She’s the Tzar of New York hashish.
This isn’t the primary time Jennifer Tzar has been lined by The Submit.
A decade in the past, the “excessive” vogue photographer was nabbed in Soho for marijuana possession and despatched to infamous Rikers Island.
It was, as The Submit crowed, “rotten ‘pot’ luck.”
Now, in a wild accident, the well-known former stylist, music video director and fotog is “again within the neighborhood,” she cheekily informed The Submit — because the founding father of New York’s first majority woman-owned, licensed hashish dispensary, Dagmar.
“I assume it’s my nature to at all times see how I can flip lemons into lemonade … However this was positively a rare flip of occasions,” mentioned Tzar, 58. “The worst factor that ever occurred to me changed into the most effective factor.”
It was an image of her 2011 arrest that modified her life. It exhibits her perp-walked down Thompson Road after a late-night inferno engulfed her Soho condo — with a 10-pound heap of “top quality” marijuana stashed inside, price an estimated $80,000.
Tzar revealed that “individuals nonetheless speak about” her headline-making arrest.
‘Actually, actually wanted cash’
Within the early 2000s, she photographed legends like David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, Bruce Springsteen and Snoop Dogg, plus shot campaigns for main manufacturers, together with Levi’s and Lancôme.
Her photographs had been printed in main media shops like Rolling Stone, Spin and Billboard.
Splitting time between Soho and Mendocino County, California, the place she owned a 20-acre property along with her boyfriend, she began racking up payments once they broke up and amid an sickness her grownup daughter was dealing with.
“I had all these bills, and I actually, actually wanted cash,” Tzar informed The Submit. That’s when her weed work took off.
For 3 to 4 months, Tzar took in 40 kilos of marijuana from Mendocino neighbors who grew it, then bought it to NYC friends — bringing in about $40,000 money a month.
“I wasn’t an enormous weed vendor … however I used to be counting piles and piles of cash,” she mentioned. “I received actually into it.”
However then her aspect hustle went up in an enormous, literal blaze.
Up in smoke
On Aug. 5, 2011, Tzar — who was 44 on the time — awakened at 2:30 within the morning to find that the Soho constructing she had known as house for 21 years was on hearth.
“I opened my bed room door and received wafted with main smoke. I knew I had minutes to get out of there, seconds even,” she mentioned.
“I simply grabbed two containers with $100,000,” she admitted, “and I ran out of the condo, barefoot, in my underwear, tank prime and no cellphone.”
The Hearth Division mentioned the dramatic three-alarm hearth began within the basement and traveled to the sixth ground — Tzar was on the fifth.
She had a lifetime of recollections and belongings inside her condo, however it was the ten kilos of weed that meant probably the most to the police when she was later ushered again in to gather her results.
“I put my title on the record [to be escorted inside], after which about half-hour later, I hear the police name my title and I’m, like, ‘OK, that is it.’ I stroll over to them, they handcuff me, and so they carry me a police automotive,” she mentioned.
She was charged with first-degree possession of marijuana — which carried a attainable sentence starting from no jail time to 5½ years in jail, The Submit beforehand reported — and given a Friday night look earlier than a choose.
She thought she was house free when her bail was set at $2,000, however by the point a good friend arrived with the cash, the court docket had closed for the weekend.
“Hastily, they’re placing me in a paddy wagon. I’m, like, ‘The place are you taking me?’” she recalled.
She was despatched to Rikers — extensively thought of one of many worst correctional amenities within the nation.
“When you get into Rikers, it’s actually, actually arduous to get out. It’s identical to, you get misplaced and all of your rights are simply taken,” she mentioned of her fortunately transient four-day keep.
After her launch, she lived in a Decrease East Aspect lodge for a stint earlier than packing up her burned-out condo and shifting to Williamsburg — as many different features of her life turned to ash round her.
“Every thing was a nightmare after that,” Tzar mentioned.
