4/20 - not a real holiday; Boulder - not a real place

The one event every year where Boulder kids/people actually show up with any consistency, is of course, 4/20.  Earlier today I was approached my some guys who asked if I knew where they could "score," and after I said I didn't, they told me "Happy 4/20," to which I didn't respond, because, of course, 4/20 is not a real holiday.

The event literally brings in thousands and thousands of potheads from around the area, although I'm pretty sure they typically overestimate the numbers to make it seem like the event is growing every year.  While it's not really a productive event in any way whatsoever, it's definitely intriguing watching hundreds of people start to stream onto campus an hour or two before 4:20 p.m.  While I'm not so great in the photography department, here's a few pictures I took to give you an idea of what goes on.

Here is the Norlin Quad around noon today (click images to enlarge):

And here it is about 20 minutes before the infamous time:

Probably about the best crowd picture I got, but still doesn't really depict how many people were really there (you'll have to enlarge it to really get the idea I think):

I never heard a countdown, and while I attributed it initially to the fact that potheads aren't really good at organizing things, I guess there may have been one I just couldn't hear since I wasn't in the thick of things. Nonetheless, around 4:19, the smoke really started to form into a cloud over the crowd:

The smoke cloud hung around for a few minutes and started to dissipate on account of the breeze that was blowing today:

While I saw a few cops around and even saw the K-9 unit on campus earlier in the day, the event seemed to be relatively conflict free.  Really nothing short of the national guard could have done anything on a large scale, and then that would have just turned into a riot.  CU doesn't like the event at all, but it's reached such proportions that they just can't really control it without causing a major incident, so I guess at least until something majorly bad happens on a 4/20 in the future, I guess they'll probably have to deal with it.

Here's a pretty good aerial photo from the Daily Camera to put the crowd into perspective.

All the while, the Lubbock newspaper is publishing stories about how smoking will make your kids be born naked.