Bill Hughes tilts his thick glasses to the pavement and searches for any cracks. He is trying not to trip. He will be damned if anyone calls him blind, but it is also true that he can barely see. This is merely a fact of his 58-year-old existence — never, he will tell you, an impediment.

Step by careful step, Bill makes his way through the once-derelict, now reborn city of Hudson, N.Y., arriving at the street corner of his youth. He holds up his phone and presses record, letting the camera capture what his eyes cannot: A glorious property has just come on the market.

To the droves of outsiders who have descended on Hudson, transforming it into a Brooklyn outpost of artisanal food and bespoke fashion, this building is prime. Three stories of 19th-century brick, just a short walk from the Hudson River.

I was born by the river Bill can sometimes hear the Sam Cooke song cresting inside him, but he tries to shut it off. He will not be seen getting sentimental. He, too, was born by the river, in Hudson’s long-shunted Black enclave. Why should that prevent him from joining the city’s newest tide?

I was born by the river Bill can sometimes hear the Sam Cooke song cresting inside him, but he tries to shut it off. He will not be seen getting sentimental. He, too, was born by the river, in Hudson’s long-shunted Black enclave. Why should that prevent him from joining the city’s newest tide?

He wants all the same things the gentrifiers want. A path to wealth and freedom. A chance at reinvention. And now, in March of 2024, that chance has come. Three years after New York State enacted one of the most progressive laws in 21st-century America — legalizing marijuana as an instrument of racial justice — Hudson’s market is up for grabs.

What was once a crime is now an opportunity. Just as weed has become “cannabis,” yesterday’s dealer is today’s “entrepreneur.” Entrepreneur.

That is a title Bill yearns to claim, for all the power it bestows in the new Hudson. Yet his desire to make money covers a deeper want: To prove wrong all the doubters who cannot see beyond his blindness. To quiet the chorus of “you can’t” that has trailed him all his life.

First Bill must land a coveted retail license amid a sea of competitors. Only two will prevail, opening shops here on Warren Street. “This I can do, if people get out of my way,” he says, as if talking to his late father, a Marine drill sergeant who “never saw me do anything successful.” While nearly half of American states have now legalized recreational marijuana, New York’s law is singular.

It was here that the war on drugs truly began, with draconian laws enacted in 1973 under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. Those laws sent generations of Black and Latino people to prison, wielding a “racially disparate impact” that the new law seeks to end.

It was here that the war on drugs truly began, with draconian laws enacted in 1973 under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. Those laws sent generations of Black and Latino people to prison, wielding a “racially disparate impact” that the new law seeks to end.

It demands that half of all licenses go to “equity” applicants, prioritizing those with marijuana convictions. It vows to create a funding stream — tens of millions in tax revenues — to uplift poor communities like Bill’s.

This new law, to its framers, was an act of reparations — not only for the drug war, but for America’s deepest fractures of race.

And where better, thinks Bill, to test out this radical idea? After all, Hudson — once a drug-war epicenter — is now one of the most unequal cities in America.

It is not lost on Bill that the late governor’s niece, Abby Rockefeller, is growing marijuana on her local farm as she launches a company called Hudson Cannabis. Its debut product will be marketed as “dime bags,” a glamorized vestige of street culture.

Bill also knows that Rockefeller’s farm has partnered with his boyhood friend, the famously infamous boxer Mike Tyson, who came of age in neighboring Catskill.

Tyson’s weed will grow on Rockefeller soil. Far stranger things have happened in Hudson, where the cannabis “green rush” will — in the months to come — lead Tyson back to Bill.

Here on Warren, rumor has it that a local man is opening the first dispensary, leaving room, per the state’s rules, for only one more. The race is on.

“May the best man win,” Bill says with the same pluck that led him to try joining the military, with severely impaired vision (he was rejected), or to later run for City Council on the Republican ticket as a janitor (he won).

Bill lowers his camera to the unwashed windows of 260 Warren. Here he sees the future: a gleaming store that could finally bring his family generational wealth, long the reserve of white America.

He also sees the past: the very corner where his cousin Vaughn once reigned as Hudson’s marijuana kingpin, and where, two blocks away, the police mistakenly threw his father to the ground in a drug bust. What Bill cannot see is the present: his hidden competition.

Joanne Wilson is texting with furious speed.

Everything she does is fast — way too fast for her husband, the venture capitalist Fred Wilson, whose investments have made billions but whose temperament is a calm breeze compared to the tornado of his wife. “Can you email me all the details so we can talk?” Joanne writes the landlord of 260 Warren. She knows she must hurry to lock down Hudson’s market, possibly renting the place sight unseen. That’s because the Wilsons reside 118 miles south, in an architectural gem of Manhattan’s West Village. It doubles as the headquarters of Joanne’s brainchild, Gotham — a retail company “where culture meets cannabis.” Hudson, in her estimation, is the perfect laboratory for this experiment — rich in urbanites with “cutting-edge taste.” For them, Joanne is rebranding weed as a luxury commodity, to be sold alongside cashmere sweaters and hand-poured Italian candles.

She is also rebranding herself.

Until now, the world has known Joanne as an angel investor — a 62-year-old champion of women in the male trenches of tech. She is an unabashed liberal with downtown style and deep pockets, serving on the boards of nonprofits like the High Line and the Public Housing Community Fund. Yet an unspoken identity hounds Joanne at charity galas and political fund-raisers: the patriarchal stamp of being “Fred Wilson’s wife.” Gotham will be her legacy — the empire she builds, from start to finish. She has already opened her first store, in Lower Manhattan. In her push to expand, she will need more cannabis licenses, leading some rivals to wonder if Gotham is following the rules.

But Joanne is in start-up mode, seeing bureaucracy as a momentary hurdle.

She waits for a response from the landlord, Brian Greene, who seems to answer to a less frantic drumbeat. In fairness, being a landlord is a side gig for Greene, a physicist renowned for his work on string theory.

She waits for a response from the landlord, Brian Greene, who seems to answer to a less frantic drumbeat. In fairness, being a landlord is a side gig for Greene, a physicist renowned for his work on string theory.

Greene finally responds with a tactfully professorial “Let me know a good time to connect.” “How’s now?” Joanne replies. “I’ll call you now.” Bill and Joanne have never met.

They came of age in different Americas, each enduring trials that left a distinct, yet searing, mark. By the time their paths collided, albeit invisibly, Hudson was a mirror of the nation’s most ruptured self.

Contained within two square miles, and a population below 6,000, is America writ small: billionaire investors and welfare recipients, luxury condos with “radiant heating” and a Protestant church with a “warming center” for the homeless.

To walk down Warren is to encounter parallel worlds — a foodie mecca for one set of people, a food desert for another. So stark is this gap that some call it “food apartheid.” Who in Bill’s Hudson would pay $16 for any side dish — much less polenta, which in his day was the “poor man's grits”?

The city owes its remaking to three 21st-century traumas: 9/11, the Great Recession and the Covid pandemic. Each brought a new wave of settlers who, by 2020, made Hudson one of the hottest real-estate pockets in America.

“Hudson went from boarded up to bought up!” says Bill, who in the span of a decade watched the Black population drop by nearly half while households earning more than $200,000 more than tripled.

Hudson’s growing inequality New York City and San Francisco are known for income inequality, but the income scale is even more skewed in Hudson since a post-pandemic influx of affluent residents.

Yet as Hudson pulls apart, both Bill and Joanne see opportunity in this new marijuana law. At its core, the law poses a fundamental question: Can the ideals of social justice meet the realities of capitalism? The answer, for Joanne, is found at Gotham, which caters to the top tier while pulling up the bottom. It pays entry-level employees $25 an hour (well above minimum wage) while providing health insurance, paid vacation and a company-matched retirement fund.

This is Joanne’s version of “doing the right thing,” a phrase she vastly prefers to “reparations” (adding, “I am so not politically correct!”). Bill offers a competing vision. His store will honor the old Hudson, becoming a bulwark for the Black community in a majority-white city — even a business incubator for its next generation.

What Bill has in Hudson, Joanne sorely lacks. Some call it “social capital.” Bill calls it “street cred.” But whose street is Warren, in today’s Hudson? And what sort of credit, or currency, wields the power? Bill scrolls through the large-print emails on his phone.

His anxiety is back. A week has passed since he filmed the property at Third and Warren. The landlord is in Australia, lecturing on the cosmos. Bill has an earthly problem: He cannot afford to rent 260 Warren while his license application is in limbo. Otherwise, he might drain his savings on a store that never opens.

No email has come. Bill puts his phone away. Wealthy people can take such risks, renting a location indefinitely. That’s the sort of freedom Bill has chased since childhood. Just the word “capital” makes him lean forward, as if he’s about to lurch from his chair. He will start rattling off stock tips or his latest take on crypto, or lamenting the 100 shares of Microsoft he sold in 1987.

“I would definitely be a millionaire today,” he says. Indeed, Bill would be worth around $12 million.

Still, for a man who spent 17 years working at Burger King, Bill has scaled unexpected heights. He squirreled away paychecks while learning to play the stock market, saving enough to buy four properties. He has steered clear of unwanted debt and takes particular delight in sharing screenshots of his 815 credit score. All without a college degree, or even a car. There are many things to want in life — not least (for a legally blind man who cannot drive) item No. 9 on Bill’s list of personal goals: “my own car with a driver.” Back in his Burger King days, Bill walked nearly two miles to work — in pelting rain, in deep snow — obsessively timing his trek to arrive early.

