Marijuana Oasis To Open In Time For Coachella

The invite-only "oasis" will reportedly be located a few miles away from the Coachella festival.

Weed is now technically legal in California, but it won’t make a difference for people going to Coachella this year—drugs (except for alcohol) are banned from festival grounds.

That is, unless you travel to the new “marijuana oasis,” a designated 420-friendly compound six miles from the festival where attendees can smoke, vape, or nosh on edibles freely.

The oasis is the marketing brainchild of WeedMaps, the so-called “Yelp of marijuana dispensaries.”

According to TMZ, the attraction will feature two grow houses, a greenhouse, and five colorful “geodesic” domes for people to hang out in—complete with “Budologists,” exotic strains to vape or smoke, and edibles.

The pot products will be given away, not sold and the event is invite-only, according to Billboard.

The two-weekend Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will take place on April 14-16 and April 21-23, and will feature Radiohead, Kendrick Lamar, and Lady Gaga as headliners. The annual event takes place in Indio, California, adjacent to the city of Coachella.

California was one of four states to legalize cannabis for recreational use last November—alongside Maine, Nevada and Massachusetts.

It was the first state to legalize cannabis for medical use in 1996, and since then California has been a pioneer—both culturally and economically—for all things cannabis.

Sober music lovers can link up with Coachella’s own growing recovery community called Soberchella. It held its first recovery meetings at the festival back in 2009, and according to its blog, it will be back for 2017.

Around 30 people got together for meetings and meet-ups at last year’s festival. “There is strength in numbers,” said Bob, who started Soberchella with his wife. “We all knew that if anybody got uncomfortable, we were out there.”

The couple, who are both in recovery, found that there was a demand for a recovery community at Coachella through a festival message board which allowed them to connect with other sober attendees.

They’re part of a larger recovery community at music festivals throughout the world. According to Fix contributor Bridget Phetasy, there’s a lot more support out there than one might expect.

Even Burning Man has an “entire sober village” that holds meetings throughout the day. And people who are tripping and need a safe space can find that here as well.

“Once I focused on making sobriety a priority, it was as if resources from a secret society magically appeared,” writes Phetasy. “Turns out there is support everywhere you just have to look for it.”