Ep. 41 - Is 420 Actually Related To Pot? You Might Be Surprised! Learn About The Waldos, Steve Capper + Dave Reddix

I didn’t know much about the Waldo’s before I found the 420waldos website. So this conversation kind of came to me by surprise, but learning that these group of five friends coined the term "420" was compelling enough for me to ask the questions of how, what and why they became known for this term.

There have been many misconceptions, fallacies, falsehoods, and media inaccuracies about the beginnings of '420', and even about The Waldos.   Although the Waldos are still friends and still together as a group today, the backstory of The Waldos and ‘420’ beginnings is a golden era we will never see the likes of again—the 1970’s in Marin County, CA— San Francisco Bay Area.

Check out our interview with Steve Capper + Dave Reddix

Website:  https://420waldos.com
https://twitter.com/420Waldos

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Transcript

Ronjini Joshua: 0:11

I didn't know much about the waldos. Before I found the 420 Waldo site. I've heard about the waldos, but didn't really know who they were Did you know I had all of the misconceptions about what 420 was, and I did not know there were people behind it or not. So the conversation kind of came to a surprise for me. But learning about this guy, this, like this group of guys, it's five guys that coined the term for 20 was compelling enough for me to just ask, like, all the questions, all the questions, all the questions, I've got some stories. Well, they probably could have kept going on the story. Oh, yeah. You know, Steve Capper and Dave Reddix are the founding, managing members of the Waldos. And they kind of do all the media stuff, so we got to talk to them in this podcast. Let's get back to the waldos and get into the green room with Steve capper and Dave. Hello, thanks for joining us today in the green room. Today we have the managing members of the waldos known for coining the term 420 Steve Capper and Dave Reddix Hello guys, how are you? Hey, we're good. How are you? Okay, that's actually my that's like my signature move is the peace sign. So we're already connected. I'm so excited to have you guys on today. And I think it's a different perspective. Typically, you know, the in the greenroom, where we're talking about the journey of the cannabis industry, and I think there's no conversation that doesn't have the idea of for 20, and how that came about. So I'm sure you've answered this question tons of times. And we'll get into some other questions later, but I'd love to kind of start with you know, how did that whole for 20 happened? And why are you guys called the wild waldos? Well, we're called to begin with, we're called the waldos. Because we used to hang out on a wall in the middle of campus there at Centerville High School. Wow, it all goes

Unknown: 2:13

there, and we'd sit up there and during class breaks and people would go by and we'd do impressions of people and crack jokes, just to make each other laugh and have a good time. So that's how we became known as the waldos.

Ronjini Joshua: 2:28

Wow, okay. Okay. I thought it was like maybe people can tell you guys apart or something like that. Right? And, and for 20, like, tell us a little bit about the background of like, you know, how that that came with how that became so big.

Unknown: 2:44

One day, we're hanging out on our wall, and a buddy of mine, Bill McNulty comes up to me and he goes hey, my brother's in the US Coast Guard and some guys in the US Coast Guard are growing marijuana they have a plot that they've started growing and for some reason they think that their commanding officer is gonna bust him we found out years later what that was about Okay, and they suspect that because somebody did get busted even earlier some Coast Guardsmen for growing part so they go well we think we're going to give us too We don't want to get busted so we've decided to the Coast Guard guy so we've decided to abandon the project and we decided bill let's just found out his brother in law and I was ready you got you and your buddies can pick it they do a map of where it was and said you guys can go ahead and pick this it's yours. Okay, I treasure map it started out with a treasure map it was a no brainer you know Steve rod is this mad is a she would you go check this out raw, no brainer. Let's go. You know, you're 16 years old. You have no money. You have no weed, right? You're gonna get some free weed. We're going forward.

Ronjini Joshua: 3:50

All right. And so where do the numbers come from?

Unknown: 3:54

So, you know, we weren't spicoli from Fast Times at ridgemont High. We weren't Cheech and Chong. We, you know, we were intelligence donors, and active stoners. I mean, what I was day was getting awards for animation videos. I was getting awards for accounting classes. We were all into sports. I mean, we weren't the best or the worst at sports. We were kind of medium range. I was a swimmer Larry, it was a was football. While though Jeff he was the team manager. Dave, what do you do? I think he did football for a while and then I did quit ball for one year and decided I'd rather chase girls and smoke pot. Yeah. Okay. So so one of the things was we decided we're going to smoke this pot but Larry and Jeff had football practice for an hour we got out of school around three 315 they had this flexible schedule thing they started some kids got out of three some got out 310 and we got out of 320 so you get out or approximately three crack football practice lasted about one hour approximately, and it was just enough time to get back to the gym, get your clothes on or get back to the locker room, get your clothes on and get over to where we decided to meet,

Ronjini Joshua: 5:11

right?

