SF’s Official 420 Hippie Hill Celebration Is Canceled. Where Else Can You Celebrate (Legally)?
KQED
For decades, stoners from the Bay Area and beyond have made a pilgrimage to Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on April 20 — to collectively combust their favorite plant in observance of 420.
However, like last year, 2025’s “official” 420 celebration at Hippie Hill has been canceled, as both event organizers and the city said they lacked the resources to hold the celebration this year.
Despite the cancellation, many people are still likely to descend on the park to celebrate, in a nod to the grassroots beginning of the holiday. For almost a decade, it’s been legal in California for people age 21 years or older to buy and use marijuana — with some important caveats.
No official Hippie Hill event? No problem — here’s where to celebrate 420 in the Bay Area
San Francisco Chronicle
Spring is about to get a bit greener on 420 as a very California — and very Bay Area — holiday celebrates local cannabis culture with its emerald buds and flowers.
The large, annual outdoor festival at Golden Gate Park’s Hippie Hill, usually ground zero for the occasion, is officially canceled for a second year. In its place, Volo Sports and the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department announced plans to once again host the family-friendly Peace, Love and Volo Field Day at the Robin Williams Meadow area, featuring interactive sports activities and more set to take place on Sunday, April 20.
Teambuilding on ecstasy? Fresno summit to explore expanding role of psychedelic drugs
The Business Journal
An upcoming summit in Fresno will give guests the opportunity to learn about the impacts of psychedelics on mental health and creativity and what it could mean for the business world. The inaugural Central California Psychedelic Summit (CCPS) will take place March 23-24 at the Tower Theatre for the Performing Arts.
The event is being organized by Advanced Behavioral Concepts, a mental health and behavioral solutions nonprofit in Fresno.
The summit will feature lectures, panels and workshops providing attendees evidence-based and community-focused education, dialogue and networking opportunities centered around the effects of psychedelics on mental health, spirituality, creativity and personal growth.
No hallucination: Hundreds back magic mushrooms at Oakland psychedelic wellness conference
San Francisco Chronicle
Supporters of psilocybin want voters in 2026 to legalize consumption of what’s commonly referred to as magic mushrooms for medicinal and therapeutic use, as well as make it legal to grow and sell the psychedelic substance.
Don’t Miss these Psychedelic Conferences in 2024
Double Blind
Most people can’t legally explore the healing effects of psychedelics, but that hasn’t hindered the burgeoning curiosity about their potential. So why not go to a conference and learn about them instead? As the industry grows in anticipation of major law changes, the psychedelic conference circuit has become its own beast. With potential US federal approval of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD in August, it’s a pivotal time for psychedelic medicine. Here’s a round-up of events you may not want to miss.
More Cult Fun and Psychedelia with David Hodges and the Church of Ambrosia!
Medium
The whole thing that about ten years ago I did some work on the accused cult leader Lori Grace under the late PI Jan B. Tucker qualifies me as having some degree of professional experience with the subject of cults and cult investigation, but it is numerous times since, in the course of doing other things that I have run into groups accused of being cults, which is probably equal if not more crucial to my understanding of them. It is true that on a few occasions I used information from that case to get sex, which is what I was doing up at the infamous Lafayette Morehouse compound in Northern California.
‘Chaos’: Concerns grow over 420 crowds, lack of toilets at Golden Gate Park
SF Gate
San Francisco business owners and residents are raising the alarm that the city is not doing enough to prepare for this year’s 420 celebration at Golden Gate Park, warning that large crowds and a lack of toilets could cause “chaos”.
For decades, Golden Gate Park’s “Hippie Hill” has hosted tens of thousands of cannabis revelers on April 20, the international cannabis holiday that started in the Bay Area. But this year, the city of San Francisco is asking cannabis fans to not congregate in the park because the event’s organizers canceled the official event.
