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If you have $45 and a considerable high going, you might direct your stoner wanderings to New York City’s brand-new House of Cannabis (also called THC NYC), which is being billed as “the first-ever immersive destination exploring the sights, scents, sounds, and stories of cannabis.” We’re not so sure about that superlative, but the place looks like it will be an entertaining spot to be stoned in Manhattan.
TimeOut offered up a pretty comprehensive round up of the rooms in the four-story, 25,000-square-foot facility that will open at 427 Broadway on Friday, April 6th. The project is spearheaded by luxury wellness entrepreneur Marcelle Frey and her husband Robert, a Las Vegas club mogul behind Pure and the Pussycat Dolls Lounge.
What can one expect from this THC NYC? First up: No actual weed. The Freys decided to opt out of the battle over NY cannabis business licenses (probably a good move since there’s no indication they’d qualify for the first round of equity recipients.) Instead, the spot offers an array of trippy, shiny sensory experiences — and one room in collaboration with the Drug Policy Alliance that features videos of New-Yorkers-of-color that have been targeted by racially-biased cannabis policing.
“Cannabis culture has a very rich history from every angle, whether it’s music, art, social reform issues that need to be addressed. It’s all about connectivity and community, and nobody had ever done anything like this,” says Marcell.
THC NYC also features a large audiovisual room built out around a poem written by Young Money rapper Curren$y, which will appear in the shadow of your body as you move through the space. This is not the first time Curren$y has waded into the world of weed. The emcee behind track “Rapper Weed” has his own indica dominant strain in Andretti OG, which is distributed through his brand Andretti Cannabis Co.
Cannabis museums have actually been around for some time. The most famous example is the Hash, Marijuana and Hemp Museum, which has locations in both Amsterdam (situated in the red light district since 1987!) and Barcelona (which first opened in 2012.) The same designing curator was on the team of the museum operated by Oakland’s Oaksterdam University from 2011 until the 2020 onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. That site included a six-plant cannabis garden that apparently was the target of a raid by the federal police.
More recently in 2017, Mexico City saw the creation of Cáñamo magazine’s Museum of Hemp and Marijuana, and Jamaica’s Bob Marley Museum further bolstered its 420 cred by adding a cannabis consumption lounge to one of its locations this year. Las Vegas’ Cannabition Cannabis Museum has not had quite so much operational luck—its yet-to-be-completed opening has been in the works as far back as 2018.
In fact, cannabis museums dot the United States from Denver to Boston, where one of the most legit sites in this round-up is located: the Core Social Justice Cannabis Museum. Core not only offers a serious look at the inequities of US drug policy, but is also located in a neighborhood (Jamaica Plain) that has been drastically and negatively impacted by said prohibitionist policies—and is free to enter.
