekend, there was little opportunity to enjoy the great weather and ocean breezes because fresh skunk-smoke was everywhere. Our non-smoking room at the Tropicana smelled a bit like weed, I think from other rooms.
There is no hope that I can see of putting the genie back in the bottle.
How quickly we’ve forgotten the world that reeked of tobacco smoke. It was so ubiquitous that it didn’t even register at the time. And it wasn’t that long ago.
I work in a federal building in DC, and it reeks of marijuana inside. Homeless people sit outside smoking, and the HVAC system sucks it in.
"It's so much worse than that. It's the rats that have entirely lost their fear of humans, or even the sunlight."
Just last year I'm in Soho running to another meeting in the car service my company arranged for me. Lovely day. Bout 3ish. We get to the intersection of Broome and Wooster and have to stop at the light. Another black Land Rover pulls alongside, probably from a competing car service. The windows aren't tinted. "That's odd" I think to myself.
Instantly I see in the back of the car is this giant Norway rat. In one hand he's munching happily on a slice of Famous Ray's. In his other hand appears to be a knish from Yona Shimmels. We lock eyes. His jaw stops moving mid-chew. I'm sure this real life cryptid is terrified I've seen it and it will vanish the moment I blink...so I blink. He's still there and now has put down the food and it's rolling down the window. "There is no effing way this thing is going to speak to me is there!?!" I think to myself.
I roll my window down. It's shifty little whiskers and ratfink nose emerge from the open portal. "Pardon me, but would you have any Grey Poupon?" it says in a classic uptown bridge and tunnel accent. I pick my jaw up off the floor. A sigh of derision leaves my parsed lips as I roll up the window and tell the driver to step on it. He's been watching the light the whole time and didn't catch everything that transpired but could hear voices. "What happened?" He asks, "was that a friggin' rat!?!"
"You guys got a real problem here." I tell him, "It's not right that native New Yorkers have lost so much fear of each other they're showing up in broad daylight and asking total strangers for condiments." "Preach brother." he says, "that ratfink motherf**ker shoulda left that yona shimmels potato knish in the garbage where he found it."
Love you NYC. Never change.
Birches said...
Nah, I can believe it actually smells like weed everywhere. It does in Denver.
I've found the opposite, at least on the near-east side. Maybe once a week I'll get a whiff of it and that's on a Friday night on East Colfax near the Bluebird theater, an area filled with hip drinking establishments and restaurants. Maybe downtown?
You can smoke weed anywhere you like in NYC. But you cannot smoke tobacco in Central Park.
"I have no idea what weed smells like. Somebody said once that it smells like weed in here and I didn't smell anything, which may explain it."
Yeah, if it doesnt affect you, it doesn't matter.
1st principle of Losertarian philosophy
I was in NYC last in . . . 1996 I think. My wife had some business there so we took our son for about a week. Stayed at the Embassy Suite Times Square. It was December I think.
That area was busy but not particularly dirty or dangerous seeming at the time, and I can recall getting a random whiff of reefer or two walking around the area, but that was to be expected, like the bums (sorry, unhoused individuals) sprawled on the air grates.
The most memorable encounter I had was with a gaggle of the young coke-ho's that hung around the hotel, and sometimes came in. I was on the elevator up to our room when two of them got on and sized me up. The tall pretty brunette with the Southern accent asked, through her runny nose, if I was interested in a blow job.
"No thanks," I said. After a moment I asked her, "Out of curiosity, what's a blow job cost?"
"Forty bucks."
"Thanks again, but no, and good night."
That's the only direct f2f proposition from a ho I've ever had.
"It still disappoints me that so many on the left will disown long-time friends for merely expressing disagreement with the then current leftist orthodoxy."
It's because they suffer from chronic insecurity.
"Next thing you know people will be pitching tents on the sidewalks, defecating and urinating on the sidewalks, and harassing the citizenry. Oh, wait..."
Following Hurricane, California's Homeless Begin The Hard Work Of Re-Pooping All The Sidewalks
https://babylonbee.com/news/following-hurricane-californias-homeless-population-gets-down-to-the-thankless-task-of-re-pooping-all-the-sidewalks
"That oily-smokey shit gets all over you and stays."
That's why they invented one-hitters. That, and their inherent economic benefit in that the only thing wasted is you.
