It is these facts, dear reader, which lay the bedrock for my current quest: to discover which of the city's private high schools has the best weed.
Deer College Odyssey
The Buck Stops Here
| THREE PORTLANDS | FRIDAY, JULY 30, 2004 | FAT FREE, HIGH FIBER |
PORTLANDS HIGH SCHOOLS
RANKED BY HOW GOOD THE WEED IS
by Vortigern Grey, Freshthing-At-Large
The one thing that everyone knows about Three Portlands (except for the people who don't know anything about Three Portlands, which as it turns out is approximately everyone) is that weed is legal here. Always has been, always will be. The second thing that everyone knows about Three Portlands is that there aren't any cars here. Never have been, never will be. And the third thing that everyone knows about Three Portlands (or, to be honest, maybe the eleventh or twelfth thing) is that we don't have a public school system. It is these facts, dear reader, which lay the bedrock for my current quest: to discover which of the city's private high schools has the best weed.
You will no doubt be asking, "but Vortigern, you're in college! Why are you smoking weed with high schoolers?" Well, dear reader, fear not: this article was written last year for the Snorth Snews, when I was a high schooler myself. They wouldn't publish it, for fear of corrupting the youth and encouraging drug use among teenagers. (While weed is legal in ThreePorts, it's still banned at all the high schools, and you can't go to a dispensary until you're 21.) The Odyssey, thankfully, has no such scruples, so read on, and be enlightened.
#9: The Best School
(The Best School of Three Portlands)
Mascot: None
Colors: Black, White
Don't let the name deceive you, this is one of the worst schools in the city, and the weed is terrible too. Founded in the late '60s in reaction to "left-wing ideological indoctrination" at the other local schools, Best is where the fascists send their kids to keep them mean and stupid, and smoking marijuana is counter to that mission. They maintain a standing bounty on any kids dealing or smoking weed — if you turn them in, you get an automatic A in a class of your choice, because the only thing they're supposed to learn at Best is selfish loyalty to an oppressive regime. Some of them will even go so far as to plant bags of fake weed on other kids to get them expelled.
Don't despair though: I was able to make contact with the Worst Kids, the anti-fascist student movement that the administration says doesn't exist. They're doing their best (if you'll excuse the pun) to be gay and do crimes despite the repressive atmosphere, and they do indeed have weed. Unfortunately, it's not very good. I suspect it might also be fake.
Best Strain: Tie between what my contact called OG Kush, which, judging by its aroma and effects, stands for "OreGano", and Acapulco Gold, which I have heard great things about and which I am sure is excellent when it is not just stems and seeds.
#8: St. Lovelace
(Saint Lovelace Virtual Learning Center)
Mascot: Electron
Colors: Electric Blue, Portland Orange
You might think that a virtual school with no physical campus would be a terrible place to find weed, but you would be only mostly correct. Thanks to a generous investment from Anderson Robotics, St. Lovelace now has a physical building for real-world fabrication and testing of engineering projects. The bigger problem is that nobody here knows how to chill. You ever hear about the wild parties they throw at MIT? No? That's because they don't. These nerds are obsessed with robots and computers and math equations that make as much sense as the ramblings that come out of them once you do get them stoned — my dealer took one hit and started saying some sci-fi bullshit about using nuclear bombs as rocket fuel.
There is an upshot though: the geeks and cyborgs who remotely attend this school have figured out a way to hack their virtual reality headsets to use the waste heat to vaporize an oil containing concentrated THC, which will get you completely and utterly blitzed in seconds. It looks dorky as hell, but I'm sure that's just because it's a bunch of nerds doing it. At least when you're in virtual reality, nobody else can see how dumb you look.
Best Strain: Android Adderall. Not to be confused with actual Adderall, which there is plenty of at St. Lovelace. This hybrid strain tastes like gasoline and makes your heart race like a fast car. Great for doing homework, but is that really what you're smoking weed for? (I decided not to try "vaporizing", because I have standards. At least it's contained at the nerd school.)
#7: Knight School
(Lord Blackwood School of Chivalry)
Mascot: White Knight
Colors: Lily White
The Knight School is a real mixed bag. On the one hand, the nature of a boarding school means that there's never a time when you aren't at school. On the other hand, it's a British boarding school, they'll let you get away with all sorts of depraved shit in the name of tradition. (They started the tradition of local high schools having coats of arms, a trend followed by all Portlands schools except Best.) And smoking weed is absolutely traditional. If you believe the rumors, the Lord Blackwood once smoked some hash with Lawrence of Arabia.
Unfortunately, like with everything at the Knight School, nobody can be normal about smoking weed — everything has to be done according to the ancient ceremonial rites of West Yorkcastershire or whatever. They made me smoke weed mixed with pipe tobacco out of a bong they said was carved from Sir Lancelot's femur. It tasted like ass.