A church’s plan to keep 4/20 participants safe
NBC Bay Area
Call it a spar of new life for the annual 4/20 meet-up in San Francisco. Officially, the Hippie Hill light up event will not be happening this year. But now, a very non-traditional church is stepping in to make sure that anyone showing up anyway will have what they need. NBC Bay Area’s Audrey Asistio spoke to Pastor Dave Hodges for some insight.
More Cult Fun and Church of Ambrosia to offer services during unofficial Golden Gate Park 4/20 celebrations
CBS News Bay Area
Despite San Francisco canceling its official 4/20 event in Golden Gate Park this year, people will still show up, and the Church of Ambrosia says it will be ready for them.
The church is a nondenominational, interfaith religious organization, supporting use and safe access to all entheogenic plants – with a focus on cannabis and magic mushrooms.
Pastor Dave Hodges said in a statement that he expects thousands of people to be there Saturday.
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Church of Ambrosia to offer series for those celebrating 4/20 on Hippie Hill
KTVU
The whole thing that about ten years ago I did some work on the accused cult leader Lori Grace under the late PI Jan B. Tucker qualifies me as having some degree of professional experience with the subject of cults and cult investigation, but it is numerous times since, in the course of doing other things that I have run into groups accused of being cults, which is probably equal if not more crucial to my understanding of them. It is true that on a few occasions I used information from that case to get sex, which is what I was doing up at the infamous Lafayette Morehouse compound in Northern California.
A ‘Magic Mushrooms Church’ Is Providing More 4/20 Porta-Potties and Crowd Control Than the City Is
SFist
The cancellation of Hippie Hill’s official 4/20 celebration seems unlikely to keep thousands of pot-smoking revelers out of Golden Gate Park, and so a psilocybin-themed church is stepping up to provide porta-potties, a medical tent, and water bottles.
When the news broke last month that the official and sanctioned 4/20 Hippie Hill event was canceled for 2024, and would be replaced with some highly counterintuitive kickball and volleyball tournament, many of us figured that throngs of mairjuana smokers would simply show up and mob Hippie Hill anyway. After all, 4/20 falls on a Saturday this year. And you can’t really play kickball or volleyball on a hill, so won’t the hill still be available anyway?
San Francisco Church Offers Support to Cannabis Users for 4/20
Men’s Journal
With April 20 around the corner, cannabis lovers across the country will go outside and enjoy some sunshine and fun with their friends. San Francisco is notoriously a stoner’s paradise, and residents across the Bay Area convene on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park every year for the annual Hippie Hill celebration. But after organizers and city officials canceled this year’s event, some questioned whether the show would go on in any capacity.
420 celebration canceled at San Francisco’s Hippie Hill? Not if a psychedelic church can hash out plan
LA Times
Budget cuts and financial woes forced San Francisco to cancel its annual 420 celebration at Golden Gate Park this year, but a self-described psychedelic church says it will step in to help support the thousands of people expected to still make the “religious pilgrimage.”
“Anybody who is going out to Hippie Hill on 420 to smoke a joint, they’re doing that religiously, whether or not they realize it,” said Church of Ambrosia Pastor Dave Hodges in a statement. “This is like a pilgrimage to Mecca.”
‘Like a pilgrimage to Mecca’: SF church to serve those celebrating 4/20 on Hippie Hill
Local News Matters
Despite San Francisco canceling its official 4/20 event in Golden Gate Park this year, people will still show up. And the Church of Ambrosia said it will be ready for them.
The group said Thursday it’s collaborating with Haight-Ashbury merchants and nonprofit groups to provide support services.
420 celebration canceled at San Francisco’s Hippie Hill? Not if a psychedelic church can hash out plan
Yahoo! News
Budget cuts and financial woes forced San Francisco to cancel its annual 420 celebration at Golden Gate Park this year, but a self-described psychedelic church says it will step in to help support the thousands of people expected to still make the “religious pilgrimage.”
