Jazz Age Normandie Hotel may roar again as ‘pot-tel’

[bigbrokush]

Los Angeles' aging Normandie Hotel is being refurbished by cannabis activists who plan to turn the edifice into a toker-friendly haven for travelers. Dennis Peron has teamed up with Richard Eastman and are struggling to spruce the place up.

The Hotel Normandie, a stoic brick building weighing down a corner of Normandie Avenue and 6th Street, opened in the Roaring '20s as an elegant residence, promising in tasteful advertisements to "leave nothing to be desired by the most experienced and exacting."

Tuesday night, the hotel will host another grand opening, for a very different, experienced and exacting clientele: pot smokers.

The aging Koreatown edifice has been rechristened Dennis Peron's Normandie Hotel, and the late-night event was timed for April 20, the annual day of celebration for cannabis worshippers worldwide.

Peron, a hero to the marijuana movement, started the first dispensary in San Francisco and led the state's medical marijuana initiative. Now, he and a team of weed-loving friends hope to turn the 106-room Normandie into America's first pot-friendly hotel.

"It's really a logical step, a logical step. It's a big city. And they needed me down here. And I needed a change," said Peron, who believes marijuana is a deeper part of the culture in Los Angeles than in San Francisco. "It's the people. It's the numbers. It's the pop culture. It's skaters."

John Evangelista, a real estate investor who has known Peron since his San Francisco hippie days, bought the hotel in January and invited Peron to create a "pot-tel." "He has a certain following, a certain know-how, a certain energy and kind of vision," Evangelista said.

But like many marijuana business ventures, much about this one remains murky.

Evangelista is in a dispute with the former owner, who alleges in a lawsuit that he only intended to sell a half-interest in the hotel. Evangelista said because of the disagreement, the hotel is now about $200,000 behind in its loan payments and he could lose it to the lenders.

"It'll be around until 4/20," he promised, referring to Tuesday night's party and to 420, which is slang for smoking marijuana.

It's also unclear where the money would come from for the projected $500,000 overhaul. Peron and his friends plan to sell $420, two-day packages and are open to help from investors. A few rooms have been renovated with the cost paid by donations, though no one will say from whom.

But these are mere details to Peron, whose Cannabis Buyers' Club sprouted from his imagination into the birthplace of the medical marijuana movement. Peron does have hospitality experience. He owns the Castro Castle, a San Francisco Victorian where he has lived for three decades. Painted to look like it is made of purple stone, it is a laidback bed-and-breakfast decorated with photos from Peron's storied past.

"Sociable is my business," Peron said, sitting in the Normandie's drab dining room, which had been cheered up a little with green helium-filled balloons and poster-sized photos of the hotel's early days. "You couldn't get any more sociable than marijuana. The hotel is just the extension of it."

Peron and Richard Eastman, a friend and dogged Los Angeles marijuana activist who is doing the marketing, have big dreams for the dowdy hotel and eagerly show off its potential charms. A favorite is the nonworking Erector-set neon sign on a rooftop that could someday support a deck where pot smoke would mingle with the view of the Hollywood sign.

For the full story visit:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-hotel-20100420,0,3068556.story

 

[nomaad]

yup. can you see the future?

 

[bigbrokush]

Hey this is a good thing

 

[nomaad]

I agree. Tourism is the next frontier. And I support Denis Peron... anybody exiled from Oaksterdam has to be doing something right.

 

[IKILL3RI]

Man I'm exited because you wont have to travel as far now to smoke pot, but man this is incredible Cali will be the 2nd Amsterdam lol Great News, thanks for sharing

 

[nomaad]

Amsterdam is trying to end its image as a pot paradise... hopefully California will embrace it.

Richard "Mr Burns" Lee is speaking this weekend in Mendo: "The Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board and Cannabis Law Institute are presenting a forum and participatory workshop entitled, “Life After Legalization: Marijuana Enters the Mainstream.”

I'll be there... hopefully I'll get a chance to ask Mr Burns some very direct questions... how bout "Do you plan to take over the entire marijuana tourism industry in the same fashion as you are trying to take over the medical cannabis industry?" OR "What do you think about your partner, Steve DeAngelo's recent comments that seem to favor monopolization of the medical cannabis market in California? Will Oakland's Gang of Four cartel go statewide?" OR "You have been compared to Mr Burns form the popular animated series, The Simpsons. How do you feel about this?

 

[humboldtlocal]

Amsterdam is trying to end its image as a pot paradise... hopefully California will embrace it.

Richard "Mr Burns" Lee is speaking this weekend in Mendo: "The Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board and Cannabis Law Institute are presenting a forum and participatory workshop entitled, “Life After Legalization: Marijuana Enters the Mainstream.”

I'll be there... hopefully I'll get a chance to ask Mr Burns some very direct questions... how bout "Do you plan to take over the entire marijuana tourism industry in the same fashion as you are trying to take over the medical cannabis industry?" OR "What do you think about your partner, Steve DeAngelo's recent comments that seem to favor monopolization of the medical cannabis market in California? Will Oakland's Gang of Four cartel go statewide?" OR "You have been compared to Mr Burns form the popular animated series, The Simpsons. How do you feel about this?

Ehhhxxxcellent