Read This: The war over who created 4/20 spans 5 decades
History is rife with historic feuds. The Hatfields and McCoys. Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. Sean Spicer and Dippin’ Dots. Meanwhile, another epic rivalry has been brewing beneath a thick cloud of smoke for the last four and a half decades and we’ve been none the wiser. Until now, that is. A new piece from The Ringer serves as a definitive primer to the harshed mellow that is the Waldos-Bebes feud.
Today’s a fitting day to report on the rivalry, as its significance wouldn’t exist without them. For years now, a group of friends who went to San Rafael High School in the ’70s have been credited with coining the phrase “420” in reference to all things marijuana. The story is that the Waldos, a group of friends led by a chill dude named Steve Capper, would “head for team practices and assorted meetings before rendezvousing back at the Louis Pasteur statue at 4:20 sharp to smoke up and set out on the day’s safari” after school.
This has long been the accepted origin, but in 2012 a piece from 420 Magazine disputed this fact, citing a group of friends called the Bebes as the phrase’s true originators.
420 Magazine quoted Tom Thorgersen, the era’s “neighborhood Norwegian weed dealer,” as saying: “Steve Capper is an opportunist who wasn’t even close to making up 420. We made fun of the Waldos, a.k.a. ‘Wallies,’ they were the weaker link, the ones who didn’t fit in.”