Amid the legal battle between Texas lawmakers and the Texas hemp industry arrived the stoner high holiday: 4/20. The myth of “420” as a code for weed has ambiguous origins. Some people are convinced that it spawned from a police code for marijuana possession, others that it derives from Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women No. 12 & 35,” which contains the line “Everybody must get stoned.” (12 x 35 = 420) My favorite theory is that it started with a group of stoner teenagers in California during the Seventies who would meet up at a secret location at 4:20pm after school to smoke a joint. Makes sense to me.
So what was a cannabis columnist to do over the weekend of 4/20 in Austin, Texas, which happened to fall in the magical period of the smokable hemp ban being blocked by the temporary restraining order, which has now been extended to May 1? First things first: Get some prerolls before they’re gone again. I headed over to Cosmic Pickle to sip on a cocktail they call the Stellar Seltzer: a 2.5mg THC cannabis, orange, peach, guava, and passion fruit seltzer. I wandered to the Bullfrog Botanicals truck, tucked away in Cosmic’s outdoor space, to see if they had prerolls back in stock, at least for now. I snagged two prerolls (just to be safe) and puffed on the hybrid while I waited for my cocktail to kick in.
On Saturday, I picked up a gram of Blue Zangria flower and rolled it while I played on a one-member team of 420 trivia hosted by drag queen Natasha Nova. Although my technical knowledge has improved since I started writing the column, I still could not correctly spell the word THC stands for: tetrahydrocannabinol. I found myself particularly lost when it came to stoner movie trivia and was embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about the plot details of Mac & Devin Go to High School, Pineapple Express, Dude, Where’s My Car?, and Cheech & Chong. Look out for these titles in a future column as I put together a list of weed flicks to educate myself.
The highlight of my 4/20 weekend was attending Futch Fetish: Austin’s all-lesbian drag show hosted by drag queen Beebee Blvnt and drag artist Karabiner at Cheer Up Charlies. “Futch” is a portmanteau combining the LGBTQ+ terms “femme” and “butch” to describe lesbians and queer folks who display qualities of both aesthetics. And of course, the name of the show plays off of the phrase “foot fetish.” If you don’t know what that means, you’ll have to look it up yourself.
If there’s one thing I know about gay people, it’s that they are very strict about staying on theme. The theme of the 4/20 weekend Futch Fetish show: Stoned Tops. When I spoke to Beebee Blvnt and Karabiner, who founded the show and do everything from coming up with the initial ideas to getting booked at venues to creating customized drink menus to creating social media promotion, they told me they love a multilayered theme. The theme for the 420 show is a play on words coming from the phrase “stone top,” a term for lesbians who only like to top. Inspired by this, the hosts put together a cast entirely composed of tops. Not only that, they required all of their performers to get high for their performances, maintaining integrity to the “stoned tops” theme. Like they said: multilayers.
If you’re asking yourself what the drag community and the stoner community have in common, keep in mind that the two cultures are deeply intertwined. Both are groups that Texas loves to ban. Most of what I witnessed at the event could be completely illegal if Texas lawmakers get their way. Speaking of which, Futch Fetish raffled off a few hundred dollars’ worth of products from GRAV, who sponsored the show, and donated a portion of the profits to Ground Game Texas, an organization actively doing decriminalization work across the state of Texas. “We always try to pave the way forward,” Karabiner and Beebee told me.
It also just so happens that this year, 4/20 marked the start of Lesbian Visibility Week, so attending an all-lesbian stoner drag show over the weekend put me right in the middle of that Venn diagram (which just so happens to be where I personally belong as a gay stoner). If you are a casual consumer of shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, you may be aware that traditionally, drag performance has been considered the jurisdiction of cis men and transgender women. I asked Karabiner and Beebee Blvnt about the significance of the all-lesbian drag show.
“Gender isn’t real for me,” Beebee Blvnt said simply. “Even when I go to the club in a miniskirt, I’m in drag. Drag is just any type of exaggerated performance of gender, and whatever that means to you.” They went on to explain that in their opinion, femme lesbians are much closer in gender performance to drag queens than they are to straight women.
When I asked about their connection to the weed community, Beebee said, “We are stoners. We have been smoking for so long, ever since we met we’ve smoked together.” Karabiner told me that they are lovingly referred to as “the lesbian Cheech and Chong. That’s our vibe, that kind of back-and-forth with each other. That’s our hosting style and that’s our friendship style.” This claim was strongly supported by the enormous bong costume Beebee Blvnt handcrafted and performed in at the top of the show.
Choosing from Cheer Ups’ customized drink menu – both THC-based cocktails called “Why Is It Spicy?” and “Tea Break” and a gin-based cocktail called “B*ng Water” – revelers took in performances from other stoned tops including Robert Rainbow, Kino Kino, Justin Eater, Whoopsie Daisy, Ethel Institution, Hot Lunch, and Venus Rising. My favorite performance of the night came from Whoopsie Daisy, dressed as the Bible’s Eve, which included an interpretation of Eve’s eating of the proverbial apple from tree of knowledge and a battle with a snake, starting out slowly with a verse of scripture, followed by Phoebe Bridgers’ “Garden Song” and ending dramatically with Lady Gaga’s “Garden of Eden” as she shed her costume.
I concluded the night in true stoner fashion with a trip to Midnight Cravingz, a late-night food truck on Barton Springs Road that serves warm cookies with vanilla soft-serve and stays open until 2am on the weekends. I’ll be visiting again soon.
April may be over now, but it’s always 420 somewhere.
This article appears in May 1 • 2026.
