We’re here to smoke weed and kick ass … and we’re almost out of weed.
It seems like ages ago that our then managing editor received a letter and a Polaroid from a dreadlocked young BMX champ from Fort Worth, TX, looking for a job. He had no experience, no references—only a passion for marijuana and the cojones to back it up. Fortunately for him, our managing editor just happened to be from Texas herself, and in need of an assistant. She said that if he could make it to New York by the end of the month, he’d have a job. He packed up his pickup truck, drove up to New York City, checked into the local YMCA and showed up on our doorstep. That was how Chris Eudaley got his start at High Times.
But it was obvious from the beginning that Chris was destined to be more than just an editorial assistant. He had this idea—which fit perfectly within my concept of the BBD—that just by working at High Times, he’d become a “pot star” (like a rock star, but instead of being famous for playing music, he would be famous simply for smoking pot). Our editor-in-chief at the time loved the concept, gave Chris his own stoner advice column, and overnight Pot Star was born.
Chris and I quickly became the best of friends. Each night after work, we’d head downstairs to our favorite watering hole, Duke’s, pound back PBRs and Buffalo wings and flirt with the waitresses. Armed with our HT business cards and a handful of bud, we crashed every party with an open bar, finagled our way backstage at every concert, smoked out countless celebrities, and charmed the digits from lots of ladies. From the drunken streets of Austin to the smoky coffeeshops of Amsterdam, from the sunny beaches of Jamaica to the dive bars of Jersey City, we left no turn unstoned in our dogged pursuit of the BBD.
The culmination of Chris’s dream came in 2000, when High Times released his first book, How to Be a Pot Star Like Me: What Every Marijuana Enthusiast Should Know—a funny little stoner handbook that I edited and designed. But then, just at the height of his popularity, Pot Star inherited his uncle’s house and moved back to Texas to be closer to his family, and the duo was divided. He opened up his own headshop—Puffers’ Paradise—and before long had a thriving chain of seven stores. Then, in February of 2003, the DEA launched Operation Pipe Dreams, and Pot Star watched the million-dollar business he’d worked so hard to create go up in smoke.
Now, seven years after leaving us, he’s back: the Chong to my Cheech, the Silent Bob to my Jay, the Dr. Gonzo to my Raoul Duke. And like those great stoner-comedy teams before us, Black & Star are fixin’ to redefine the American Dream one toke at a time. So fasten your seatbelts for the new misadventures of The Debaucherous Duo—not just in the pages of the magazine, but in our upcoming guerrilla podcast series and, if all goes well, in the new High Times reality show currently in development. We’re ready for our close-up, Mr. Hager…
