| Toke of the Town editor Steve Elliott: You’ve come to the right place if you wanna talk about marijuana. |
Two years ago today — actually two years ago tonight, at 7:08 p.m. — fingers trembling with excitement, I hit the “Post” button for the first-ever story on Toke of the Town.
“The good thing about a free marketplace of ideas is,” I wrote, in the first sentence ever to appear on this site, “despite the best efforts of prohibitionists and their fear-mongering propaganda, the truth eventually prevails.”
Thousands of stories, joints, medibles, and bongloads later, I’m still loving this gig, and judging by pageviews, so are more than half a million of you every month.
Toke didn’t just happen. If it hadn’t been for Village Voice Media’s then-social media talent scout, John Boitnott, spotting my personal blog Reality Catcher making the front page of social news-sharing site Digg, I wouldn’t have had the chance, starting early in 2009, to write “Chronic City.” That was a twice-weekly cannabis column for S.F. Weekly‘s online blog, “The Snitch.”
And if it hadn’t been for Boitnoitt and Bill Jensen, then in charge of VVM’s web presence worldwide, that well-received column would not have opened the door for Toke of the Town about six months later.