Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.
How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.
If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 30th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.
This was originally posted on April 30, 2018. It was the final day of the 2018 A to Z Blogging Challenge.
Z is for Zig Zag
Well, this is it. The final day of this year’s A to Z Challenge. And that means that it’s also time to post about the last letter of the alphabet — Z. My Z word is “zig zag.”
Decades before medical marijuana could be sold with a doctor’s prescription and, even more recently, in a number of states that have legalized the sale and use of marijuana for recreational use, the only way to score some pot was if you knew a guy who knew a guy.
Hence, there was a vibrant underground for the buying grass. At the same time, though, a number of small, retail places that serviced the pot-smoking community sprung up in strip malls and shopping centers. These storefronts were called “head shops.”
Most head shops had a lot of psychedelic posters, black lights, multicolored plastic beads hanging from the front door and separating the front of the store from the back room, and smelled of burning incense. Some had beanbag chairs and played albums from Hendrix, Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane on the shop’s stereo system turntable.
These head shops from the late 60s through 70s didn’t sell pot or any other drugs. Their merchandise consisted of pot paraphernalia, from pot and hash pipes to bongs, roach clips, posters, and scented incense. And, of course, joint rolling papers, the best of which were Zig-Zag brand papers.
The label on the Zig-Zag packaging called them “cigarette papers,” but I never, ever saw anyone smoking tobacco in Zig-Zag rolling papers. And it’s not like you could find Zig-Zag rolling papers at the local pharmacy, grocery store, or convenience store. Just at head shops.
So, I dedicate this final A to Z Challenge post to Zig-Zag brand rolling papers. They really helped keep my shit together back in the day.
This, That, and the Other 
I’m flashing back to a 2015 post and a wonderful trip to the tulips in Istanbul: https://travelwithintent.com/2021/04/30/carpets-of-tulips-in-istanbul/
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2015 for me too Fandango
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We had a brand called Rizla. They did all sorts of papers but you could tell the dope-smokers because they’d tear pieces of the cardboard packet too, to make almost a filter. I’m sure the word won’t translate but we called ’em roaches.
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Yes, we called the tiny ends of a joint roaches and we’d use a “roach clip” to hold it so we could smoke it down to the end.
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Rizla were kinda giveaways because while they made a few different (including liquorice, ugh), one was larger than all the others…
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I had forgotten about zig-zag paper — not that I ever bought any.
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So zigzag was for naughty purposes was it? Interesting post.
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Thank you for hosting again, Fandango! This is one of my favourite posts from my blog:
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Sorry, I do not know why it got linked with a whole window!
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No problem, Irene.
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Great post, Fandango! Really takes me back. There was a head shop in my neighborhood back in the day. Budget Tapes & Records. I used to love looking at the bongs.
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Ah, the bongs! 😏
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Three weeks ago, on Friday, I was looking forward to my first novel corona virus shot (the next afternoon). This Friday, I’m an achy wreck.
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Although the second shot has made me miserable for almost two days, I wish more people could get vaccinated. I was happy when Oxford had said they were going to make their technology on the matter open-source. But, as we know, Bill Gates stepped in to change their point of view. And, now, he still isn’t in favor of helping more people.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ5DavuOkcM Krystal [of The Hill’s “Rising”]: Bill Gates Is LYING TO YOU On Vaccine Patent Protection
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I’m appreciative that my crafty/home-ec neighbor started sewing and giving away masks before their good was acknowledged.
Panel: MSNBC CONFRONTS Fauci For Lying To Americans On Masks
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Well, it sounds like you were on to something good! ❤
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We didn’t call them head shops here (or at least I didn’t), but we did have some cool ‘eastern’ or ‘hippie’ shops on the city high streets which sold similar stuff. Bright psychedelic clothing, long cotton skirts, tie-dyed t-shirts and velvet jackets and Indian bedspreads with tiny mirrors sewn in, pipes and bongs, packets of incense (always smelled of patchouli) exotic oils, brass buddhas and yes, the giant Rizla papers. Not that I smoked then 😉. I loved browsing in those shops and I still wish I had bought a mirrored bedspread!
I’m going back to a post from 2013 but which was about a road-trip in 2008.
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