By Dan Ketchum
The year is 1971. It’s a school day, at 4:20 p.m. Five teens, dodging the jocks and drama, meet by a statue of Louis Pasteur at San Rafael High School. They light up. Rinse and repeat until those teens — Steve Capper, Mark Gravich, Jeffrey Noel, Dave Reddix, and Larry Schwartz — realize that they want more out of their high. They challenge each other to embrace new adventures, which they call “safaris.”
The tradition started in San Rafael has become the time-honored holiday of 4/20, and we invite you to create your own safari on that holy day. Our selection of 4/20 party ideas will elevate both your party and your high, whether it’s a low-key night in or high-key holiday for you and your crew.
1. Change Your Perspective
Sometimes, a change of space is all you need to take your 4/20 party idea from a solid weekend to a legendary event. Sites like Peerspace (think of it as Airbnb for parties and events) offer everything from neon dance floors to industrial-chic warehouses to wild, pop art-inspired Instagram havens and everything in-between. Try booking a poolside rooftop party to (literally) elevate your 4/20 gathering this year.
2. Take a Forest Bath…
To have a truly happy 4/20, you’ll want to embrace activities that work in tandem with your favorite highs. Few activities go so well with your favorite vape pen as the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku. In literal translation, that means “taking in the forest atmosphere,” a form of eco-therapy that combines forest walks and meditation with disconnecting from our techno-drenched world. Leave screens behind, absorb every sight, scent, and sound, and walk as slowly as you breathe.
2. …or a Sound Bath
For another meditative new tradition that’s as applicable indoors as it is outdoors, absorb a little sound healing this April. Like most traditions, you can get as casual or as structured with it as you like — many cities offer professional, guided classes, or you can simply pair your meditation, tai chi or yoga with the sounds of Tibetan singing bowls, soothing bells, crystal bowls or gongs at home. Sound baths may help reduce anxious feelings and decrease your heart rate, a sensation you can enhance with strains like Herijuana or Butter OG.
3. …or Get Drenched in Sound
For another meditative new tradition that works indoors and out, absorb a little sound healing this Spring. You can get as casual or as structured with it as you like — many cities offer professional, guided sound baths, or you can simply pair your meditation, tai chi or yoga with the sounds of Tibetan singing bowls, soothing bells, crystal bowls, or gongs at home. Sound baths may help reduce anxious feelings and decrease your heart rate, a sensation you can enhance with strains like Herijuana or Butter OG.
4. Go Formal
Gone are the days when weed culture was doomed to lava lamps and bongs shaped like dragons. (You can check out the new stoner aesthetic in our handy guide.) Let’s embrace that to the maximum. Send out embossed paper invites, set your longest table with your fanciest napkin folds, light the candelabras, plan a munchies-friendly menu, put on the Alice Coltrane, and set a dress code that demands the finest finery. Your friends look great, don’t they?
5. Perfect Your Pairings
Food is an essential part of the holiday slate, and why should 4/20 be different? For a mindful springs-giving feast, bring the munchies out of the basement, focusing on crafting new, exciting, or intricate dishes and infusing them or pairing them with cannabis.
We have a full guide for pairing cannabis with food, but our top tip is to pair key flavors with the dominant terpenes in your favorite strains. Think marrying citrus fruit notes with limonene terpenes, herbaceous dishes with pinene terps, and spicy flavors with caryophyllene-heavy flower. Get down in the kitchen to make this one a happy 4/20 not just for you, but for your full-bellied guests. Check out our guides for the best munchies to pair with Sativa for more inspo.
6. Take a Day Trot
Call it a hike or a forest bath, getting in touch with nature is never a bad idea for a happy 4/20. To add a communion with a majestic living creature to your regular communion with nature, lift your 4/20 celebrations into the saddle this time around. Especially for first-timers, enlist a horse-savvy friend, trainer, or guide service and focus on clear-headed highs and gentle trails. And don’t forget to bring a few carrots or apples to make a new friend.
7. Bring the Drive-In Home
Nowadays, a solid digital projector starts in the sub-$100 range, which means it’s time to take the home theater — and your closet friends — outside. Pair your strains with whiskey or cocktails and tapas, and pair those flavors with your cinema.
Think outside the “marijuana movie” box and look to films that are naturally enhanced by your highs. We recommend firing up that Criterion Channel subscription and looking into Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love, Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, or Prince’s concert-movie classic, Sign o’ the Times. If you prefer a documentary, you can also check out our favorite nature docs to watch while high for a bit of additional inspiration.
8. Stargaze in Style
Since time immemorial, humans have paired Indica with starry skies and long ponderings. Take stargazing from “incidental” to “active” this year with a bit of solicitous structure. Whether you just direct your own two eyes skyward, take a camping trip to the star-drenched desert, or invest in a hobbyist telescope, choose a clear spot as free of light pollution as you can get. Use free astronomy apps Star Walk 2 and SkySafari or books like Terrence Dickinson’s Nightwatch and Krupp’s Beyond the Blue Horizon to help you get oriented with the cosmos.
9. Create, Together
Speaking of stargazing, Carl Sagan once said that cannabis “helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.” And if that doesn’t sound like a state of mind in which to make good art, then please tell us what is. Programs like Puff Pass and Paint help facilitate and organize group art nights all across the U.S., so you can leave the 4/20 party ideas to them. Or, you can host your own weed and paint night right at home.
10. Just. Listen.
Sound and smoke go together like the moon and the stars, but there’s at least one 4/20 party idea that seems to have been lost to time: the listening party. The rise of Spotify has relegated these events to industry-only release parties, but it’s time to take back the soundwaves.
Break out the Houdini Indica, dust off the hi-fi, and invite your guests to take turns sharing meaningful tracks from their favorite vinyl records. Share, smoke, laugh, commune, and just listen.
11. Smoke Trees, Plant Trees
Celebration on its own is valid, but a celebration that fights climate change is even better. You can do it flying solo, you can do it with your partner, you can do it in a group, but something about planting a tree on 4/20 just feels right, doesn’t it?
The Arbor Day Foundation recommends planting in your community, in a national forest, or just in your front yard, while The Wildlife Trusts offers detailed instructions on how to make throwable seed bombs from compost, water, and powdered clay if you want to get a little more active. This 4/20, make flowers while you smoke flower.
Dan Ketchum is a Dallas-based freelance lifestyle, fashion, health, and food writer with more than a decade of experience. He’s been fortunate enough to collaborate and publish with companies such as FOCL, LIVESTRONG, Vitagenne, Reign Together, Out East Rose, SFGate, The Seattle Times, and many more.