A High Times Magazine Sendoff Atop the World Trade Center
New York Times revisits the wake held in 1978 for High Times magazine founding editor Tom Forcade.
There are a number of intriguing tidbits in this weekend’s retracing by Alex Williams in The New York Times of the evolution of High Times magazine.
Will Dana, former managing editor of Rolling Stone, is on board as a consultant. Parent company Trans-High Corporation, located in New York, earns 80 percent of its annual revenues from the events side (the magazine’s signature Cannabis Cup series alights later this month in San Bernardino, Calif., and Broomfield, Colo.). And while there have been previous accounts of the magazine’s staff, in December 1978, giving founder Tom Forcade a proper sendoff from the original World Trade Center’s observation deck by scattering his ashes, we had not heard about this additional wrinkle:
High Times, to put it mildly, is no ordinary media property. This is, after all, a magazine where the staff once smoked the founding editor (more on that later)…
When Mr. Forcade committed suicide in 1978, the staff gathered atop the World Trade Center (“so we could have the highest tribute possible,” one editor said), rolled his ashes into joints and smoked them.
Forcade shot himself Nov. 17. For more context on his death, check out Chapter 18 of Patrick Anderson’s book High in America.
Previously on FishbowlNY:
Revisiting Truman Capote’s Tipsy High Times Cover
Pictured: March 1999 cover of High Times