“Anybody who is going out to Hippie Hill on 420 to smoke a joint, they’re doing that religiously, whether or not they realize it,” said Church of Ambrosia Pastor Dave Hodges in a statement. “This is like a pilgrimage to Mecca.”
420 celebration canceled at San Francisco’s Hippie Hill? Not if a psychedelic church can hash out plan
AOL
Budget cuts and financial woes forced San Francisco to cancel its annual 420 celebration at Golden Gate Park this year, but a self-described psychedelic church says it will step in to help support the thousands of people expected to still make the “religious pilgrimage.”
“Anybody who is going out to Hippie Hill on 420 to smoke a joint, they’re doing that religiously, whether or not they realize it,” said Church of Ambrosia Pastor Dave Hodges in a statement. “This is like a pilgrimage to Mecca.”
4/20 in S.F.: High spirits despite lower turnout at unofficial cannabis celebration
SF Chronicle
With San Francisco’s official 4/20 event in Golden Gate Park canceled this year, a smaller but spirited crowd of cannabis celebrants blazed forward Saturday as the city and neighborhood groups provided toilets and medical staff. Officials announced last month that the city-sanctioned 4/20 event — which usually features live entertainment and street vendors — was canceled due to budget constraints. But celebrants rolled up to the park even if organizers didn’t, especially because 4/20 fell on a weekend this year.
Thousands flock to SF’s Hippie Hill for ‘unofficial’ 420 celebration
KTVU
Thousands of weed worshipers flocked to San Francisco’s Hippie Hill for an unofficial, but still spirited version of 420.
The annual pilgrimage to Golden Gate Park went on despite the absence of organized entertainment this year.
“The official 420 has been canceled,” said Tamara Barak Aparton of San Francisco Recreation and Parks ahead of the event. “It just comes down to economics. The usual organizer for 420 couldn’t get the level of sponsorship that he was accustomed to from people in the cannabis industry. I guess they’re struggling a bit, and the City, we had to cut our budget as well, so we couldn’t subsidize it.”
Scrapped 420 Hippie Hill event doesn’t stop crowd from lighting up in Golden Gate Park
ABC 7 News
Today is April 20, better known as “420.” A day celebrating the consumption of cannabis products.
And for those who partake in cannabis culture, Hippie Hill in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is typically ground zero for celebration.
SF asked people not to gather at Hippie Hill for 420. Thousands came anyway
SF Gate
The cloud of marijuana smoke on Hippie Hill in San Francisco was a bit smaller this year after the longtime city-sanctioned 420 celebration in Golden Gate Park was canceled.
Organizers of the cannabis festival announced in late March that there wouldn’t be an event on April 20, and asked people not to gather – but that didn’t stop thousands of people from celebrating on the hill Saturday.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon, crowds walked from Haight Street into Golden Gate Park, and flocked to the famous spot at the park’s eastern end as one of the park-goer’s speakers played, “Because I Got High,” by Afroman.
4/20 in S.F.: High spirits despite lower turnout at unofficial cannabis celebration
SF Chronicle
With San Francisco’s official 4/20 event in Golden Gate Park canceled this year, a smaller but spirited crowd of cannabis celebrants blazed forward Saturday as the city and neighborhood groups provided toilets and medical staff. Officials announced last month that the city-sanctioned 4/20 event — which usually features live entertainment and street vendors — was canceled due to budget constraints. But celebrants rolled up to the park even if organizers didn’t, especially because 4/20 fell on a weekend this year.
From 420 to a naked bike ride, this was the most San Francisco day ever
The San Francisco Standard
Saturday, you may have noticed, was an exceptionally busy and spectacularly beautiful day in San Francisco.
Not only was it 420, but Taylor Swift fans embarked on a pub crawl, low-riders were out in the Mission and the World Naked Bike Ride was busy weaving around town. On top of that, the city’s oldest queer bar, The Stud, reopened in a new location after a four-year sabbatical.
