Arts & Entertainment
National Cannabis Festival features out vendors like D.C.’s Sean Kim
Owner of Pride Smoke Shop on coming out, embracing his dream

Ahead of the April 22 National Cannabis Festival, the Washington Blade caught up with Sean Kim on Friday at his store, Pride Smoke Shop, a smoke, gift, vape shop, and glass gallery located near Dupont Circle at 21st and P streets, N.W.
“I want to show the community that I’m here for everybody,” he said, “And I’m not afraid anymore.”
This year will be Kim’s first National Cannabis Festival, and he is looking forward to setting up shop with two connected booths, “It’s amazing, actually, they put us near an LGBTQ pavilion that they have,” he said.
As a sponsor of the event, the Blade will be stationed nearby. Tickets are still available for the Festival, which will feature an all-day concert along with “exhibitors, education pavilions, munchies zone, sponsored lounges and more.”
“It’s gonna be amazing,” Kim said. “I’m so excited. We have a lot of stuff planned.”
The event’s organizers are debuting the designated LGBTQ space this year. A spokesperson told the Blade by phone it is designed to be a “chill spot for the community,” a place where “you can take a load off,” they said, noting there will also be a seniors’ lounge.
Kim said Pride Smoke Shop represents his entrée into a new phase of his life, where he is free to live authentically as himself, his full self – out of the closet as LGBTQ, the sole proprietor of a smoke shop who had abandoned a successful career in auto sales to chase his dream of starting the business.
The endeavor has been successful. In fact, for this interview Kim had traveled back to D.C. from Atlantic City, N.J., where he is planning to open a second location of his store.
“As I got older and realized time is short on this earth, I became the true me – the person that I had suppressed for years and years, almost decades,” Kim said. “And I just became free.”
The decision to start his business came like an epiphany, he told the Blade. “I just woke up one morning and I was just like, I don’t want to be an old man looking back and thinking ‘I’ve lived this lie my whole life,'” Kim said.
Working in a corporate job had brought Kim considerable success, but while he was earning a comfortable living in accordance with his family’s wishes and expectations, he said, “I wasn’t happy.”
“It was my awakening, you know, no more being afraid of whatever stigmas, other people — I just don’t care anymore,” Kim said. “I want to be me and do what I love.”
The nature of Kim’s business also meant he would be coming out again and again. “For years and decades, even, I hid it from a lot of people – family, even a lot of friends,” he said. “I grew up in a Korean American household where it’s not even a question — you just don’t smoke.”
For this reason, Kim said, he felt like even more of “an odd one.”
When it comes to the location of his shop, Kim is cognizant that he was hardly the first LGBTQ person to venture into a certain Washington, D.C. neighborhood in search of refuge and the company of others who are different.
When I was younger, I always heard of Dupont [Circle] as like a safe place for our community,” Kim said, so his decision to situate his business there was an easy one — a homecoming of sorts to “the place where I felt safest, always.”
When it comes to the name of his business, “I couldn’t think of any word” other than Pride that would exemplify the idea that “this is me now, no questions asked, this is what I represent,” Kim said, adding “it’s pride of everything,” of his whole identity and everything that entails.
The name also touches on the idea that “a smoke shop can thrive,” he said, “that it’s not a terrible thing.”
For his parents, Kim said, “It was like the biggest shock, but now they’re my biggest supporters.”
The change of heart did not come easily, though. “It was very hard,” Kim said. “For my dad, it was the toughest thing. And now he’s the first person to fight for me, you know? If someone tries to say something, and he’s in construction, so he’s the first guy pulling up in his truck with all his tools come in to fix whatever.”
“My dad is bringing his workers,” Kim continued, “but then I see him, like, he has no questions, you know, he brings them right in, like, you can even see his workers’ faces looking around, like, you know, they see all the [LGBTQ pride] flags, so they get it.”
Customers “get it” too. Pride Smoke Shop is a window into its owner’s life, personality, and tastes.
“You’ll see my vision of my store” just by walking in, Kim said. “It’s just my favorite things,” like the “Wu Tang symbol on the ground” to celebrate “one of my favorite artists,” to “Lucy Ricardo’s picture [hanging] because ‘I Love Lucy’ is my favorite show,” he said. “Richie Rich was my favorite comic and you’ll see that influence. It’s just everything I love, and I’m here to just showcase that this is me.”

