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Partly cloudy skies. Low 41F. SE winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph..
Partly cloudy skies. Low 41F. SE winds shifting to NNW at 10 to 20 mph.
Updated: April 18, 2026 @ 7:31 pm
Pal’s Cannabis Shop owner Alena Wagener stands with a sandwich blackboard inside her store that greets customers with a playful “Thank you for pot smoking.”
Pal’s Cannabis Shop owner Alena Wagener stands with a sandwich blackboard inside her store that greets customers with a playful “Thank you for pot smoking.”
I don’t smoke pot.
However, I have been aware of the expression “420” for a number of years, and had a vague idea of its association with the date April 20 (or 4/20) and cannabis culture.
I also know that there are a number of highly visible and popular marijuana dispensaries in the Eastern Sierra.
Realizing that April 20 is coming up on Monday, I decided to find out a little more about 420, how it came to be that smoking marijuana is celebrated wholeheartedly on that day, and what a couple of local dispensaries are doing for their customers in observance of “Weed Day.”
Like others, I erroneously thought 420 had something to do with a police call code related to marijuana use.
The actual story is much more colorful.
A little online research (including on Wikipedia and The Huffington Post, which wrote a couple of articles about the origin of 420 more than a decade and a half ago), revealed that the term was apparently coined by some high school students in San Rafael in the early 1970s known as the Waldos, who agreed to meet regularly after school at a statue of pasteurization inventir Louis Pasteur on their San Rafael High School campus at 4:20 p.m., and scheme how they might find an abandoned marijuana crop using a treasure map that had been given to them.
The code name for their plan was “4:20 Louis.”
When their search failed, they shortened the phrase to “4:20,” to simply mean smoking weed. It became a sort of code word they could use even in front of adults who were ignorant of what it secretly meant.
An article in the cannabis culture magazine High Times misattributed the meaning of 420 to a police code and the rest is “party hearty” lore and pop culture history.
“It’s a holiday for us,” Oak Creek Dispensary manager Heather Tebbetts said of Weed Day, when she tends to see more customers than usual.
Owned by the Fort Independence Paiute Tribe, Oak Creek, which opened in 2019, is highly visible on the west side of Highway 395 north of Independence, as the white, tent-like tensioned-membrane structure that houses the dispensary sits next to the high-traffic Fort Independence Travel Plaza, with its cheap gas, convenience store and casino.
Locals as well as visitors shop at Oak Creek, she said—“about fifty-fifty.” Traffic is not always constant and can vary from 30 to 200 clients a day. But “a lot of recreationists stop by,” she said, many of them headed to Mammoth. “Depending on how much snow is on the mountain, that definitely determines how busy we’ll be that season.”
Tebbets highlighted for me some of the conveniences Oak Creek offers clients, including tax-free sales, a drive-thru — where bud tenders ask what the client is looking to buy and offer options on menus displayed on iPads — and for those choosing to go inside, a fun shopping experience.
“Everything is out,” and easy to help oneself to, she said of product displays in the store. “Just grab a basket and shop like you’re at a market.”
The dispensary offers flower (also referred to as bud), edibles, topicals, tinctures, concentrates, and vape products which it produces in-house, she said. Oak Creek also sells psychoactive (commonly known as magic) mushrooms in their natural form, as well as in gummies, chocolates and capsules.
Most products — both cannabis flower and mushrooms — are packaged in “eighths,” she said, meaning one-eighth of an ounce, or 3.5 milligram quantities, which are micro-doses and legal in California.
And what kinds of special offers are happening on Weed Day?
“A free eighth to anyone that purchases anything on 4/20, buy-one-get-one-free offers, and discounted top-shelf flower,” she said.
Oak Creek is licensed to sell recreational products only. For more information, email heather@oakcreekdispensary.com or visit www.oakcreekdispensary.com.
Alena Wagener, owner of Pal’s Cannabis Shop, also known as Pal’s Collective, in Bishop, said her store has been around for about 12 years.
“We were the first shop to open, so we have a good amount of local customers,” she told me.
She said that because marijuana was previously illegal, “there is a counterculture surrounding cannabis.”
Medicinal marijuana became legal in California in the late 1990s, and recreational use was legalized in 2018. It remains illegal at the federal level today; however, more than 20 states have legalized its recreational use. Wegener said customers are allowed to purchase up to an ounce a day of dried cured flower, or bud.
Because of legalization, “you are seeing less and less of that counterculture the longer it’s legal,” she said. “The culture behind it is kind of like fading out.”
When I asked her what defines cannabis culture, Wagener said, “It’s very diverse. The cannabis plant brings a bunch of people together that wouldn’t normally come together. I think that’s why it was maybe banned or made illegal before.”
Wagener also provides a variety of cannabis products in many forms, but no bongs, or weed pipes or bowls. The reason is that she wants to be a good neighbor to Smoke 4 Less smoke shop, just a couple of doors down. She refers clients to her neighbor for smoking paraphernalia.
Pal’s offers discounts year-round as follows: a 15% veteran discount, a 10% tribal and “wisdom” (senior) discount; and a 5% local discount to residents of Bishop and surrounding communities. These are not “stackable” discounts, so they cannot be used in conjunction with 420 Day special offers, and the best discount will apply that day.
What Wagener is planning for Weed Day is a promotion to give “a bonus” to the first 50 to 100 customers who make a purchase then, buy-one-get-one-free deals on select promotional units, and giveaways from certain suppliers.
“Basically, everything is on sale,” she said.
Pal’s is licensed to sell both recreational and medical marijuana products. The store is located at 1367 Rocking W Drive in the Bishop Plaza shopping center. For more information, write to palsbishop@gmail.com.
Before visiting any marijuana dispensary, it is best to make sure you have your photo identification with you, and find out what minimum age limits apply, which could differ depending on whether the intended purpose of your purchase is recreational or medical.
Please check online for other cannabis dispensary options throughout the Eastern Sierra region.
And with that, this “4:20 Louis” will sign off for now. Happy Weed Day!
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