There is an article today in the New York Times about Hudson that isn't about our fair city as idyllic weekend escape. Instead it's about Bill Hughes and his effort to open a cannabis dispensary: "When the Weed Wars Came to Warren Street."
It is recommended reading, even though it contains a few inaccuracies and characterizes Gossips in this way:
The troubles of Hudson rarely escape The Gossips of Rivertown, a tireless if cranky blog that serves as a digital town square. It chronicles the most incremental zoning meetings like events of global magnitude. Reader comments flare like torpedoes.
Only in Hudson does the equity license go to the person with the most equity.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think Hudson has sole proprietorship of the rich getting richer, but welcome to the revolution, comrade.
DeleteHa! Nothing wrong with people who work hard, take risks and innovate doing well.
DeleteAnd we already had the revolution, Michael. It was for individual rights, capitalism, and liberty in 1776.
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The more Hudson-specific sequel to this well written and deeply researched NYT story might be about the people who have discovered an even better business model: monetizing Albany grants and regulations while calling it “doing good.”
Exploiting minority business owners for social capital and gleefully violating state regulations; ain’t it grand.
DeleteTireless? Absolutely. Cranky? Never. Now, off to read the article!
ReplyDeleteI’m pleased that this article paints Gotham and its owner in the appropriate light.
ReplyDeleteGotham is a fine shop. So is Riverbend. So, for that matter, is Gold Leaf out on Fairview. But they’re businesses and the one thing anyone who has actually owned and run a successful business will tell you is how bloody hard it is to make money.
ReplyDeleteThat’s why Bill Hughes is having such a hard time: he’s never been in business, never run anything like a business. Yes, someone will always have more assets than you. That’s the way of the world. By the way, if Bill’s idea (a third dispensary in a town of 5500 population) is so good, why isn’t his pal Tyson investing? And, bear in mind, that Bill has Albany connections more vital and based on relationships than anyone else mentioned in the article. The bottom line is his idea is weak due to his timing, he’s vastly undercapitalized and fighting an uphill battle as the wannabe third mover.
In addition to using the likenesses of minority vendors in its marketing but *not* stocking those products because of “the aesthetic”, Gotham also touted its selection of black- and brown-owned product lines back when the shop was illegally sited in Fain’s building on Front. When asked to produce a list of those owners, they stalled them failed.
DeleteBy the owner’s own admission, she asks for forgiveness and not permission. This comment section has a long history of excoriating local businesses for doing the same (see: literally any article about a project’s historic appropriateness, or the tiny pitchforks recently raised about the “four or fewer locations” ordinance). Kudos to them for paying their staff a decent wage, though.
(The half they didn’t fire, anyway)
Gotham employs many minority folks in customer facing positions. They also do feature minority owned product. And the only business that has never laid off employees is a company that hasn’t experienced a downturn. It’s simply the obligation of those with P and L responsibility to cut unproductive headcount when needed.
DeleteWhoever painted “What do u harbor that rots?” on 330 Warren like that struck graffiti gold. The image of that building and text is being documented everywhere. It’s slowly becoming Hudson’s “Hollywood” sign. I wonder if when the art gallery from Chicago (I’ve heard) moves into the building they’ll paint over it?
ReplyDeleteNah. They’ll cut it down and hang it on a wall … with a price tag.
DeleteIf I were mentioned in this story, even tangentially, I would be deeply ashamed. Instead it seems that many are just excited to be mentioned in the New York Times and care very little about the actual reporting or the reason the Times chose to publish this article in the first place. Thus far, the reactions have been disgraceful. Instead of calling for boycotts of Gotham or Riverbend, "community members" are joking about making t-shirts or fan art using images and pull quotes from the piece. Clearly, racism is alive and thriving in Hudson — a city run by bloggers, anonymous Instagram accounts, and art school grads with too much time and vested trusts.
ReplyDeleteZoom out and it's one story:
Deletethe state criminalized a plant and enforced it use and sale selectively, then legalized it and rationed the permits to politically connected (including Hughes).
Hudson/NY's biggest drama, as usual, is regulation and government capture.
Boycott Gotham or Riverbend -- for doing what exactly? Following the law? Sure, they have more money than Bill and more experience. There's always someone with more money and experience. But should they be boycotted for using their resources in a lawful manner? That makes no sense.
DeleteLet's be frank: Bill used his Albany connections to cause the Office of Cannabis Management (a cluster-fuck of epic proportions in its initial iteration) to issue a dispensary license within an area the law says no such license should issue. Bill used his resources, Gotham and Riverbend each used theirs. If a white man had used his pull to do the same, it would likely be an issue and rightfully so. But when Bill does it it's just . . . business as usual in Albany. So of course Riverbend sues -- Bill subverted the OCM process to achieve an outcome he was not entitled to under the law. Riverbend followed the law. They have a right to expect that the law will protect them equally, that their considerable investment of money and time won't be at the mercy of an Albany bureaucrat making arbitrary decisions based on relationships.
Who's the bad actor here? Really no one: the established business people use their financial and organization skills to move as quickly as possible; Bill uses his social capital to do the same. Unfortunately, in business, money almost always trumps other variables.
Among the many fundamental flaws in the NYS cannabis licensing scheme (and there a plenty) is the belief that business regulation can repair historic societal damage. It clearly can't.
Carole, thanks for posting this. It’s a big, deeply reported piece, but I came away feeling that Riverbend’s side was barely there, especially given how heavily the story is framed around race and who was harmed by the drug war.
ReplyDeleteBill Hughes gets a full personal history and a lot of space explaining why he believes he should have a dispensary in Hudson. Riverbend, by contrast, is introduced largely as “two white men” who got a CAURD license intended for people harmed by the drug war.
Ed Glickman’s path to a social-equity CAURD license was very different from Bill Hughes’s. A felony cannabis conviction followed Ed long after the arrest, shutting him out of conventional employment and leaving him with very few options for earning a living. Entrepreneurship was not an easy or privileged choice. It was what he turned to because the job market had closed its doors to him. Years later, that same history helped qualify him for CAURD. Bill Hughes did not qualify for CAURD because he had never been convicted of a cannabis offense. Yet Ed is largely introduced to readers as one of “two white men” who received a license. His experience with the drug war does not disappear because he is white.
Riverbend also wasn’t simply an outside operation. Ed’s partner had lived in Hudson for more than 25 years.
Riverbend then opened under New York’s 2,000-foot proximity rule and invested a huge amount of time, energy, and money relying on that protection. The state later waived that protection for Hughes, allowing his proposed dispensary to locate just 345 feet from Riverbend after Riverbend had already fully invested and opened.
The Hughes waiver also appears to be among the most extreme proximity exceptions OCM has granted. In Niagara Falls, a waiver was denied at roughly 870 feet under a 1,000-foot rule. In Hudson, a city of fewer than 6,000 residents, Hughes was approved at only 345 feet from Riverbend under a 2,000-foot rule. The disparity is striking, and Riverbend is opposing what it views as an egregious exception to a rule it had already relied on in making its investment.
The article spends a lot of time explaining why Hughes wanted that exception, but much less on why Riverbend objected after the state waived the 2,000-foot protection Riverbend had relied on.
And with an October 15 hearing approaching on these very issues, the timing is hard not to notice.
The racial history behind New York’s cannabis laws absolutely matters. But if the story is going to ask who was harmed by the drug war and who deserves consideration now, then Ed’s actual history matters too.