Mayor Breed Lights Up San Francisco's Weed Week

San Francisco Mayor London Breed stopped off before attending the Giants home opener on Friday to welcome participants in the first SF Weed Week, to be held throughout the city on April 13 – 20th.

The kickoff press conference was held in conjunction with a Cannabis Mylar Art Exhibit, showcasing over 1,000 commercial mylar product packages from the legal and illicit market, at the Mirus Gallery & Art Bar at 540 Howard Street throughout April. 

One of the Mylar Art pieces at Mirus

The event was organized by cannabis journalist David Downs and attended by about 100 supporters from the Bay Area and beyond. Downs said he got the idea for a “Weed Week” after hearing about Beer Week in the city, and by Amoeba Records in-store events. “Cannabis growers are rock stars. Strains are celebrities. We’re treating them accordingly,” he said.  SF Week Week events will be held on 7 consecutive nights at 7 different cannabis lounges, showcasing 7 new cannabis strains.

Wearing a Giants jersey and bright orange suit, Breed said she was grateful to be part of, “an opportunity that is so San Francisco.” She added, “When you think about San Francisco, you think about fun, you think about excitement, you think about joy. And the cannabis community, even before it was legalized in California, has been such an important part of that.” 

Mentioning the Beat poets in North Beach and the Summer of Love in the Haight as examples of San Francisco culture that have spread across the world, Breed said today’s efforts would help “transform the conversation and open up opportunities for people to experience joy through cannabis.” She joked that SF Weed Week should be held at the same time as Restaurant Week (because, the munchies).

Cannabis businesses are projected to bring in $789 million to the city in 2024/25 Breed said, mentioning that SF has approved 52 business permits through their equity program, and has given out $11 million in grants for equity programs in cannabis. She said SF Weed Week was an opportunity to “support our dispensaries and small business, and use this as a way to bring tourists and other people back to our city for an experience that only San Francisco can provide.” 

On display at the event

Speaking about some flap her office got when the official 4/20 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate park was cancelled this year, Breed clarified, “I love 4/20…what we did instead of cancelling it we created an event where people can come together safely. We didn’t enforce our ’no smoking in the park’ rules; we allowed people to come together….4/20 is an organic event that has come together not because the city says it’s so, but because the community makes it happen….So as we embark upon this new SF Weed Week, I’m excited to see something like this happen in a more formalized way.” 

After she spoke, Breed posed for pictures with the crowd, holding a cannabis bud bouquet presented to her by local cultivator Sense. 

One theme of SF Weed Week is reconnecting as community following the lockdown of COVID, when Breed urged San Franciscans to watch Netflix and chill in 2020 instead of congregating at the park, for their own safety. That same year, VP candidate Kamala Harris, the former DA of San Francisco, admitted she smoked weed when she was in college and when asked if she might start smoking again, she replied, “I think it gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy in the world.”

It's a theme picked up on by High Times editor Ellen Holland in her piece, Weed Doesn't Smoke the Same Without Others, where she writes, "The upcoming holiday this month, 4/20, is something the cannabis community celebrates all together. It unites us, and—especially as we roll out of the acute danger of COVID-19—it is vitally essential to our mental health and well-being that we gather to show unity. I want to see other people and smoke their weed. I want to make new friends through weed. Together, we can all get higher!"

Holland, the author of Weed: A Connoisseur's Guide to Cannabis will appear at an SF Weed Week event on 4/19, with Tina Gordon of Moon Made Farms.  

Meanwhile, Harris's stepdaughter Ella Emhoff opened her textile exhibition this week at Gotham NYC, billed as a “woman-owned legal cannabis concept store on the Bowery.”