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Oregon pot shop’s video highlights ‘great’ Boise spots to smoke weed: ‘It’s coming’

If you can’t stop laughing at a new video about Boise from an Ontario dispensary, don’t worry.

I’m rolling on the floor right with you. It’s clearly some sort of contact high.

The short film from Treasure Valley Cannabis Company — about where to “sesh” in Boise, aka smoke marijuana with friends — is utterly absurd. And undeniably funny.

Released on Treasure Valley Cannabis’ Facebook page, it’s been a quick attention-getter.

Is it the cheerful orchestral music (Werner Tautz’s “Off Broadway”)? Is it the idea of a friendly stoner — played by employee Kyle Kowalski — tooling around Boise on an electric scooter and happily finding places to puff?

Or is it the fact that the joke is on Idaho, a state content to donate bazillions of tax dollars to Oregon?

The City of Trees “sesh” tour is the brainchild of Brandon St. Germain, director of operations at Treasure Valley Cannabis. He’s a Boise native. With the help of the dispensary’s marketing director and a Portland camera operator, he hatched the idea to film a humorous, landmark-filled video about his hometown.

Everybody knows that Ontario dispensaries are powered by border-crossing Idaho customers. This video, goofy or not, fosters that connection. Along with Idaho’s ties to marijuana.

“It’s important to me,” St. Germain says. “... Cannabis in Idaho and just helping establish and normalize it in this state as we get closer to legalization. ... Because it’s coming in some form or another.”

(Whaaaaat? In Idaho? Better stop smokin’ that stuff, man.)

Weed humor

Like an eager, modern-day Jeff Spicoli, Kowalski tours some of Boise’s most recognizable outdoor spots: the Greenbelt, Julia Davis Park, Freak Alley, even Camel’s Back Park.

All from a fake baked perspective. “No cannabis was actually consumed across state lines,” the dispensary wrote on Facebook.

“He wasn’t. That’s the best part,” St. Germain says. “He truly wasn’t.”

Um, OK. Then this Kowalski dude deserves an Oscar.

“Boise, Idaho,” he proclaims at the start, adding, “Great place to smo—” ... before pretend coughing.

His interactions with befuddled Boiseans are comedy gold.

“You know he likes weed,” Kowalski informs a couple walking past Zoo Boise, as he chuckles at a giraffe.

“Almost game time,” he tells a jogger underneath the Broadway bridge near Albertsons Stadium. “Sesh time. Woooo!”

Scrubbing his hands with water from the Boise River, Kowalski is impressed. “Geez. Could be used for bong water. It’s that clean.”

(A new marketing slogan, Parks & Rec Department? OK, maybe not for Quinn’s Pond.)

Growing dispensary

An Idaho-owned pot shop launched in 2020, Treasure Valley Cannabis Co., 560 Southeast 12th Ave., is growing. The dispensary is in the process of going farm-to-table, St. Germain says. A solventless extraction lab should be open in a month or so. An 11,000-square-foot grow house could be operating by spring 2022.

The Boise “sesh” video is a small promotional step. But it matters, St. Germain says. “If the Treasure Valley’s our future, we had to start somewhere to establish the brand.”

Long-term, who knows? The dispensary could expand ... southeast.

Idaho could legalize cannabis, St. Germain insists.

Really? Really.

“I think they’d be foolish not to,” he says. “For a long time, I thought Idaho would be one of the last states in the U.S. to do it. I think that they’re closer than a lot of us realize for some type of legalization.

“Again, money talks. It’s impossible to ignore. The tax revenue itself — it’s good for everything.”