The problem with Seattle Center’s pot party

Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show

This just doesn’t sit right with me. We found out over the weekend that a guy has gotten a permit to have a huge marijuana party on the first anniversary of the legal weed in our state. On Dec. 6, there will be a huge pot party at the Seattle Center – where the Fun Forest used to be.

Let me explain why I’m so conflicted by this: I voted for the legalization of marijuana. I believe that marijuana is far less harmful to society than alcohol. Now, I’ve never smoked weed in my entire life. But I’m confident that 500 people cordoned off is no more damaging than hundreds of people sitting in a beer garden at the Seattle Center. Or people having a drink at happy hour a block away from the Seattle Center. They’re just all numbing themselves with a drug – like the weed smokers.

There is a Seattle public school in the Armory at the Seattle Center, so we should ask ourselves, do we want to have a pot party at the Seattle Center?

But here’s why I’m conflicted – even though I support the freedom of people to do what they please as long as they’re not harming anyone else, and as much as I think weed is no more damaging to society than alcohol, and probably less so – I also recognize that a group of people that would celebrate the anniversary of the legalization of marijuana, for the most part, those are losers.

(Yes, there may be exceptions, but for the most part – they’re losers.)

Anybody who is so into weed that your entertainment is to go to a pot party at the Seattle Center – for the most part those are losers.

But I’m also sad just because of the evolution of the Seattle Center.

When I was a kid, the Fun Forest was a magical place. And I know it got decrepit over the years, but if you had a few extra bucks as a kid and you could go fly the Flight to Mars and the Zipper, The Wild Mouse, The Log Flume. Maybe you could walk down the midway and see if you could knock over the milk bottles with the ridiculously cushioned softball, or break the balloon with a dart, or spray the ink on the spinning cardboards so you could make the psychedelic print that you could take home.

It was a great family place. And I know that’s hard to imagine because families really have fallen out of favor in Seattle. That’s not a subjective statement – that’s an objective statement. We’re the second most childless city in the country; only San Francisco has fewer children per capita that Seattle (among major cities.) We are a very family un-friendly place. I do think that this kind of symbolically represents the transformation of our city, from a place where kids and families lived and where kids and families would occasionally go down to the Seattle Center to have some somewhat wholesome times.

Now, the Seattle Center becomes a place where 500 (mostly losers,) celebrate the legalization of pot, something I supported, but something I’d never take time out of my day to celebrate.

It’s the evolution of the city, and I’m confident and comfortable in expanding liberty and freedom. But I’m equally uncomfortable with this transmogrification of our city and how we’ve become a city where we just kind of spit in the face of traditional values.

And I guess I did as well with my vote.

But to me, freedom is the most important thing we can support.

That’s what’s going on at the Seattle Center; it’s a celebration of increased freedom and liberty and it’s also a demonstration of how that increased freedom and liberty can take a wholesome place and turn it into a place that is not at all family-friendly anymore.

Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show

AK