CREATOR OF “SUPRALAND” DAVID MÜNNICH GAMING’S BOLDEST NEW EXPERIENCES ARE COMING COURTESY OF SMALL DESIGN TEAMS
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THE ART ISSUE
SEPTEMBER | DOPE MAGAZINE
FROM THE EDITOR A
For the last year, the DOPE team has been waiting patiently for the opportunity to showcase the brilliant work of Jeremy Fish. The time finally came, and we couldn’t be happier with the outcome; this is one of our most fantastic Art Issues to date. San Francisco City Hall's first artist-in-residence, Jeremy Fish, has produced illustrations for skateboards, rappers and art shows worldwide while remaining dedicated to his home, the city that incubated medicinal cannabis as well as the tech boom. From collecting signatures for Denis Peron to collaborating with AbsoluteXtracts, Fish's commitment to the cannabis community is as steady as his drawinghand. Twenty-five years into his career, he's got the mayor on speed dial and more cannabis collaborations on the way — and he's just getting started. Filling the pages alongside Fish is the work of Arik Roper – aptly coined the Rembrandt of stoner rock. From science textbooks to mead labels, Roper’s work is ever-present. Much of his work is tied to the music industry — throughout a career spanning more than two decades, Roper’s designs for the likes of Iron Maiden, Cathedral, Windhand and The Black Crowes have earned him a devoted following.
will eventually become a wall hanging or a large sculptural installation – reminding us that rather than getting angry at the problem of plastic we can collaborate on finding solutions to plastic waste. Washed Ashore’s work has toured North America appearing in botanical gardens, zoos, aquariums and libraries. If you want to get involved, please visit the artists’ websites. We take our Art Issue to the gaming world in interviews with small-team game designers like David Münnich of “Supraland” and Leighton Gray of “Dream Daddy.” These designers are changing the landscape of game design and revealing that it doesn’t take an army of creatives to create an immersive and sought-after gaming experience. In the past decade, crowdsourcing, freemium economies and app games have given small teams more avenues for attaining the spotlight. We want to thank all of our readers for taking a peek inside this year’s Art Issue. Stay DOPE.
The DOPE Editorial Team Plastic waste has penetrated our planet in irreversible ways. Two companies, Washed Ashore and One Beach Plastic are attempting to change the way local communities rally around the waste. Their answer? Art. They comb beaches for plastic bits, large and small, that
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THE ART ISSUE
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elcome to my fucked-up bakery,” Jeremy Fish says unfastening a small latch built into a bookcase of his North Beach, San Francisco studio. His laid-back voice juxtaposes the outlandishness of his statements and the surreal fantasia of his artwork. The bookcase swings open on a hidden hinge revealing a massive expanse of white brick. In this room, once the furnace of a local bakery, Fish works on an upcoming exhibition: a ring of easels showcase his works in progress, figures in various shades of gray all rendered in his now signature style. For the past quarter of a century, Fish’s illustrations have graced art galleries worldwide, as well as magazine spreads, skateboard decks, tee shirts, album covers and business signs around San Francisco — S.F. City Hall named him its first artist-in-residence in 2015. No matter the medium, Fish’s hobby horses are constant. Caricatured wildlife — bears, fish, dogs and especially rabbits — commingle with human skulls and other more morbid symbology. Their elastic bodies metamorphose into cars and other objects, presented unrealistically in comic landscapes that seem safer, cleaner and more earnest than ours. Fish’s work offers a window into an imaginative realm more accepting of mortality and simultaneously more harmonious than reality. It’s no small wonder that intellectual hip-hop musicians, art critics and skateboard enthusiasts find common ground in his output’s adorable and anarchic spirit. T h e c a n n a b i s s p a c e i s n o s t ra n g e r t o Fish’s work, either. He’s worked with cannabis brands internationally and collaborated with AbsoluteXtracts on his own cartridge – aptly named Fish Tank. Multiple sherlock-style vapes cradled in carved wooden holsters sit at the ready near his workstations: a sometimes-grim reminder of Fish’s brush with death. He survived an aneurysm and subsequent brain surgery and can’t burn flower or smoke cigarettes any longer. Though Fish prefers tequila, the counter in his workspace is stocked with beer, mostly gifts from friends in the North Beach neighborhood which he observes from behind a drawing table, invisible from the outside thanks to a glass etching of his own face. Fish watches S.F. from inside the image of his own eye, dressed head to toe in the brown shade that’s become his signature. He’s lived in that neighborhood during the tumultuous period that brought legalized cannabis back to the United States, rubbing elbows with the technological innovators that now shape our society, and his reach is just as global. Pretty good for a kid who moved to the bay from upstate N.Y. in the early ‘90s to attend art school, skate around and smoke some great grass.
