Last week, one of San Francisco’s favorite unofficial “holidays” took place. Yup, 4/20. On this day, Hippie Hill off of Haight and Stanyan streets is the place to be. Whether you choose to participate in the festivities or not, it’s still a site to see, and a fun place to be on this famous day.

How did 420 get so famous? I’ve heard many theories, ranging from it being Hitler’s birthday to it being the police code for marijuana smoking. I decided to do a little research of my own to figure out where such an event initially came from.

Wikipedia, The Huffington Post, and Urban Dictionary all tell similar stories of the origin. The term was coined by a group of high school students in the early 1970s. The group of students, known by their nickname The Waldos, were looking for an abandoned pot crop and would meet up at 4:20 everyday after school to go search. They never found it, but the term 420 stuck with the group as a code way of alluding to smoking.

No one is clear on how this term spread so quickly, but one of The Waldos had a connection to the Grateful Dead, and theory has it that he must’ve used the term around them and then they spread it through their fans across the United States.

After hearing the term, the popular cannabis magazine High Times gave it worldwide publicity.

Now, every year on April 20th (especially at 4:20 in the afternoon), people across the nation are celebrating by getting stoned. University California, Santa Cruz, and University of Colorado at Boulder are known for holding the biggest 420 celebrations.


Hippie Hill, April 20th, 2010.