Unknown: 5:11

Yeah, I decided to meet it. The statue of Louis this past year on the campus right in the middle of the campus. They're actually in the front of the campus. And we decided we'd

meet there at 4: 5:21

20pm after school after everybody had finished their activities or whatever. Yeah, and we met there that first day we smoked the big fatty and then we hopped in Steve 66 Impala and we drove out to point rays on our search

Ronjini Joshua: 5:36

Oh for your treasure hunt. Yeah, gotcha. Okay, wait wait wait

Unknown: 5:40

smoke all the way out and take well depend upon traffic it'd be 1440 minutes to an hour I didn't put the pencil on traffic but listening to that all that great 70s music all the way out. I mean, incredible music during those times especially in the San Francisco Bay area so much and Steve had a killer eight track stereo Craig eight track stereo so we listened to that. This booming music all the way out there smoking weed. The car would be you know, clouded with smoke. Giddy you know, what was the word what was gonna happen? It was a 66 Chevy Impala, four doors, kind of embarrassing. It's not an any car that you'd get chicks with. But handpan me down, you know. And being that was had such a big trunk, these big speakers that would baffle and give you a great sound. So you pile a bunch of waldos. And you're smoking out there and listening to music and headed out to look for the weed. And we did every week. We look for weeks. But you know, in the ensuing weeks, you know, we'd see each other in the hallways, and we say for 20. Louis, that was the original saying for 20. Louis can remind you chat to each other where we were going to meet at what time so nobody had to go for 20. Louis Oh, yes. And you go Yes, for 20. Louis, that meant we were going to search that day, which we did for several weeks. And we kept searching, but we never found the patch. What we we realized that, hey, we could use this as a secret code that we could use around in front of our teachers, our parents, cops, nobody knew what we're talking about. So we just dropped the Louis part, and used for 20 as our own secret little code. It was a you know, a private little joke. That's all it was. That's

Ronjini Joshua: 7:21

crazy. And now, like we

Unknown: 7:23

had about 100 other private jokes that we had.

Ronjini Joshua: 7:27

Well, I imagine I imagine but nobody, that nobody cared about those ones.

Unknown: 7:32

It's just the tip of the iceberg. Not all our jokes made it into national and international consciousness. We had about we put about maybe 35 of those jokes and what they're about onto our website, which is 420 waldos. com. They're all funny as hell yeah. They're all jokes.

Ronjini Joshua: 7:49

That's so funny. Bullock. It's crazy. How something so simple and your personal story. I mean, you guys are, were you guys connected to the entertainment industry where you connect it to the media in any way. Like how did that happen? Like how did how did it get so like now internationally recognized? It's such a big deal, and it really carries so much weight. I can't imagine you guys would have ever thought that happened? Well, what happened?

Unknown: 8:14

We didn't realize we were creating history at the time. Yeah, it's having fun. That's all we were doing with our little secret code. And the way it's spread, you know, our younger brothers and lower classmates they you know, heard it from us. They carried it on for many years. As well as you can tell him about mark. Of course, we went off to college. I went up to Southern California and people from all over the state all over the country were there so they picked up on it and took took it. took it home with them. We have this I'll get into that later. We have this big 420 artpiece a flag in my dorm room and other people like once that they picked up on it. We had a bunch of connections to the Grateful Dead. We were always around them and the dead the dead communities worldwide. Yeah, they picked up on it from us. While though mark and his dad handled real estate needs for the dead. The dead were centered in Centerville, California. That's where we live inside of Ohio. That was the center of their organization. And they all lived in Marion County. So while though Mark's father, lots of real estate needs, you have an organization that big you need office space, you need places to store equipment, you need places to rehearse, everybody in the whole debt that band members nobody in the organization was making money they buying homes in the Marine county hills. So Mark, Mark's dad would find them in their homes and then when you find them their homes, they go out on tour, they need people to babysit their animals and their houses. So Mark and us would get jobs babysit in their houses and his dad always had us he take us we always on the guest list backstage so we go to winter Your land this place in San Francisco. It was an old skating rink, a huge old skating rink and we were backstage hanging with, you know, the Grateful Dead. But the other connection came in 1975. The Grateful Dead took a hiatus from touring for about nine months and my brother Patrick has was good friends with Phil last for like 50 years. And in 75 Phil said, Hey Pat, I want to have a couple bands Can you manage them and the two bands were called to lose to truck I take on too loosely track and another band called C stones and pat hired me to be a roadie in the band. And Pat and I were using for 20 backstage at these shows with with Phil getting high with Phil and guys like David Crosby and Terry Haggerty and many other musicians. And the, you know, the dead head set, you know, the roadies, and the groupies caught on to this as it spread. Those guys thought it was kind of funny as we brought it up, and it spread through the dead community. And years later, in 19. I think it was 91. Steve Blum from High Times Magazine. He was the editor. I think he was the editor at that time, or I think it was anyway is he was at a Grateful Dead concert over at Oakland Coliseum in 91. And he saw a flyer that says come join us for a 420 celebration on the top of Mount Tam on April 20. Okay, so so they publish that story and i times really glommed on to that, and they started using for 20 a lot. And then there was the other connection was with Larry Steve, go ahead and tell them about Larry. Larry, which which good Larry Schwartz what connection? Well, how he? Well, Larry saw Oh, okay, okay. All right. All right. All right. Sorry, Jay. Well, one day, Steve. Yeah, one day and it was about 9798. Larry called me up one day, I'm I'm in my car, he goes, Hey, this 420 thing. It's taken off. It's all over the place. There's hats, there's shirts, there's, there's all this starting to see all this commercial usage of it. And people still think that for 20 is a police go that's the most you know, common common misconception. Yeah, and I know it's not a police code. I mean, there is no police code in the California Penal Code system or anywhere else, even related to 420. It's all if it's transporting weed, if it's selling weed note possessing that, whatever it is, that's always like five, six digit codes, separated by a decimal point has none and none of them are for 20. So we already knew that. And then there's the other weird thing to or there's 420 chemical constituents. today. There's just so many theory Bob Dylan's up for Tony song or something about 420 had nothing to do with our bottle. Yeah, Bob Dylan said his song had nothing. Oh, rainy day women. 80 women. Yeah, that that was a multiplying numbers, and it comes out for everything. But so I had written a letter, I worked up a letter to High Times. And he said, it's not a police code. It's not the time, whatever, Jerry Garcia whatever it was, yeah. theories. I said, we started back in 1971 in high school. And here's the whole story. And the editor in chief Steve hogger at the time said, Hey, this looks like somebody said you guys have physical proof. I go Yeah, we have lots of physical evidence proof that we were using for 20 before case before anybody who knew what it was. So he flew out to San Francisco we spent a weekend we showed him all our several pieces of physical evidence proof and that was kind of the start of it. And then he went immediately on ABC News and like, Hey, I found the real beginnings