All without a college degree, or even a car. There are many things to want in life — not least (for a legally blind man who cannot drive) item No. 9 on Bill’s list of personal goals: “my own car with a driver.” Back in his Burger King days, Bill walked nearly two miles to work — in pelting rain, in deep snow — obsessively timing his trek to arrive early.

All without a college degree, or even a car. There are many things to want in life — not least (for a legally blind man who cannot drive) item No. 9 on Bill’s list of personal goals: “my own car with a driver.” Back in his Burger King days, Bill walked nearly two miles to work — in pelting rain, in deep snow — obsessively timing his trek to arrive early.

“He’s the quiet giant that no one saw coming,” says his childhood friend Yvette Roberts. To trace Bill’s life is to uncover a hidden Hudson — a place with its own compass and landmarks, its own unseen players.

Five neighborhoods known as “wards” fan out from Hudson’s center, a turf that Warren splits in half. The local vernacular hints at confusion. “Downtown” is, in fact, north of Warren; “uptown” is south and east.

Such designations, Bill learned as a boy, hew less to geography than to the boundaries of class and race. Wealth is concentrated south of Warren, in the uptown First Ward, which is notably white; the city’s poorest residents — and its highest concentration of Black people — live north of Warren, in the Second Ward.

Hudson’s history is also cleaved into parts.

The known parts are recited on walking tours; the unknown, often relegated to oral history, which tends to die before it is captured. Known: Hudson began as a whaling port and, in 1785, became the first American city incorporated after the Revolutionary War.

Unknown: Five years later, Hudson was home to at least 193 enslaved people. Known: For centuries, this river town has drawn captains of industry. Many of their Queen Anne and Victorian mansions remain intact, preserved as historic landmarks.

Unknown: The longtime sanctuary of Hudson’s Black residents was the Colored Citizens Club. After 71 years, the historically unpreserved “CC Club” fell into disrepair, and on Dec. 5, 2011, the city demolished it.

The boundary between “known” and “unknown” surfaces on Hudson’s map of its historic districts.

Just north of Warren, where Bill’s neighborhood begins, the map fades to blank, as if history stopped there.

Bill was 4 when his aunt threw him a ball. It rolled across the carpet. As he went to fetch it, he ran in the wrong direction, reaching for a ball that wasn’t there.

His condition — open-angle glaucoma — advanced without symptoms until the damage was irreversible. Doctors call this “the silent thief of sight.” Yet as Bill’s vision faded, it was other children who “didn’t see me,” he said. All they saw were his thick glasses, taunting him with “Coke bottles!” “If anyone touches you, hit them back,” instructed his father, Clarence.

A flinty Marine veteran, Clarence had served during Vietnam — following in the path of his own father, who was drafted into the Army in World War II. Clarence’s parents had raised him by the river, in Hudson’s Black hub, where in 1972, after his discharge, he bought a two-story house on a cement-worker’s salary.

A flinty Marine veteran, Clarence had served during Vietnam — following in the path of his own father, who was drafted into the Army in World War II. Clarence’s parents had raised him by the river, in Hudson’s Black hub, where in 1972, after his discharge, he bought a two-story house on a cement-worker’s salary. A two-block terrain held the universe of Bill’s childhood: the Shiloh Baptist Church, where he sang in the Sunshine Band choir; Franklin Park, where he learned to play jacks.

A two-block terrain held the universe of Bill’s childhood: the Shiloh Baptist Church, where he sang in the Sunshine Band choir; Franklin Park, where he learned to play jacks.

Then came the bulldozers of urban renewal, which James Baldwin called “Negro removal.” As the city razed 176 properties, Black families scattered or found themselves concentrated in Bliss Towers, a Brutalist public-housing complex that shot up over the Second Ward in 1973.

Bill’s parents managed to stay put — even after the cement plant closed, leaving Clarence unemployed and Christmas gifts scarce.

Bill’s parents managed to stay put — even after the cement plant closed, leaving Clarence unemployed and Christmas gifts scarce.

“That’s when my entrepreneurial spirit kicked in,” said Bill. He shoveled sidewalks, mowed lawns, trapped animals and sold their hides. He spent his lunch money on candy to hawk from his desk at school.

Eventually, Clarence found another factory job, working 16-hour shifts. At home, Bill watched his parents feed the neighborhood while giving refuge to stray children. “Our house was an open door,” said Bill’s sister, Wanda. By 1981, a new boy joined their flock — a 14-year-old boxer who went by Mike. Joyce Carol Oates once wrote that Mike Tyson “had been saved” by juvenile detention, setting him on the path to Cus D’Amato, the legendary trainer who ran a boxing club in Catskill, across the river from Hudson.

It was there, “far from the corrosive atmosphere of the Black ghetto,” in Oates’s words, that D’Amato molded Tyson into the youngest heavyweight champion in history. “There is nothing nostalgic,” Oates declared, “about Tyson’s feelings for his past.” In Tyson’s own rendering, decades later, the past is filled with nostalgia. He does not dilute D’Amato’s role as adoptive father but redefines the territory in which the young Mike thrived — as an ecosystem of white power and Black culture, divided by a river.

It was there, “far from the corrosive atmosphere of the Black ghetto,” in Oates’s words, that D’Amato molded Tyson into the youngest heavyweight champion in history. “There is nothing nostalgic,” Oates declared, “about Tyson’s feelings for his past.” In Tyson’s own rendering, decades later, the past is filled with nostalgia. He does not dilute D’Amato’s role as adoptive father but redefines the territory in which the young Mike thrived — as an ecosystem of white power and Black culture, divided by a river.

It was there, “far from the corrosive atmosphere of the Black ghetto,” in Oates’s words, that D’Amato molded Tyson into the youngest heavyweight champion in history. “There is nothing nostalgic,” Oates declared, “about Tyson’s feelings for his past.” In Tyson’s own rendering, decades later, the past is filled with nostalgia. He does not dilute D’Amato’s role as adoptive father but redefines the territory in which the young Mike thrived — as an ecosystem of white power and Black culture, divided by a river.

Tyson had spent his first 12 years in Brooklyn, sleeping in abandoned buildings, training pigeons and racking up charges as a child burglar — all before landing in detention upstate. From there, D’Amato brought Tyson to live in a 14-room Victorian mansion.

Tyson had spent his first 12 years in Brooklyn, sleeping in abandoned buildings, training pigeons and racking up charges as a child burglar — all before landing in detention upstate. From there, D’Amato brought Tyson to live in a 14-room Victorian mansion. Every night, they gathered for dinner — roast beef, broccoli and other foods that “rich white people eat,” recalled Bill’s friend Main Moore, another D’Amato recruit.

Bill, Moore and their peers moved seamlessly between the Black quarters of Catskill and Hudson, six miles away. Soon, Tyson followed. “I could walk across the bridge,” said Tyson, whose deep ties to Hudson have eluded his biographers, like a hidden alcove in a well-trodden house.

“You’re a Black kid upstate, in Catskill, New York, where the town is majority white,” Tyson said. “And you just go six miles and now you’re in a Black town. You’re with people that understand me more and they want to get to understand me more.” He found a new best friend in Shamiq Evans, the soon-to-be husband of Bill’s cousin, who was still living the life of a “crimie,” drawing D’Amato’s disapproval.

“You’re a Black kid upstate, in Catskill, New York, where the town is majority white,” Tyson said. “And you just go six miles and now you’re in a Black town. You’re with people that understand me more and they want to get to understand me more.” He found a new best friend in Shamiq Evans, the soon-to-be husband of Bill’s cousin, who was still living the life of a “crimie,” drawing D’Amato’s disapproval.

“You’re a Black kid upstate, in Catskill, New York, where the town is majority white,” Tyson said. “And you just go six miles and now you’re in a Black town. You’re with people that understand me more and they want to get to understand me more.” He found a new best friend in Shamiq Evans, the soon-to-be husband of Bill’s cousin, who was still living the life of a “crimie,” drawing D’Amato’s disapproval.

Yet Tyson “never swayed from me,” recalled Evans. “He’d come get me — especially when he’d get mad, when Cus and them would piss him off in the gym or something. … ‘Yo, what you doing? Let’s go home.’” Sometimes home was Brooklyn. It was also two houses in Hudson, contained within one family: the Hughes residence and, a few blocks away, the home of Bill’s Aunt Mary.

Yet Tyson “never swayed from me,” recalled Evans. “He’d come get me — especially when he’d get mad, when Cus and them would piss him off in the gym or something. … ‘Yo, what you doing? Let’s go home.’” Sometimes home was Brooklyn. It was also two houses in Hudson, contained within one family: the Hughes residence and, a few blocks away, the home of Bill’s Aunt Mary.

Only after D’Amato had determined that Bill’s family was “highly respectable,” recalled Tyson, was he allowed to stay with them.

“Spending the night, over at the house, are you crazy? Only the Hughes.” Bill watched the young boxer in awe. Tyson stood 5-foot-9, weighing around 200 pounds. He had a feathery voice with a lisp, but was the most muscular boy Bill had ever seen.