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During DOPE’s visit to Fish’s studio, he reveals that he first moved to California 25 years ago that very week to attend The San Francisco Art Institute. “At 19 years old, I was far more interested in skateboarding than I was in art school, and so that’s what I spent the majority of my time doing here,” Fish says. And with skateboarding came cannabis. “Some of the greatest fucking grass was coming from Northern California, and I was just a few hours south. It blew my doors within the first few months I was here.” A longtime sufferer of chronic migraines, he found that cannabis would clear his head long enough to allow him to draw unencumbered, making him an ideal medicinal cannabis activist. Fish found himself advocating for medicinal cannabis not long after. A chance encounter at Fort Miley with a skateboarder working for Denis Peron led to a part-time job collecting signatures. “It paid 50 cents a signature,” Fish remembers. “Every person you could coax to feeling the same way about it that I did, was 50 cents in the pocket of an art student in what was slowly becoming a more and more expensive city to live in.” Fish’s father had warned him to keep his finances near the fore of his mind, advice which he took to heart. “My father said, ‘Major in something practical so you can get a fucking job because a fine arts degree is not the sort of thing that opens the doors to great paychecks; focus on something that has a practical application.’” That practical application turned out to be screen printing, which led to a job offer right out of school at a print facility which serviced skateboards and tee shirts. “It was a dream job; it is more than I could have wished for,” he recalls. At the time, transitioning from skateboard decks into fine art was an unthinkable career track, but Fish has no aversion to breaking from convention. “I think there’s a million avenues to be successful at visual art, whatever that is, and I’ve taken a lot of non-traditional ones,” he says. He thinks of that period in the print shop as the equivalent of graduate studies, a crash course in the technical and commercial application of his craft. When Fish entered the shop, he didn’t have the skillset to complete a professional board graphic. By the time he exited, his now-iconic style was fully developed, owing to years working with local influences. “I was studying the illustration styles of these guys that I just worshiped. And that’s kind of when my style shifted to look more like it does today.” Fish quickly points out that he never took any ideas from his then-mentors but admits: “We joke frequently that my style is kind of a melting pot of all the guys that were contributing to that print shop at that time.” The print shop came with another advantage: its owners published a murderer’s row of touchstone skateboarding magazines, including Thrasher, Slap and Juxtapoz — the latter of which brought Fish international attention. “While I was in art school [it] was a Bible,” he says of Juxtapoz. “It’s created an entire genre and a niche of visual art that wasn’t really there before I moved here.” Fish published his first poster in Juxtapoz in 1999 after leveraging his contacts inside of the print shop. “I kind of snuck in through the back door. I knew their production guys before I knew their editor.” That work led to a feature in Slap, and shortly thereafter exhibition offers from galleries worldwide looking to explore the ascendant skateboard culture. He worked in the skateboarding industry for a decade, enduring the economic ups and downs that eventually made him the sole member of his art department. Meanwhile, the standard operation
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of print shops gradually included more and more computer technology, which Fish had no training in. He left to freelance full time and landed even more high-profile gigs, including the cover to critically acclaimed rapper Aesop Rock’s 2007 album “None Shall Pass.” “I’m a humongous hip-hop fan and have been my entire life,” Fish says. “At that age, and at that time, the backdrop to all my artwork was his era of hip hop and tons of guys like him.” Fish and Rock were introduced by a mutual friend when the emcee relocated to S.F. from New York. The two empire state expats struck up a working relationship which continues to this day. That partnership led to more gigs for Fish with similar backpacker rappers including Atmosphere, further raising his profile. But the key to Fish’s future would not be music, but the history of the city he calls home.
The Barbary Coast A circular marker sits embedded in the concrete outside of Fish’s studio, one of many such markers that point out historic locations in the city dating back to the Gold Rush. Fish’s neighborhood offers an embarrassment of cultural riches, both famous and infamous. The Condor, the first legal strip club in America, sits two intersections away, and not far from that is City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, founded by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Nearby Caffe Trieste, the oldest espresso bar on the west coast, adorned with photos of famous singers of the ‘40s and ‘50s, hosted Francis Ford Coppola while he wrote his script to “The Godfather” — an early scene in the film wherein Johnny Fontane visits Connie Corleone’s wedding bears the shop’s obvious influence. Fish strolls through the neighborhood with easy confidence. Locals sitting outside of Italian restaurants on their lunch break call his name and wave to him while he strides by. Numerous local businesses proudly display signs which he illustrated. He might as well be the Mayor of North Beach — after all San Francisco, home of Emperor Norton, is no stranger to such beloved unelected ‘officials’ — and the local history and culture of the city have inspired some of Fish’s most critically acclaimed material. “In 2008, I did this whole show that was about Barbary Coast history, the dawn of the city, the Gold Rush, a crazy bar that had a bear tied up in it, and crazy brothels that were saved by the firemen because they loved [them],” Fish says. That exhibit came at a time when the ascendant tech industry began to price-out many of the city’s creatives, a process which Fish doesn’t take issue with. “I was trying to point back at something historically about the city to remind people, “Hey, shit has bubbled and changed before.’” Fish says. “Look at the phoenix, the symbol of the city, our flag, is one of rebirth from tragedy and rebirth from the flames. There’s been shitloads of ups and downs in this town, and there will be it seems … until I either leave or the place explodes.” The Barbary Coast exhibit proved to be a game-changer for Fish, raising his local profile and catching the attention of those outside of the art scene. “People in the city started to give a fuck about my stuff because I was giving a fuck,” he recalls. “It was at a time that you needed to give a fuck. Things were getting volatile here; people were getting pissed off.”
