‘Grass Lands' Offers Cannabis Experience (With a Catch) at Outside Lands Festival in SF

The annual music festival has have a zone for all things pot-related — as long as you weren't expecting to actually smoke it there

What to Know

  • Outside Lands will become the country's first big music festival with a special area dedicated to cannabis
  • Consuming pot is still illegal at the festival, so you can learn all about it, but you can't light up

With this year's Outside Lands music festival now in full swing, the grass covering Golden Gate Park's sprawling Polo Fields is hardly the only green in sight.

With a new attraction called "Grass Lands," Outside Lands' producers are declaring this the first major American music festival to embrace cannabis culture on-site, and announced it proudly on festival's website a few weeks in advance.

Situated at the south end of the Polo Fields (organizers call the area "SoPo"), Grass Lands is a 21-and-up experience showcasing all facets of cannabis culture. There's lemonade stand, educational exhibits with "budtenders" on hand to answer questions, homemade baked goods, and a place to make your very own flower crown.

A "smell wall," where you can sniff cannabis terpenes, is the brainchild of the sommelier from the nearby Wine Lands exhibit, and a farmer's market challenges visitors to carve their own pot-smoking devices out of fresh produce, as a souvenir from the festival.

There is a catch, though. Although the smell of weed is nearly synonymous with music festival ambiance, consumption of cannabis is still technically prohibited at Outside Lands — and made more difficult for scofflaws by the new clear backpack requirement. So while you can meet face to face with people from your favorite dispensary or cannabis confectioner, there aren't any pot products for sale at Grass Lands -- in fact, some vendors are offering promotional cannabis-free versions of their edibles.

Outside Lands is organizing the Grass Lands experience in partnership with a who's-who of Bay Area cannabis companies, including vape pen maker Pax Labs, edibles company Kiva Confections and cannabis investment fund Mesh Ventures. Watch the video above to see our behind-the-scenes tour!

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