“He had no neck!” Now 15, Tyson had stunned spectators by knocking out his Junior Olympics opponent in eight seconds.

Bill was on a downward slide. Three surgeries had failed to stem his disease, forcing him to quit football. Then a military recruiter turned him down.

“I decided I didn’t like God anymore,” he said. College was never an option. Instead, he retreated to his room.

“I tell you what,” Clarence hollered. “You can be mad at the world if you want. But you can’t live in this house unless you have a job!” Bill kept failing to get hired. It was his eyes, a Burger King manager confessed after finally giving in. He took the night shift, making $3.35 an hour. To work for long stretches — outside of his parents’ house — was Bill’s first win.

Tyson brought his wins home, gliding up Warren in a cream-top Cadillac, wearing Gucci. “We never saw a Gucci anything in our whole lives,” said Bill.

The boxer’s victory streak lasted until 1990, when Buster Douglas dethroned him in Tokyo — one of the most stunning upsets in boxing history. A few nights later, Tyson pulled up to the Hughes house. Bill’s parents were asleep on the couch. Tyson glanced at Wanda, saying nothing about the fight. She watched as he lifted the lid off her mother’s pot of meatballs. Quietly, he dug in. Joanne was 15 when her father left.

The radio unfurled a mix of sounds — news reports on President-elect Jimmy Carter, the crooning of Rod Stewart. From upstairs came a more familiar sound. Joanne’s mother was weeping.

It was Joanne who had discovered the affair, hearing her father locked in the master bedroom with her mother’s best friend. Then came another bomb: Joanne’s mother took up with the best friend’s husband.

This “spousal swap,” as her little brother Jerry called it, sent tremors through the Reform synagogue the two couples had helped found in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

And now, in the winter of 1977, Joanne was staring at another debacle: her father’s half-built sailboat, abandoned in the yard — the latest experiment undertaken by Lou Solomon, a failed academic with a Mensa I.Q. Only later would Joanne see that her father, the son of a Holocaust survivor, was “covered in trauma.”

As a small girl, she chased her father’s love, greeting him, arms wide, only to hear, “STOP!” By her teens, Joanne had stopped reaching. She smoked pot to “get through the pain,” rolling her eyes as Lou tried to craft his ill-fated sailboat. After he left came a bitter divorce. But there, in the yard, the boat’s hull remained.

“In the summer, it looked like an unfinished abstract sculpture,” said Jerry. “And in the snow, like a postmodernist igloo.” It fell to Joanne to collect her mother’s child-support checks. “You just always felt there was no money,” she said.

By 16, she was working three jobs, paying for gas to drive her siblings to school. They had fallen to the lower rungs of America’s middle class, no longer eating out and “only shopping at Loehmann’s.” Occasionally they visited their grandmother’s posh country club, which cast a spell on Joanne. “Here was a big fancy spread,” recalled Jerry, “and here was wealth, and here was affluence, and here was power, and here was control.” College would be Joanne’s exit, but her father did not want to pay. When she got into Simmons College, in Boston, Lou called the admissions office.

“Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake?” he asked. After enrolling at Simmons, Joanne took a dishwashing job and, in the summer of 1981, rented a fraternity-house room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After enrolling at Simmons, Joanne took a dishwashing job and, in the summer of 1981, rented a fraternity-house room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Do you know where I can find some weed?” she asked one of her housemates, a lanky boy with shaggy brown hair. She was looking at her future husband: Fred Wilson. Yes, he knew where to get weed. In fact, he was growing it in his hallway, stashing the buds in a coffee can.

Fred and Joanne talked “for hours and hours and hours.” He was a curious mix — a geeky mechanical engineering major, son of a West Point professor, but also a rebel.

It never occurred to Joanne that Fred could get in trouble for growing weed. “White boys from M.I.T. don’t get busted for this,” she said. The drug war had come crashing through Hudson, arriving at Bill’s front porch in 1978.

Officers broke through the door as 13-year-old Bill and his sister froze in place. “What are you all doing?!!” their father yelled. They were looking for Bill’s pot-dealing uncle, Chuck, who lived next door.

“I can still see us, standing in underwear and a T-shirt,” said Bill’s sister Wanda.

Seven years had passed since President Richard M. Nixon declared a “war on drugs.” But its original commander was America’s first drug czar, Harry J. Anslinger, whose race-baiting campaign against marijuana led to a federal ban in 1937. His tactic — using drug law to exert social control — only escalated under Nixon.

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black,” Nixon’s aide John Ehrlichman told the journalist Dan Baum, “but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs?” he continued. “Of course we did.” Two years after Nixon declared his drug war, New York waged the first major battle, enacting Rockefeller’s mandatory sentencing scheme of 15 years to life — laws that would spread across America. By the 1980s, Warren Street was caving into rust-belt decay, with boarded-up storefronts and a dimly lit bar where cops gambled.

This was the same police force that had once enabled Hudson’s vice industry — a nest of gamblers, mobsters, speakeasies and brothels so freewheeling that the columnist Walter Winchell called it “Little Las Vegas.” As the crack era dawned, the cops remained “untouchable,” said Bill.

In October 1983, Lamar Autery, a 44-year-old dealer known as Corn, was found hanging from a tree. While the police reported his death as a suicide, rumors spread that he had been lynched.

Corn’s fate read as a warning.

“We all know that the war on drugs was a war on minorities,” said Tyson’s best friend, Evans. And Hudson’s police “took that to the hilt.” After President Ronald Reagan signed a federal version of Rockefeller’s drug laws, officers raided a house near Bill’s. Someone screamed that his uncle had been arrested.

“We all know that the war on drugs was a war on minorities,” said Tyson’s best friend, Evans. And Hudson’s police “took that to the hilt.” After President Ronald Reagan signed a federal version of Rockefeller’s drug laws, officers raided a house near Bill’s. Someone screamed that his uncle had been arrested.

Bill’s father raced toward the scene. By the time his children caught up, Clarence had been thrown to the ground so fiercely that his wedding band flew off. A white officer stood over him, a knee to his back.

“Call Shetsky!” screamed Clarence, referring to his patrol-sergeant friend. Finally, the officers let him go. His ring was never found.

Sirens became the soundscape of Bill’s neighborhood as Bliss Towers emptied of men. One by one, they landed in prison. “Everyone around me was in trouble,” said Bill, who clung to his job at Burger King.

A pivot point had come in 1994, when New York City’s new mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, unleashed a policing tactic that would make New York the global capital of marijuana arrests.

A pivot point had come in 1994, when New York City’s new mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, unleashed a policing tactic that would make New York the global capital of marijuana arrests.

This was ironically an outgrowth of reforms to the Rockefeller drug laws, which allowed people to possess small quantities of weed — but only in private.

Was a coat pocket “private”? Not on the street, if an officer claimed to smell weed — the “reasonable suspicion” pretext for stopping, frisking and arresting people (unlawfully, a federal judge later ruled).

The police flooded New York’s poorest neighborhoods, treating a crime-ridden block like a broken window: If left alone, it could spread, ruining the entire building.

This strategy brought a tenfold spike in marijuana possession arrests, to more than 33,000 by 1999.

The sociologist Harry Levine noted a striking trend: Most people arrested were first-time offenders, charged for tiny amounts of weed — often a mere joint.

A criminal record created its own broken window, ruining the entirety of a life. People lost access to jobs, housing, credit cards, even custody of their children.

Everything comes upriver. Centuries after the first whales were towed into Hudson’s harbor, the city became a new kind of hub: a drug-war epicenter.

Centuries after the first whales were towed into Hudson’s harbor, the city became a new kind of hub: a drug-war epicenter.

In 1998, Hudson’s mayor, Rick Scalera, attended a crime conference held by Giuliani, whose police commissioner boasted that he had “cleaned up” New York City. Scalera raised his hand.

“All you’re doing, sir, is taking your broom and sweeping it upstate.” Many of the city’s dealers had fled north, landing in Hudson, where Scalera began his own crackdown. “As soon as you get off the train, they would jump out on you,” said Bill’s cousin Vaughn, who had amassed a small empire as a marijuana dealer.

By the late 1990s, Hudson had the highest rate of drug arrests of any city in the state. And Black people fared the worst: They were nearly six times as likely to be arrested, were incarcerated at a higher rate and served longer prison sentences, on average, than white defendants.

Drug dealers bound for Hudson passed New York’s tonier suburbs, including Chappaqua, where the Wilsons now lived.

Joanne had been climbing the corporate ladder at Macy’s when she married Fred, whose career took over.

Stuck at home, Joanne became “C.E.O. of the Wilson household,” cooking, cleaning and chasing after three children. “I thought I might kill myself,” she wrote in a memoir she left unpublished.

The Wilsons struggled to pay their mortgage, tracking their monthly budget on Excel-style “Fred Sheets.” In January 1999, Joanne stopped at an A.T.M. to get cash for groceries. The balance was too low. “Put it on your credit card,” Fred told her. He was about to make his first “mega deal”: Fred’s firm, Flatiron Partners, had invested in GeoCities, which Yahoo would buy for $4.58 billion.

A week later, the Wilsons were rich.

Joanne never warmed to the gala ladies. She was too unscripted, too much herself — disrupting cocktail chatter with a salty question, a rebellious eye roll.

