Trenton has its share of social activists and marijuana enthusiasts. It also has a tradition of restaurants sometimes distinguished more by the personality of the owner than by the actual cuisine.
Nowhere, though, do all three come together like they do across from Trenton City Hall on East State Street. That is where the Weedman’s Joint restaurant opened in June alongside the Liberty Bell Temple III, a sanctuary where marijuana is a sacrament, and a shop called the Secret Stash, which specializes in merchandise helpful to casual marijuana use that once was known as “paraphernalia.”
The Weedman is Ed Forchion, 52, a former cross-country truck driver and native of Sicklerville, on the western edge of the Pinelands in Camden County. He is being treated for bone cancer in Philadelphia, he says. He thought it was in remission until recently. Qualifying under New Jersey’s medical marijuana law is only part of it, though. Forchion is an unapologetic proponent of marijuana legalization.
“It never should have been illegal,” he says of pot. “In the early days of my activism, I was mad. Now I just think I’m right.”
“Weed itself doesn’t ruin your life,” he says. “The laws do.”
But while Forchion may be the “Weedman,” he makes it clear that he is not the “Reefer Man,” which the legendary band leader Cab Calloway once immortalized in song. No controlled substances are sold or distributed at the Weedman Joint, the “Temple,” or anywhere else in the three side-by-side buildings leased by Forchion.
“Unofficially, when I was a teenager,” Forchion says, when asked when he started smoking marijuana. “I preferred marijuana. I never was much of a drinker. My friends started calling me (Weedman”).
In the YouTube age, Forchion is a presence. Last year he and some friends attended a Trenton City Council meeting where Forchion said he had expected council to approve a resolution calling for marijuana legalization. Council members changed their minds about voting on the measure at all, though, and in a video Forchion can be heard calling out “cowards” several times before being escorted out of council chambers by authorities.
He says he used to send letters to then-federal prosecutor Chris Christie regularly asking him to stop prosecuting marijuana users, enclosing a joint along with each letter. So it is little wonder the governor should remember him. There is an online video showing Governor Christie being asked about Weedman during a news conference where he appears to refer to Forchion personally, calling him “Ed.”
Indeed, considering Forchion’s habit of publicly tweaking the high and mighty, combined with the nature of his business, it suggests a question: “How is he getting away with it?”
“I argue the religious argument,” Forchion says. “And that’s the same argument I would argue now. I just want to do this to survive. We’re not selling weed. I think I have a pretty good defense, if they come. I think what I’m doing is legal, until I’m told otherwise.”
Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have legalized marijuana for recreational use and 23 states and Washington, D.C. have legalized it for medical use. Similar legislation is pending in seven other states, but it remains illegal under federal law. There are federal laws granting religious liberty, under which the Liberty Bell Temple III justifies use of the “sacrament” that church members partake in on the premises. He says the temple has about 200 members. Membership is $25.
“I think it’s been great,” he says of his “Joint” since it opened. “No one’s bothered me. I think the only issue has been about a month ago when the City Council didn’t act on a resolution that was presented to them. It was a resolution for the city asking the state to legalize marijuana.
“I thought it was going to be defeated. But they didn’t vote on it at all. So we had a little reaction in the chambers. It may not have been the most neighborly thing to do. That was the only problem, when I overreacted. It’s consistent with me. I’m a reactionary kind of activist.”
Forchion spent some time in college, and then did a hitch in the Army, getting out in 1990. He decided he “wanted to sight-see” and became a truck driver, hauling everything from steel to produce with his own 18-wheeler. “I got the truck bug in me. That was my way to be free,” he says. “If I wanted to see Prince in New Orleans, I took a load to New Orleans.”
His father is a retired NJ Transit diesel mechanic and his mother owns an assisted living group home.
He’s been married twice, he says. “My last wife, the Weedman didn’t sit well with her after awhile,” he says.
Forchion’s travels as a truck driver took him to Los Angeles, where he started an earlier incarnation of the Weedman’s Joint and Liberty Bell Temple. In 2012, though, authorities closed it down.