“The publicity crushed my picture profession,” she continued, noting that it was overshadowed by information of her arrest that changed her years of labor on the prime of a Google seek for her title.
‘A beeline for Soho’
Realizing a felony rap wouldn’t be an attribute on job functions, she bought her Mendocino house, took a $75,000 buyout from her Soho landlord and finally moved to Hudson, New York, the place she opened a bar. However it wasn’t the life Tzar was used to dwelling.
“I used to be actually bored up there,” she admitted, finally shifting to Los Angeles and opening one other ingesting gap.
Then she heard from mates throughout the nation, asking whether or not she knew that New York legalized leisure weed in 2021 and was giving the primary 150 licenses to individuals with prior hashish arrests — prioritizing girls, individuals with disabilities, individuals of coloration and others.
She certified.
At first, she insisted that having a hashish dispensary was the very last thing she wished to do. However as her mates continued to push her, she found that it gave the impression to be a great enterprise transfer.
“I began trying into it, and I used to be like, ‘Yeah, you possibly can positively make some huge cash,’” Tzar mentioned. She realized she had an actual imaginative and prescient for a store and leaned on her visible expertise and vogue background to do it proper.
“I wished it to be stunning, as a result of I’ve been in a number of dispensaries out in California, and so they’re simply all so bro-ish or like AT&T shops,” she mentioned, including that she wished to attraction to her neighborhood — which she described as a complicated vogue, finance and superstar crowd.
Regardless of all of the twists that make it look like destiny or an act of revenge, Tzar mentioned founding the history-making dispensary was merely a great monetary determination.
“It took a yr and a half, however I lastly received licensed and made a beeline for Soho,” she mentioned.
Since returning to NYC, Tzar additionally received concerned in politics and labored carefully with the state’s Workplace of Hashish Administration in addition to Gov. Kathy Hochul, who Tzar says has known as her for her perspective and with whom she has even appeared at press conferences.
And in one other one more twist, the spot the place Tzar was arrested — 68 Thompson St. — is simply across the nook from her store, a tidbit she thinks is “humorous.”
Dagmar opened at 412 West Broadway, between Spring and Prince streets, on Dec. 15, 2023. Thanks to plain laws, it’s the one licensed dispensary in a 1,000-foot radius.
“You see individuals in fits subsequent to an outdated woman behind the mannequin,” Tzar mentioned of her clientele, which she says contains some A-list entertainers whose names she’ll hold hidden in a haze of smoke.
The partitions of the store are lined in a daring teal that brightens as daylight washes in by means of the big home windows. The shop is lined with cupboards of curios like skulls and coral. A bronze statue of a lady in movement stands within the middle of the room on a claw-foot cupboard.
“Once I get excessive, I like to have a look at issues — so there are all these fascinating issues,” Tzar defined.
Success — and attainable enlargement
When the store opened, the principally feminine workers initially wore uniforms created by a former Christian Dior and Halston designer, which aligned with the placement’s aesthetic: All of it has a lady’s contact.
“Being the primary [woman-owned dispensary] is an enormous deal,” Tzar mentioned. She shared that the shop employs a couple of male gross sales associates and stock employees; nevertheless, the chief group and the vast majority of the workers are girls.
“I like working with girls,” she mentioned merely.
Tzar mentioned prospects have informed her they admire her sudden accomplishments.
“I meet so many fascinating individuals, and it’s identical to a very heat setting,” she mentioned of her store.
As for her pictures profession, that’s just about prior to now. She does shoot promotional materials for her retailer, she mentioned, and in any other case solely often does different work, together with for a current jewellery advert marketing campaign in Scotland.
However then there’s the shop’s success: Tzar claims the store made $4.5 million in gross sales in its first yr and expects to make someplace between $6 million and $7 million this yr. Plus, she is planning to open a second location in Williamsburg someday this yr.
All that regardless of her preliminary qualms about beginning a dispensary and revisiting her previous.
“It seems that I really actually find it irresistible,” Tzar mentioned.