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100 Days in the Broom Closet In 2015, Fish was selected as the City Hall’s first artist-inresidence and was commissioned to create 100 drawings in as many days celebrating the history of San Francisco City Hall. “The Arts Commission picked me because they knew that my work had a broad appeal,” Fish opines. “Because of the amount of tee-shirts I put my artwork on and signage around the city, advertising in commercial work, I had a very recognizable style and something that has a narrative. It tells a story very quickly, and the Arts Commission wanted people to give a fuck about city hall.” In an interview that year, Fish said that if the project could make one percent of the city’s new tech community care about city hall, the project would be a success. Fish demanded an office at City Hall in which to finish the project and found himself assigned a storage closet. “There was a giant storage room full of architectural drawings and retrofit plans and cool stuff about the building,” he remembers. “That’s the perfect thing to sit around: dusty old models from presentations and things like that. It was wonderful. I was probably the only guy that had an “office” [at city hall] in 2015 that was sitting there stoned drawing pictures.”
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The Bronze Bunny
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Fish’s most lasting contribution to San Francisco’s art history came about as a gag. A construction project in the Haight was set to demolish a long-abandoned building. As a way to give back to the community, the developers worked with neighborhood supervisor Thea Selby to commission a series of murals to beautify the building before its demolition. Naturally, she approached Fish, who had a slightly different idea. “[The building] had been heavily tagged with graffiti forever as long as I lived here, so I just thought, ‘Man, putting a mural on that thing is a death wish. Your shit’s just going to get destroyed no matter what you put there.” Instead, Fish chose to work in an odd, triangular space on the corner, which sat just a little too high to be easily graffitied. And rather than paint a mural, he spent around $500 by his estimation to sculpt a six-foot-tall rabbit out of foam and cover it in fiberglass. “My friends and I poured a puddle of liquid cement. We drilled way down into the shelf, my construction buddy came, and we put these fat lug nuts down into it. You’d have to cut, I don’t know, 10 bolts off the thing [to remove
the sculpture],” he remembers. “It was on there. I just bounced and left it there, and it really got a reaction right away.” Briefly, Fish has a thing for rabbits. The animal often appears in his work, frequently in a slightly skeletal form. Fish is the leader of a nationwide gang named the Silly Pink Bunnies, boasting over 100 members. The group claims no criminal activity and appears to be more of a social club than anything else, meeting annually in different cities. Fish owns its web page. That sentimentality may explain why, when it came time to remove the statue, Fish made a to-do about it. He held a funeral for the statue, complete with a eulogy by the city’s now-mayor London Breed —the two now text sometimes. The statue was demolished by a crane, but that was not the end of it. A local museum, the Haight Street Art Center, received an offer to move into a new building. Selby knew that Fish’s
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
statue had to be a part of the new Art Center and helped organize a Kickstarter to recreate the Silly Pink Bunny, this time in bronze. “Those guys had watched the whole story of the enthusiasm that grew around the statue and the fact that it was going to get destroyed,” Fish remembers. “They raised the money like that, and it became the largest crowdfunded public bronze statue in the state.” Mayor Breed donated $5,000 to the Kickstarter. The second, much larger, bronze statue now exists outside of the Haight Street Art Center. In all likelihood, it will outlive all of Fish’s other work. “Long after the paintings are gone and the murals are painted over, and you’re long since dead, here’s this giant several-ton fucking rabbit,” Fish says of the statue, which may be his most enduring piece. “Now, I have this relationship with the mayor because of this fucking statue. You couldn’t predict that kind of outcome from something like this. And it’s a reminder that we should all once in a while just do the most outlandish, most stupid [thing,] just because it seems like a good idea.”