Ronjini Joshua: 14:04

that's it I mean, that is like I'm a PR person. So from my perspective, I feel like that's like such an amazing guerilla marketing campaign even though you guys weren't marketing anything it just like that's the first like thing I've heard that's been like, like a truly viral if you want to talk about you know, YouTube, YouTube virality or social media morality. This is like a really cool experiment of social morality of like just how you kind of penetrated the market and then it became something that now is owned by anybody who loves cannabis. So it's really interesting. I like it's such a cool it's such a cool testament to kind of social marketing. It's so

Unknown: 14:43

great that we had so many all these different pieces of physical evidence. Yeah,

Ronjini Joshua: 14:48

yeah. What what is what is that evidently

Unknown: 14:50

a letter down at San Diego State. It was I wrote him a letter and told him about me being a roadie for Phyllis bands, and I You know, I told him I said, Hey, I'm getting high with David Crosby and Phil and, and, and I made 20 bucks last night man is a doorman, you know? And, and I rolled Steve a joint up, and I stamped it down and I put it in the letter. And at the end of the letter, I said, here's a little for 20 for your weekend.

Ronjini Joshua: 15:23

Night. Oh,

Unknown: 15:24

so we have the letter. It's, it's it's, you know, dated early 70s. Yeah. And, and every it has referenced before 20 decades before anybody knew what it was. Then I have a friend who went to Israel to live in a kibbutz and he was not happy. There's no way there. So he's writing me letters with international post stamps, saying, I'm upset. There's no for 20 here. Gotcha. And then and then one of our which we have again, we keep all this evidence in a big giant vault. That is where the vault is located. It's it more 20 Montgomery Street. And then there's this this gal Patty, we call her the Betsy Ross of the waldos. She heard about all our adventures and all our air for 20. And all our other cliches and sayings and stuff we made up and she had to do an art project for art class, she decided to make this really cool batik like for 20 flag, or 20, which is on our website and find on the web as a picture of a marijuana leaf behind it and stuff like that. And we still have that flag. And then she wrote me a letter with a 17th postmark. How's the for 20 flag?

Ronjini Joshua: 16:36

There's so many times that those letters probably could have gone into the trash. So

Unknown: 16:41

yeah, we've got them in the hall, and then the flags in the vault. That's it. That's gonna be in like the Smithsonian someday. Yeah. There's so many times we could have thrown away. It's not that we wanted to save things. We were just too lazy to throw them away.

Ronjini Joshua: 16:57

Yeah, no, I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's like such a, this is a very serendipitous thing where you guys were able to prove all these things. So it's very, very cool. Have

Unknown: 17:07

one of our buddies, the school newspaper, you know, they always have a question, man. Yeah, so question, man, school newspaper, went to one of our buddies and said, Hey, if you could say anything to the graduating class, say, and our buddy said for 20. And of course, we have the original newspaper with 1970s that's sitting in the wall to Wow, multiple pieces of evidence.

Ronjini Joshua: 17:30

Well, I mean, I think this is such a good segue, we're gonna we're gonna segue into the journey here. And I this is kind of the reason I wanted to talk to you guys in particular is obviously your, your connection to deep roots to like, something that's become an international phenomenon. But also, like, you know, a lot of the stuff that we talk about in this podcast are how people have affected the cannabis industry, how it's affected them, and how it affects business and how also just like, you know, the importance and impact of it in people's lives as we're moving into, like a federal legal situation. So I think one of the things I wanted to ask you guys is really like, you know, becoming known for this. And this is a stigma problem that a lot of people have or are worried about as, like, they get into cannabis. We've I talked to someone the other day, and she's like, Well, I didn't want to do anything in cannabis because I was worried that nobody else would hire me after so this is this is a big challenge. Stigma is a huge challenge for us. And I want to know, like, you know, how has it affected you guys in your personal life as you've been getting jobs? Like, at some point, you were known for this 420 thing? And how did you How has it affected your professional life? And, you know, it wasn't legal when you guys were when you guys were doing this? So Well,

Unknown: 18:51

to begin with, you know, the other three guys besides Steven Steven, I came out with this, you know, back, you know, the articles in 98. But the other guys didn't want their names published because they family man, and they're paranoid, you know, with the stigma of being associated with marijuana. But they, we all came out, they came out in 2012. When we we had another article in I think it was the Huffington Post Steve. I don't remember which one of the Yeah, anyway, they came out and they, you know, since then, we've all been out, you know, even the originals with our full names, and the other three guys came out back then, a lot of times we used to have our faces blurred, or they change our voices.

