You’ve seen the iconic logo: a big fluffy cartoon cloud with smiling red eyes. The storefront on Guadalupe, nestled right into “the strip” just off the University of Texas campus, doesn’t even have the name of the shop on the front, just the eponymous anthropomorphic cloud himself against a bright blue background. This shop is the sixth and most recent location of Happy Clouds, where I pulled up to meet co-owner Milinda Hernandez Smith, even after I’d sworn off coming anywhere near campus after a recent misadventure helping a staggering undergrad when I was just trying to get a Halal wrap from a campus food truck.
Walking into the shop, I was greeted by a light and heady smell that I later learned was Blunt Effects incense, something I will be trying out in my apartment in the future. Milinda greeted me, sporting a pink bandana around her neck with a hemp leaf design, custom-made for the brand’s 10th anniversary, and a pair of earrings with a hemp leaf on one side and a tiny cloud and joint on the other. Milinda helped found Happy Clouds with her now-husband and co-owner Zack Smith back in 2015 when they were both recent graduates of UT-Austin. They met as undergrads, both in art school; he was focused primarily on sculpture and she on painting and printmaking. She recalled their meet-cute while they were on a trip to Dallas to look at art: “We just saw each other there in this billion-dollar art collector’s home.” She said there was just something cool and intriguing about Zack that made her want to know more. She describes him now with a smile: “He’s such an eccentric guy, and much louder than I am.”
A decade ago, they were two art students who had just graduated and wanted to start a business. They were throwing ideas back and forth, looking for something that would stick. “Zack has been interested in cannabis for a long time, before it was mainstream,” she told me. “He actually would get in a lot of trouble for it with his parents. It was a gray area. You don’t talk about it. You’re in trouble. But he had a passion for it, and he loved the whole culture behind it, so he’d spend hours online looking at glass pieces before even starting Happy Clouds.”
True to Zack’s sculpture roots, the storefront on Guadalupe boasts a display case of what Milinda explained to me is called “heady glass,” artistic pipes much more elaborate than your average pipes and water pipes, and much more expensive, costing up to a thousand dollars for a single piece. Artists will take up a unique style and create multiple pieces in accordance with that theme. In the display case were a series of pipes shaped like ocean waves with bowls fashioned after sea animals and another set of “Happy Clouds” figures with cloud heads and feet, custom-made for the brand.
Happy Clouds has always been intertwined with the local art scene. Their flagship location on the Eastside, which Zack found on Craigslist, originally sported a mishmash of murals created from “art jams” hosted with J Muzacz. Zack and Milinda provided the paint, and Muzacz brought in local muralists looking for a canvas. You have probably seen Muzacz’s mosaics and murals around the city, or been to the Mosaic Workshop, where you can create a mosaic of your own. I once created a coaster meant to look like an eye there.
During the beginning stages of Happy Clouds, well before selling THC products was legal, and when Zack was stocking the first shop one pipe at a time, Zack and Milinda lived with Zack’s parents, staying in his childhood bedroom as they worked to develop the business. Milinda was always working two or three art jobs at a time – working at a laser-cutting studio, making ceramic jewelry, designing merchandise for the shop, and even at one point working as a traveling portrait photographer. “They put me in the back of these weird houses,” she laughed, “and people would show up and I’d take their family photos.”
Although they may have been skeptical of Zack’s cannabis consumption as a teenager, Zack’s parents were never skeptical of Milinda. “We made it official after his mom was already telling everyone I was his girlfriend,” she told me. Ten years and six shops later, Mr. and Mrs. Happy Clouds are a thriving part of the Austin cannabis scene. Milinda now works for the brand full time. She showed me around the shop and told me what a dream it is to establish a location right by their alma mater’s campus.
The shop displays cloud-themed murals inside, including an interpretation of Michelangelo’s iconic The Creation of Adam, with the addition of a joint being passed from hand to hand. These were created by Osten Art, which was also commissioned to create a fresh mural on the exterior or the Montopolis location, replacing the original. “We’ve always strived for Happy Clouds to be more than just a smoke shop,” Milinda shared. “We think it’s more of a place that uplifts people and creates opportunities for the community. When people leave our shop, we want them to feel Happy.”
EB and Jess Go to P. Terry’s
Update: I finally sat down and watched Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle at my film-buff buddy’s house. Favorite line that I will be repeating to him when he’s not available to watch my cats for the weekend: “You’re worthless.” Five stars. The same weekend, my buddy Jess invited me to attend the end-of-season awards of the Austin Gay Flag Football League at RAIN on 4th. How could I say no?
Surrounded by jocks, Jess and I sparked up a joint in the back while the athletes celebrated and received their awards and took tequila shots. Everyone hit the dance floor, and the DJ knew exactly what he was doing with his demographic when he played the Hannah Montana theme song, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” and “HOT TO GO!” back to back. By the time we were finished dancing, and after an older gay couple from out of town guessed Jess’ birthday based solely on her “Leo aura,” I couldn’t think of anything other than getting my hands on a cheeseburger. There’s no White Castle in Austin, but we embarked on a hero’s journey to P. Terry’s to satisfy our cravings and honor the stoner comedy legend.
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This article appears in May 29 • 2026.