Best Strain: Jack Herer. There's not much special about this one — you can find it pretty easily on the other side of the Veil — but the classics are classic for a reason. A piney, earthy smoke, this sativa-dominant hybrid encourages creativity and focus, and is the perfect accompaniment to a pot of Earl Grey and some Thucydides. (It's not the most popular strain at Knight School, though — that honor goes to Neon Slug, a high-CBD strain that's great for relieving aches and pains after losing a joust or getting hazed by the upperclassmen.)
#6: 3Ports Snorth
(Three Portlands South/North Semi-Municipal Charter School)
Mascot: Centaur
Colors: Silver, Lemon Yellow
Smoking weed at Snorth is even more of an exercise in paranoia than usual. Newer and smaller than its counterpart Weast, Snorth has fewer places to smoke and more faculty to keep an eye on students. Smoke sessions last a few minutes at best before someone notices the odor and starts hunting for you, so the weed here is selected primarily for its ability to get you high from the fewest number of hits possible.
Potency alone means that Snorth doesn't make the bottom three, but I cannot emphasize enough how hard it is to actually enjoy that potency. Special appreciation must be paid to the so-called 'Snorth Snecial', a pen or mechanical pencil turned into a one-hitter, with an empty soda can stuffed with cotton covering one end to try and absorb the smell. It only kind of works, and it makes you look ridiculous.
Best Strain: Snour Sniesel. Which is not named after a Pokémon, my cousin Mike smoked this shit in the early 90s, several years before even the first Pokémon game was released. It's the sacred duty of the Snorth snenior class to tend to the crop in the Weed Dimension, a branch-universe hidden somewhere on Snorth campus. The school's been trying to find it for years, but the Way only opens for students who aren't narcs. It can tell.
#5: St. Lucy's
(Saint Lucifer's Parochial School)
Mascot: Angel (biblically accurate)
Colors: Silver, Sable, Scarlet
This is where things start getting interesting. This Catholic (and Anglican, and Orthodox) school has a strong focus on applied religion (read: fighting demons), which means that students have ready access to two very different types of unusual strain: weed that's been to hell, and weed that's been blessed by a priest. The former is more fun, but the latter smokes so smoothly you'd think you weren't smoking at all.
The worst part of smoking at St. Lucy's is getting caught — Bishop Bishop will call you into his office and give you a solemn look, then launch into a whole "I'm not mad, just disappointed" speech that will make you feel Catholic guilt regardless of your actual religious leanings. Which is especially ironic, because I have it on good authority that Bishop Bishop smokes weed to help with the pain from spiritual wounds sustained while performing an exorcism.
Best Strain: Devil's Lettuce. A sour, funky strain with sulfurous notes on the exhale. Originally cultivated in the fields of Limbo, just outside the gates of Hell, Devil's Lettuce was brought to Three Portlands by Bill Z. Bubb, a local weed dealer, possible antichrist, and former Deer Student Body President-For-Life. Best smoked with a holy water bong and a lot of irony, this weed inspires all seven of the deadly sins, but its high THC content means you won't really have the energy for anything but gluttony and sloth.
#4: Sidhe Prep
(Three Portlands Sidhe Preparatory School)
Mascot: Sassenach
Colors: Blood Red, Snow White
They say that long ago, the Sidhe hero-king Lugh brought seeds of cannabis from Shangri-La to Avalon, where they spent many centuries growing and mutating under the influence of the island's elevated background magic. The result is a variety of weed that is neither sativa nor indica. Renowned for its potency and its rumored ability to grant prophetic visions, Avalonic weed has become scarce since the destruction of Old Avalon.
Unfortunately, the Sidhe republican movement's hostility towards the Seelie Crown in New Avalon makes it much harder for the Unseelie-affiliated students of Sidhe Prep to acquire the best strains of Avalonic cannabis. While you can still find Avalonic weed here, most of the strains in use at Sidhe Prep are grown locally in Little Avalon, and just aren't as potent as Seelie cultivars.
With that said, Sidhe Prep is easily one of the best places to smoke in the city. The Unseelie have no tolerance for narcs, and the administration has a tendency to look the other way when it comes to minor acts of juvenile delinquency — after all, most of them are (ALLEGEDLY) ex-members of the Fomorian People's Front, which (ALLEGEDLY) finances its militant operations with drug-running. Vice Principal Doolan (ALLEGEDLY the mastermind behind the Seelie Consulate Hostage Crisis, which lasted for seventeen days and was only ended by the intervention of the Golem of Prague) actually caught me in the middle of packing a cone, and all he did was criticize my technique.
Best Strain: Winter of Our Discontent. Like most Avalonic strains, this one is named after a line from Shakespeare. It has notes of hoarfrost and pine, with a little bit of citrus on the back end; if you blow smoke rings with it, they leave an icy rime on surfaces. Inexperienced smokers tend to assume that this strain makes you paranoid, but experience shows that it actually reveals which of your friends secretly hate you for being a better writer. (It was Craig.)