To our friends in New York City/State: I understand that it's just too icky to vote for a Republican but consider this, just don't vote for the Democrat. I'm not saying don't go vote, do so for politicians you approve of or special ballot measures. You want them to see it wasn't just low turnout, when the down ballots add up to more than the main ballots they'll understand it's none of the above.
Jamie said, "He opposes this view to the constrained or tragic vision, in which there are only tradeoffs and in which we must make decisions based on imperfect and incomplete information."
All information is incomplete. All actions require to a degree a leap of faith. What has been so totally lost is that individuals of every type are in fact trying to do their best. I work professionally as a psychiatrist and please believe me when I tell you the disconnect between what people are told versus what they see is very real and very damaging. Every case these days has a component.
Just 100 years ago Western men were this close to solving planetary energy crises and now they're not sure if they're straight or not. This is unprecedented. We don't have a historical allegory outside maybe the fall of Rome.
"How quickly we’ve forgotten the world that reeked of tobacco smoke."
When I was in college, we smoked in the classrooms and the lecture halls. And we stomped the butts out on the floor. Once, a student complained to a professor about the smoke. She told the student to go sit by the window, and open it.
Kids today don't believe me when I tell these stories.
“It’s jarring when you walk into a high-end department store where you used to smell Chanel perfume and now it’s weed... Everywhere you go in New York City smells like weed. It’s not just Saks — it’s at Bloomingdales, at the movies … there’s no high-end anymore.”
Tell me I'm not the only one who saw one of the matrons from a New Yorker cartoon clutching her pearls in their head as they read this.
Lawlessness goes pandemic when the laws are no longer enforced. And nobody wants to live among the demonized druggies. It’s too dangerous.
Tom T. said...
I work in a federal building in DC, and it reeks of marijuana inside. Homeless people sit outside smoking, and the HVAC system sucks it in
Saved…for next election season when we’re trying to discern the origins of the First Name/Last Initial commenters what show up timed with the cycle…
New York City police are going to be using drones this weekend to be sure no one is having fun at a backyard party.
Almost everybody smoked in college in the early '70s. If not pot, then tobacco.
Classrooms, offices, dorms. Ashtrays everywhere, usually MSU-branded. Us ROTC cadets (two mandatory semesters, being phased out the next year) even lit up in the old admin auditorium when they showed us USDA Grade-A bullshit movies.
The riskiest toke I ever took was definitely in the visiting yard at the Old Shelby County Penal Farm. My older bro was serving a (plea-bargained) 11 & 29 for breaking and entering, and on Visitor Sunday afternoons my younger brothers would go see him.
I tagged along one day, out of curiosity. Turns out my youngest brother was expertly opening and resealing the cigarette packs that visitors could bring in for the inmates, and when we got to the yard and sat on the grass in a circle the joints came out, as if we were at a rock concert. Clouds of baccy and pot smoke wafted about.
Hell yes I partook. In for a penny, in for an ounce.
the Post- total nonsense as usual. And by citing this BS, Althouse proves once again that she is not a serious person.
“the Post- total nonsense as usual. And by citing this BS, Althouse proves once again that she is not a serious person.”
Yeah, and if your mama had wheels she’d be a streetcar, Muttman
"How quickly we’ve forgotten the world that reeked of tobacco smoke."
When I was in college, we smoked in the classrooms and the lecture halls. And we stomped the butts out on the floor. Once, a student complained to a professor about the smoke. She told the student to go sit by the window, and open it.
Kids today don't believe me when I tell these stories.
We had a smoker's tree at my high school where kids would go smoke in between classes and at lunch. I used to dip tobacco in class, spit cup and all.
The kids don't believe me either.
"Most New Yorkers are fed up with the inescapable stench of lawlessness, too, but refrain from saying so for fear of being shouted at by progressive friends."
I suppose somewhere there's a new Yorker who won't speak his/her mind because of what others may think. Can't say i've ever met such a New Yorker.
But how am I supposed to smoke my weed with my mask on?
So much anarchy, so much control.
"Why are the wealthiest USA cities so dysfuntional?"
Because progressive beliefs are a luxury good. When you are worried about choosing between rent and food, you don't suffer silly ideas like the gangbanger down the street is trying to get his grades up for college, the dude selling dope on the corner isn't harming anyone, your six year old daughter is really a boy and needs thousands of dollars in medication and surgery, etc.
@Michael K.
That's bc certain ethnicities gathering together end up being involuntary gang bangs or massacre magnets for the disgruntled among them and so NYPD wants have a heads up. Just sayin'.
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