THE LOOP — In a move that should surprise absolutely no one who loves to get closer to Jah by smoking some of that wonderful herb, Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced last week that she will not budge on a zoning ordinance that prohibits the sale of legal pot in downtown, thereby denying all those suit-wearing zeros the chance to cast of the shackles of commerce and bleeze down on a spliffadiliano of phat Cali medi.
“This is a disappointing decision on Lightfoot’s part,” said Alderman Brendan Reilly of Chicago’s 42nd Ward. “The Loop will continue to be a major tourist destination after this pandemic ends and is undeniably one of the city’s most intensely foot-trafficked areas. If anywhere in the city is ripe for encouragement to steam on a primo j-bird of some gnarly stank named ‘Working On The Choom Gang’ they bought from a 135-pound guy wearing an oxford shirt buttoned up to the collar, it’s our downtown!”
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“Mayor Lightfoot,” Reilly bellowed, donning a rasta-themed drug rug, “Let my people smoke!”
The mayor’s office, however, remains adamant that top-tier bud will never find a home downtown during Mayor Lightfoot’s tenure.
“If Chicagoans insist on smoking marijuana,” said Tillie Liznak, 32, a comms associate with the Mayor’s Office, “there are more than enough areas in the city where that’s more than welcomed. I can’t control what those burnouts in Wicker Park do and if they want to alternate between doing bong rips, reading the same 20 pages of House of Leaves and listening to Animal Collective that’s their prerogative.”
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“But the Loop is a place of commerce, and we are not interested in inviting that level of frivolity onto the Mag Mile,” she concluded.
“Lightfoot’s the same as every other politician,” mused Itchy Peterson, 64, a longtime resident of Streeterville who owns a glassware shop in the Loop. “She knows if she lets legal weed into downtown, she won’t be able to control us any more, man. Tech bros and investment bankers would be swarming my store to buy a blanket that has a picture of Bob Marley with a lion growing out of the back of his dreads on it. All this corrupt bullshit, it’d all come down in a heartbeat if we were able to buy weed downtown.”
Although the odds are stacked against him, Peterson remains confident.
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“It’s coming,” he mused. “Maybe not in my lifetime, but it’s coming. Oh by the way you have to promise me you’re only going to smoke tobacco out of that one-hitter. I could get in a lot of trouble if I let you buy it for anything else.”