Obelus Fish underwent treatment for his aneurysm in 2015, during the height of the bunny statue’s mania, he suffered a brain aneurysm. Fish had been a heavy smoker of cannabis and tobacco for years, but doctors warned him to abstain. Quitting nicotine was one thing, but cannabis was another. Once again, Fish’s deep communal roots came to the rescue. One of his friends, a grower for CannaCraft and AbsoluteXtracts, provided him with oils and edibles during his recover y. “ They star ted providing me with all kinds of oils and edibles and things that at that point were a fucking gift because my life had changed dramatically, “Fish says. That relationship eventually led to the creation of the Fish Tank cartridge, at a time when collaborating with a cannabis brand was no safe bet. “A lot of the people I work with were like, ‘Definitely don’t do that. Don’t put your name on drugs; you’re not Snoop Dogg, it’s not a good idea.’ But I had so much loyalty to them.” That loyalty extends to other businesses as well, such as Mendocino Grasslands in Ukiah, California. Once again, Fish swam against the current, and wound up with a hit on his hands. “It was a risk worth taking and
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I’m glad I did. The cartridge won a bunch of awards and it was really well-received and continues to do really well and make shit loads of people happy,” he says. Fish Tank was such a success that a second version of the cartridge, one that comes paired with an infused beverage, is in the works. Fish’s seemingly contrafactual choices adhere to a workable methodology: using unusual avenues to forge a relationship between his artwork and people who would not otherwise come in contact with it. “Taking a picture and hanging it on a wall in your house, that’s one experience. Hanging it near the toilet? Whole ‘nother experience,” he explains. “But consuming it, eating it, smoking it? That’s a different way of thinking about visual art and the person behind it. To me, that’s really romantic and special, and I’m super proud to have those kinds of things out on the market.” He’s currently working with the minds behind bay area dispensaries Moe Greens, Grassroots and The Barbary Coast on a new dispensary, right near his headquarters in North Beach. “I couldn’t possibly have a dispensary open in the neighborhood without being involved,” he says. “I’d feel fucked up about it.” The yet-unnamed dispensary promises to be a bifurcated operation, part cannabis outlet and part art gallery, which Fish will help curate. He promises to use the space to keep up the tradition of visual artists in the area, such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. The dispensary will be one of many traces Fish leaves on North Beach, but it may have to take the place of his headquarters. Fish’s fucked-up bakery, with its secret bookcase door and massive blank expanse, is slated for destruction in the name of development at an uncertain time in the future. The sword hanging over his studio doesn’t bother Fish, though — while the rest of the community complained, he went out of his way to remind the world that San Francisco grew through the Gold Rush, through the rise of big tech and also the rise of legal cannabis. So long as the city exists, the phoenix will continue to fly higher, and Fish will be there to illustrate it.
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PLASTIC ART HOW A NEW MEDIUM TURNS POLLUTION INTO INSPIRATION WRITER | JEFFREY RINDSKOPF
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PHOTOS | COURTESY OF RICHARD LANG AND JUDITH SELBY LANG
ngela Pozzi grew up learning the arts like a second language. In her mother’s studio, she discovered a passion for reinventing would-be discarded items like toilet paper rolls or bottle caps as creative materials, which would later come in handy during her 30 years as an underfunded public art teacher. When her mother passed away, Pozzi decided to become a professional artist, as her mother had always encouraged her to. But after her husband passed, Pozzi moved to her family’s cabin on the southern Oregon coast, lost and depressed, to try and connect with the ocean and to find her life’s trajectory. But something was wrong. “I kept coming across plastic on this beach that I felt was a sacred place,” she explains. “I’d always believed that the ocean would never change, that it’s one constant in our lives, but I realized we were starting to destroy it … I thought, if I can save the ocean, that’s a good reason to live, so let’s do that.”
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Rufus the Trigger Fish weighs in at 100 pounds (9 feet tall x 3 feet wide).
2,000 pound sculpture of Adelie penguins Maggie and Charlotte (10 feet tall x 12 feet wide).
In 2010, Pozzi founded the 501c3 nonprofit Washed Ashore, rallying local community members who had previously just been getting angry about the problem to collaborate on a solution: recycling beach plastics into art that would “let people see what’s going on in a way they want to see it.” With the help of more than 14,000 volunteers, the organization has processed over 20 tons of reclaimed plastics into more than 75 giant sculptures, or four traveling exhibits, of animal species like sea lions, jellyfish and puffins threatened by human pollution. Their four traveling exhibits are displayed in galleries, museums and aquariums alike, where viewers can make out thousands of recognizable components, from toothbrushes to flip-flops, many with visible bite marks in them. As public awareness of our overwhelming plastic waste has grown, so too have plastic-derived creative projects like Washed Ashore, which aim to engage and motivate communities on a subject that often causes feelings of consternation and defeat. Though used in a wide variety of “disposable” products, plastics take centuries to decompose completely and have started piling up to a weight of more than 315 billion pounds in the world’s oceans. With an additional eight million metric tons added each year, the World Economic Forum predicts that by 2050, oceans will contain more plastic than fish mass. Since we’re going to be living with the remnants of our plastic waste for centuries, it’s in the Earth and humanity’s best interest to find some positive use that can keep them out of our natural ecosystems and food chains. Circulated by ocean gyres, the world’s trash has become international artists’ creative treasure, a cheap, ubiquitous and versatile new medium with an inherent connection to people’s everyday lives and some unique aesthetic qualities. “Plastic is either clear or colored all the way through,” explains Richard Lang. “When [it] starts to get weathered by the sun and abrasion, there’s a really interesting patina that happens pretty universally with plastic on the beach. [I]t’s like putting a photoshop filter on a bright color.” Since 1999, Lang and his wife Judith Selby Lang have collaborated on the project One Beach Plastic, making minimalist still life prints with
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plastic pieces they collect and curate from one 1,000-meter stretch of coastline in Northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore. Both had been independently collecting plastic to make their art for three years before sharing their first date at this same beach. When she knelt to pick up a colorful piece in the sand, he asked, “Are you gonna keep that?” “By focusing on just that tiny dimension of the vast coastline,” Judith says, “it shows what’s happening on beaches around the planet. Because the problem is so vast, the main point of our work is ‘two people, one beach’—a graspable metric for the human mind.” Despite the singular focus, their art has been exhibited internationally “from Tokyo to Tbilisi,” in over 100 venues and counting. Like Pozzi, the Langs relish the challenge of creating something new and beautiful from what others discard, arranging different shades of plastic like “brushstrokes on a canvas” and selling photographic prints to avoid the environmental nightmare of re-shipping plastics around the world. As well as promoting consumer mindfulness and simple fixes like bringing reusable bags to the grocery store, their work invites viewers to reconsider familiar objects disregarded by our throwaway culture, like drink lids or cigarillo tips (a mainstay on many beaches), in a new, often beautiful light.