She bonded more easily with the men. But even they saw Joanne as “the wife” of Fred, whose venture-capital career skyrocketed after his new firm became Twitter’s first major investor.

She bonded more easily with the men. But even they saw Joanne as “the wife” of Fred, whose venture-capital career skyrocketed after his new firm became Twitter’s first major investor.

From their Greenwich Village townhouse, the Wilsons published two popular blogs: Fred’s investor “diary” and Joanne’s “Gotham Gal,” a chronicle of New York life, culture and politics.

As her following grew, Joanne kept hearing the same grievance: Female entrepreneurs couldn’t get funding. Soon she became an angel investor, while starting a podcast, producing a documentary and launching a business festival — all for women (while railing against men). Still she felt an itch. She had seeded the dreams of other women without realizing her own. Bill’s ascent began almost by accident, as he walked home in the rain.

“Junior! What are you doing?” a driver called out. Now 30, Bill had taken a second job at Walmart. He needed a cornea transplant but without health insurance couldn’t afford it.

“Let me give you a ride,” said the driver, John Grandinetti, whose family dominated county politics. Soon came a job offer: Bill would work for the county, cleaning offices, moving boxes. Only later did he realize that the Grandinettis were grooming him for another job — as a Republican city councilman.

“They wanted a bridge to the Black community,” said Bill. He balked.

Who could go from janitor to elected official? Even by small-town standards, this was a superhuman leap. And besides, Bill was a Democrat. But with his vision getting worse, he agreed to switch parties in exchange for a full-time position with health insurance.

Finally, in 2000, Bill had the cornea transplant. It failed.

As Bill mopped and emptied trash, he absorbed the parlance of county administrators — of “procurement” and “weighted votes” and “RFPs.” Eventually, in exchange for a raise, Bill ran for office and was elected in 2003.

By then, he had fallen for Debola Owoeye, a graduate student from Nigeria. They married as Bill began a political career that would make local history — none of which his father got to see. Clarence had died, the previous winter, of congestive heart failure.

Bill tried his best to dodge the missile of “Uncle Tom” from his Black constituents, the diss of “uppity” from his fellow Republicans. He was accustomed to being an outsider. He considered government his “college” — an education in ethics that spilled over into his day job, as a county janitor, when he blew the whistle on local corruption.

His Republican bosses lashed back, ordering him to scrub the same baseboards “over and over again.” He filed a complaint of racial and disability discrimination, upheld by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Still bent on revenge, Bill switched parties and in 2007 was elected to Columbia County’s board of supervisors. Soon, he was the county’s highest-ranking Black politician.

He came to see politics as “a chess game,” reaching across party lines to start a prisoner re-entry program and diversify local law enforcement. But on some issues, he did not waver. His cousin Vaughn had been convicted of two marijuana felonies by 2009, when Bill rallied behind reforms to the Rockefeller drug laws.

He came to see politics as “a chess game,” reaching across party lines to start a prisoner re-entry program and diversify local law enforcement. But on some issues, he did not waver. His cousin Vaughn had been convicted of two marijuana felonies by 2009, when Bill rallied behind reforms to the Rockefeller drug laws. Soon he heard about a new movement brewing: to legalize recreational marijuana in the name of racial justice. Reparations, on Warren Street? He tried to imagine it. Word travels fast on Warren. It lands in Bill’s ear with a thud: Two white men in Hudson have claimed a cannabis license — the kind intended for people “harmed” by the war on drugs.

Sure, white people got arrested, but to Bill’s mind, they existed on the drug-war “periphery.” One of them, Ed Glickman, briefly dealt in the 1970s, while attending private school in Brooklyn. By the time he came to Hudson, in 2017, he was a seasoned entrepreneur. Now, in early 2024, he is teaming up with a local real estate agent to open a dispensary.

“These are people who had money, who moved into a community, who were on the affluent end of society,” says Bill. “And then, all of a sudden, they have the first standing license?” The pioneers of New York’s cannabis law had a radically different plan.

Their movement took off in 2012, led by the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that helped reform the Rockefeller laws.

Backed by the liberal billionaire George Soros, the group enlisted a 25-year-old community organizer, Kassandra Frederique, to lead its “cannabis justice” campaign. As words like “reparations” and “mass incarceration” wove their way into the national discourse, her recruits wrote a law that took eight years to pass.

Framing the law as “restorative justice,” they called for a market structure to protect small businesses, while prioritizing people harmed by the drug war, as well as a dedicated funding stream — 40 percent of cannabis tax revenues — to benefit their communities.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, long an opponent of the law, was by 2021 embroiled in a sexual-harassment scandal. Fighting for his political life, he caved on marijuana.

The law’s most vocal Black champion was its Assembly co-sponsor, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, who had once told activists that she did not approve of “people smoking pot.” Yet she had seen families ripped apart by marijuana arrests in her Buffalo district.

She thought about capitalism and its uneven playing field. She thought, too, about the Kennedys, whose political dynasty drew from the proceeds of alcohol distribution — a fortune sealed by Joseph P. Kennedy’s early access to the market after Prohibition.

“If at the end of the day, this legislation creates one person who has the opportunity to do for their family what the Kennedys were able to do for their family,” Peoples-Stokes said, “then I would count it as a success.” It is one thing to pass a law, another to deliver on its promise.

The very upheaval that had fueled the cannabis law — the American tumult of 2020 — was now drawing a backlash, with lawsuits redeploying the Constitution’s equal-protection clause to defend white people, Asians and other groups in an anti-D.E.I. push for “race-neutral” policies.

The very upheaval that had fueled the cannabis law — the American tumult of 2020 — was now drawing a backlash, with lawsuits redeploying the Constitution’s equal-protection clause to defend white people, Asians and other groups in an anti-D.E.I. push for “race-neutral” policies.

New York’s fledgling cannabis agency faced a daunting task: How to help the people most harmed by the drug war — those from Black and Latino communities — without mentioning race? “We had to be careful not to write anything in emails that would suggest that somehow we were racially motivated,” recalled Axel Bernabe, a former Cuomo counsel who was, by late 2021, running policy for the agency, the Office of Cannabis Management.

He had helped write the law with his new boss, Chris Alexander, a racial-justice advocate and former State Senate counsel. They had taken pains to emphasize “equity” (a word that appears 58 times, compared with eight mentions of “racial” and two of “race”).

He had helped write the law with his new boss, Chris Alexander, a racial-justice advocate and former State Senate counsel. They had taken pains to emphasize “equity” (a word that appears 58 times, compared with eight mentions of “racial” and two of “race”).

But “equity” could apply to all kinds of people. They needed a more targeted policy, using “the best tool we had,” recalled Alexander. Given that Black and Latino people were arrested at disproportionately higher rates, Alexander said, the agency set out to create a special class of licenses for the first round — prioritizing people with marijuana convictions as “a proxy for race.”

Given that Black and Latino people were arrested at disproportionately higher rates, Alexander said, the agency set out to create a special class of licenses for the first round — prioritizing people with marijuana convictions as “a proxy for race.”

“We didn’t need to be ‘race neutral,’” Alexander said, “because the cops already refused to be.” The very idea of Bill as “cannabis entrepreneur” made his friends howl with laughter. He was a rule follower, not a drug dealer. He had scarcely touched a joint.

This might arguably be Bill’s most “hood moment,” he conceded, in a lifetime spent “trying not to be justice-impacted.” Absent a criminal record, Bill did not qualify for the first licenses. While waiting his turn to apply, he met repeatedly with cannabis officials to share his ideas on social equity.

In his 14 years as a politician — a career he left in 2017 — Bill had cataloged his community’s decline. Now he had a plan: He would open a store called Blaze, employing former inmates through the prison re-entry program he had helped create. They could also join his cannabis “equity incubator,” the brainchild of Bill’s new business partner, Remigio Arteaga. On May 18, 2022, Bill got an email from the state’s cannabis-policy chief, Bernabe. With more than 400,000 people convicted of marijuana offenses in New York, Bernabe predicted an avalanche of applicants for the first licenses (known as CAURD, for Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary).

To narrow the playing field, he explained, only the best candidates should be chosen. After all, even for savvy entrepreneurs, the federal marijuana ban brought a heavy tax burden, steep compliance costs and limited access to financing.

To narrow the playing field, he explained, only the best candidates should be chosen. After all, even for savvy entrepreneurs, the federal marijuana ban brought a heavy tax burden, steep compliance costs and limited access to financing.

Therefore, to win New York’s first licenses, Bernabe wrote, applicants needed to show the “tenacity and ability to make it beyond all odds.” The test? That they had already owned businesses that had been profitable for two years.

How, Bill wondered, could his cousin Vaughn and other former convicts own businesses when their criminal records prevented them from landing most entry-level jobs? The CAURD criteria, Bill wrote to Bernabe, created “a barrier to entry for the very people you’re trying to help.” If marijuana convictions were a proxy for race, the ownership requirement struck Bill as a different kind of proxy — for a capitalist system favoring white people.

They would fare best, Bill suspected, in this first round. Sure enough, Hudson’s first Black mayor, Kamal Johnson, was taking meetings with white investors looking to open dispensaries. Some had recruited Black people with marijuana convictions.

