Several thousand marijuana enthusiasts still showed up for a supposedly “canceled” 4/20 at Hippie Hill, and we’ve got pictures and video of Saturday’s weed-smoking shenanigans at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
San Francisco's long-running 4/20 weed-smoking party at Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park was officially canceled this year, with organizers citing city budget cuts and sponsorship woes. But you try telling these thousands of cannabis lovers that 4/20 was canceled, as somewhere between 3,000-5,000 peaceful revelers just showed up anyway, as seen in the video below, taken right at the magic moment of 4:20 pm on 4/20/2024.
There was no proper countdown to 4:20, which there traditionally was when the event had a large permitted stage. And the crowd was nowhere near the size of the usual 20,000-some people who typically show up for this event.
But with the entire 4/20 crowd concentrated just on Hippie Hill, a few DJs still provided smaller-scale entertainment.
And while it was technically an unpermitted, rogue event like it used to be back before 2017, it was very calm and peaceful, without the illegal alcohol vending, fights, and littering that marred this event in those earlier years.
SF Rec and Parks tried to discourage/replace the 4/20 celebration with a kickball, volleyball, and cornhole event called Peace, Love & Volo Field Day Festival, which closed off the flat areas of Robin Williams Meadow to people who’d registered to play. But there was a pretty noticeable crowd size difference between the two events.
This often made for a striking split screen between the concentration of people in the kickball area, and those celebrating 4/20 on the hill.
This was presented via signage that Hippie Hill was a “Spectator’s Area” for supposedly watching kickball and volleyball. But in reality, that’s just where all of the pot-smokers were sitting and chilling.
We’d heard there was going to be substantial volunteer support provided to this event from a “magic mushrooms” church called Church of Ambrosia. Above we see that church’s founder, Pastor Dave Hodges, who prefers to call it a “non-denominational, interfaith church that focuses on the use of Entheogenic Plants.” And indeed, they came through with water and additional porta-potties.
“We brought 10,000 bottles of water,” Hodges told SFist. “We were already planning on bringing a bunch of water. And then when the event got canceled, that’s when we were like, we need to do more than that. We need to at least have some medics out there, and we need to be the ‘Stoner Safety’ crew.”
The number of porta-potties seemed adequate (they were certainly cleaner than the ones at Burning Man!). According to the Chronicle, Rec and Parks provided “about a dozen” portable toilets, while the Church of Ambrosia and the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association funded 22 more.
There was not much law enforcement presence. Over the course of the afternoon, SFist saw maybe a dozen various SFPD, sheriff’s deputies, and park rangers. But the crowd was mellow and just getting high, and there were no troublesome incidents requiring police.
That’s probably because of the lack of alcohol or illegal alcohol vendors, as that’s just not what this crowd was interested in.
And some of the revelers got quite creative. “My girlfriend and I are both involved with Slow Page Street,” the creator of this ‘blazing joint’ bike Anthony Ryan told us. “In the past we’ve had an issue when 4/20 here was more crowded. Our idea, just to slow people down and amuse them, we would put a huge smoking joint on the backs of our bikes. And they couldn’t get mad at us because we looked awesome.”
“But today was not like that at all,” Ryan added. “All day long it’s been super mellow.”
And some seemed to prefer this iteration that was more like the old unstructured, unpermitted, and less commercial 4/20. “I’ve been coming here for years now,” said Amanda Coffelt, who drove all the way from Merced. “Back in 2008, 2007, it was a lot different without all the vendors. And it’s like that vibe once again, and that’s what I love. It’s just natural, us getting together.”
The kickball and volleyball organizers provided three food trucks, which did brisk business all afternoon as people got the munchies. And it should be noted that the Volo Field Day Festival folks contributed many logistics that helped this 4/20 on a Saturday go smoothly.
Naturally, the drum circle crowd was out in full force, though somehow this very good dog managed to sleep through the racket.
Haight Street was also quite lively and celebrating 4/20, though we did not see anything resembling the horrible traffic nightmares that this event has wrought in previous years.
There were even some porta-potties set up on the streets of the Upper Haight, something that maybe ought to be considered on sunny Saturday and Sunday afternoons throughout the summer.
And Rec and Parks did an excellent job of getting the hill cleaned up after the party, with workers out picking up trash as soon as the smoke cleared from the 4:20 smoke-out.
So City Hall should be acknowledged for very effective handling of this unpredictable, unpermitted renegade 4/20 on Saturday. Corralling the revelers up onto Hippie Hill proved to be an effective move, and the light footprint of law enforcement also appeared to be the right call. The extra portable toilets and the free water from Church of Ambrosia and the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association went to good use. A lot could have gone wrong Saturday, but the event was mellow and smooth.
The official 4/20 organizers say they hope to bring the permitted event back next year. Though we’re warning you now that next year’s 4/20 falls on Easter Sunday, so any event would be up against the Hunky Jesus Contest in Dolores Park.
Images: Joe Kukura, SFist