Books
Tragedy and comedy intertwined in witty ‘Quietly Hostile’
Irby’s fourth essay collection addresses pandemic, TV writing career, more

‘Quietly Hostile: Essays’
By Samantha Irby
c.2023, Vintage
$17/304 pages
You know from the get-go that “Quietly Hostile,” essayist, television writer and humorist Samantha Irby’s fourth essay collection, is filled to the brim with the author’s mordant wit, cynicism and empathy. Who else but Irby, 43, who has struggled with depression, would write: “This book is dedicated to Zoloft”?
There are zillions of essay collections. But few are as memorable, poignant, funny (sometimes grossly, in a good way) and heart-filled (a term Irby might hate) as “Quietly Hostile”

This long-awaited collection is filled with what Irby would call “good shit”: from hilarious descriptions of her bad dog in doggie day care to bits about, literally, shit, (that will gross you out, but reduce your shame about pooping).
Irby, who is Black and bisexual, grew up in poverty in Evanston, Ill. Her parents died when she was 18 (her mother from multiple sclerosis; her father, who gambled, likely, suffered from post traumatic stress disorder).
At the age of nine, Irby’s mother’s MS went out of remission. While still a child, she was called upon to care for her Mom.
“When I was an actual kid growing up on welfare with a sick mom and expired Tuna Helper from the dollar store, the future and its infinite possibilities stretched before me like a sumptuous buffet I couldn’t afford to go to,” Irby writes.
There is a backdrop of pain, sadness and, sometimes, anger to much of Irby’s humor. But self-pity and rage don’t consume the book.
Irby, the author of “Meaty,” “We Are Never Meeting in Real Life” and “Wow, No Thank You,” knows that the cliche is true: tragedy and comedy often are often intertwined.
It’s fun to learn in “Quietly Hostile” that Irby, who was a writer for the popular TV shows “Shrill” and “Tuca & Bertie,” is as much a fan as the rest of us of the TV shows she loves.
In 1998, Irby couldn’t afford cable or HBO. She had to wait to watch the “City” until it came out on VHS. “The show reflected nothing of my life,” she writes, “but provided something of a road map for my future…” she writes.
In a future, she wouldn’t have dreamed of then, she grew up to become a writer on “And Just Like That,” the “Sex and the City” reboot. (She’s a writer on season two of “And Just Like That” which premieres on June 22 on Max.)
Irby was stunned when Michael Patrick King of “And Just Like That” asked her to write for the show. “I was like … Are you allowed to work on a show like this if you only wear nine-dollar T-shirts,” she writes, “and have no idea how many Brooklyns there are.”
“During my interview,” Irby jokes, “I said, ‘Can I give Carrie diarrhea?’ and I was hired immediately.”
Even ardent “Sex and the City” aficionados may find too much of SATC in “Quietly Hostile.”
No worries: Irby who speaks of herself as being “fat” and “sick” (she has arthritis and Crohn’s disease), riffs on many things in “Quietly Hostile.” Irby turns her sharp wit on everything from what it’s like to run for a public toilet when you have diarrhea to why she’s a David Matthew’s fan girl to her love for (approaching addiction to) Diet Coke to the “last normal day” before the pandemic to the “food fights” that are a part of the most loving marriages.
Grab a Diet Coke (or libation of your choice), tell your bad dog to quit barking and enjoy “Quietly Hostile.”
The Blade may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via this post.
Theater
Arena’s ‘Exclusion’ is a piece of art about art
Majority Asian production features intelligent performance by Karoline