Ronjini Joshua: 19:43

Like, like you guys are some some mischievous, like,

Unknown: 19:46

witness protection program. It's predicted Yeah, you know, one of the main changes in my entire life when I just saw just a phenomenal shift. I have that As a specialty finance company, we finance businesses with special niche lenders and business. For years, my my earlier business partner would say, don't talk about it. It's bad for business. Yes, anything we don't want people to know it's bad for business. And we were doing an interview here, interviewing there. And then all of a sudden, I remember what year it was. Look it up, because I have the article posted on our website, one year, the Wall Street Journal, call me up. And they said, there are so many businesses that are using the 420 thing in marketing, I the names of the business and marketing. It's just a huge thing now. And we'd like to show how big it is. And that people in the normal business world, normal kind of straight, seemingly straight business, people are using this map. So they interviewed me. And I was at a conference, kind of in the lending industry, down in Southern California. And it the article came out on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Of course, they had to have a picture of me in a tie. Because they wanted that. So it came out. I was on the front page, and they put it on the doorstep of every room at the hotel.

Ronjini Joshua: 21:14

Oh my god. Yeah, I've seen that before. Yeah, okay, yeah.

Unknown: 21:17

And then I go down to the conference hall. And all of a sudden, just out of the blue. Every bank president was my new best friend. And I had no no idea how many people were in the closet about it. They were telling me like their their wives or elementary school teachers they used to every night to get to sleep and all this stuff. That just changed everything dramatically. And all of a sudden, everybody in the industry is cool to have to know me with that association. I've had customers stay with me because they just think that's cool.

Ronjini Joshua: 21:45

Yeah. Yeah. So something you thought might like or even that your partner thought might be such a detriment ended up being like, oh, everyone's kind of doing this quietly.

Unknown: 21:56

Yeah, right. I just kind of snowballed from there and there and we just did a huge interview for this for 20. Yeah, what do you what are you waiting for with Forbes? You know, they did a whole thing. They they liked the interview so much. They did a little video and stuff. So no, it's it's mushrooms.

Ronjini Joshua: 22:15

Good. Yeah. No, that I mean, that's good to hear. I mean, it's good to hear that you're a I mean, you're able to kind of give people a little bit more confidence in in that in that sex that area, because they probably were pretty quiet about it before that people are so quiet about it today. I mean, let's let's be honest.

Sheldon: 22:34

How did you guys avoid the scrutiny of the police being like the center of attention at this point?

Unknown: 22:42

Amen. Recently, or before before? Oh, we we there were so many times that we almost got busted, and we wiggle out of every one of them back in the early 70s. You know, smoking weed was a crime. Yeah, you could go to jail for 10 years for having a join in some states. Yeah. So we're always you know, looking over our shoulders. We were like underground Desperado. Dope, smoking, hippies, you know, level of paranoia. How much adrenaline? We went through our systems, you know, every every week of the year, avoiding and hiding and everything right. You have no idea what people have no idea what it was. Yeah. I mean, there was one time when we were we decided we're going to go down to the tonight show in 1974. Right. So we hop in Steve's car, and we brought a high school friend, this young woman. What was your name again, Steve. Laura, Laura. So we're driving down, heading towards LA and we're down in San Luis Obispo. And we're smoking some joints and listening to the stereo. And all of a sudden Steve says, put it out. The cops are behind this. So there's a motorcycle cop following us and then and then we're throwing the doobies out the windows with the rubies. The windows were all rolled up so they're bouncing back with smoke,

Ronjini Joshua: 24:08

oh shit.

Unknown: 24:09

another minute later, we notice a cop car in our left and then a minute later there's one on the right and then there's one in front of us and they're pulling us all over to the side of the road.

Ronjini Joshua: 24:18

Oh no.

Unknown: 24:19

sitting there in a cloud of smoke with like five cop cars and a motorcycle cop and they come up to the window with their guns drawn. And we're freaking out. Steve rolls down the window and the cop says I'd like to see your driver's license all of you so we will Okay Here they are. The captains anything about the smoker the week. He takes the licenses he goes back to his car. He sits there for about 20 minutes and runs checks on all of us and we're just freaking out. Yeah, yeah. And he comes back to the cars is okay you can go and it was so why did you stop us tail since the SLA. The Symbionese liberation You know army and this young woman was Patty Hearst with you. Wow. So we missed it we're gonna miss our time tonight your windows so what did you tell the cops need was Johnny Carson was the big guy at that time. I just want to say I just said cop. You know you deleted you goof now we're gonna miss Johnny Carson. I was perturbed

Ronjini Joshua: 25:22

Yeah, you were mad. He's like, Okay. Yeah, that is crazy. Wow. So like the the scariest? Well, maybe not as scary as but one of the encounters that wasn't even about you was you got so paranoid about it all the time. Well, tell us a little bit more about I mean, what have you guys been doing? I mean, obviously, this for 20 kind of social thing is more of like a PSA. I imagine it's more of a side thing. Unless you guys are building something more out of it. But you know, as far as like what you guys ended up doing in your careers in your lives, like how did that affect the direction that your life has taken? Yeah.

Unknown: 26:10

Well, all of us have different careers. Larry Waldo Larry Schwartz is a in printing and he does design and market is a photographer's assistant for high school. years. commercial photography, commercial photography, Jeff works in the wine industry. I worked as a cameraman field producer for CNN for 20 years. And one funny story I have is a reporter. I work I never told anybody at CNN about this, right? So I kept the the Siri as a secret for so long. On Facebook a couple years ago, a reporter I used to work with for 20 days saw the article and stories about us and he says, you know, you never know who you're going to you've been working with or who they really are until you really discover who they are like, like the guy that carried the flag up Evo Jima or the guy who smoked a joint in sandersville High School.

