WASHINGTON – 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 NW.
“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.
“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.”
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The Washington Blade is a sponsor of the event. 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.”
