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Original 420 flag, from the Waldo’s official website.
All five of the original 420 Waldos are in the studio today on Brew Ha Ha with Steve Jaxon and Herlinda Heras. Waldo Dave and Waldo Steve were on Brew Ha Ha once before, on this episode of April 18, 2019. This time, all five of them are here.
Steve, Dave, Jeff, Larry and Mark are here, they are the original Waldos from San Rafael High School in the early 1970s. There is ample documentation of their invention of the expression 420 on their website. It is the first time all five of them have been together for a radio interview.
They used to hang out on the wall, every day between classes and after school. “We were all about comedy and having fun.” They also listened to a lot of music, including the great bands from the Bay Area at the time. Lagunitas makes a special 420 Waldos beer and they have some of it in studio today.
At the time, one of them had a brother who was in the Coast Guard who knew of a secret garden. One of them got the map.
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So their meeting spot was the Louis Pasteur statue at school, and their buzzword was “420 Louis” to meet at the statue at 4:20 PM. That became just “420” then the term became “…secret code that we accidentally created.” It was still illegal and one of their fathers was a narcotics officer so they needed cover. The term extended to their group of friends and beyond.
The Grateful Dead Connection
There was also a connection to the Grateful Dead. Waldo Mark’s father was a real estate agent who ended up selling houses to three members of the band. He got tickets to concerts and the guys got to hang out with the band at concerts and one of them eventually got to be a roadie. He was using “420” at the time and the term started spreading through the Dead community.
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Each of the Waldos went on to professional careers in the Bay Area and they are now retired or semi-retired. They were also always into in what they called “safaris” where they went on adventures to investigate interesting stuff. Once they visited some researchers who were doing holographic images. “They were cub scout field trips but we were stoned.” One day Waldo Steve drove his 1966 Impala on the airport runway.
Another day they climbed onto the girders on the Golden Gate Bridge, when there was no security on the bridge. They jumped onto the protective nets which were “bouncy.” Another time they took a trip to LA and the police stopped them on the road when they mistook the Waldos for the SLA (who had kidnapped Patti Hearst). They wanted to see a taping of the Johnny Carson show, but the stop caused them to miss it, so they went to Disneyland. Listen to their telling of that story about 31 minutes in.
Brian Donaldson from Lagunitas has brought some of Lagunitas’ special 420 Waldos release, a 10.7% brew. He also brought some hop water and other brews. The Lagunitas brewers invited the Waldos to taste different hops and to choose the ones they thought tasted most like cannabis.
Waldos on three! One, two, three WALDOS! Woo hoo!