“AS PUBLIC AWARENESS OF OUR OVERWHELMING PLASTIC WASTE HAS GROWN, SO TOO HAVE PLASTIC-DERIVED CREATIVE PROJECTS LIKE WASHED ASHORE, WHICH AIM TO ENGAGE AND MOTIVATE COMMUNITIES ON A SUBJECT THAT OFTEN CAUSES FEELINGS OF CONSTERNATION AND DEFEAT.”
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“[W]e want people to pay attention to their everyday actions, and don’t feel terrible about their actions, just change them,” says Richard. “What we’re interested in more than anything is inspiring creativity, because out of creativity comes solutions. Feeling terrible doesn’t do it.” These projects are a reminder that environmentalist art can do more than point fingers or make us feel bad, an approach that quickly leads to despair, alienation and division on what should be a universal issue. To make their message accessible to as many as possible, including international audiences unable to decipher the educational signage, Washed Ashore offers many different ways to learn about the nature and scope of our plastic crisis. Pozzi drew from her teaching background to build out resources like a sub-exhibit called Buoy, Beat ‘n’ Bop appealing to musical learners, and a free online “marine debris” curriculum to help anyone launch a beach pollution art practice. “The arts have a purpose just in their aesthetic qualities, but they’re also a powerful language that can reach into the heart and into the mind, and stay there and not be fleeting,” says Pozzi. “The art itself has to educate without any words, so even just having a recognizable item in your face when you’re looking at a fish and realizing, ‘Is that a lighter?’” DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
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Judith Selby Lang and Richard Lang combing Kehoe Beach for plastic.
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WEBSITE WASHEDASHORE.ORG INSTAGRAM @WASHEDASHOREART
When a Washed Ashore volunteer feels empowered for bending old clothes hangers on a penguin’s six-by-six wing panel, or a viewer of the exhibit starts crying because they’d never thought of it like this before, it shows that art still has a powerful role to play in helping us overcome insurmountable-seeming issues of environmental destruction, in much the same way it’s helped us overcome other issues – by inspiring action and changing minds. Since founding Washed Ashore, Pozzi has witnessed this influence firsthand. She’s now looking to move onto something new within her umbrella nonprofit the Artula Institute. While it’s been a continual challenge to hand over creative control without letting ego get in the way, it’s also been “extremely rewarding and fulfilling,” and goes to the heart of the collective impact she hoped to make with Washed Ashore’s art. “I think the whole paradigm shift should be ‘I’m part of something bigger and we’re all doing this together.’ It’s what we need more of in this world,” Pozzi says. “Every little step adds up, and when people see a visual, that’s real, that gives us hope because we very seldom get a tangible example of how our actions count.”
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
S ’ E I L L I W ESERVE R ™
CULTURE 44
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
E
ven though recreational cannabis use in New York state and therefore New York City still remains illegal, the Big Apple’s cannabis culture is very much alive and well. A study released last year by the German public relations and communications firm ABCD found that, despite its recreational illegality, New York has the highest cannabis consumption for any city on the globe – at 77.44 metric tons annually.
in the 1920s and ‘30s, when alcohol Prohibition was in full swing, swinging nightclubs in upper Manhattan kept things lively with groundbreaking music, bootleg booze and marijuana. Cab Calloway, famed bandleader at New York’s legendary Cotton Club, had a hit in 1932 with his song “Reefer Man.”
A long history of pot smoke
That tradition of the Prohibition speakeasy remains in NYC to this day for cannabis enthusiasts. Although New York lawmakers recently decriminalized cannabis, the state failed in its latest attempt to legalize recreational cannabis use. New York cannabis activists say that, as cannabis legalization grows around the country, there’s a unique need in NYC for safe and legitimate spaces where people can consume cannabis. Benjamin Leiner, the executive director for New York City NORML, points out that the hundreds of thousands of people living in city public housing aren’t allowed to smoke cannabis. “If they are caught smoking cannabis, even if they are medical patients, they can be evicted,” he tells DOPE. “Also, there are a lot
Cannabis has been a part of New York’s cultural life — and street life — for decades now. Pot smoke was seemingly everywhere in New York during the 1960s and ‘70s. The city’s annual Cannabis Parade and Rally traces its roots back to the Vietnam War-era “Smokeins” in Washington Square Park, organized by the counter-culture Youth International Party, or Yippies. On the artistic side, former Beatle and later New York resident John Lennon in 1972 produced an album for David Peel, a self-proclaimed “New York City Hippie” and marijuana activist, called “ The Pope Smokes Dope.” Further back, during the Harlem Renaissance
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Looking for a safe place to light up
of people who don’t have a place to smoke at home, so they smoke outside, and smoking outside can turn into a serious offense, a criminal offense for the New York Police, and those people [can] end up in the criminal system. Having a safe place for people to consume cannabis […] protects those people.”