‘Exclusion’
Through June 25
Arena Stage
1101 Sixth St., S.W.
$56-95
Arenastage.org
When Asian-American historian Katie’s best-selling book about the racist Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is optioned for a mini-series by a Hollywood mogul, she couldn’t happier. However, artistic and commercial visions clash and things go awry. This is the premise of Ken Lin’s new comedy “Exclusion” now at Arena Stage.
Katie is played by Karoline, the mononymously named New York-based actor who brings intelligence and energy to every role they tackle.
“I’m similar to Katie — honest to a fault, optimistic, both strong and naïve,” says Karoline, 28. “For me, the challenge is watching Katie choose yes or no at every turn. Should she address what’s coming at her with truth or not? Or hide what she’s thinking? My struggle in life has been similar. How do I stay true and at the same time get what I want in a corrupt world.”
When asked to be part of “Exclusion’s” early development, Karoline was unsure: Doing a piece of art about art can be tricky. But they soon changed their mind.
“The workshop changed my life. I got into the room and it was majority Asian. Seeing Ken [Lin] talk about coming back to theater and about being able to write about Asian people with a play that’s ostensibly a comedy and obviously super personal, drawing from his life and what he’s learned from colleagues.”
Karoline describes their experience with anti-Asian racism as more microaggressions. “I don’t have people point at me saying ‘you’re a chink.’ It’s been subtler versions of that.”
As a stage actor, they’ve had an activist history, taking complaints of racism to a company’s board, a move that can be contentious. Typically, it’s preferred actors “be grateful, listen and interpret, and not speak up.”
When a respected mentor later asked Karoline whether they wanted to be an actor or an activist, they didn’t understand why it had to be mutually exclusive. “I was too young to say it could be both. Now it depends on the situation. Maybe both in theater because I have more of a career there. But in TV, I don’t know.”
Karoline was born in Shanghai and grew up in South Texas where they had little exposure to the arts. After graduation from a pre-med magnet high school (with no intention of a career in medicine), they headed off to Harvard on full scholarship: “I showed my family that I can be smart, but I was going to do my own thing.”
They took a gap year from Harvard to train at Atlantic Acting School, then went to apprentice at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Weeks after moving to New York they were cast as closeted lesbian Bo in Tom Stoppard’s “The Hard Problem” at Lincoln Center Theater.
“I’ve played more than one lesbian in my career,” says Karoline with a chuckle. In the fall, they can be seen in the entire first season of “Death and Other Details” (Hulu) as a very rich lesbian heiress, a darkly funny role.
“It seems when you’re Asian, you’re expected to talk about your parents’ accents or dumplings,” they add. “The narrative is vivid and bright. I wanted to do classical theater so my work could speak about everything else. From the start, I was ready to do the work, and hoped to have a long career that included many different things.”
Not long ago, Karoline shed their surname owing to a difficult childhood and a feeling of estrangement from their family. “It’s unusual, especially for Asian Americans, but after some self-healing and thinking, I decided I didn’t need it. Now I feel a lot freer.”
And there have been other changes in addition to their last name including coming out as queer and sharing their gender identity. This is the first year they’ve only used “they” pronouns.
“When you’re queer, I believe you’re always queer even if you’re not in a queer relationship. I think of my character like that. In this space and time, Katie’s with a man but that doesn’t mean that’s the whole conversation about this person.
“For me, playing Katie in ‘Exclusion’ has been a huge vote of confidence. Sometimes it takes someone writing something wonderful and casting you for you to know where you need to be.”
Out & About
Mayor’s office to host Pride tie-dye party
Guests to make colorful shirts for ‘PEACE. LOVE. REVOLUTION’ theme

The Mayor’s Office for LGBTQ Affairs will host “Love Out Loud: Tie Dye Party for Pride” on Wednesday, June 7 at 5 p.m. at the Frank D. Reeves Center of Municipal Affairs.
The event, hosted along with the DC Center for the LGBT Community and Capital Pride Alliance, will be an afternoon for community and artistry. Guests are encouraged to bring their creativity to make some colorful tie-dye shirts in line with this year’s Pride theme, “PEACE. LOVE. REVOLUTION.”
This event is free to attend and more details are available on Eventbrite.
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