Sam Adler grew up hyperactive in Manhattan, learned chess from a Russian janitor at age five, and eventually decided that cannabis and the Royal Game belong together. His father used to write record reviews for High Times. His mother hosts a PBS cooking show. Neither is particularly surprised by where he ended up.
Sam Adler is a weed-loving chess teacher. Adler lived a real-life version of the hit Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit, which told the fictional story of a chess prodigy who was taught to play by a janitor at a Kentucky orphanage. A Russian janitor taught five-year-old Sammy Adler to play chess — but at a private school in Manhattan.
“When I was little, I was hyperactive as hell,” Adler, 35, recalled. “I ran around. I didn’t understand why people walked. I could’ve been given medication and pilled out. I’m very grateful my parents didn’t go down that route.”
His parents, a hip-hop executive and a nationally renowned TV chef, marveled at their son’s mastery of The Royal Game. Adler was playing in chess tournaments at the age of seven.
A family with range
Both of Adler’s parents are quite proud of his unconventional career path, which includes teaching chess and running a small business that creates educational events for cannabis companies. They’re both 74 and their days of inhaling are long past.
His mother, Sara Moulton, is host of Sara’s Weeknight Meals on PBS. His father, Bill Adler, was founding publicist of Def Jam Records. Bill Adler’s papers were acquired by Cornell University’s hip-hop archive. Photos from the father’s now-shuttered hip-hop photography gallery were acquired by the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. We proudly note that the senior Adler began his career as a journalist and wrote record reviews for High Times in the mid-1970s, including a March 1977 critique of the trippy Firesign Theater comedy album Forward into the Past.
Bill Adler shares something with his son: they both started smoking weed while they were still in high school.
“I couldn’t possibly tell Sam not to do it.”
Bill Adler, founding publicist of Def Jam Records
Ask Sam when his mother is going to do a Cooking with Cannabis episode of her TV show and he’ll tell you it ain’t gonna happen, that her fan base wouldn’t be interested and that it would actually turn a lot of them off.
Sam doesn’t share his mom’s skepticism about marijuana’s culinary utility and said he’s had cannabis-flavored ice cream that was not only delicious but knocked him on his ass.
From chess teacher to cannabis entrepreneur
Adler earned a B.A. in education at SUNY New Paltz. When informed that the school had a reputation back in the 1970s as a stoner school where there were huge bricks of hashish floating around in the dorms, Adler replied it was still a party school when he went there.
After college Adler got a job teaching chess for several years with a non-profit called Chess in the Schools. Eventually he landed a job at a charter school where he got kids to play. He did that for a couple of years and decided to try becoming a cannabis entrepreneur, devoting his efforts to his start-up, The School of Fine Herb, which focused on small businesses in communities of color affected by the drug war.
The School of Fine Herb has produced creative events such as Sew-A-Ting, where participants got high and made a pillow. The name came from a West Indian woman who wanted people to “sew a thing.”
Adler and his company put on some 30 Puff and Chess events, where chess was taught and an array of cannabis products consumed.
“People think it’s a crazy idea, that weed and chess don’t mix. Chess can be intellectually intimidating but cannabis helps bring down your guard. It helps you to be vulnerable. We get people in that relaxation mode and they’re able to have a conversation while learning the game.”
Sam Adler, founder, The School of Fine Herb
The concept of getting baked while you play chess is often met with a joke about players being too stoned to realize it’s their turn to make the next move on the board.
Many of the Puff and Chess events have been held in restaurants but one gathering was done outdoors as a barbecue in Brooklyn. Eight chess boards were set up across from a couple of long displays of cannabis products.
Why chess, why cannabis
“It teaches the grid system, basic addition, subtraction. If you want to take it to algebra, you can take it to algebra. It teaches strategic thought, critical thought, being able to make more than a binary decision. For me, it’s really about decision making.”
Sam Adler
Sam Adler has high hopes for the future of the cannabis industry but they’re tempered by his own struggle to make a decent living in the biz. Over the course of two years he juggled his School of Fine Herb efforts with part-time gigs at Cannaware, a cannabis network, as well as the Borough of Manhattan Community College, where he helped prospective cannabis license holders get through the applications.
Adler has since taken a full-time job at a charter school in Brooklyn to help pay the rent and has started teaching middle schoolers how to play chess there. He’s still producing School of Fine Herb events.
Follow The School of Fine Herb
Find upcoming Puff and Chess events and other School of Fine Herb programming at @theschooloffineherb on Instagram.