Instead of allowing ourselves to become paralyzed with what-should-we-cover indecision, a Standard reporter, photographer and video producer gave themselves an assignment: Let’s see if we can do everything, from bongs to songs and buns to (drag) nuns. It was like a San Francisco pentathlon.
SF Hippie Hill 4/20 Draws Thousands of Pot Smokers, Despite Being Officially ‘Canceled’
SFist
Several thousand marijuana enthusiasts still showed up for a supposedly “canceled” 4/20 at Hippie Hill, and we’ve got pictures and video of Saturday’s weed-smoking shenanigans at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
San Francisco’s long-running 4/20 weed-smoking party at Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park was officially canceled this year, with organizers citing city budget cuts and sponsorship woes. But you try telling these thousands of cannabis lovers that 4/20 was canceled, as somewhere between 3,000-5,000 peaceful revelers just showed up anyway, as seen in the video below, taken right at the magic moment of 4:20 pm on 4/20/2024.
420 was definitely not canceled in San Francisco
Medium
The air on Hippie Hill was still thick with the smoke of countless joints, the sound of drums and laughter on 4/20 — even though we were told the party was over.
Organizers announced in late March that San Francisco’s official “puff, puff pass” event must end due to budget constraints; Apparently the festivities cost half a million to put on each year, and like so many other budgetary narratives we’ve heard recently, they could not find the funds. San Francisco turned it out anyway.
Oakland’s magic mushroom church opens outpost in this San Francisco neighborhood
The San Francisco Standard
Three years after his house of worship was famously raided by the Oakland Police Department, Dave Hodges of Zide Door Church has opened a satellite outpost in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, a repurposed industrial building on Howard Street that’s filled with art and buzzing with helpful volunteers.
On Saturday, volunteers welcomed some of the church’s 80,000 registered members, each of whom pay $5 per month, to pick up their “sacrament” on the second floor. That holy substance isn’t blessed wine or a communion wafer, but naturally occurring, psychoactive substances—cannabis and the so-called entheogen popularly known as magic mushrooms, whose supervised use constitutes the theological heart of the faith, known as the nondenominational Church of Ambrosia.
California Campaign To Legalize Psychedelics Submits Final Version Of Proposed 2024 Ballot Measure
Marijuana Moment
The campaign behind a prospective California ballot initiative to legalize psychedelics filed a final revised measure with state officials this week, making a handful of changes to the proposal following a public comment period that ended late last month.
While adults would be allowed to legally grow, possess and use substances like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, DMT, ibogaine and mescaline under the measure, they would need physician recommendations to purchase the psychedelics at regulated stores.
Psilocybin Potency, The Missing Link For Magic Mushroom Safety: Oakland’s Psychedelic Mushroom Church Announces Groundbreaking Information for Safe Use of Psilocybin Mushrooms
BusinessWire
The Church of Ambrosia, the largest psychedelic Church in the world with over 90,000 members, has announced important new safety information surrounding the use of psilocybin mushrooms by those seeking expanded consciousness in their spiritual quests.
PoliticsCalifornia Psychedelics Ballot Measure Could Undermine Marijuana Taxes, State Officials Say
Marijuana Moment
The California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) released its review this week of a prospective ballot initiative to legalize psychedelics, outlining not only the plan’s policy implications but also its potential fiscal impacts on the state—which the report calls “various” and “uncertain.”
The measure, which proponents submitted the final language for earlier this month, would allow adults to legally grow, possess and use substances like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, DMT, ibogaine and mescaline. A person would need a healthcare practitioner’s recommendations to purchase psychedelics at regulated stores.
Psychonaut POV
Tricycleday.com
Dave Hodges leads the world’s largest entheogenic megachurch today. He’s the first to admit the whole idea started as a joke, but since then, The Church of Ambrosia has given him a greater sense of meaning and purpose than he could have ever imagined.
We asked Dave what he learned from taking 30 grams of mushrooms at once, what really happened when police raided his church, and why he’s stepping into policy reform with an ambitious California ballot initiative.
