VIEWPOINT
BY SCOT T L A NDFIEL D
A Plea to Locally
Owned Dispensaries
TSUNAMI BOOKS SEEKS TO STAY IN BUSINESS
T
he first time I ever smoked pot was two
weeks out of high school at a rock festi-
val in the Atchafalaya Basin about an hour
north of New Orleans. June 21, 1971. The
sun was just above the western horizon on
a 105-degree day. A surfer dude convinced me to give it
a try. He thought it might help my incipient depression.
As we finished the joint the sun dipped below the dis-
tant swamp line, the temperature dropped to a cool 98
degrees, I opened my eyes, really opened my eyes and
saw, also for the first time, live naked female breasts.
Probably about 50,000 of them.
I’ve been a pot smoker ever since.
For the past 21 years I have been a worker-owner of
Tsunami Books at 2585 Willamette Street in beautiful
South Eugene. Tsunami has changed my life in as many
good ways as there are books on our precious reclaimed
lumber bookshelves. The best people — which is to say,
all people at their best — enter this big umbrella for the
arts and the human heart and openly, consciously give
in ways that no amount of money could ever replace.
Considering I began this bookstore business with about
$50, soon lost it, and have only recently begun to get it
back, the deep rewards I have garnered are all the more
worthwhile.
Early in this enterprise, when former bookstore
partner Dave Rhodes and I were expanding the store
into the back two-thirds of what was then a leaking,
effervescing mess of a 1949 cement block building,
the fellow who did the wiring was well-known and re-
spected for building some of the best and biggest illegal
grow rooms in the county. There is a 1,500-square-foot
unsupported upstairs room in the Tsunami building that
apparently had been used by a previous occupant as a
sweatshop. Our electrician proposed a secondary set of
wires.
“One year’s time, you’ll pay cash for the building,”
he promised. And no doubt, if all went well, he was
right.
At the time I was wrapping up a 20-year career
planting a couple million trees. As part of the job I knew
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May 25, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
every secret spring on every south-facing mountainside
in the Willamette National Forest, as well as most of
the guys who grew the illegal crops. But I just wanted
to make a living working hard and planting trees. Plant-
ing trees, reading and writing, and smoking a little pot.
And Dave and I just wanted to make our living selling
books, reading and writing books, hosting events and
smoking a little pot. Making a living from pot was sim-
ply never a part of the plan.
Now, at age 63, to paraphrase my old friend Ken
Babbs, it only takes “a single toke and it all comes back,
better than ever.” And though people come by the store
all the time offering up big bags of smoke, I always turn
it down, in part because suddenly in the last two years
there’s a tax in Oregon I really like to pay. To wake up
late on a Sunday morning, walk to my local dispensary,
buy a gram of something suitably weak and know that
not only am I good for the next two weeks, but my tax
dollars are headed straight for the schools of Oregon, is
a simple mix of pleasure and duty I can look forward to
the rest of my life.
Amen.
But here’s where it gets weird, folks. This is where
your help is needed. See, over these 22 years our rent
has slowly quadrupled, to where Tsunami now pays
$50,000 per year in rent. A lot of money, but we have
learned that when a venture such as Tsunami begins
with $50, and is fortunate, a living begins to be made
after about 21 years. Meanwhile, hosting over 4,000
community, cultural, educational, heartful events has
turned this place into so much more than just a book-
store. Some good people call it an institution; some, the
community’s second living room.
In 2015, with 30 days’ notice, the building came up
for sale. Some local people bought this 16,800-square-
foot property, having to pay top dollar to do so. Our
22-year lease is up on June 30. For us to procure an-
other five-year lease, with options, our rent will have to
immediately double to at least $100,000 per year. We
simply do not have the money to make it happen.
What we do have is a community process, some-
thing invented by the many loving people who are in-
tent on helping Tsunami survive and thrive. A unique
pledge campaign is under way. So far over 750 people
have turned in pledge forms. Our goal is at least 1,500.
Over $125,000 has been pledged — as loans — toward
a dedicated rent fund that will ease the transition we are
confident we can move through into a good long future
to come.
Unfortunately, modern commercial leases in a
boomtown being what they are, this is not enough to
secure a new one with the building owners. In our most
recent conversation, I was informed that though we are
not out of the running, a dispensary has made a much
better offer.
So here’s the idea: Tsunami Books wants to stay at
this location. Period. And we want the local folks who
own dispensaries, who have been and will remain citi-
zens of this wonderful little town and big county, to step
up ASAP with the other half of the pledge money we
need to make a convincing offer to our good building
owners. Tsunami knows your customers; many of them
are our customers. And even if they aren’t, most want
us to remain.
The website Leafly states there are at least 50 dis-
pensaries in Eugene. Many come from out of the area.
Many more are coming. Local dispensaries are being
challenged by hedge-fund money. From many direc-
tions come stories of the pressures of an ugly competi-
tion.
There is only one Tsunami Books. Time and again
we have helped show that community energy makes
things happen.
To all good local dispensary owners: Please contact
us at TsunamiBooks.org/contact-us/ for a pledge form.
Or email me, Scott Landfield, at tsunami1@opusnet.
com and we will talk. Help us to succeed now, and we
will share the story far and wide of how you stepped
up in service to the community to help Tsunami Books
keep its home.
Scott Landfield is the owner of Tsunami Books.