“I was chasing the green rush, just like everyone else,” he says. “There are hundreds of stores in Los Angeles. I was ticking a lot of people off.”
In 2010 he ran into serious trouble with the law, however, and did an 18-month stretch in the former Riverfront State Prison in Camden for a marijuana offense. “It was horrible,” he says of prison. “Sixty to 70 percent of the people in prison are drug users. (But) there are people in prison who should be in prison. I would look at them and think, ‘I’m glad they’re in prison.’ My first cellie was a convicted murderer.”
In 2004 he and others were cited at a pot-smoking gathering at the Liberty Bell Center in Philadelphia. Forchion appealed the convictions unsuccessfully in federal court.
He also appeared in court after suing an employer who fired him in 2004 after Forchion was seen in a television news report. It is unclear whether Forchion was fired for advocating marijuana legalization or for dedicating the Village People’s 1980s anthem “YMCA” to then Governor Jim McGreevey outside the State House in Trenton. By then he was living in Browns Mills and was a freeholder candidate for the Legalize Marijuana Party. He also stuck his toe in the water as a candidate for Congress and later got on the ballot in a futile run for governor. He received 14,000 votes, he says, “mostly from Burlington County.”
In various writings he mentions his travails alongside some of the most notorious civil rights wrongs in U.S. history, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions and the Jim Crow era.
He is a free man, now, however, with no charges still outstanding. Nevertheless, while having a restaurant attached to a temple where marijuana is worshipped makes a good deal of sense, it’s another thing entirely to make a commitment to the food and beverage industry.
“Years ago, I thought about opening a restaurant, but never did it,” he says.
Everything came together with his marijuana advocacy, he says. At first he was looking for a location on West State Street across from the State House, where he might continue to tweak the high and mighty. But he found his spot across from Trenton City Hall almost as suitable and a good target for his bullhorn. “I wanted to make a statement. I wanted to be closer to the State House. But the location, there is no better place in the state to put it. I’m trying to be as Main Street as possible. That’s what it’s all about, being out in the open, out of the cannabis closet.”
“I feel like I’m making a huge statement as an activist. But as a businessman, I think we’ll be all right. We have a pretty decent lunch crowd, state and city workers. I want to get it to where I’m a destination location for city dwellers. I think this will work out,” he says. “I think it will create a counter-cultural spot.”
The Weedman Joint is attracting different kinds of attention these days. “During the week, I have a steady stream of medical marijuana patients coming through,” he says. “Mostly during the day.”
The restaurant offers turkey, salmon, and chicken burgers, chicken wings, fish dishes, and sides that cover all the soul food bases.
Forchion had envisioned a reality TV show, which seems like a natural, given the setting. He also attracted the attention of the Wall Street Journal last summer. The reality show didn’t come through, however, but he has hopes that a scripted show will begin shooting soon. “A lot of people thought it was going to be like Cheers,” Forchion says. “I think it’s more like Black Ink Crew,” he says, referring to the VH1 reality show set in a Harlem tattoo parlor.
In addition to the restaurant and the temple, there is also entertainment and other events on nights and weekends. Forchion writes a column that appears in the Trentonian, and he maintains a page on Facebook. His buildings are adjacent to the space that was a community garden last year. A mural courtesy of SAGE coalition decorates the side of the Weedman Joint building. In back is a space that Forchion hopes will become a “Kannabosm Garden.” The term has Biblical roots and is sometimes subjected to etymological pushing and pulling that suggests that the Bible condoned marijuana use in some way.
Patrolling the building is Bud, a full blood pit bull. “He’s kind of symbolic of Trenton,” Forchion says. “Trenton has a lot of problems with pit bull breeds. But he wandered by one day and walked in and never left.”
NJ Weedman’s Joint, 322 East State Street, Trenton, open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. For more information, including details of “Stoner Saturday,” call 609-337-9973 or visit www.njweedmansjoint.com.
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