Inside the Bay Area’s Church of Magic Mushrooms
Hyperallergic
If the Bay Area’s Church of Ambrosia had a Christ-like icon, it would be a psychedelic mushroom, and if it had a promised land, it would be the “playa” at Burning Man — and you can find that story on the church’s walls in a sprawling mural by an artist who goes by “Free Rolando.”
The Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants identifies itself as an interfaith religious organization that celebrates psychedelic mushrooms as a sacrament to “connect people with their soul to help them understand why they’re here and what they’re supposed to do,” Pastor Dave Hodges, founder of the Church of Ambrosia religion, told Hyperallergic.
First responders, veterans hail benefits of psychedelic drugs as California debates legalization
Yahoo News
Dave Hodges is the founder and pastor of the Church of Ambrosia, which considers magic mushrooms a sacrament. Hodges says the effects of psilocybin are profoundly spiritual because they “allow people to connect to their soul.” (Sherry Tesler)
Wade Trammell recalls the time he and his fellow firefighters responded to a highway crash in which a beer truck rammed into a pole, propelling the truck’s engine through the cab and into the driver’s abdomen.
“The guy was up there screaming and squirming. Then the cab caught on fire,” Trammell says. “I couldn’t move him. He burned to death right there in my arms.”
Divine Supply: How A California Church Became A Psychedelics And Weed Sanctuary Challenging Federal Prohibition
Benzinga
Dave Hodges, founder of Zide Door in Oakland and the Church of Ambrosia in San Francisco, is leading a growing movement that challenges traditional boundaries between spiritual freedom, alternative therapies and the use of psychoactive substances. As federal prohibition continues to regulate psychedelics and cannabis, some religious organizations are pioneering innovative pathways for legal and safe access under religious auspices.
Pastor behind psychedelic San Francisco church raking in $5m a year supplying shrooms and weed to members claims drug-fueled worship can save people from fentanyl
Daily Mail
Nestled in the heart of America’s opioid crisis lies America’s biggest psychedelic church, raking in $5million a year supplying illegal drugs to members.
But its pastor, Dave Hodges, sees no issue in setting up shop just a few blocks south of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, home to the country’s most notorious open air drug market.
In fact, the computer geek turned psychedelic preacher believes that if there were more churches like his, where congregants get high on shrooms and cannabis, there would be fewer opioid addicts overdosing on his doorstep.
The Prophet Of Shroom
Forbes
When meeting the mushroom priest of San Francisco, one must first pass two armed guards wearing bulletproof vests and then clear a metal detector. “There was a stabbing right outside this door the other week,” says Pastor Dave Hodges, the 42-year-old founder and leader of the Church of Ambrosia, which he describes as a non-denominational religious organization founded on the belief that cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms are sacraments that can be used as spiritual tools.
Psychedelic Spokane church working toward legal immunity to consume ayahuasca, a sacred tea considered both a powerful mood stabilizer and a risky experiment
AOL
As early as this spring, the federal government could allow members of a Spokane religious congregation to lay on the grassy floor of a nondescript building to consume their sacrament — a hallucinogenic tea from South America known as ayahuasca.
The tea is bitter and thick. Brewed from two Amazonian plants, ayahuasca can more closely be described as a watery sludge than a tea.
The drink has been consumed by tribes in South America for thousands of years but is illegal in the U.S., though the government has largely looked the other way as these groups, which consider themselves churches, host ceremonies where it’s consumed en masse.
El profeta de los hongos psicodélicos: fundó una mega iglesia que recauda millones y lo investigan por tráfico de drogas
Forbes Argentina
Para reunirse con el “sacerdote de los hongos” de San Francisco, uno debe pasar primero delante de dos guardias armados que llevan chalecos antibalas y luego por un detector de metales. “La otra semana hubo un apuñalamiento justo delante de esta puerta”, dice el pastor Dave Hodges, fundador y líder de la Iglesia de Ambrosía.
