On December 10th, high end cannabis consumption lounge Cirrus Social Club will be hosting its first iteration of its Colfax Christmas fundraiser. Described as the “World’s First Classy Cannabis Fundraiser,” the event seeks to combat the devastation wrought upon local businesses that call Colfax home by the construction associated with the building of the East Colfax Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project by creating a marketing fund meant to drive traffic to and raise awareness for impacted businesses. The fundraiser is the result of the partnership between former influencer and YouTuber turned Cirrus Social Club founder Arend Richard and attorney and MSU Affiliate Faculty member Jason Adelstone, a somewhat unlikely pairing brought together by the desire to improve their community. The event will consist of a special menu prepared by some of the best chefs and restaurants in Denver including Champagne Tiger, Same Cafe, Fino, Yahya’s Mediterranean, Dana Rodriguez and more with entertainment such as a magician and a performance from Jan of RuPaul’s Drag Race fame accompanying each course. It’s sure to be a night filled with good food, good people, good weed and a whole lot of Christmas spirit all benefitting struggling Colfax businesses.
Denver Dive recently sat down with Richard and Adelstone to talk about how their partnership came about, what Colfax means to them, how the fundraiser will help Colfax businesses, going all out for Christmas and much more.
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Born and raised in Thorton, Colorado, Richard was a popular YouTuber going by the handle the Gay Stoner before he launched Cirrus. He’d post videos advocating for and educating about cannabis, with videos such as “How to Smoke Weed” going incredibly viral and serving as many’s first introduction to cannabis and cannabis culture. The idea for Cirrus came from a bowling night he spent with his husband. He grew frustrated that he kept having to go out to the car to smoke between frames and the idea dawned on him to open up a social club where cannabis consumption is not only normalized but celebrated. He said, “I remember saying to myself, ‘Damn, I wish there was a place that we could have a date night and a session would be normal.'”
The idea took many different shapes, evolved over time but eventually Richard arrived at the official concept for Cirrus: the classiest cannabis consumption club the world has ever seen. Arend and his business partner Joya G, officially launched Cirrus last year and have since hosted tens of thousands of patrons, showing that public cannabis consumption has a place in this modern age, the club acting as an alternative for people who don’t want to go out drinking or be around drunk people. It really is a beautiful space, each table accompanied by the smoking apparatus of your choice as Frank Sinatra and Billy Joel pour out of the speakers, the room dripping in decorations that feel warm but also very high end. This isn’t getting stoned in an alleyway or hotboxing your car. It’s a complete elevation of the whole cannabis consumption experience. Given that it is also located right off of Colfax, it is poised as the perfect location to host a fundraiser to help their neighbors on the street they all share.
Adelstone was raised in Albuquerque but has lived in Denver for a little over a decade. An attorney, he began his time here working at Vicente, LLP, a cannabis and psychedelic focused firm largely credited with starting the wave that led to cannabis legalization in America. He has since left Vicente and now works at Harris-Slikowski but still is very much involved in cannabis policy. He also teaches as an Affiliate Faculty member at MSU. A Colorado Restaurant Association member, the original idea for Colfax Christmas came from a conversation he had with former Denver Post journalist and cannabis advocate Ricardo Baca, known as the subject of the 2015 documentary Rolling Papers and also as one of the founders of the Underground Music Showcase. Their conversation focused on Adelstone’s desire to find a “cause.” “I wanted to do something that would help people and make an impact,“ he said. Baca brought up the devastation being wrought upon Colfax businesses by the BRT construction and the idea for the fundraiser was born.
The partnership with Cirrus came from Adelstone and his wife visiting the club as guests last year. He had been looking for a partner to help him bring his still forming idea for a fundraiser to life and after his visit to Cirrus, he felt like he had found it. He said, “The first person I came to was Arend because I want to combine cannabis and restaurants. Both industries need a lot of help in a lot of similar ways that legislatively can be combined, low margins to no margins for most of them, and politicians always try to take taxes. When they need money, they go after both those industries for taxes. I came here for the first time and saw [Richard’s] social media talking about the hospitality aspect of this place. This is not a cannabis business, a hospitality business and that I thought would be the perfect combination. And also I’ve never been to a fundraiser at a weed place.”
For those unfamiliar, the East Colfax Bus Rapid Transit or BRT is a construction project that just finished in September after almost fifteen years in the making. It implemented bus transit centers up and down Colfax. The intent is to improve public transit by implementing more frequent buses, safe places to board and provide access to a nearly 250,000 jobs, according to denvergov.org. The downside of the project, however, has been how devastating the construction of these centers have been for Colfax businesses. Fences were put up in front of store fronts, great deep holes dug in front of walk ways, access to many business such as 1Up or the Velvet Banjo made extremely more difficult. In this day and age, small businesses need all the help they can get anyway and the lack of access, the noise from the construction, the dirt and chainlink everywhere caused so many Colfax businesses to take huge hits. This is what Colfax Christmas seeks to combat.
Colfax Christmas seeks to build a marketing fund that will help drive traffic to Colfax businesses that have been so impacted by the BRT. Adelstone said, “I think it’s really important to address what we’re doing because you could hear that we’re gonna like hire marketing firms to to bring people back to Colfax. What we’re actually doing is we’re taking all of that capital and putting it pretty much directly back into the restaurants via influencers visiting and paying for their own meals and posting about these Colfax businesses in a really authentic and organic way.” Richard said that this model was inspired by Cirrus’s success which he said was almost totally based on influencers spreading the word. Richard said, “I think this approach is potentially more impactful than just giving some dollars to a business. It’s actually culturally influencing and about bringing people back here, letting people know that Colfax is still cool, it’s still open, and everything.”
The Christmas connection came simply from timing and also because of Richard’s deep love for Christmas. Last year, they held a Christmas event and said it was one of their favorite nights they’ve had since they’ve been in operation. “I go all out for Christmas,” Richard said. The event itself will kick off on the evening of December 10th with a non-alcoholic cocktail hour, hosted in their newly renovated bar area. After an hour of mingling, guests will be seated and treated to a 6-course meal, each course provided by a different Colfax restaurant or chef. Current participating chefs and restaurants include Same Cafe, Fino, Yahya’s Mediterranean, Champagne Tiger and Dana Rodriguez with more potentially to be announced. Each course will also feature entertainment from magician Ryan Kwessel, a performance by Jan of RuPaul’s Drag Race Fame, a performance from “The Cirrus Starlets Burlesque Troupe” and a mysterious specialized circus act. All of this will be happening with guests consuming cannabis at their leisure, blowing smoke in the air for a good cause. Tickets are $500 but Richard and Adelstone believe that the price of admission is justified given the good that that money can do and the night they have in store. It’s going to be one of the most interesting and impactful events of the year, a beautiful, elegant, elevated night with the potential to majorly improve this city we all call home.
Colfax Christmas feels so distinctly Denver, a shining example of this city’s willingness to fight for itself, how small businesses in this town support other small businesses. It represents so many things, the normalization of cannabis in what’s considered “polite society,” a desire to improve our city so that everyone calling this place home may thrive, a willingness to attempt to revitalize a part of this city that has been long afflicted by construction and negative public perception. This event has the potential to be huge for this city, even if it merely serves as inspiration for others to come together and fight for the businesses in Denver that make this city what it is. Get in touch with your Christmas spirit, get ready to eat some of the best food in the city and smoke some of the finest weed in the world all in the name of improving Denver. Don’t miss out.
Get tickets to Colfax Christmas here!