The new “smoke-easies”
That’s where New York’s underground cannabis social clubs come in. Over the past several years, the city has reportedly seen a quiet boom in the number of places where people can gather with other cannabis enthusiasts and get elevated in good company. A gentleman called Stan (a pseudonym) was DOPE’s guide into the world of New York’s cannabis speakeasies or, as he prefers to call them, “smoke-easies.” “There is definitely a scene going on around the city,” he says. “Consumption spaces in various forms that have been popping up pretty quickly. Some have apparently been around longer than others. Some move around, some are stationary. But the scene is evolving very, very rapidly.”
A visit to an underground club
Stan got DOPE entrée into one such, members-only club, but only if we adhered to stringent restrictions regarding information about the place; to the point where we promised to not even mention in which of New York’s five boroughs it was located. This club was away from the street; in a series of rooms where, after paying a voucher charge, the customer could come in and get comfortable on oversized couches. People either brought their own cannabis or could purchase flower, edibles and other forms of weed via a voucher at the club’s dispensary, located in one of the venue’s many rooms. The mood was accentuated by subtle lighting and a great sound system. It was a welcoming atmosphere, where it didn’t take long for strangers to get comfortable and start chatting with their neighbors on the couches while rolling potent joints on conveniently-located coffee tables. To access the club Stan says a person has to be introduced to the venue’s principal members, then approved and added to the members’ list. It has a 21-and-older age requirement, with soft drinks and CBD-infused drinks only; no alcohol. It also has a very diverse list of members and what Stan describes as an educational program for people unfamiliar with cannabis. “The club was born from the need for us to congregate,” he adds, “and almost everyone that uses cannabis is an activist in some way. So we started doing as much community outreach as we could.”
Cannabis and cabaret
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Stan says there is now a wide spectrum of underground cannabis v e n u e s i n N e w Yo r k , f r o m s o m e w i t h m e m b e r s h i p s i n t h e thousands to much smaller organizations. He also introduces me to Fred (a pseudonymn), who runs one of the city’s 420-friendly entertainment venues. Fred is the director of a cabaret where patrons can openly light up and then enjoy a variety of acts, from music and magic to comedy and burlesque. The cannabis is bring-your-own, and the events are only advertised via word-of-mouth. The cannabis-friendly cabaret, Fred says, has a very diverse clientele and a real sense of community. DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
“New York cannabis activists say that, as cannabis legalization grows around the country, there’s a unique need in NYC for safe and legitimate spaces where people can consume cannabis.” 47
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“It’s a vibe, it’s an energy,” he continues. “The main ingredient really is the laughter. People live such stressful lives; life is stressful in the city. It’s a place to release your stress and enjoy yourself in a relaxed environment. Also, to be challenged with ideas but encouraged to laugh and think beyond the quotidian.”
Everyone’s gone to the movies
There are also a variety of above-board artistic events for cannabis enthusiasts in New York City. High NY bills itself as a community organization and educational platform for people interested in cannabis. “We produce events in New York that are designed to bring people together through networking, education and to raise public awareness about cannabis issues,” says founder Michael Zaytsev, aka Mike Z – who stresses that High NY is not just for people looking to get into the legal cannabis industry. Mike Z is also the founder of the annual NYC Cannabis Film Festival, which showcases movies dealing with cannabis culture. The mission of the event, he says, is to “normalize and celebrate cannabis culture and undo the stigma which is largely perpetuated through films and the media.” While people might get elevated before the films, he says, “We have really good snacks, available free, but no open consumption.” He also believes that there is a huge demand in New York City for not only cannabis but also for cannabisrelated art experiences. “I’m a little spoiled because I have easier access to these things,” he continues. “But there’s a huge appetite for these kinds of experiences for the average (cannabis) consumer.”
“We don’t have to be hidden”
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For now, New York State appears to have kicked the issue of recreational cannabis legalization down the road for at least another year. But people involved in NYC’s cannabis culture sense a growing acceptance of cannabis legalization in the city, and a need for cannabis-centric spaces. After all, says Stan, one of the best parts of living or being in New York is going out and enjoying the city’s culture. And that’s true for NYC’s cannabis culture. “ There’s a lot of good stuff happening for our community,” he adds. “We can get together in venues, locations and socialize. We don’t have to be hidden in the corners, the alleyways and the door fronts.”
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EDITORS CHOICE
WRITER | ANDREA LARSON
PHOTOS | COURTESY OF ICKY
ICKY STICK
WHERE THERE’S AN ICKY YOU’LL FIND THAT STICKY
A
vailable in an assortment of colors and sizes, Icky Sticks can be personalized for your aesthetic and smoking needs. Whether you’re looking for a personal onie or wanting to share with your crew, there’s an icky stick to fit your smoking needs. I prefer the original, which holds enough flower for eight hits, give or take. Icky has employed what it calls a “State-of-the-Art Filtration System,” into each stick, which pushes the smoke through a mazelike path for cooling before it reaches your lips. Smoke travels over one foot before being inhaled, proving that pocket-sized devices are becoming more userfriendly by the day.