#3: 3Ports Weast
(Three Portlands West/East Semi-Municipal Charter School)
Mascot: Minotaur
Colors: Gold, Steel Grey
I know, you're probably surprised to see 3Ports Weast this high on the list. After all, it's partially funded by the municipal government, and is the closest thing to a public school in the city. It's run by an independent board of teachers and parents, not a shadowy cabal of wizards. In most respects, it is positively normal.
But it's also the oldest and largest high school in the city. Portlands teens have been smoking weed in the bathrooms of Weast since the 60s. What it lacks in exoticism, the stoner culture of 3Ports Weast more than makes up for in experience. You can always find someone ready to light up a joint, and while the student-to-teacher ratio might be unfavorable for academics, it's great for evading adult supervision. The expansive and aging campus offers an almost endless supply of places to hot box. My personal favorite? In the maintenance tunnels beneath the library, there's a eight-inch-wide crack in the wall that leads to an abandoned civil defense bunker from the 7th Occult War. Nobody goes down there, and it's full of old maps of the city that can tell you the best alleyways to use to ambush Nazis in the year 1943.
Best Strain: Kallisti Gold. An old classic, a hybrid of Acapulco Gold and Sour Apple, Kallisti Gold was popular in the occult side of the counterculture in the late '60s and early '70s; it was recently brought back into vogue in ThreePorts by the Legion of Dynamic Derby, our local Discordian roller derby team. This shit gets you high so fast you get a little dizzy — I've heard it compared to poppers and nitrous. But after that first hit, you settle into a pleasantly psychedelic groove. It also makes you very psychically receptive, so make sure nobody around you has a negative vibe that could harsh your mellow.
#2: Royal Seelie
(Royal Seelie Magnet School of Three Portlands)
Mascot: Questing Beast
Colors: Gold, Royal Blue, Emerald Green
Despite its vastly worse stoner culture, Royal Seelie comes in a couple places better than its Unseelie rival across town. The halls of Royal Seelie are one of the few places you can reliably find Avalonic strains of cannabis, where successive generations of elf teenagers have maintained an underground pipeline bringing in flower from New Avalon.
Unfortunately, most of those teens hardcore suck — as the name suggests, Royal Seelie is sponsored by the Seelie Royal Family. The majority of its student body are the entitled sons and daughters of New Avalon's titled nobility, and the token human students are all a bunch of posers. Finding anyone cool enough to smoke with is a real challenge — your best bet is behind the bleachers of the swimming pool, where I was able to find a couple Selkie members of the swim team sharing a bowl and planning that year's senior prank. They swore me to secrecy about the latter, but I can promise you it will be a real laugh.
Best Strain: Despair Thy Charm. Another Avalonic strain, of course. Notes of peat and mistletoe, with a citrusy finish. Smoking it reveals the manner in which your nemesis will kill you, but in that tricky prophecy way where you end up meeting your doom while trying to avoid it. Thankfully, I do not have a nemesis, so I just spent some time floating in the pool while the swim team got real anxious about their opposite numbers at Sidhe Prep stealing their skins.
#1: All-Seeing High
(Adam Weishaupt Leadership Academy)
Mascot: Pyramid
Colors: Green, Gold, Black
It should come as no surprise that the Illuminati have the best weed, and their high schools are no exception. All the privileges of these shadowy puppet-masters await those students who manage to survive the grueling two-day-long entrance examination. I didn't, so I had to sneak onto the campus while the faculty were distracted conducting one of their depraved rituals. (Some sort of team-building exercise in the gym involving trust falls and guided meditation? They seemed very enthusiastic about it. Horrifying.) Once inside, it was a trivial matter to find a group of junior Illuminates to smoke with. They were more than happy to share their weed with me as soon as they were assured that I wasn't a Rosicrucian double-agent or a spy sent by Peter Thiel. (I had to look him up, I guess he founded PayPal? The Illuminati are pretty worried about him, maybe something to keep an eye on.)
Discerning which bits of gossip were deeply held secrets of the global elite and which were just the stoned ramblings of high schoolers was surprisingly difficult — I joined in the middle of a discussion about outsider trading, which seems to be stock market fraud involving demons. For all their noble humanitarian goals, the Illuminati aren't immune to the desire to make a quick buck in the process, as I discovered when they turned around and charged me 10 bucks for smoking with them.
Best Strain: Alamut Black, a highly concentrated variety of hashish prepared according to a secret alchemical formula invented by Hassan-i Sabbah, the founder of the Order of Assassins and one of the philosophical predecessors of the Illuminati. The occult cannabinoids in Alamut Black activate the pineal gland's production of DMT, giving you the sort of psychic-precognitive trip normally only achievable in dreams and near-death experiences. I think I saw the face of god. He told me to get my eyebrow pierced. And it looks great.
So there you have it. If you want your kid to get optimally stoned, send them to All-Seeing High, or failing that, Weast (or Seelie Magnet if you're ok with them being a total square). If you want your kid to actually get a good education, All-Seeing High is actually still the best option, which I think probably reveals something about our society. I'm not sure what, though. But definitely something.
