Herb Your Enthusiasm
The Green Angels aren’t irreplaceable.
Like finding a new hairdresser or figuring out the best place to do your laundry in a new neighborhood, finding a weed guy is done by word of mouth. For years, I was an indefatigable mooch. When offered weed by a friendly stranger or a regular person or someone I hung out with on a regular basis, I never turned it down, and until fairly recently, I never bought my own. Part of the ethos of smoking weed is a tacit understanding of karma — the universe will eventually pay you back in kind for all the joints you smoked with new friends in the corner of someone’s dank basement apartment or in the backyard of a bar that’s no longer open.
Even though weed is not legal in New York, getting it is relatively easy. The first person I ever bought from with regularity only sold edibles — delicious chocolate-covered toffees and brittles. She was the roommate of a friend of a friend and was only halfway reliable. Our routine was the same every time. I’d go to the now-defunct breakfast taco place she used to work at, buy an iced coffee, and I’d get a brown paper bag in return. I stopped using her services after I spent an hour and a half waiting in a pissy summer rain on her doorstep, texting and peering down the street, chain smoking until I got cold and went home.
Edibles were too fussy for regular use and also way too strong — a fact I realized after consuming one, heading to a food festival in Prospect Park and becoming so overwhelmed with the options that my friend and I had to leave to take a very long nap. My next guy was a friend’s college roommate who sold garbage weed in great quantities for cheap from his Bushwick basement apartment. That worked for a while. The last time I saw him, he was glue gunning sequined pot leaves to a tank top in preparation for Burning Man. For a while, my boss arranged for her weed dude to come during work hours; I’d walk into her office under the premise of asking her a question, then slip cash onto her desk and walk away.
I wanted something easier and Green Angels, a weed-delivery service reportedly staffed by “models” was the answer. “It’s all hot girls,” said my friend who recommended them. “They’re really nice. And awesome.” Their methods were exactly as reported by the GQ piece that supposedly brought an end to their empire. I was never to mention product in our communications, texting “Wanna hang out?” instead. Once contact was established, they’d send a text with a specific time window. In the two years that I used their services, they were never late.
The “models” I was promised were a lie, though maybe all the women that came through were models and I just don’t know. Usually it was very pretty and talkative young women who were better dressed than I will ever be, always very nice and friendly and normal. Occasionally they’d send a man, but when they did I’d always get a warning text first: “Just FYI, it’s a boy angel this time :)”. A beautiful, French, possibly model toting a skateboard sold me a bag each of Green Crack and Blue Dream, followed me into my bedroom when I went to get my wallet, but stayed at a respectful distance.
Wowed by the ease with which marijuana was being delivered to my house in a reliable fashion, like a pizza or something from Amazon Prime, I recommended the Angels to everyone I talked to — part of my penance as weed-mooch for the majority of my years. I was an excellent brand ambassador, talking up a service that needed no extra help. For friends who lived out of Green Angels’s delivery range — north of 125th St. in Manhattan and most of Crown Heights and Flatbush — I served as a middleman, rattling off a list of strains and products when the delivery came, sorting through what was available and arranging discreet drop-offs. I met a friend at a Duane Reade near Times Square and passed her a cigarette pack, empty but for an eighth of Cherry Pie, while we looked at body wash; another friend met me outside of a bar on her way home from walking her dog. It was the least I could do.
A few Sundays after the GQ article came out, I realized I was running low. I sent them my usual “Hey! Wanna hang out?” text and waited. The message I had sent was green instead of the reassuring cerulean of an iMessage. Something was up. I tried again. No one ever responded, and after an hour or so, I found another delivery service and was no worse for the wear.
lol GQ killed the New York media world’s weed hookup, @joepompeo reports
It’s not hard to find weed in New York, or any other drug for that matter. For the Green Angels to be the single (or even dominant) supply chain for a group of people who perform intelligence in a semi-public forum every day is an astonishing assertion, but if it’s true it also means that the hordes seeking weed are simply not looking hard enough.
The writer of this piece wishes to remain anonymous and also wishes that you don’t do a story about their new connection, because it’s a pain in the ass to keep finding friends to vouch for them.