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
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$39.99 $44.99 $49.99 $39.99
FEATURES Housing is made from either aircraft-grade aluminum or stainless steel. Equipped with a multi-tool for cleaning or packing your bowl. A 32cm maze path cools and filters smoke before inhalation. Equipped with keychain/necklace holes for hands-free carrying.
ICKY.COM @KEEPITSTICKY
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Icky Slim comes with a Rolling Filter. #nomoreroaches
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
Af
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PROFILE WRITER | P. GOTTI PHOTOS | COURTESY OF CROTEAM | DAVID MÜNNICH GAME GRUMPS | SNAPSHOT GAMES
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ere days before April 20, 2019 the landscape of video game design shifted with the release of David Münnich’s indie-hit, “Supraland.” Münnich created the explorative game by himself, without the infrastructure and overhead that have classically supported video game design. Münnich attributed the unique yet familiar feel of the game to the subconscious influence of the Mario franchise, going on to say that “Everybody can now create and release a game … that would normally cost millions of bucks.” Gaming’s boldest new experiences are emerging from small-design teams. At 19, Gray had “never made a game before.” She co-created and led the art direction of dad-dating simulator “Dream Daddy” (2017). Leighton hit a homerun without enough people to field a baseball team. In addition to Gray, the design team includes a creative director, a design lead, two producers, a few designers as well as remote contractors. “Dream Daddy” was wildly successful, emblematic of the changing times and the unconventional conventionality of small-team game design.
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
UTILIZING TALENTED FREELANCERS The large undertaking of designing a video game compels even the most dedicated creators to dip into the pool of talented international freelancers. Münnich drew crucial game elements from the free Unreal gaming engine and from his single art designer, who Münnich said immediately struck him as a “master” among a largely unimpressive lineup of freelance asset designers. Outsourcing, however, can be a risky proposition with practical limitations. Industry veteran Eric Neigher, director of marketing and publishing at Snapshot Games, spoke with DOPE Magazine as his team put final touches on the upcoming September release of “Phoenix Point.” “There are tiers to what can or should be outsourced, says Neigher, who explains further: “With a strong art-director, the drawing and animation process can thrive under a remote freelancer. User Interface is more sensitive. Core design work is crucial to the final feel and function of the game and should take place under the nose of the team’s visionar y lead.”
FINDING AN AUDIENCE
"Supraland": an engrossing, sativa-friendly masterpiece
Discoverability represents a significant challenge for small game designers at the moment. Münnich has designed games for two decades (this was not even his first major gaming release). He admitted that upon releasing “the game of [his] dreams … the most likely outcome was no success.” You could say that Münnich got very lucky. The emergence of streaming and online gaming marketplaces has not done enough to connect gamers with stellar independent games. Croteam, based out of Zagreb, Croatia, grew from humble beginnings in 1993 as a “garage game development” into one of the prominent game development studios in Eastern Europe — largely through the success of the “Serious Sam” franchise and 2014’s philosophical puzzler, “The Talos Principle.” Ante Vrdelja, CMO at Croteam, outlined two paths to indie discovery in 2019: The first entails designing marketability into a game from the start; developers should analyze cultural trends, adapt popular game mechanics and design a game that’s both fun to watch (for streaming purposes) and unique in each play-through. The second is more renegade: “There are many elite commando teams that save the world over and over, but there’s just one game [“The Talos Principle”] where you roam the garden of Eden with androids,” Vrdelja says. The thing is … Leighton Gray invented this approach as a teen in 2017. Her reaction to strategy now is reminiscent of the young “Dream Daddy” character Amanda who bemoans her dad’s unfashionable use of memes (“daaaaad!”). Gray labels the builtin marketability approach dead in 2019, the victim of overuse by publishers in a “post-‘Dream Daddy’-society.” Vrdelja’s second path for indie developers entails disregarding what’s popular, breaking every rule and creating something ambitious. Small design teams have more advantages now than ever before, and possibly more than they will ever have again. In the past decade, crowdsourcing, freemium economies, app games, and many, many more avenues for indie discovery have emerged. “Supraland” ascended to the top of the indie gaming world in 2019 without a marketing budget, on the back of one sleep-deprived designer. The natural emergence of a new, shining experience in gaming is evidence of the market’s good function. Münnich made what he loved, and the people made it hot.
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ENGAGING THE MODERN STREAMER
In "The Talos Principle," philosophical science fiction meets lasers.
TIPS FROM ERIC NEIGHER, DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND PUBLISHING, SNAPSHOT GAMES 1. Identify the proper tier (low, mid, top) and category of streamer you want to work with. Top streamers command huge sums that can eat up an entire marketing budget. 2. Working with streamers is relationship-driven marketing. Companies can’t just write checks. Streamers really want developers to be responsive to feedback and audience input. 3. Game developers must involve themselves and appear authentically in streamers’ audience. Identify a streamer’s audience and figure out how to enhance their watching experience through involvements that show that developers care.