“It just felt weird,” said Johnson. “Like tokenism.” Some people run through walls. Joanne “doesn’t even see the wall,” said Ben Leventhal, co-founder of Resy and Eater, businesses she helped start. She has no patience for “obstacles, hurdles, rules,” he added. “There’s no ifs. There’s no, ‘I am gonna try to do this.’” It was only a matter of how.

Joanne “doesn’t even see the wall,” said Ben Leventhal, co-founder of Resy and Eater, businesses she helped start. She has no patience for “obstacles, hurdles, rules,” he added. “There’s no ifs. There’s no, ‘I am gonna try to do this.’” It was only a matter of how.

Joanne had plunged into her next chapter as a “cannapreneur,” assembling an executive team, working sleep-when-dead hours and pulling every lever of power to launch Gotham.

After Cuomo’s resignation in 2021, she hosted a fund-raiser for his successor, Kathy Hochul, and would donate, with Fred, $105,700 to the new governor. They had also given $4,000 to the New York City mayoral campaign of Kathryn Garcia, now a top Hochul aide whom Joanne began lobbying.

After Cuomo’s resignation in 2021, she hosted a fund-raiser for his successor, Kathy Hochul, and would donate, with Fred, $105,700 to the new governor. They had also given $4,000 to the New York City mayoral campaign of Kathryn Garcia, now a top Hochul aide whom Joanne began lobbying.

“I got the feeling that she wanted her own rules,” said Garcia. Joanne does not dispute this. “I always play by my own rules,” she later said. To open her first store, in Manhattan, Joanne embraced a complicated plan.

The state had reserved a handful of CAURD licenses for nonprofits that worked with former inmates. They could partner with companies, provided the nonprofits remained majority stakeholders.

Joanne pitched the idea to Strive, a job-training nonprofit in East Harlem that received a $625,000 donation that year from the Wilsons’ new charity, Gotham Gives. But Strive’s lawyers worried that a cannabis venture could threaten the organization’s nonprofit status and funding, given the federal cannabis ban. Then came a solution: They would create another nonprofit to distribute 51 percent of the store’s proceeds to Strive as “charitable contributions.” All they needed was a “justice-involved individual,” in regulatory parlance, to oversee it.

For this, Joanne turned to a man named Jason Gibson. Gibson wanted his own license, but he had never owned a profitable business — not the legal kind. By age 12, he was the dealer known as “Manolo,” earning a cameo in the Nas song “A Queens Story”: Get money, Manolo At the peak of his career, he trafficked 50 pounds of marijuana from Miami every week, moving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“I used to vacuum-seal the money and send it back down to Florida,” said Gibson, who paid employees, managed shifts and, in 2014, landed in state prison after pleading guilty to two felony charges.

From prison, Gibson plotted out a new life. He wanted a legitimate path to wealth, like the tech billionaires he kept reading about. But he had no connection to that world.

Then came an idea: After leaving prison, Gibson would start a nonprofit, teaching children in the projects to computer code. This would give them a bridge to tech — while giving Gibson “proximity” to rich people who might take “some of my for-profit ideas seriously.” It worked.

Then came an idea: After leaving prison, Gibson would start a nonprofit, teaching children in the projects to computer code. This would give them a bridge to tech — while giving Gibson “proximity” to rich people who might take “some of my for-profit ideas seriously.” It worked.

In 2021, Gibson’s nonprofit, Hood Code, caught the notice of the Wilsons, who donated $25,000. A year later came Joanne’s proposal:

Would Gibson join forces to get a CAURD license for Gotham’s first store? In return, she explained, Gibson would own 1 percent of it, “which could be very lucrative.” On the street, 1 percent would never fly, Gibson thought. But this was the corporate world, where the rules must be different. And he wanted that world to be his.

There was no barrier, to Bill’s mind, that he couldn’t cross — not of race, eyesight, education.

But raising capital required serious luck. His childhood best friend, Jake Walthour — who had D.J.'ed with Bill back in the 1990s as “Mr. Money” — now had his own investment firm. But he wanted nothing to do with cannabis.

For new leads, Bill turned to Warren Street.

One upside of gentrification, in his estimation, was exposure to power — the bespectacled, Barbour-clad New Yorker who could be spotted wandering up Warren.

And on Jan. 10, 2020, just that man walked into Nolita’s Cafe & Gallery: a silver-haired investor named Kevin Albert. As he stood in line, whispering into his phone, Bill was eavesdropping from the table he calls “my office.” Upon hearing Albert say “millions,” Bill rose to his feet.

“Excuse me,” Bill said. “Would you be interested in investing in cannabis?” This was hardly the first time a Black man in Hudson had asked a white man to transact in weed.

This man is bold, Albert thought. By coincidence, he had already invested more than $2 million in cannabis companies. Soon he agreed to serve as Bill’s financial adviser. “I’m now part of a world-class team,” Bill wrote to another wealthy local, Cameron Melville. Eight months later, Melville gave Bill his first win: $300,000 in seed funds. On Nov. 4, 2022, six weeks after Gotham filed its application, the cannabis agency raised a red flag.

Gibson’s criminal record showed that, in 2013, detectives had found two pistols and a 9-millimeter submachine gun in his apartment. What if this made the news? That was the agency’s concern — that “the public finds out that a licensee has some horrible weapons charge,” Gibson recalled. Was Gibson, in other words, the right kind of criminal? New York’s marijuana law might be more progressive than its taxpayers. It was one thing to disavow “systemic racism.” But to do business with a former gun-packing kingpin?

Republicans had seized on this message, with the State Senate minority leader, Rob Ortt, blasting the CAURD program as “giving a leg up to those who have broken the law.” Gotham’s consultants drafted a letter in Gibson’s name, framing his story as an act of reinvention — the embodiment of New York’s law. It helped, too, that Gibson had just won the prestigious David Prize, given to “New Yorkers with ideas for extraordinary change.” Two weeks later, Gotham prevailed, securing its Manhattan license. Joanne was “over the moon,” she texted Gibson.

And so was Gibson. He finally had a seat at Joanne’s table. He could watch her flex what he considered the ultimate form of “white privilege”: Move fast and break things. It would be harder for Mike Tyson to rebrand himself as the right kind of criminal. “I could never let go of the past,” he said. “The past is in us. It doesn’t matter if we want to lose it or not. It stays with us, you know?”

It had been 40 years since Tyson first smoked blunts at Bliss Towers. Now that weed was legal, he wanted a piece of New York’s green rush, which meant navigating the market of “luxury cannabis.” But to its gatekeepers, Tyson’s past was a problem: his violent conduct with his ex-wife, Robin Givens; his 1992 conviction for raping a beauty contestant (which he still denies); his bankruptcy; his cocaine addiction. All of it drew headlines that to Tyson’s own friends sounded incomplete. He was no saint. This much they knew. But they had also watched white profiteers shape his monstrous persona as the “Baddest Man on the Planet.” Redemption would require a fuller telling of his story.

By 2016, Tyson had quit cocaine, becoming what Bill called “the new Mike.” He meditated, ate plant-based meals and lived in the Las Vegas suburbs with his wife, Kiki, and their two children. And in 2021, as the “culmination of my personal journey toward holistic well-being,” he created his cannabis company, Tyson 2.0.

Even the ear was something to reinvent. Back in 1997, Tyson had bitten off a chunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a fight that left spectators lurching between horror and fascination.

Twenty-five years later, Tyson would release a line of cannabis gummies shaped like Holyfield’s injured ear. “Mike Bites. The ear that bites back.”

Redemption. Reinvention. Abby Rockefeller — whose uncle enacted New York’s harsh drug laws — favored “regeneration.” A slight woman with a shock of white hair, the 79-year-old environmentalist could be spotted roaming her dairy farm, south of Hudson, where cows were occasionally strewn with floral crowns. “She’s the black sheep of the family,” said Melany Dobson, who worked with Rockefeller for seven years, eventually launching her cannabis company.

Rockefeller had been rebelling since the 1960s, when she embraced the politics of Fidel Castro and the militant feminist group Cell 16. Then she began manufacturing a Swedish compost toilet as the best way to deal with “our excreta.” And now she was investing in biodynamic agriculture as a rebuke to “Big Ag,” not to mention the fossil-fuel empire that made her grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, America’s first billionaire.

Marijuana would be her newest act to “regenerate” the land. But how to reckon with her family’s drug-war legacy?

As the majority stakeholder in Hudson Cannabis, Rockefeller offered employees profit-sharing and decent wages. None of this distracted from the weight of her name. To hear “Rockefeller,” Dobson noted, was “triggering” for people who cared about racial justice.

“What’s our narrative?” Dobson recalled pressing Rockefeller (who gave The New York Times access to her farm and staff but declined to be interviewed).

Rockefeller’s response, said Dobson, focused on “the technicality” of her distant link to her uncle: “It was like, ‘I don’t have an apology. I don’t have that for you.’” Dobson was left holding the mic.

“I started to leave Abby out of the story,” she said. The troubles of Hudson rarely escape The Gossips of Rivertown, a tireless if cranky blog that serves as a digital town square.

It chronicles the most incremental zoning meetings like events of global magnitude. Reader comments flare like torpedoes. On Nov. 3, 2023, the torpedo came from “Wowser,” complaining that wealthy outsiders were again encroaching — this time at Bill’s expense.

