By Tom Yamaguchi
The following story was told to me by a witness to some strange events in the 1960s and 1970s who prefers to remain anonymous:
The first political demand for General Motors to go into bankruptcy was issued sometime in late 1970 or early 1971. The bankruptcy for General Motors political demand was included as part of a marketing campaign for GrassMasters, the brand of marijuana cigarettes marketed by Felix The Cat, who proclaimed GrassMasters had the “GM Mark of Excellence.”
Felix The Cat, also known in the media as Mr. Felix, was one of the public pseudonyms used by an anarchist marijuana dealer known to certain residents in Berkeley, Calif. Someone made a mistake in early 1970 by raving some Abbie Hoffman-style rhetoric to Felix The Cat about the fun of manipulating the media. For some strange reason Felix took media manipulation jokes seriously.
Mr. Felix first decided to manipulate the media by buying advertising to sell marijuana. He placed a one-half page ad in the Berkeley Tribe underground newspaper for Park Lane brand cigarettes. The alleged “barter” ad was placed by Felix The Cat as both a political campaign contribution supporting the Tribe and as an act of conceptual art. Felix claimed he was the first person to advertise the commercial sale of marijuana in a newspaper.
Park Lane was a brand of cigarettes not normally sold in this country. During the Vietnam War, Vietnamese peddlers sold packages of Park Lane where the tobacco had been emptied out and replaced with marijuana. Park Lanes were “high test” even with filters. The cigarettes were smuggled into the United States by homeward bound servicemen who stuffed them inside of stereo speakers. During the summer of 1970, the supply of Park Lane marijuana cigarettes dried up. Rumor had it that the mastermind of the smuggling operation had been shipped home by the Army, as the United States started its years' long withdrawal from Vietnam.
After the Park Lane ad, Felix The Cat's love for media manipulation continued. He decided to create a media scam, and see how far he could carry it out. Felix decided to market GrassMasters cigarettes, which came complete with the “GM Mark of Excellence.” GrassMasters were made from a short-lived brand of cigarettes at that time called Laredo.
Laredo cigarettes came as a package of loose tobacco, a set of cigarette filters, and a set of cigarette papers shaped into tubes. The Laredo starter pack included a hand-operated machine which shoved the loose tobacco and filter into the paper tube. Felix The Cat had some of his girlfriends go out and buy all the Laredo starter packs they could find. He put them to work stuffing the Laredo papers with marijuana to produce GrassMasters. The Laredo system included boxes to hold the handmade cigarettes. Felix sold his cigarettes in packs made with the Laredo boxes. He replaced the Laredo logo with his own GrassMasters labels that he had printed on bumpersticker stock. Felix The Cat stuck other labels to the packs with messages such as “Caution: Cigarette Smoking Will Get You High!” and “GrassMasters use the GM Mark of Excellence!”
Once he had a supply of sample GrassMasters ready to go, Felix The Cat went out on his mission to manipulate the media into publicizing the GrassMasters marketing launch. Felix got a radio scriptwriter to create a half dozen 30-second radio spots. He visited the top rock station in San Francisco and waved around $300, trying to buy airtime for his commercials. The station didn’t take his money, but it did give GrassMasters a half-hour of airtime on a public affairs show. A very stoned Felix was interviewed by the radio station’s News Director.
GrassMasters managed to get a story on the coveted front-page, middle-column of the Wall Street Journal. GrassMasters got half-page articles in Rolling Stone and Playboy. GrassMasters and Felix The Cat ended up getting a wide variety of other media coverage that seemed to be mostly cribbed from those three reports.
