It's down to the wire for the final permit approval to make Outside Lands possibly the biggest music festival in the U.S. ever to allow both on-site sales and consumption of legal marijuana.
The festival launched its Grass Lands area last year, to accompany its Beer Lands and Wine Lands areas, though no consumption or sales were allowed there — it was simply a place for cannabis companies to host marketing events. But this year, the weed community has been breathlessly waiting for word that Grass Lands will offer actual grass this year, marking the first time a major music festival in the country has done so. As SF Weekly reports, final word won't be coming until "mid-week," meaning that vendors will be scrambling to pull their offerings together. But the company that would handle the payment systems, Blaze, is ready to roll with 55 point-of-sale registers once they get the green light.
As Leafly noted earlier this summer, this is a brave new world for legal weed and concerts in California, which is currently the only state among legal-weed states that allows for licenses for cannabis at events. The first music festival to do so, as far as we know, was last month's Northern Lights fest in Piercy, California. The EDM fest four hours north of SF launched the Tree Lounge, a chill consumption space that featured cannabis retailers — and part of the state's licensing requires that alcohol consumption be kept separate from any cannabis consumption area.
Vendors/exhibitors confirmed for Outside Lands include Sublime, which makes pre-rolls as well as a new line of cannabis-infused ice pops, upscale vape brand Pax Labs, and Flow Kana, which will be repeating an activity from last year letting guests carve bongs out of fruits and vegetables.
Sublime CEO Alex Fang tells SF Weekly that he sees this Outside Lands as "an opportunity to make history," but of course the city's Office of Cannabis and the California Bureau of Cannabis Control both still have to grant their OKs. And the festival begins in three days, at noon on Friday, some time is ticking.