A sus 42 años, la describe como una organización religiosa no confesional fundada en la creencia de que el cannabis y los hongos de psilocibina son sacramentos que pueden utilizarse como herramientas espirituales.
La iglesia fue fundada hace cinco años en Oakland y estrenó recientemente un segundo local en el barrio SoMa de San Francisco. “Ves a gente fumando crack y drogándose, con sobredosis”, dice Hodges, explicando cómo su ciudad está plagada de delincuencia y otras plagas callejeras. “Ahí se ve por qué no somos nosotros el problema”, afirma.
This San Francisco church has 115K members yet might be illegal
SF Gate
Dave Hodges wasn’t sure if he would be a free man right now. He’s the pastor of the Church of Ambrosia, an organization dedicated to distributing magic mushrooms. He opened his Zide Door church in Oakland in 2019, and when he expanded to San Francisco last year, he openly acknowledged the venture could land him in jail. But Hodges says it’s his spiritual calling to provide access to psilocybin mushrooms, so he went ahead and opened the church.
Over a year later, not only is Hodges not in jail, but he might just be the busiest pastor in the Bay Area. In an interview earlier this month, he told SFGATE that his church has added 35,000 members since he expanded to San Francisco, and it now counts more than 115,000 members.
Inside the Megachurch Where Shrooms and Weed Are Religion
Web Times
As soon as I press the buzzer, an armed female security guard appears from behind a barred door. I tell her I’m here to visit the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants. She nods and welcomes me inside this inconspicuous building on the corner of a block in a working class neighborhood in Oakland, California.
In the last year, the Church of Ambrosia – the nondenominational interfaith religion of which Zide Door Church is part – has grown to well over 100,000 members and has opened another chapter in San Francisco. It’s riding the wave of a boom in psychedelic churches in the U.S., and the skyrocketing demand for psilocybin mushrooms. The idea of these churches operating in the open and holding ceremonies may seem wild, but they are nominally protected by a Supreme Court ruling in 2006 that defended the use of illegal drugs during worship services.
This Pastor Offers People Shrooms and Weed at His Church
Vice
Cali loves shrooms, that much is known. But did you know that there’s a magic mushroom church in California with a whopping 100,000 members? Zide Door is founded by Dave Hodges, who believes shrooms and cannabis are divine sacraments which facilitate connection with God.
Launched in 2019, the Zide Door Church of Entheogenic Plants holds ceremonies involving drug-taking and sermons from Hodges. But it’s best known for, um, supplying its sacraments to members – despite mushrooms still being technically illegal in the US. It provides a dispensary-type facility where members can buy up to 20 mushroom strains and cannabis products. The interfaith organisation currently brings in $5 million a year.
America’s Largest Megachurch—Where Shrooms Are A Sacrament—Makes Millions
Forbes
When meeting the mushroom priest of San Francisco, one must first pass two armed guards wearing bulletproof vests and then clear a metal detector. “There was a stabbing right outside this door the other week,” says Pastor Dave Hodges, the 42-year-old founder and leader of the Church of Ambrosia, which he describes as a non-denominational religious organization founded on the belief that cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms are sacraments that can be used as spiritual tools.
It’s a Psychedelic Church, Man: Meet California’s mushroom Church of Ambrosia
The Psychedelic Skeptic
Join us as we explore the controversial world of psychedelic churches and the legal battles they face, focusing on the Church of Ambrosia and its founder, Dave Hodges. We’ll discuss the church’s use of psilocybin mushrooms as a sacrament, the ongoing fight for legalization, and the complex issues surrounding religious freedom and drug policy. Stay tuned for an exclusive upcoming interview with Sean McAllister, lead counsel for the Church of the Eagle and Condor, who recently won the right to import ayahuasca for religious purposes.
Mushrooms, Entities and the World’s Largest Psychedelic Church
Pilzezauber
Interview with Dave Hodges