She’s the Tzar of New York cannabis.
This isn’t the first time Jennifer Tzar has been covered by The Post.
A decade ago, the “high” fashion photographer was nabbed in Soho for marijuana possession and sent to notorious Rikers Island.
It was, as The Post crowed, “rotten ‘pot’ luck.”
Now, in a wild twist of fate, the well-known former stylist, music video director and fotog is “back in the neighborhood,” she cheekily told The Post — as the founder of New York’s first majority woman-owned, licensed cannabis dispensary, Dagmar.
“I guess it’s my nature to always see how I can turn lemons into lemonade … But this was definitely an extraordinary turn of events,” said Tzar, 58. “The worst thing that ever happened to me turned into the best thing.”
It was a picture of her 2011 arrest that changed her life. It shows her perp-walked down Thompson Street after a late-night inferno engulfed her Soho apartment — with a 10-pound heap of “high quality” marijuana stashed inside, worth an estimated $80,000.
Tzar revealed that “people still talk about” her headline-making arrest.
‘Really, really needed money’
In the early 2000s, she photographed legends like David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne, Bruce Springsteen and Snoop Dogg, plus shot campaigns for major brands, including Levi’s and Lancôme.
Her photos were printed in major media outlets like Rolling Stone, Spin and Billboard.
Splitting time between Soho and Mendocino County, California, where she owned a 20-acre property with her boyfriend, she started racking up bills when they broke up and amid an illness her adult daughter was facing.
“I had all these expenses, and I really, really needed money,” Tzar told The Post. That’s when her weed work took off.
For three to four months, Tzar took in 40 pounds of marijuana from Mendocino neighbors who grew it, then sold it to NYC pals — bringing in about $40,000 cash a month.
“I wasn’t a big weed dealer … but I was counting piles and piles of money,” she said. “I got really into it.”
But then her side hustle went up in a huge, literal blaze.
Up in smoke
On Aug. 5, 2011, Tzar — who was 44 at the time — woke up at 2:30 in the morning to discover that the Soho building she had called home for 21 years was on fire.
“I opened my bedroom door and got wafted with major smoke. I knew I had minutes to get out of there, seconds even,” she said.
“I just grabbed two boxes with $100,000,” she admitted, “and I ran out of the apartment, barefoot, in my underwear, tank top and no phone.”
The Fire Department said the dramatic three-alarm fire started in the basement and traveled to the sixth floor — Tzar was on the fifth.
She had a lifetime of memories and belongings inside her apartment, but it was the 10 pounds of weed that meant the most to the police when she was later ushered back in to collect her effects.
“I put my name on the list [to be escorted inside], and then about 30 minutes later, I hear the police call my name and I’m, like, ‘OK, this is it.’ I walk over to them, they handcuff me, and they bring me a police car,” she said.
She was charged with first-degree possession of marijuana — which carried a possible sentence ranging from no jail time to 5½ years in prison, The Post previously reported — and given a Friday evening appearance before a judge.
She thought she was home free when her bail was set at $2,000, but by the time a friend arrived with the money, the court had closed for the weekend.
“All of a sudden, they’re putting me in a paddy wagon. I’m, like, ‘Where are you taking me?’” she recalled.
She was sent to Rikers — widely considered one of the worst correctional facilities in the country.
“Once you get into Rikers, it’s really, really hard to get out. It’s just like, you get lost and all your rights are just taken,” she said of her thankfully brief four-day stay.
After her release, she lived in a Lower East Side hotel for a stint before packing up her burned-out apartment and moving to Williamsburg — as many other aspects of her life turned to ash around her.
“Everything was a nightmare after that,” Tzar said.
“The publicity crushed my photo career,” she continued, noting that it was overshadowed by news of her arrest that replaced her years of work at the top of a Google search for her name.
‘A beeline for Soho’
Realizing a felony rap wouldn’t be an attribute on job applications, she sold her Mendocino home, took a $75,000 buyout from her Soho landlord and eventually moved to Hudson, New York, where she opened a bar. But it wasn’t the life Tzar was used to living.
“I was really bored up there,” she admitted, eventually moving to Los Angeles and opening another drinking hole.
Then she heard from friends across the country, asking whether she knew that New York legalized recreational weed in 2021 and was giving the first 150 licenses to people with prior cannabis arrests — prioritizing women, people with disabilities, people of color and others.
She qualified.
At first, she insisted that having a cannabis dispensary was the last thing she wanted to do. But as her friends continued to push her, she discovered that it seemed to be a good business move.
“I started looking into it, and I was like, ‘Yeah, you can definitely make a lot of money,’” Tzar said. She realized she had a real vision for a shop and leaned on her visual skills and fashion background to do it right.
“I wanted it to be beautiful, because I’ve been in multiple dispensaries out in California, and they’re just all so bro-ish or like AT&T stores,” she said, adding that she wanted to appeal to her neighborhood — which she described as a sophisticated fashion, finance and celebrity crowd.
Despite all the twists that make it seem like fate or an act of revenge, Tzar said founding the history-making dispensary was simply a good financial decision.
“It took a year and a half, but I finally got licensed and made a beeline for Soho,” she said.
Since returning to NYC, Tzar also got involved in politics and worked closely with the state’s Office of Cannabis Management as well as Gov. Kathy Hochul, who Tzar says has called her for her perspective and with whom she has even appeared at press conferences.
And in another yet another twist, the spot where Tzar was arrested — 68 Thompson St. — is just around the corner from her shop, a tidbit she thinks is “funny.”
Dagmar opened at 412 West Broadway, between Spring and Prince streets, on Dec. 15, 2023. Thanks to standard regulations, it’s the only licensed dispensary in a 1,000-foot radius.
“You see people in suits next to an old lady behind the model,” Tzar said of her clientele, which she says includes some A-list entertainers whose names she’ll keep hidden in a haze of smoke.
The walls of the shop are covered in a bold teal that brightens as sunlight washes in through the large windows. The store is lined with cabinets of curios like skulls and coral. A bronze statue of a woman in motion stands in the center of the room on a claw-foot cabinet.
“When I get high, I like to look at things — so there are all these interesting things,” Tzar explained.
Success — and possible expansion
When the shop opened, the mostly female staff initially wore uniforms created by a former Christian Dior and Halston designer, which aligned with the location’s aesthetic: It all has a woman’s touch.
“Being the first [woman-owned dispensary] is a big deal,” Tzar said. She shared that the store employs a few male sales associates and inventory workers; however, the executive team and the majority of the staff are women.
“I like working with women,” she said simply.
Tzar said customers have told her they admire her unexpected accomplishments.
“I meet so many interesting people, and it’s just like a really warm environment,” she said of her shop.
As for her photography career, that’s pretty much in the past. She does shoot promotional material for her store, she said, and otherwise only occasionally does other work, including for a recent jewelry ad campaign in Scotland.
But then there’s the store’s success: Tzar claims the shop made $4.5 million in sales in its first year and expects to make somewhere between $6 million and $7 million this year. Plus, she is planning to open a second location in Williamsburg sometime this year.
All that despite her initial qualms about starting a dispensary and revisiting her past.
“It turns out that I actually really love it,” Tzar said.
Read the full article here