Ronjini Joshua: 27:08

You're like, Huh,

Unknown: 27:11

Dave would tell me stories about being in the field like down in LA. Like, you know, your earthquakes. I don't remember what's the story to that he'd be there with the camera, CNN. They'd be like Connie Chung on his left side. And somebody's like, you know, the statue of Tom broke on his right side. And David be stoned out of his mind with the camera.

Ronjini Joshua: 27:31

Wow, that's so funny. That's so funny. I mean, I feel like yeah, you don't know. Maybe they were stoned to I mean, they probably weren't. But not on camera. But But yeah, you know,

Unknown: 27:42

I didn't make it a regular prak practice of getting stoned.

Ronjini Joshua: 27:45

Right? No, but i think i think that's that's such a interesting testament to just like society in general. What that what you're that guy said is that you never know who you're around or what they're doing. Like you don't know what people's private lives lives are like, and I think people have been in the closet for so long, you know, smoking or doing anything with cannabis, that right now as we talk about it more it's like always been such a secret that people are so afraid to even explore ideas of like a legal job in the industry. It's a big deal for people. That's why I'm so interested in seeing like, you know, how it's impacted you negatively or how it's impacted you positively and what maybe you would you guys would say to someone that is wanting to explore a career in this area. Obviously, Things are different now than it was when you guys were growing up what I do

Unknown: 28:43

in the realm of commercial lending, a lot of what we do has to do with law. Yeah, I spend 50% of my time with attorneys and contracts and stuff like that, as all these different things come at us as the waldos separate LLC, and things coming out as whether it's movie producers or beer, or beer producers are these things that come at us, you start going back and forth. Because I have the training from commercial lending. Yeah, we start going back and forth with people I'm already trained, nobody's gonna pull anything over. We, we ourselves, we go through these contracts and negotiations ourselves, word by word by word. Or even I have become experts at reviewing proposals and contracts. And the gods everybody's fighting for every single atom, of course. So that's what what we have done in the real world has come very become very useful in animals. Same thing with date, where we've done hundreds and hundreds of interviews. Yeah. And Dave's been around that. So we're a student media, student content, contracts a student and business and it's all come in useful.

Ronjini Joshua: 29:55

What about I mean, you guys were mentioning you guys are kind of like the managing partners. What about The other guys have they felt like they had a negative impact from their involvement in this? Obviously they kind of wanted to be a little bit more private about it, which is totally understandable. This is like entertainment industry one on one like having a private life. But do you think they've shied away with format from it to kind of detach themselves from that stigma?

Unknown: 30:21

No, I think they're in the last few years. They're all very proud to be associated with for 20 years, their kids, the kids are in high school. Yeah, our kids are in high school. And they're, they're proud of us. And you know, their friends are proud of it. They're really excited to to talk about it. Yeah. You know, we're basically or the kids know, we're kind of extended family. Yeah, you have to understand the waldos. We we've been friends. Well, I know Mark since I was in second grade. Wow. They Waldo mark and when? Dale, Larry went in junior high school, yeah, junior high school. So we go back, you know, 5560 years, and crazy. We all live near each other. We see each other all the time we talk on the phone every day. Yeah, we're there for every single family family event, whether it's weddings, bar, mitzvah mitzvahs, divorces, memorial services, everything. We've been kind of family and our kids know that there's kind of extended from the wives. You can imagine how wives can get that they've accepted. They knew what they got into when they were marrying waldos. Yeah,

Ronjini Joshua: 31:36

yeah, that's so funny. You guys are like a little collective. So I mean, it sounds like I mean, that's also really cool. I've you've kind of like a testament to friendship to you guys still being in touch and being so close and using it as a as a positive thing. What would you say to people who are like, you know, like, I think people are still trying to figure out how to norm make it normal? And I don't know, do you guys talk about it? You know, how do you practice? You know, for 28 years? I don't know, I don't know how to word it. But like, how? How do you normalize it with like, you having kids and having families and stuff like that?

Unknown: 32:18

Well, first of all, you know, we don't advocate smoking marijuana for children.

Ronjini Joshua: 32:24

Of course, of course. No, no. And

Unknown: 32:27

second of all, you know, it's worked for us,

Ronjini Joshua: 32:30

right?

Unknown: 32:32

Oh, wait, we've been able to wait all responsible, I have jobs and houses and pay the mortgage. I've been able to do everything in life successfully. I mean, I know some people can't handle it. They get carried away with it. But we've been able to do, you know, live normal, responsible life. And we're still you know, we still go on safaris is we came up with safaris before we you know, even got into this 420 thing. We were the guys underneath the football stands on Friday night. Going What the hell are we doing here? While we're smoking? Jimmy? Yeah. So, you know, we wanted to do something more interesting than just going to parties and hanging out on a Friday night at a football game. So, you know, one year, Steve was reading a Rolling Stone magazine. I'll let him tell you about that. Well, there was just a very, very first holograms were being developed. This is like 1971 back then. Okay. I mean, you you grew up with all one rat. That's all I've ever known. But back then, it was just total science fiction, a three dimensional image made I like lepa hell. So there's these scientists down in Silicon Valley are down that way. Working on a 24 seven, I like well go visit the scientists if they're working on it. 24 seven, and I did and it was a lot of fun. And we got stoned. And when I got the waldos Next week, we got stoned, went back to visit them. And each week we figured out some weird adventure to go on. We call them safaris. That's what day

Sheldon: 34:08

we we saw them on the website. Yeah. We

Unknown: 34:11

challenge each other each week to come up with a new Safari. We were you know we are out there we are seeker is looking for new, weird, interesting places to go and weird people to meet. So that was our challenge every every week to weird adventures and weird catchphrases.

