“Outlandish Questions” – Is it legal weed or the prospect of legal weed, that makes us long for prohibition? In The Inlander
I wanted to hate the Volstead Act. The bar’s been open for several years, but I’d never been until a few weeks ago. I had, however, been to the Cruise Room in Denver, a similar celebration of Prohibition. If all nostalgia is a hopeless dream of recapturing what’s been lost, there’s something especially hollow about nostalgia for an era we didn’t live through. Prohibition nostalgia, a booze fantasy of naughty behavior, feels like cuddling up to vice, an expression of our superbad outlaw selves, but safe — like inhaling vaporized water instead of cigarette smoke.