The College Press Service wrote that Felix The Cat, "told a radio station interviewer that 320 dealers in the Bay area are handling his first consignment of 5,000 cartons. A packet of 18 joints now sells at $7.50, but he hopes to pass on savings to the smoker as the business grows. By early spring they plan to have an automated rolling factory in Mexico and two more, underground in San Francisco and Berkeley, with distribution centers coast to coast." CPS furthered quoted Mr. Felix who was referred to in the article as a spokesman for a consortium of pot dealers known collectively as Felix the Cat, "We turn about a ton of grass a month in the San Francisco ares (sic). That's worth $250,000." The article expressed optimism on the possible legalization of cannabis. "Mr. Felix claims to have a bail fund reserve of $125,000 and is prepared for two supreme court appeals in the next couple of years. 'Then we'll be out in the clear.'"
The Wall Street Journal story recited a series of allegations that Felix The Cat had made to their reporter. Felix claimed GrassMasters cigarettes were created from a blend of four different types of exotic marijuana. He boasted that fleets of aircraft were used to import many tons of the raw material to GrassMasters' warehouses and an assembly line of Hippies worked in these warehouses to produce massive quantities of the finished product. The Wall Street Journal reporter noted that, if his financial allegations were correct, then Felix The Cat was making over one thousand percent profit. He poked fun at Felix's other improbable assertions. The Felix The Cat cartoon copyright holder was quoted, complaining about the betrayal of children’s trust. The Wall Street Journal article lamented that other media received GrassMasters packages from Felix, while denying the Journal had received the product itself.
The Journal quoted police sources, stating that Felix The Cat was a fraud. The police agencies had apparently expended a considerable amount of effort in unsuccessful attempts to buy GrassMasters or find out anything about the GrassMasters brand. The Journal reporter had contacted General Motors for a comment about Felix The Cat’s use of the “GM Mark of Excellence” marketing slogan. The reporter apparently baffled the General Motors spokesperson who later called back to announce the company was beginning an investigation into the misuse of its trademark. Somewhere in his attempts to continue use of the “GM Mark of Excellence” slogan, Felix The Cat publicly demanded the bankruptcy of General Motors. No one took him seriously at that time.
Media stories about GrassMasters would continue to trickle out for months. By the time the last story had come out, Felix The Cat had left Berkeley, not to return for several years. He did return for a short time in 1976, insisting to everyone who knew him that he never be addressed by them as Felix The Cat and that he should never be identified to anyone else by that name ever again. After a few months of engaging in alienating behavior, that person fled Berkeley.
There are no reports of anyone seeing or hearing from Felix The Cat ever since. It was a matter of intermittent discussion for years among those who knew Felix as to whether it was more likely that he would end up getting murdered or catching some fatal disease. None who knew him consider it likely he could have managed to stay alive for long. No one would have ever guessed he was ahead of his time in his call for the bankruptcy of General Motors.
My source has informed me of another piece of San Francisco marijuana mythology. During the late 1960s through mid 1970s, it was a commonly held belief that pot smoking was responsible for the continued integrity of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Smoking a joint while crossing the bridge prevented the structure from collapsing into the water below. That the bridge continued to stay intact was proof that, at any time of the day or night, someone was smoking a joint while driving across it. Performing the duty of holding the bridge up was made easier by the knowledge that the police are very reluctant to stop vehicles mid-span. The corollary of this theory was that individual drivers did not feel obligated to smoke a joint during every bridge crossing as someone else was always on the bridge smoking one for them.
My source has documented that since the mid-1970s this myth has been largely forgotten. It only seems to be known to those of the counter culture who lived in Bay Area during that time and not to those who lived there before or after. It may have been forgotten to the bridge's detriment. In 1989, part of the eastern span collapsed during an earthquake. Timing may have also been a factor, the collapse having occurred at the beginning of the World Series. Bridge traffic was relatively light, and commuters may have rushed home early to roll joints in anticipation of the baseball game.
The old structure is now being replaced with a new eastern span linking Treasure Island and Oakland. My source suspects that changes in demographics and commute patterns may have reduced the number of marijuana users crossing the span. This could be counteracted by a public service campaign to bring awareness of the need to secure the new bridge's structural integrity. For example, a message could be flashed on the toll plaza's electronic sign that reads "Smoke 'em if you got 'em."
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