He was still waiting his turn to apply for a cannabis license. Meanwhile, a weed “pop-up” had just opened near the train station. It brought to Hudson a name Bill associated with Batman and, by extension, New York City:

He was still waiting his turn to apply for a cannabis license. Meanwhile, a weed “pop-up” had just opened near the train station. It brought to Hudson a name Bill associated with Batman and, by extension, New York City: Gotham. This was nothing to worry about, Bill told himself.

The state would allow pop-ups only until Dec. 31, making Gotham as fleeting as the urbanites who step off the train on Friday and leave on Sunday.

“Smoke a number and take a deep breath,” another reader fired back. “Poor Billy Hughes ain’t having his lunch eaten by anyone. Yet.” Gotham had no intention of popping back down. Joanne wanted a Hudson foothold.

Five months had passed since her Manhattan store opened, and she was eager to expand. From Gotham’s headquarters, she held meetings with her executives. She cooked for them once a week. “My inner mom!” she said. From Paris and Milan, they imported goods best described as the opposite of Cheech & Chong, most notably a $421 ceramic bong.

But when it came to weed, Gotham was required to sell New York-made products — a limited market that would soon include Tyson’s brand. His team had been scouting farms upstate, in search of a New York grower.

For Joanne, selling anything associated with Tyson was out of the question.

It didn’t matter that he had done his time, or that he still denied raping the beauty contestant in 1991 — a scandal so old Gotham’s millennial employees had no idea what Joanne was talking about.

It didn’t matter that he had done his time, or that he still denied raping the beauty contestant in 1991 — a scandal so old Gotham’s millennial employees had no idea what Joanne was talking about.

“Google it,” she told them, calling Tyson a “scumbag.” Melany Dobson also Googled it. She was now the chief executive of Rockefeller’s cannabis company and in November 2023 had signed a deal to become Tyson’s New York manufacturer. After a Gotham executive mentioned the rape case to Dobson, she began searching for answers, leading her to a Joe Rogan podcast.

“What was wrong with me back then?” Tyson said of his younger self. “I was really disturbed back then.” Rogan had long observed Tyson’s struggles, he remarked, and was struck by how “self-reflective” the boxer had become.

“You have to reflect on yourself to discover who you really are,” Tyson replied.

Dobson also found herself reflecting — on New York’s a-la-carte approach to crime. She, too, had been arrested, in 2017, for weed possession while working in the illicit market. Now she was a rising star of luxury cannabis — a golden-tressed Hudson “maker” featured in Town & Country.

Retailers snapped up Hudson Cannabis “dime bags” while responding coolly to Tyson’s brand. Soon another luxury dispensary, The Travel Agency, turned him down.

Retailers snapped up Hudson Cannabis “dime bags” while responding coolly to Tyson’s brand. Soon another luxury dispensary, The Travel Agency, turned him down. Like Gotham, this company had partnered with a nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated people — in this case, the Doe Fund.

Even after Dobson appealed to the Doe Fund on Tyson’s behalf, the company refused to budge.

“Now ‘crimes’ have a moral hierarchy,” Dobson remembers thinking, “and you’re the decider of it?” Jason Gibson got the optics of being “the right kind of criminal.” Still, he could not shake the feeling he had been fleeced.

He was sure Gotham owed him more than 1 percent, he told his friend Kareem Culbertson, another former dealer, who went by Ice. As Ice absorbed the facts, he applied street code: Back in Queens, Joanne would have told Gibson, “This is my block. You want to get paid? This is what I’ma give you. Take it or leave it.”

It was Gibson’s fault, concluded Ice (who admired “the lady” for being cutthroat). “You took that 1 percent.” But street code no longer applied. Instead, Gibson hired a lawyer, who sent Strive and the Wilsons a letter saying he was “exploited as merely a proxy justice-involved individual” and demanding 21 percent ownership.

“He just turned on me,” said Joanne. “He lost me as an ally.” Her legal team accused Gibson of a “potentially criminal attempt” at extortion.

Gibson stared at the word “criminal.” He had already spent $10,000 on the case while working at a legal clinic to pay his bills.

So he dropped the matter, later asking Joanne if he could “expect any proceeds.” Her Manhattan store was still operating at a deficit, preventing her, she later explained, from distributing proceeds. None of this did Joanne say in her one-line reply:

“You can expect nothing.” In Hudson, Gotham’s pop-up had gained a “first to market” following. Over the holidays, employees scrambled to keep up with demand.

A few weeks after its required closing, in early 2024, Gotham’s pop-up reopened as an accessories store, allowing customers to retrieve cannabis ordered online. Citing this as a violation, O.C.M. closed the pop-up for good.

“Gotham is out,” Bill gleefully wrote to his partner, paying no mind to Gotham’s Instagram post: “We promise that Hudson hasn’t seen the last of us.” Joanne was in overdrive.

In her quest to expand Gotham, she searched for new justice-involved partners — this time enlisting a fixer who took a $650,000 cut.

She and Fred had also given $10,000 in political donations to Jeremy Cooney, chairman of the State Senate’s cannabis subcommittee. On Jan. 31, Cooney emailed O.C.M.’s leaders “flagging a request by Gotham” to “purchase another CAURD license.” This was the power of capital — the very thing that had worried one of O.C.M.’s leaders, Damian Fagon, since he arrived in 2022 to run the equity program.

Now the rollout was in crisis. The short-staffed agency scrambled to fend off lawsuits driven by corporate interests. Fewer than 70 legal stores had opened amid thousands of illicit shops. And in January, two white men filed a discrimination lawsuit, describing O.C.M.’s leaders by their “dark pigmentation.”

It was a Times Union article on the suit — with a photo of Fagon and two other Black officials in a marijuana field — that signaled “we were getting caught up in something bigger,” Fagon said, adding that it “reflected the mood of an election year, and the anger, especially among white men, in upstate New York.” Three days later, Hochul declared the rollout “a disaster” — just hours before Cooney’s email landed.

When asked about the email, Cooney said he had acted as a “liaison” for dozens of applicants. But to Fagon, it “felt like we were battling our own government to implement the law that they passed.” He fired off a response to his team.

None of the equity applicants in Cooney’s Rochester district, wrote Fagon, “have been able to open a store, let alone secure a license, but we should allow a billionaire to secure a second location?” Bill’s prediction turned out to be right: White people had fared best in the program for “justice-involved” individuals.

They were one-third of all CAURD winners, and likely far more, given that many licensees did not disclose their race. By comparison, Black-owned dispensaries claimed 24 percent of CAURD licenses; Latino-owned ones, 13 percent.

Here in Hudson, Bill had waited his turn to apply for a license, which required locking down a property. At first, he had found a dusty warehouse on Columbia Street, where the landlord agreed to make repairs before collecting the $8,500 rent.

Here in Hudson, Bill had waited his turn to apply for a license, which required locking down a property. At first, he had found a dusty warehouse on Columbia Street, where the landlord agreed to make repairs before collecting the $8,500 rent.

Bill felt good about this deal — until March 12, when O.C.M. released a map showing the locations of its first dispensaries. In Hudson, no dispensary could be within 2,000 feet of another.

And there was Hudson’s first store, the white-owned Riverbend — a mere 345 feet from Bill’s rental. “Where’s the store, Bill?” People keep shouting it — from cars, from stoops. It is less a question than a plea. If Bill fails, so might his Hudson.

Frantically, he searches for a new rental. And 48 hours later, he finds it — the glorious property at Third and Warren. It is just far enough from Riverbend to allow both stores to corner the market. As Bill films it with his phone, he imagines the possibilities.

Instead, Bill falls into the quicksand of bureaucracy. His license application remains tied to his original location — the warehouse that, by dint of the agency’s own rules, will now be disqualified. Yet Bill is barred from changing locations “during the review process,” leaving him stuck at No. 464 in the applicant “queue.” Capital moves at a faster clip.

His license application remains tied to his original location — the warehouse that, by dint of the agency’s own rules, will now be disqualified. Yet Bill is barred from changing locations “during the review process,” leaving him stuck at No. 464 in the applicant “queue.” Capital moves at a faster clip.

It is still spring when workers appear at 260 Warren, covering the windows with paper.

“Hello?” Bill calls out, knocking at the door. A man in a tool belt answers, telling Bill the space has a new tenant — “a furniture store.” Bill tries to breathe.

“We already have enough furniture stores on this street!” he snarls at the worker, who shrugs.

The truth finally hits on July 15. “We’re back!” reads Joanne’s blog. “Let’s get high in Hudson.” Bill reads the post in shock.

Not only has he lost his coveted rental at Third and Warren — the very corner once claimed by his marijuana-dealing cousin, Vaughn.

The new tenant is Gotham. Bill suspects — correctly — that when Joanne signed the lease (for what she calls a “nothing” rent of $5,500) she still lacked a cannabis license.

To solve this problem, she tapped the CAURD market, recruiting a white former convict with no ties to Hudson: a businessman named Dave Blair who (like Riverbend’s owner) sold marijuana in his youth but avoided prison.

He joins the ranks of Gotham’s CAURD partners, each helping Joanne open a new store — in Hudson, Brooklyn and Manhattan — in exchange for lump-sum payments ranging from $350,000 to $750,000.