Ronjini Joshua: 34:28

Yeah, that's really cool. I imagine you guys have run across especially now. A ton of really cool people. What has been like one incident that was a surprising incident that you kind of met someone that blew your mind.

Unknown: 34:46

I met Tommy Chong over the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam about 14 years ago. But I didn't even mention that about who you said hello to him in the elevator him and his wife and a very nice Got he was at the Cannabis Cup as a speaker there.

Ronjini Joshua: 35:03

Sure, of course, of course. What about what about you, Steve?

Unknown: 35:10

I know something weird about me. I ran into people all the time celebrities by myself. I don't know why they run into me or I run into them. It's like, I don't know what the thing is. God one day I ran into an I go story after story. One day, I'm driving by this little airport, a little private airport, like to watch planes. And I'm sitting there and I look over and Steve Perry from journey is sitting there in a field. Dave, what are you doing here? And he goes, I'm taking helicopter lessons and the instructor just took the helicopter and he flew off and he's gonna come back in a while. I'm sitting here. So I mean, I just started talking. Is there for half an hour talking with them. One time I was at a memory, you know, Andy Kaufman, the comedian. Yeah, yeah, that is, one day, Andy Kaufman and this guy, magician, Doug Henning. They're just they want to do a concert to raise money to teach Transcendental Meditation to prisoners in San Quentin. So I went to that show afterwards there was this party and I met this party up in this room there's like 30 people and all of a sudden like, every like people saw ghosts everybody in the room runs out and there's two people if you're a me and Andy Kaufman I'm there with them. Half an hour talking about this and egg story one day oh you know David Crosby from Crosby Stills Yeah, sure. I'm at a hotel on a in on Friday stay over because had a business appointment on Monday. I get wake up the parking lots empty bit the far corner of the parking lot there's a car where the garbage can and I go I get my car I go to throw something away. It's David Crosby from Crosby Stills Nash like David What are you doing here? He goes the tabloids they look through my garbage they find out everything about me so I come down here to throw my garbage away. Wow.

Ronjini Joshua: 36:58

That's your that's your tagline. It's so and so. What are you doing

Unknown: 37:02

here? I was just there first name like I'm buddies. Yeah, my name is a nice story and they just go on and on and on. There was another time I went to a show down in Calaveras County in 1987. It was the mountain air festival with a Grateful Dead and Santana. It was a three day concert and we went to the show the first couple days and Saturday after the show a friend of mine invited us up to a place called the Avery ranch up in Twain are up on the top of this mountain so you drive up this bumpy dirt road we got up there and we're hanging with the crew and partying a little bit and this is like a couple of hours after the show and all of a sudden this huge banana type helicopter lands in this huge meadow and the Grateful Dead all come tromping out so a little bit later on john my buddy john and i are walking around and we there there was a bunch of little cabins dotted all over this Meadow this huge flat metal on the top of the mountain we see Jerry Garcia sitting on the porch of one of these little cabins by himself on a rocking chair and we say hey Jerry How you doing? Would you like to smoke a joint he says yeah come on up. So we go up and we hang with Jerry we got high with him for like an hour it you know I told him hey if you guys were good Santana was really good any any jokingly started laughing He told us a story about how Carlos Santana used to sneak into the Fillmore all the time to learn how to play guitar from Jerry himself Jesus about that but so we hung with him we got a high smoked a few doobies and he just was totally cool with us and very nice and accepting and you know we walked away with a solid gold memory

Ronjini Joshua: 38:52

Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, like I think I think that's really cool to be able to have these opportunities but I don't know it sounds like you guys were just in a good place a great place at the right time for a lot of these. I don't know if it had a lot to do with being the the wall though the 420 waldos

Unknown: 39:09

know what kind of, well, just kind of explorer seekers I as Danny said, just to kind of individuals that like I said, we weren't spicoli and we just smoked weed and sat on a couch or something like that or just did idiotic thing. We weren't stupid stoners.

Ronjini Joshua: 39:25

Yeah. Well, what what kind of opportunities are you guys taking advantage of now, as as the group that kind of put this together? I imagine you have some really cool things. As you know, the industry is kind of moving forward and you have this legacy. Do you have any plans for what you guys are going to be doing next?

Unknown: 39:43

Well, you know, you say you're in a big company, studio there. Yes. Two years. Three years ago, we had a vape pen with a company called chemistry over and Oakland which was a very good success. And what we did is we donated all The profits 100% to the Drug Policy Alliance.

Ronjini Joshua: 40:06

Okay, great.

Unknown: 40:07

So and presently we just signed a deal we've, we've been renewed. What's it we renewed our deal we renewed our deal with lagunitas Brewery they make they've been making our our beer called Waldo special ale for the last 10 years.

Ronjini Joshua: 40:27

Oh, okay.

