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If pot is legal in Colorado, then why do Denver police need robotic noses to sniff out stinky weed?
11.17.2013
01:01 pm
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robot nose
 
Recreational cannabis is legal in Denver, Colorado, but folks are still feeling a little bit iffy about its sudden visible, and potentially sniffable, presence. The Denver police are now using an instrument called the “Nasal Ranger” (yes, that’s really what it is called), to measure and track the scent of pot in order to better enforce laws regarding smell complaints. They began using the tool fairly recently, purportedly after pot-related odor complaints more than doubled. Doubling sounds like a lot, right?

Oh wait, except that the numbers were pretty negligible to begin with.

In a city of around 634,000 people, there were 98 smell complaints in 2010, seven involved weed. In 2012, there were 288 complaints, with sixteen having to do with marihuana. While that’s an increase overall, complaints about pot actually decreased by about 1.5%, and this was all prior to the legalization of pot for recreational use. In 2013 (up until September 20th), they recorded 85 complaints, eleven of which were attributed to marijuana, a slight increase since 2010, but the city isn’t exactly being hot-boxed. And let’s be honest, at least some of those complaints were made by anti-pot tattle-tales and buttinskies. I only know a few Denverites, but none I’ve spoken to have complained of a sudden pervasive skunky smog enveloping the Mile-High City.

I looked up the Nasal Ranger, attempting to find a price, but apparently you have to request a quote, which is far too much work for an (cough) groggy young woman like myself. It sounds to me like the police department bought an expensive-ass toy in order to assuage some stuffy reactionaries. In all fairness, the Nasal Ranger actually seems like a pretty tame measure when you learn there are people in Denver attempting to pass laws making the very smell of pot punishable by up to $999 or up to a year in jail.

And at least the Nasal Ranger uses measurable data. That way, they can punish only the truly egregious odor levels—smells most likely produced by a dispensary or farm, not personal use. And at most, it’s a $2,000 fine, nothing completely outrageous. The more potentially unjust part is the provision declaring that five household complaints in a 12 hour period constitutes a violation. That could so easily abused by a few vindictive, lying, busybody neighbors.

On some level, I sympathize with a fear of overpowering smells. I grew up next to a donut factory that ran the ovens at 5 am, right when I was driving to my awful job as a hotel maid. I used love the smell of donuts, but after living in a cloying corn syrup fog for a year, I can now only stand the aroma when the odd donut craving hits me. Of course, now I live in a West Indian neighborhood, so guess what my street smells like in the summer heat? Barbecue, you racists! (Seriously, 95 degrees and a smoker full of jerk chicken in front of every brownstone.)
 

 
Via NPR

Posted by Amber Frost
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11.17.2013
01:01 pm
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‘Jack Was Here’:  Jack Kerouac has a posse, too
07.06.2011
12:48 pm
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Denver-based street artist Theo has only been working since February but already he’s getting a lot of attention. Inspired by his love of beat writer Jack Kerouac’s novel On The Road and the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, Theo and other members of the Kerouac Project, have taken to stenciling pensive looking “Kerouacs” around various locations in Denver where the writer was known to have visited or that he mentioned in his book. It’s also a protest of the fact that the upcoming film adaptation of the book is being shot in Canada. From the Denver Westorld:

Sixty years after Jack Kerouac filled a 120-foot scroll in a haze of lust, creative ambition and amphetamines that resulted in the original On the Road, producer Francis Ford Coppola is actually making a movie of the book — his third attempt. But while On the Road is a distinctly American classic, he’s filming the entire movie in Canada.

That snub is particularly egregious considering that Denver factors prominently into the action — in fact, you could argue that our fair city is a main character in the book. While, sure, some of the action takes place on either coast, Denver is like the meat of that literary sandwich, providing the book with a prodigious amount of its soul, not to mention its hands-down best character: one Dean Moriarty, known in real life as Neal Cassady, Denver boy and Beat god.

And in the rabble-rousing spirit of Cassady himself, at least one team of “elite street thugs” is not taking the slight lying down. For the last few months, cloaked in secrecy and carrying a copy of On the Road and a handful of stencils, this group has been visiting known Kerouac hangouts and doing the writer a favor he may or may not have gotten around to himself: tagging them with a likeness and the words “JACK WAS HERE.”

“I got the idea when I heard about the film adaptation coming out,” explains the artist and ringleader, a shadowy figure who calls himself only Theo. “The filmmakers substituted Gatineau, Quebec, for Denver. I’ve been a Kerouac addict for years, and I’ve always wanted to pay tribute to the author in some way, but it only recently hit me just how this could be done: It’s just a simpler reminder that Kerouac was here in Denver and not some small town in Canada that no one’s ever heard of. I think it’s an appropriate gesture to celebrate one counterculture with another.”

There is a very cool Tumblr blog dedicated to the “Jack Was Here” Kerouac Project.
 

 

 

 
Above, outside of Neal Cassady’s favorite bar at 15th and Platte Street in Denver. Below, Kerouac interviewed in French on Canadian television, 1967.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.06.2011
12:48 pm
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