The phone rang, and our employee Dan was on the other end:
“Tommy Chong just stopped by the kiosk and was really interested in the hammocks, he had to walk off but said he’d be back in a bit.”
Before we go any further, let me paint the picture a little better: We live in Boulder. Where, truth be told, there’s a lot of guys who look and even sound eerily like Tommy Chong. And it just so happened to be Halloween.
Normally I’d have good reason to be a little LOT skeptical of such a situation, but coincidentally just one day earlier I had heard that a friend of mine had waited on Tommy Chong in her restaurant in Boulder. That was enough to convince me that we were talking about the real deal – the king (well, co-king, no pun intended) of stoner comedy himself.
While I can only claim to know the public personality that is Tommy Chong, he immediately struck me as a perfect person to own a Trek Light Hammock. If anyone follows our belief that life should be as much about relaxing and enjoying yourself as it is pursuing your dreams, Tommy Chong is certainly up there on the list. I had a funny feeling he was just being polite and wasn’t going to come back to the kiosk, but sure enough an hour or so later the picture below showed up on my phone. One look tells you all you need to know - that is definitely the one and only Tommy Chong. He walked away with a brand new Double hammock and hopefully a great memory of supporting small businesses in Boulder.
I have fond memories of my Dad telling me stories about listening to Cheech & Chong’s comedy records back in the day, but as a teenager it never quite translated – I was just too young to get the humor.
It wasn’t until my own college years that I re-discovered their comedy and wound up shedding more than a few laughing tears with my roommates. It’s counter-culture humor at its finest, comedy your parents are supposed to hate, and realizing that my Dad and I could both share a laugh at something like that some 20 years apart was one of those great moments of growing up.
For a small business getting your product into the hands of any known celebrity is always a great feeling, regardless of whether it leads to a single additional sale or not – when my own kids discover Cheech & Chong someday I’ll be sure to blow their minds with the fact that Tommy just may have spent his later years writing jokes from the comfort of his Trek Light Hammock.
Chong is pretty active on Twitter (@tommychong) and also has his own podcast potcast radio show so I’m hoping we can hear at some point what he thinks about his new Trek Light Gear hammock. We’re too small of a business to pay for celebrity endorsements but I do know that our hammock is capable of making anyone’s life better – and a celebrity fan is way cooler than a celebrity spokesperson. Who knows, maybe someday we'll be announcing that we're adding a Tommy Chong signature edition hammock to the lineup.
Hey Tommy, if you’re home, open up man – it’s me, Seth.