Sheldon: 40:28

I'm gonna I'm I tried I tried it a couple weeks ago on a friend's house. Yeah.

Ronjini Joshua: 40:31

Oh, is it okay, is it hoppy? I like hops.

Unknown: 40:35

Okay, very strong. It's a 11.7% alcohol. So it's almost like a barley wine. But

Ronjini Joshua: 40:42

I'm going to pick it up on the way home today.

Unknown: 40:46

They only produce it about a month or two before April 20. And from the story not be on the shelves, but you can get it in March and April next year. But they approached us after you know, they had success with other they had beers that they promoted with rock stars like Frank Zappa and in shamli process and asked us if we'd like to make a beer with them. And we said, Sure, like hell yeah. They invited us up to their brewery in Petaluma. And we picked out all the hops ourselves, getting these hops that smelled like marijuana, and you rub them together and smell them. And we picked the hops, and they've been making the beer for 10 years now. And we just renewed our contract with them another three year deal going forward. So making the beard the next three years and many more years to come. And for the first seven years, they said it cost them too much to make and promote, they couldn't pay us anything. And it was good just to be lol or whatever. It's good just to have a company of that size. Do a brand around this now and

Ronjini Joshua: 41:53

then it's nice for you guys to have it at your house. Do you know like, this is our beer

Unknown: 41:59

that would look good to any other potential people want to do any kind of branding round so we let it go for about seven years, but by the seventh year we said like we can't do this anymore.

Ronjini Joshua: 42:08

You gotta be making some money. Yeah, you got the money.

Unknown: 42:11

It just had a consent a legal precedent. Again, people can use our name and likeness without having to Okay, they started paying to some nominal amount for a couple years. We just came around for renewal and we said hey, we're still mentioned the media were a lot bigger now just for 20 thing growing from state to state in a million different ways. Yeah, we just renewed actually we got the approval yesterday. Did Yeah, it's a much better deal than in the past.

Ronjini Joshua: 42:35

Did you guys do anything around trademarking or anything like that?

Unknown: 42:40

People don't understand people come to us all the time. Did you trademark for 20 years should it create I don't think you can write I don't know if any have to explain to people you just can't trademark anything and everything around trademarks. You have to do it for a specific category like for 20 sunglasses. And then you have to use it in interstate trade and prove that you used it in interstate trade and there's a whole process so you have to do it for specific categories. And we well we did it for you know for 20 waldos for shirts and hats and stuff on our website. Dave, I can just all of a sudden do Hey, you guys had to do some for 20 snowblowers or one time utensils or Yeah, some gender neutral soup crackers. Ooh, and who knows these days with what you can do but no, we it's limited and there's a lot of process and procedure where we I was somebody sent me a phony thing. You get these all the time, but they want to get money for renewing your trademark. right but they they changed the date. So then I'm like, is my trademark really expiring? I've had to spend hours the other night figuring this stuff out. Yeah, we kind of kind of have a besides the fun of for 20 you kind of have a business to run here.

Ronjini Joshua: 43:50

Yeah, yeah, that's Yeah, I mean, I imagine. I mean, I think everybody should be cognizant of those types of things. You can't You can't trademark everything, but you can kind of form a plan around it. I guess. You can't just

Unknown: 44:02

trademark a number. So say I want everything for 20 that number

Ronjini Joshua: 44:08

belongs to all of us. Well, do you guys I mean, this is Laguna lagunitas. Oh my God. That lagunitas is a really cool i like opportunity. And it sounds like you guys have done some things. Do you have anything coming up that you're working on? Yeah. Now

Unknown: 44:27

people are coming at us with the NF T's and not everybody knows what NF yes are these called non fungible non fungible tokens

Ronjini Joshua: 44:36

not tokens

Unknown: 44:38

and for you know, people listening this don't know what it is. It's kind of like on a on a Bitcoin like format, they trade. You have a piece of art, if a piece of physical art it can be even a soundbite, it can be an offer a piece of art with that, backed by an experience, and people can I guess, bid basically and they own the digital form of it. That art so people want us to do these NF T's and we're working on that.

Ronjini Joshua: 45:04

That's a really cool idea. I think you should definitely look into that. Any, any brands in the future?

Unknown: 45:14

You come to us and we'll talk about I know, there's a bunch of people who have, you know, loosely and we're just so busy with our regular life. No, yeah, he's everything else. There's people who said they'd like to do you know, we'd brand but we just don't want we want to do everything right with quality. We just don't want to put our names on. Absolutely. We're at the stage of life. It's not going to change anything. We're already in our 60s Yeah, we're not like super gradient, we're going to jump over we want things to be quality if we're going to do them. So there's some things brewing out there with with marijuana, and cannabis. I think every celebrity in the world that got the idea like Oh, me, too, yes, everybody wanted to be calmer and everybody's gonna have a weed. I was saying the other day, I was surprised and all of a sudden, you can hear Tom Selleck is gonna have his brand to induce people to do is reverse mortgages or something like that. Oh, wow. Getting that crepe. No, that's not true. No, no, no, but it'll be funny. Yeah, that crazy that everybody every celebrity the world thinks they can have a week so it's getting I don't know that any celebrities weed has dominated. You know, Marley who was doing the brand I don't know they Willie Nelson's got a brand. Jerry Garcia has a weird I don't know, guys that, you know, nobody's dominated it's kind of spread out.

