New podcasts: Dreams of a marijuana mecca told in series Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto from Crooked
A weed-loving, gun-toting conservative drives his van into a dying prison city in California and gets elected to city council with a vision of creating a thriving commercial marijuana precinct in the Mojave Desert.
A weed-loving, gun-toting conservative drives his van into a dying prison city in California and gets elected to city council with a vision of creating a thriving commercial marijuana precinct in the Mojave Desert.
John “Bug” Woodard Jr wanted to bring the green dollar to the town of Adelanto, which was burdened by both debt and dullness. Adelanto’s finances are still in the red but Bug did succeed in breathing some life in to the city.
His dreams of a marijuana mecca force him to duke it out with the conservative old guard on Adelanto’s city council. Think Mad Max but local government. The town with no entertainment descends into chaos.
The truly mad story of attempts to turn a safely Republican city into an epicentre of pot in the Mojave Desert is documented in newish podcast, Dreamtown: The Story of Adelanto from Crooked Media.
To the beginning of this madcap caper.
Adelanto was home to California’s largest detention centre and a couple of prisons but had no cinemas or shopping centres. People lived there because it was cheap, not fun.
“There’s a lot to love about Adelanto but only if you appreciate emptiness and heat and high winds and the slow pace of small town desert life,” says host David Weinberg.
The town’s old guard want to save Adelanto by raising taxes. Newcomer John “Bug” Woodard Jr. wants to legalise and then cultivate marijuana, hoping the lure of the green dollar will bring investment by celebrities, athletes and venture capitalists.
Bug is a bit of a character, kind of like a conservative hippie. He loves guns and but also loves getting high.
“I used to direct traffic with a car beam on my back and a .357 on my side,” he says.
Live your truth.
Bug arrives late to the city council election debate wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a straw cowboy hat while clutching a Monster Energy drink. Somehow he is elected, possibly because of low voter turnout.
But half-baked ideas and power do not make for responsible fiscal planning. And recreational cannabis use at that point in time was not legal in California or Adelanto, pitting Bug against the other conservative council members in the battle for reform.
The weekly late night council meetings start attracting a crowd, one witness telling Dreamtown it was like watching an episode of Jerry Springer.
“We pretty much have a packed house every night,” says Bug. “We’ve actually been standing room only before.”
No spoilers on whether the green dream turned Adelanto into an economic powerhouse but the podcast gets even weirder as the story unfolds, the lure of cannabis bringing gangsters and weed advocates into town.
Dreamtown is the story of a dying city, a man armed with vision and charm and the brutal politics of local government.
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