Is Seattle’s Goodship Higher Education Series about bringing together cannabis users? Or is it about deep subjects like the search for extraterrestrial intelligence? And is it OK to ask fellow attendees if they’re toasted?
The answer, apparently, is yes, yes and yes.
As SETI astronomer Seth Shostak and I were chatting before his Feb. 9 talk at Melrose Market Studios in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district, we wondered how many folks in the standing-room-only crowd had arrived “pre-boarded.”
In The Goodship Company’s parlance, pre-boarding means getting high before sitting in on the event, an activity that’s in line with the Seattle venture’s main business of selling cannabis-laced edibles.
Goodship founder Jody Hall told me she sees the Higher Education Series as “TED talks with pot” – a social alternative to the TV-watching, game-playing, music-listening or chip-eating marathons that are stereotypically associated with stoners.
Shostak and I mused out loud about the etiquette of asking people whether they were under the influence. And just then, Laurel Cleveland, creative director for the Vela Community pot shop in SoDo, stepped up from behind and set us straight: Yes, it’s OK to ask. And yes, she was toasted.
