Just hope that you don't have a drug test tomorrow.
Berkley's "smoke thrower" looks like a Tupperware bin with a handle and a couple of pipes poking out. Still, he's able to pack it with two grams of weed, turn on a small attached air pump and light the bowl with a dab torch before pouring out milky fogs of smoke into the faces of concertgoes. According to Berkley, he's been doing this for the past year and a half.
"We're coming from a COVID climate where nobody wants to put their lips on everything," he says. "But still, once you see a cloud of smoke, people want to know what's going on."
Berkley started blowing smoke as a product promoter for Fuma Enterprises, a Longmont-based company. Fuma makes and sells its own smoke throwers along with other popular versions made by Cookies and Tyson 2.0, a cannabis brand owned by boxer Mike Tyson. Last year, Tyson showed off his smoke thrower on Instagram with a video of him blasting himself in the face.
Fuma Enterprises has product promoters like Berkley doing the same job in other cities; in Miami, where recreational cannabis is still illegal and public consumption is a criminal penalty, a Fuma promoter smokes people up while dressed in a mascot costume that looks like a stoner.
But Berkley now takes pride in being Denver's smoke-thrower.
"We don't have a place where we can smoke" in Denver, he says, pointing to the lack of cannabis consumption venues in Denver. According to Berkley, part of what he's trying to do is make concerts and the music scene that kind of place.
"Everyone loves music," he says. "It's just another way that we can still be social, still consume and not have somebody regulate."
Berkley says he's taken the smoke thrower to upwards of thirty concerts at venues like Ball Arena, Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, Your Mom's House, Mission Ballroom, El Patio, the Marigold, Orchid Denver, Red Rocks, the Meadowlark, the Beacon and the now-closed Marijuana Mansion. He goes beyond Denver to Colorado Springs and Pueblo, as well.
"I'm everywhere with it," he says.
You might find him near the entrance of venues offering smoke as you walk in. Or, once the show starts, he might move through the crowd, "but usually I'm backstage or even sometimes on stage." Sometimes he'll hit himself with the smoke thrower if enough people ask for it.
The smoke thrower only comes out at 21-and-up concerts, he says. Berkley tries to avoid smoking up people who don't want to get high, but he will occasionally use it on people without asking, which he says has never caused a problem. He generally starts by offering people who are already smoking. Once the smoke thrower is out and going, people will approach him. Then he'll decide if the crowd would be happy with him smoking up people randomly.
"Usually I have people around me that are already smoking, and that just builds on it," Berkley says. "Some people don't consume, or say, for instance, there's a rapper. He may not want to hit it because it makes his voice harsh."
He does hit a lot of rappers with smoke though, including Wiz Khalifa, Riff Raff and Benny the Butcher. When he was backstage at a Benny the Butcher concert, the New York rapper couldn't help but notice. "He was like, 'What the fuck is that?'" Berkley recalls. "He stopped his whole photo shoot."
Berkley says that the smoke thrower builds up a dense cloud that comes out in thick streams. People can inhale from that stream like drinking from a water fountain, and it's plenty to get baked in one hit, he promises. "It'll fill a whole room up," he assures. It's even set off smoke alarms a few times at smaller venues.
The biggest crowd he's ever smoked up was at the Denver Nugget's parade after winning the NBA Championship in 2023. "You had people everywhere. I would pull it out, load it up and blast it into a crowd of people," he says. After hitting one section of people, he would "dip, run down the block and catch another crowd" to blast, which then attracted the attention of about eight police officers who were standing nearby.
Being told to knock it off was the most trouble Berkley has gotten into with his smoke thrower, he says. He walks around with it in the street but only unloaded. Public marijuana use is illegal, and no Denver music venues are licensed for indoor marijuana consumption. Berkley, who moved to Colorado from Louisiana two years ago, says he didn't know that, but notes that he hasn't gotten in much trouble yet and sees people smoking in public all the time.
"I see people taking dabs or walking around smoking joints, plants in people's homes, weed being consumed openly," he says. "That was shocking for me, coming from a very illegal state like Louisiana. If I were to do that in Louisiana, I would go to jail, for sure, but you're not going to catch me on the news for something like this out here."
Berkley sticks to concerts because regulation isn't as strict there, he says. Rap concerts are his typical destination, but DJs have started inviting him to raves too.
"I'm having DJs wanting me to smoke them in their sets while they're doing their thing," he says. "Who knows, I might do a country show next."
He says that his experience "has been positive. It makes people want to come back to Colorado," he says. "It's opening another avenue, hopefully, for Colorado as a party scene."