They will have no role in the business, aside from periodicallyg documents, for which they will get an additional $100,000, paid over four years — the minimum time, by law, before licensees may opt out.

They will have no role in the business, aside from periodicallyg documents, for which they will get an additional $100,000, paid over four years — the minimum time, by law, before licensees may opt out. And having them exit is Joanne’s goal, as outlined in separate contracts. She wants full control. Such deals appear to violate O.C.M.’s regulations, which give “sole control” to CAURD licensees while explicitly prohibiting “side agreements related to their recusal.” (Joanne’s lawyer disputed this, adding that the contracts had all been disclosed to O.C.M.; agency officials told The Times they were re-examining Gotham’s deals.)“It’s capitalism,” says Joanne. “It’s pure capitalism. And to think it wasn’t going to be capitalism, they’re kidding themselves!” Two of Joanne’s CAURD partners praised their deals, but a third, Maria Granville, said she felt “exploited” and “disrespected” by Joanne and had filed a complaint to O.C.M.

Such deals appear to violate O.C.M.’s regulations, which give “sole control” to CAURD licensees while explicitly prohibiting “side agreements related to their recusal.” (Joanne’s lawyer disputed this, adding that the contracts had all been disclosed to O.C.M.; agency officials told The Times they were re-examining Gotham’s deals.)“It’s capitalism,” says Joanne. “It’s pure capitalism. And to think it wasn’t going to be capitalism, they’re kidding themselves!” Two of Joanne’s CAURD partners praised their deals, but a third, Maria Granville, said she felt “exploited” and “disrespected” by Joanne and had filed a complaint to O.C.M.

The public’s ire, Joanne thinks, is better directed at the state, which partnered with a private-equity firm to create a $200 million fund, promising CAURD licensees turnkey stores and access to capital. Instead, the fund locked them into predatory loans while paying its managers $1.7 million.

Joanne’s CAURD partners fared better, she says.

“We changed their lives,” she insists. “It’s not like we did anything wrong by anyone. We did everything right by everybody.” Bill is despondent. O.C.M. has granted him a license it calls “provisional,” leading him to scout nearby towns for a new rental.

To Bill’s family, the word provisional reads more like this: A Black Hudson native cannot take advantage of a law promoting racial justice because white outsiders — using the same law — found a way to go first.

His mood is further sunken by another revelation: Hudson has missed out on the state’s long-promised reparations. It will not get a share of this year’s “community reinvestment” fund — millions in cannabis tax revenues meant to heal the drug war’s harms. The reason? In O.C.M.’s calculus of “harm,” only marijuana arrests counted. And in Hudson, where crack and heroin reigned, most weed offenses were cited as violations, not arrests.

By a sleight of bureaucracy, Hudson — a drug-war nexus — had failed to be seen as a “community disproportionately affected” by the war on drugs. Gotham rushes to hire people to work the floor. In other dispensaries, they go by “budtender.” Here they will be “cannasseurs.” They must learn to sell things they cannot afford, including a $2,000 marble tray for rolling joints. Some grumble about working for a “billionaire” — a label the Wilsons deny (though Joanne concedes to “centimillionaire”).

In Manhattan, Gotham’s cannasseurs have been secretly meeting to form a union. When Joanne catches wind of this, she dismisses them as Gen-Z kids who “do not want to work hard.” No such currents have reached Hudson, where a celebrated tattoo artist begins painting a mural across Gotham’s facade.

In Manhattan, Gotham’s cannasseurs have been secretly meeting to form a union. When Joanne catches wind of this, she dismisses them as Gen-Z kids who “do not want to work hard.” No such currents have reached Hudson, where a celebrated tattoo artist begins painting a mural across Gotham’s facade. When a cannabis leaf appears, Hudson’s code enforcer hands the matter to the city’s Historic Preservation Commission. Does the leaf meet the commission’s criteria of “appropriateness”?

The question is dissected by Gossips in a post about Hudson’s “garish and inappropriate” signs. The leaf vanishes. Even vice can be gentrified. On Sept. 13, the same day as Hudson’s “appropriateness” meeting, Bill heads to a casino resort in Schenectady, N.Y., with his childhood friend Moore. Tyson is waiting. They will share a meal at the Vice & Virtue Restaurant and Cocktail Bar before attending Cage Wars, a mixed martial arts competition where Tyson is giving ringside commentary.

Bill is nervous. Over and over, he has practiced his cannabis pitch. He knows Tyson is preoccupied — training for his fight with the YouTube influencer Jake Paul (which will draw more than 108 million viewers). But when Tyson is in a good mood, “he’ll give you anything,” Moore reminds Bill.

“Mike is ready for you,” says a security guard, ushering Bill and Moore to a sixth-floor suite. At the sight of his friends, Tyson breaks into a gaptoothed smile, crinkling the Maori-inspired tattoo on his face.

Clasping hands, Tyson and Bill pull together, completing their age-old dap with a fist pump. As they sit chatting, Tyson perks up at the mention of cannabis. “What do you need?” Tyson asks. Bill lays out his plan: If he manages to open a dispensary, he hopes Tyson will “show up” for the kickoff. Others can provide funds, but Tyson in the flesh — “we couldn’t pay that in marketing dollars.” Tyson agrees to help, connecting Bill with his cannabis team.

Soon they head to the casino for Cage Wars. “Make a circle!” commands a security guard. “Make a circle?” Bill asks.

They must surround Tyson, to protect him from the crowd. Bill has never witnessed anything like it — a vibrating mass of fans “throwing themselves at him, screaming.” The men close rank, moving like a submarine. The next day, Gotham throws a Hudson launch party. Guests step into a gallery of high-end marvels as Joanne chats up her new staff. Her store supervisor, Bianca, is nervous.

A manager ordered her to remove opaque film from Gotham’s windows. Now, anyone can peer inside, seeing gummies, pre-rolls and vapes — in violation of O.C.M.’s rules. “That’s how I do business,” Joanne says. “We ask for forgiveness, not permission.” Forgiveness is in short supply.

Authorities have raided hundreds of illicit weed shops, slapping operators with fines and the occasional criminal charge. The crackdown comes to Hudson on Nov. 1, as the dealer known as Dre drives to his rogue weed shop. Just blocks from Gotham and Riverbend, his store draws a different clientele: working-class locals.

Lights flash in Dre’s rearview mirror as sheriff’s deputies descend, seizing his S.U.V., searching his home and padlocking his store. Dre is led away in handcuffs, charged with a felony for marijuana possession.

As word of the bust spreads, Black Hudsonsites take to the internet, with one of Dre’s supporters decrying the episode as “racist.”

“Permanently closed due to discrimination of locals!” writes another, Ja-Lisa Ivery, later posting: “At some point, we as locals gotta step up and start pushing these city people out!” Under a cloudy November sky, a crowd gathers on Warren, summoned by Hudson’s Black vanguard. They huddle in the cold. Four weeks have passed since Dre’s arrest. Donald J. Trump has been re-elected, and a new movement — championed by a Tesla-driving South African known as “Hudson’s Elon” — seeks to “professionalize” city governance. Hudson’s first Black mayor might be ousted. Mayor Johnson looks pensive, his face shaded by a baseball cap. He stands near Bill and Greg Mosley, the county’s first Black state trooper. They are here in the name of reclamation. The City Council has agreed — for the first time ever — to the honorary renaming of one historic block: Warren between Second and Third, the anchor of Bill’s youth.

This was the site of Savoia Bar and Restaurant, a longstanding Black haven that closed seven years ago. In its place came an upscale apothecary, lauded by Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, right across from where Gotham now stands. Lest Warren’s newcomers erase the past, four new street signs will honor Savoia’s founders, Barbara and Jacob Walthour. Warren will yield to “Walthour” — just for one block, but enough to “forever embed them,” Mosley tells the crowd. “And I hope that as the New Yorkers come, and the tourists come — and all the people come who are not from Hudson — and they walk up and down Warren Street, I just hope that when they look up and say, ‘Well, who is that?’” he says, pointing skyward, “that somebody is still in this community, around, to remind them.” Bill shuffles from foot to foot, trying to stay warm.

He glances over at the Walthours’ son, his former best friend, Jake. They have barely spoken since he declined to help Bill with his cannabis venture. Six years later, their parents are gone, and Hudson’s Black population has dipped below 900.

Hudson’s growing racial disparity White residents earn four times as much as Black residents, per capita, a gap that has grown significantly since the pandemic.

The crowd presses in as tourists stroll by. “Hudson brags about the ‘rich history of Hudson’ all the time. Hudson’s rich history,” Mosley calls out. “Well, I don’t want this piece of rich history to ever be forgotten.”

On Feb. 4, 2025, Joanne sends Gotham’s staff an“PLEASE READ THIS” Two weeks after taking office, Trump has upended the government and is blaming D.E.I. initiatives for a fatal air collision.

“The world at large now can seem very scary,” she writes.

Joanne then describes how Gotham is celebrating Black History Month, honoring African Americans’ “profound impact” on the cannabis industry — while acknowledging “the injustices that persist.”