Ronjini Joshua: 46:40

Yeah. And it's more of like, hey, like people know that I smoked so I should have something it's I don't think it I don't think it's a well thought out like business plan. I mean, I'm sure it is. But you know, it's not. It's not a central focus for a lot of those guys. And it's just a kind of something they could put their name on. Right.

Unknown: 46:56

I agree. Well, Seth Rogen. He's getting a lot of shows every time pushing his new brand, but I don't know that that's in every store in America. I don't know.

Ronjini Joshua: 47:05

Yeah, no, Seth Rogan's brown houseplant that's been around for I think and since 2017 because he's Canadian You know, he got to he got on that market quite early. I think I think that is kind of the way to do it. He's done a really good job of putting together brand specialists to create something that he loves and he's very passionate about it I feel like that's a little bit different than like you know, when you have another like entertainer or celebrity that just kind of puts their name on something too It's like they're he's they're creating something I think from the ground up

Unknown: 47:38

Yeah, right. We're thinking about coming out with a pizza marijuana infusion

Sheldon: 47:45

that sounds that would be

Ronjini Joshua: 47:47

nice just kidding Yeah. Well I can see I can see it in the frozen already sauce It's out there the frozen food depart with a free frozen food section with your faces on it.

Sheldon: 47:58

And it's red and white so it fits the Waldo theme

Ronjini Joshua: 48:00

Yes, perfect. Well, is there anything that we haven't really I know you guys have so many stories and the stories that you probably told him stories you haven't told um, is there anything else that we kind of like Miss today?

Unknown: 48:13

Well, you know, our website Yeah, yeah, please there's hundreds of pages there of our stories and our background and our and our phrases and hundreds of interviews that we've done in media not only print but there there's there's podcasts and radio shows, I mean, all over the world even you know, a Canadian Broadcasting System in the book, we've done interviews with Italian magazines, Colombian magazine, Israeli magazines, crazy. So our website has a lot of not only just factual a lot of entertaining things we put a lot of funny videos that we found like there was listening to that show on they did a whole you know, movie studio 420 thing of people dancing around celebrating for 20 day I'm trying remember the name though is a trailer that Yeah, all that stuff's on our site. There's a lot of funny stuff to like out there.

Sheldon: 49:10

And for our viewers, that is for 20 Waldo,

Unknown: 49:13

Waldo, those four to zero Debbie AL do s comm that that's our site, we have to correct a lot of things. There's a lot of things that get twisted, like we had an interviewer twit, interviewing, so we're telling about Mark's father, providing you know, real estate needs for the Grateful Dead. Uh huh. We do the interview. And then we look at the thing gets printed up and all of a sudden, it's like, Mark's father was a gardener for Jerry Garcia. We got a marijuana. I think a lot of interviewers and stuff, they do the interview straight but then they go home and they get the thing up and all of a sudden their mind starts wandering so we got to keep a grip on this media thing. Make sure everything's accurate so that's our definitive accurate sight of everything that's out

Ronjini Joshua: 50:05

yes some people tend to get creative and and with your guys with your story it's it's easy to kind of go in the wrong direction and start coming up with some fun facts of their own I'm sure

Unknown: 50:18

the wall those are if you got together with all five waldos in person all pretty funny constantly joking the wall those humors are common common ground between us I can get on the phone anytime morning I can call up Mark three in the morning and instantly humor and comedy out of him. He'll walk up to anybody and everybody in the world and start joking with him I don't care even the scariest looking people he just immediately disarms people with humor. So that's our really our common bond all those crack each other up all the time.

Ronjini Joshua: 50:52

Yeah, I think this is so nice. And I mean, it's been a pleasure to get to know your story a little bit more and, and talk to you. So thank you guys so much for the time you gave us today. I hope this helps people understand like they you know, I think what I got out of it was, you know, well, especially now. Stigma is just, it's just kind of like a passing phase. I think like you said, you know, people notice that you were on the cover of that article, and they actually appreciated it. So I think honesty, authenticity is kind of the best thing here. That's what you've taught me here.

Unknown: 51:28

It's a totally different changed world. It's mind boggling. Driving through Oakland. There'll be a big huge billboard from ease you know, 420 right on there. It's a huge I mean, it's amazing to see this thing break open the way it has.

Ronjini Joshua: 51:44

Yeah, I imagine you guys like have a little sense of beaming pride inside as you're as you're driving through these things.

Unknown: 51:52

We think it's funny your joke here we created

Ronjini Joshua: 51:55

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

Unknown: 51:58

They don't wait. Don't get caught up in self importance. We think it's funny we do we laugh about it every day.

Ronjini Joshua: 52:04

Well, it's been incredible. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. And this has been awesome. I appreciate the stories.

Unknown: 52:12

You're welcome. And happy 420

Ronjini Joshua: 52:16

Thank you. Thank you. The Green Room podcast is brought to life by green seed PR, a cannabis green tech focused PR agency and a dedicated production team of editors mixers and show Booker's. A huge thank you to the vessel team for providing their studio for our recording. Don't forget to subscribe and share the greenroom podcast with friends, colleagues and family. That way you'll never miss an episode and we can keep the lights on. If you're feeling extra generous, please leave us review on your favorite podcast listening platform. You can also find us on Instagram at Green seed PR and to the live video versions of all of our podcasts on YouTube. Would you like to be on the guests on the show or do you have a great guest referral. Awesome. Submit your guests at Green cpr.com slash the hyphen green hyphen group. Thanks for listening and be well