Are we the Amsterdam of America? We do have the tulips.

My current home state, the Evergreen State just became the EverGREEN state with the passing of the legalization of marijuana, coming December 6.

Don’t book your flight just yet. Although the pot fog wafting into my window has thickened, there’s nowhere legal to buy the stuff. And there’s a big parler coming up with the Feds on how this will all work.

As a travel writer, I find this most interesting in terms of tourism. Rick Steves, that khaki-clad, accountant-like celebrity traveler, is a huge marijuana supporter. This surprised me. I had him pegged as the kind of guy for whom a glass of white wine is a wild night. Then again, I am one to talk.

I’ll leave my own political affiliations out of this because I am suffering from political fatigue. Here are some just-for-fun predictions.

Pot legalization predictions:

Please read the following in your best Year 2000 voice. If you don’t know that reference, you really need to catch up on your Conan O’Brien.

1. Capitol Hill, our trendiest, (i.e. most obnoxious) neighborhood will fill to capacity with potheads and slackers and people who wear vanity monocles and play polo on bicycles. Oh wait – it already is. Next.
2. Coffee shops will be replaced with “coffee shops.”
3. Washington State residents will be visited by their long-lost slacker friend, the guy who nicknamed himself The Guy on the Couch, who hasn’t called you in years, who now wants to sleep on your couch. Forever.
4. People will refer to Seattle as mini-Amsterdam and tourism from here to the legal weed-topia across the pond plummet. Why bother going there? We have tulips and legal Mary Jane. Ok, so we don’t have many windmills or canals or really old buildings or legal prostitutes.
5. Cheech replaces George Washington on our state flag.
6. The show Portlandia becomes obsolete as hordes of hipsters migrate back to Seattle to work on their distopic vampire novels and post-post-post modern paintings of clowns. Oh brother.