Indeed, Black-owned brands are scarce — both on Gotham’s shelves and in New York’s cannabis market. As such, Joanne is creating an incubator for Black entrepreneurs. Her commitment to D.E.I., she writes, “isn’t performative.” But if marketing is a form of theater, Gotham’s performance is about to go sideways.

“Black in Cannabis,” begins the company’s public post in February. “This industry doesn’t exist without the Black community.” From there, Gotham showcases nine “Black innovators.” Scrolling through the list is Breanna Neff, a food scientist whose company makes cannabis-infused drink mixes. Neff pauses at a photograph of her face.

“Black in Cannabis,” begins the company’s public post in February. “This industry doesn’t exist without the Black community.” From there, Gotham showcases nine “Black innovators.” Scrolling through the list is Breanna Neff, a food scientist whose company makes cannabis-infused drink mixes. Neff pauses at a photograph of her face. She is stunned. Neff had repeatedly pitched her brand, Brelixi, to Gotham’s executives. After a long silence, a Gotham buyer replied that Neff’s brand was “not an aesthetic fit.” “Aesthetic fit” sounded, to Neff’s ear, like code for “white.” She had long observed, she later said, how corporate America subjected Black women to racial bias — set off by their names, their hair, their diction. In fairness, Neff could see that her brand’s punchy packaging was at odds with Gotham’s minimalism. Still hoping to win them over, she pitched a sleeker product line.

She never heard back. Yet now, a year later, Neff’s face is a perfect “aesthetic fit,” she notes, for Gotham’s Black History Month campaign. She takes her complaint public. “Gotham features Black culture in their marketing materials, giving the illusion of inclusivity,” while “denying us the very support that would actually make a difference,” Neff writes on She implores all dispensaries to “stop using Black bodies as props for your marketing campaigns.” Neff’s post draws more than 35,000 views as other Black entrepreneurs chime in. Within 72 hours, Gotham has removed Neff and the other eight innovators from the post.

“Gotham features Black culture in their marketing materials, giving the illusion of inclusivity,” while “denying us the very support that would actually make a difference,” Neff writes on She implores all dispensaries to “stop using Black bodies as props for your marketing campaigns.” Neff’s post draws more than 35,000 views as other Black entrepreneurs chime in. Within 72 hours, Gotham has removed Neff and the other eight innovators from the post.

By April, Bill’s anxiety has risen to “high meter.” He cannot breathe it out. He cannot pray it out. He cannot weight-lift it out — not even with five reps of a 225-pound bench press. At night, his mind rattles with worry, breaking apart his sleep. To leave Hudson, and open a store elsewhere, is unthinkable. Instead, Bill has asked the state’s Cannabis Control Board to waive the “proximity” rule — allowing him to keep his original location, one block from Riverbend. But this means risking everything. Should the board turn him down, at a public hearing next week in Harlem, “it will result in the disapproval of your application,” reads an email from O.C.M.

In other words, Bill will be out of the game. He releases a long sigh. “We have so much time invested. We have more time than money. But time is money.” He goes silent. By now, Gotham has opened its fourth store, in Chelsea, with two more licenses coming. Four days later, Bill boards the train to New York. Light spills into the conference room as Bill walks inside.

Everyone, it seems, is early — throngs of anxious bodies, jostling for seats. They are a New York swirl of race, dialect, religion, fashion. A lawyer reads from the Torah’s “laws of ritual purity” near a phalanx of men in matching baseball caps. “This is like the D.M.V. on steroids!” one grumbles. As the hearing begins, Bill bunches his fists into a prayer. Breathe, he tells himself. The control board’s chairwoman, Tremaine Wright, offers opening remarks — interrupted by protesters holding up signs.

“People are losing money!” their leader calls out. “They are putting their lives on hold!” After the protesters settle down, the board swiftly approves the renewal of six CAURD licenses — including the one that launched Gotham.

By the time the board turns to the matter of Hudson, Bill is feeling sick. “Oh my God, I can’t take it,” he whispers. A senior official with O.C.M. argues against Bill’s request, because his proposed store is only 345 feet from Riverbend. Hudson River N. SECOND st. DOWNTOWN state st. Gotham dispensary columbia st. Warren st. UPTOWN S. third st.

Bill’s proposed shop S. sixth st. Riverbend dispensary YORK UNION st.

But Wright pushes back, citing a letter from Hudson’s mayor, who argues that Bill’s store will “benefit their community.” The board needs more time and postpones its vote. Bill heads home on a mission: He will go door to door through Bliss Towers, asking neighbors to sign a petition supporting his plan to stay put.

In three days, Bill has 73 signatures. Meanwhile, Riverbend’s owners mount their own letter-writing campaign, planning to plead their case at the next board meeting, in Buffalo. Bill and his wife watch the meeting from home, clasping hands. After 45 minutes, the board returns to the question of Bill’s location. He freezes as the five members vote. “Aye …. Aye …” Bill needs one more. He closes his eyes and listens.

He lifts his arms to the sky. As the fourth and fifth “ayes” come, he and Deb jump to their feet, dancing. “YES!” Bill cries out. “Got all five votes! Got all five.”

Eleven days later, Bill’s phone lights up with “Mike Tyson.” He is calling to check in.

By now, Tyson has parted ways with Rockefeller’s Hudson Cannabis, which she will close, selling the brand (while her farm remains a marijuana wholesaler). Another New York grower has picked up Tyson’s brand, which Gotham still refuses to carry. “I don’t like that woman that has the dispensary in Hudson,” Tyson texts Bill after their call.

“Most Black people stay away from her store,” replies Bill, who plans not only to carry Tyson’s brand but to bring him “home” for the opening.

“We are going to bankrupt her,” Tyson writes back. “We made fools out of billionaires in this game.”

Joanne sends Riverbend her own message: to let her know “if you need anything from us.” She is livid that a third dispensary might open in Hudson and is “cheering” Riverbend’s latest strategy: suing the Cannabis Control Board, along with Bill’s company.

Joanne sends Riverbend her own message: to let her know “if you need anything from us.” She is livid that a third dispensary might open in Hudson and is “cheering” Riverbend’s latest strategy: suing the Cannabis Control Board, along with Bill’s company.

“He’s late to the party,” says Joanne, who has also sued the state — over its labor rules, hoping to quash the budding Gotham union. To cut costs, Joanne will soon fire nearly half of her employees while managing to keep her stores open.

“He’s late to the party,” says Joanne, who has also sued the state — over its labor rules, hoping to quash the budding Gotham union. To cut costs, Joanne will soon fire nearly half of her employees while managing to keep her stores open. “I am in it for the long game,” she says. The same could be said for New York’s cannabis agency.

Its pioneers, Alexander and Fagon, were pushed out after Hochul accused the agency of mismanagement. Its current leaders have distanced themselves from the language of “racial” justice, emphasizing to The Times that the drug war “harmed people from many backgrounds.”

When asked why Hudson was not considered “disproportionately affected,” Matt Wilson, director of the state’s cannabis reinvestment fund, said he was reconsidering how O.C.M. measures harm. “You are surfacing data that no one knows about,” he said. “That’s the information and data we need to keep building on.” On Oct. 23, 2025, Joanne heads to Hudson for Gotham’s first anniversary, cutting a red ribbon for the Chamber of Commerce.

When asked why Hudson was not considered “disproportionately affected,” Matt Wilson, director of the state’s cannabis reinvestment fund, said he was reconsidering how O.C.M. measures harm. “You are surfacing data that no one knows about,” he said. “That’s the information and data we need to keep building on.” On Oct. 23, 2025, Joanne heads to Hudson for Gotham’s first anniversary, cutting a red ribbon for the Chamber of Commerce. “Thank you and we want you!” declares the president, handing Joanne a certificate. “We’re here to help you in any way we can!”

This is what keeps happening: men in suits, exalting her. She is no longer “the wife of Fred.” “Men look at me and treat me differently,” Joanne says a few weeks later, sitting at her desk in Manhattan.

And “part of me is like, ‘Wow, that’s what I was waiting for?’” It is now March 26. Bill walks along Warren feeling the sun on his face.

The corner claimed by Gotham recedes as Bill watches the ground with each step, soon passing Riverbend. After hiring his own lawyer, Bill is less worried about “that frivolous lawsuit.” His only real concern is the store he will call his own.

The corner claimed by Gotham recedes as Bill watches the ground with each step, soon passing Riverbend. After hiring his own lawyer, Bill is less worried about “that frivolous lawsuit.” His only real concern is the store he will call his own. And that is where Bill heads, on this sparkling afternoon, arriving at the entrance of 519 Columbia Street. The landlord is almost done renovating.

Bill hopes to raise enough capital to be in business by late fall, joining the ranks of New York’s 726 legal dispensaries — more than half of them “equity” licensees — in an industry poised to make $2 billion this year.

Bill hopes to raise enough capital to be in business by late fall, joining the ranks of New York’s 726 legal dispensaries — more than half of them “equity” licensees — in an industry poised to make $2 billion this year. If Bill succeeds, Tyson will be there. “I’ll open it with him,” Tyson says.

Today, as Bill tours the 5,100-square-foot space, he takes out his phone and hits record. As always, he begins a narration that is as much for his team as for himself.

“Man, this would make a really nice dispensary,” Bill says, panning the floor and walls. “Really,” he says again, walking toward the window. Thirteen days later, the landlord hands Bill his key.