1. The Choom Gang
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self-selected group of boys at Punahou School who loved basketball and
good times called themselves the Choom Gang. Choom is a verb, meaning
"to smoke marijuana."
As a member of the Choom Gang, Barry Obama was known for
starting a few pot-smoking trends. The first was called "TA," short for
"total absorption." To place this in the physical and political
context of another young man who would grow up to be president, TA was
the antithesis of Bill Clinton's claim that as a Rhodes scholar at
Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled.
Along with TA, Barry popularized the concept of "roof hits":
when they were chooming in the car all the windows had to be rolled up
so no smoke blew out and went to waste; when the pot was gone, they
tilted their heads back and sucked in the last bit of smoke from the
ceiling.
When you were with Barry and his pals, if you exhaled precious
pakalolo (Hawaiian slang for marijuana, meaning "numbing tobacco")
instead of absorbing it fully into your lungs, you were assessed a
penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.
"Wasting good bud smoke was not tolerated," explained one member of the
Choom Gang, Tom Topolinski, the Chinese-looking kid with a Polish name
who answered to Topo.
[Choom Gang member] Mark Bendix's Volkswagen bus, also known as
the Choomwagon. … The other members considered Mark Bendix the glue,
he was funny, creative, and uninhibited, with a penchant for Marvel
Comics. He also had that VW bus and a house with a pool, a bong, and a
Nerf basketball, all enticements for them to slip off midday for a few
unauthorized hours of recreation...
Barry also had a knack for interceptions. When a joint was
making the rounds, he often elbowed his way in, out of turn, shouted
"Intercepted!," and took an extra hit. No one seemed to mind.
Choom Gang members often made their way to Aku Ponds at the end
of Manoa Stream, where they slipped past the liliko'i vines and the
KAPU (keep out) signs, waded into waist-high cool mountain water, stood
near the rock where water rushed overhead, and held up a slipper (what
flip-flops are called in Hawaii) to create an air pocket canopy. It
was a natural high, they said, stoned or not.
He was a long-haired haole hippie who worked at the Mama Mia
Pizza Parlor not far from Punahou and lived in a dilapidated bus in an
abandoned warehouse. … According to Topolinski, Ray the dealer was
"freakin' scary." Many years later they learned that he had been killed
with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover. But at the time he was
useful because of his ability to "score quality weed."
...
In another section of the [senior] yearbook, students were
given a block of space to express thanks and define their high school
experience. … Nestled below [Obama's] photographs was one odd line of
gratitude: "Thanks Tut, Gramps, Choom Gang, and Ray for all the good
times." … A hippie drug-dealer made his acknowledgments; his own mother
did not.
Their favorite hangout was a place they called Pumping
Stations, a lush hideaway off an unmarked, roughly paved road partway
up Mount Tantalus. They parked single file on the grassy edge, turned
up their stereos playing Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, and Stevie
Wonder, lit up some "sweet-sticky Hawaiian buds" and washed it down with
"green bottle beer" (the Choom Gang preferred Heineken, Becks, and St.
Pauli Girl).
One of the favorite words in their subculture revealed their
democratic nature. The word was veto. Whenever an idea was broached,
someone could hold up his hand in the V sign (a backward peace sign of
that era) and indicate that the motion wash not approved. They later
shortened the process so that you could just shout "V" to get the point
across. In the Choom Gang, all V's were created equal.
11. Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud And Kona Gold:
In the Honolulu of Barry's teenage years marijuana was
flourishing up in the hills, out in the countryside, in covert
greenhouses everywhere. It was sold and smoked right there in front of
your nose; Maui Wowie, Kauai Electric, Puna Bud, Kona Gold, and other
local variations of pakololo were readily available.
The Barf Couch earned its name early in the first trimester
when a freshman across the hall from Obama [in the Haines Hall Annex
dorm at Occidental College] drank himself into a stupor and threw up
all over himself and the couch. In the manner of pallbearers hoisting a
coffin, a line of Annexers lifted the tainted sofa with the freshman
aboard and toted it out the back door and down four steps to the first
concrete landing on the way to the parking lot. A day later, the couch
remained outside in the sun, resting on its side with cushions off
(someone had hosed it clean), and soon it was back in the hallway nook.
(The main hallway at Haines Hall was called the Annex,) home to
the impromptu Annex Olympics: long-jumping onto a pile of mattresses,
wrestling in underwear, hacking golf balls down the hallway toward the
open back door, boxing while drunk. There were the non-Olympic sports
of lighting farts and judging them by color, tipping over the Coke
machine, breaking the glass fire extinguisher case, putting out
cigarettes on the carpet, falling asleep on the carpet, flinging
Frisbees at the ceiling-mounted alarm bell, tasting pizza boxes to the
floor, and smoking pot from a three-foot crimson opaque bong, a two-man
event involving the smoker and an accomplice standing ready to respond
to the order "Hey, dude, light the bowl!"
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