ERIC NEIGHER Director of Marketing and Publishing, Snapshot Games
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Walter White is up to nothing suspicious in "Supraland.
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
Leighton's team created game characters they would want to make in "Dream Daddy.
Phoenix Point" is Julian Gallop's upcoming spiritual successor to the X-Com franchise.
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DOPE SHOTS
DOPE PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
CHECK OUT THE WINNER OF THE DOPE SHOTS PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST! WANT YOUR WORK FEATURED IN THE PAGES OF DOPE? BE ON THE LOOKOUT EACH ISSUE FOR YOUR NEXT CHANCE TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK.
CONGRATULATIONS,
JORDAN SWENSON “Sometimes there is nothing that creates balance better than imbalance. Despite their incompatibility, when placed together and viewed at a macro level, oil and water create an otherworldly landscape full of color and texture.”
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@JORDAN.M.SWENSON
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INTERVIEW 58
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
W
oodland dr yads and mysterious hooded figures appear on hillsides and in mossy ravines. Snow-encrusted oxen and colorful dragons stand sentry over dense, landscapes. Welcome to the imagination of artist Arik Roper. Roper occupies a venerated place among contemporary artists. His immersive illustrations appear in many contexts — from science textbooks to mead labels. Still, his most well-known work is tied to music. Throughout a career spanning more than two decades, Roper’s designs for the likes of Iron Maiden, Cathedral, Windhand and The Black Crowes have earned him a devoted following. Like Roger Dean, whose covers for progressive rockers Yes set the bar for ‘70s conceptual album art, Roper specializes in worldbuilding. “I love a lot of that stuff,” says Roper, speaking to DOPE from his home in New York City. “I’m unashamedly into a lot of fantasy artwork. Always have been.” He goes on to defend the word “escapist,” an oftmaligned descriptor. “There’s a stigma attached to that term, but I consider it a compliment.” However, in contrast to Dean’s utopian landscapes or say, the nightmarish biomechanics of H.R. Giger, Roper’s visions are earthy, based on the natural world of foliage, vegetation and yes, even fungi. “Most of the work people have seen of mine is quite organic — moss, mushrooms, wood — stuff like that. It became part of my aesthetic many years ago, probably from a childhood spent living in the woods. That’s the place where my imagination goes — where life is fertile, and nature is in charge.” Many of Roper’s landscapes exist in the forest ecosystem. “I have an interest in off-world sci-fi, but that stuff is more architectural and regimented. I prefer to work with loose forms, which lend themselves to roots and trees.” Arik Roper paintings feel otherworldly, yet oddly familiar. “Science fiction doesn’t have to be glass towers and spaceships,” he says. Whether bringing to life a tribe of pothead pilgrims known as the Weedian for Sleep’s “Dopesmoker” cover or releasing a coffee table book entitled “Mushroom Magick” (Abrams, 2009), Roper’s imagery often courts psychedelia. In the case of “Mushroom Magick,” the psilocybin connection is intentional. “It’s like seeing the mushrooms in an altered state,” he confirms. “People who have an appreciation for that type of mushroom should feel that essence in there.” Still, psychotropic voyagers aren’t Roper’s sole intended audience. “The book could also appeal to grandmothers and folks who are interested in mycology.”
Burial in Moss by Arik Roper
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The Pond by Arik Roper
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
And then there’s Sleep, the stoner metal trio with which he’s frequently associated. Roper doesn’t downplay his symbiotic relationship with that band. “I’ve done a lot for them and, conversely, they’ve done a lot for me. Their reputation has become so legendary, and my art has gone along with it. It’s been a mutually beneficial thing.” While his work for Sleep is undoubtedly iconic, Roper’s oeuvre is full of such highlights. The cover of Earth’s 2008 release, “The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull” (Southern Lord), is a standout. “Obviously, it’s very literal. The title is based on a quote from the Old Testament. Dylan [Carlson, vocalist-guitarist of Earth] wanted it to be very colorful and look kind of like a Hindu painting. Something vibrant as opposed to gloomy, which was in fashion for heavy music at the time.” Despite his penchant for such unconventional subject matter, Roper is formally trained; he holds a degree from New York’s School of Visual Arts. While academia provided certain benefits, his main takeaways weren’t craft exercises as much as preparation for a life in arts. “As far as technique, I developed that on my own. I’ve been drawing my whole life,” explains Roper. “SVA
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brought me to New York City, which was hugely beneficial to my career. It put me in a lot of the right places at the right times and helped me make connections. The early ‘90s were a good moment to be doing these things.” With so many musical projects in his portfolio, it seems sound could play a significant role in his creative process. “I rarely work in silence,” he confirms. “I listen to a lot of podcasts and radio — mostly history, science, esoteric stuff, spirituality, the paranormal. Often, the things I’m working on are somewhat fantastic, if not very fantastic, and that does help set the mood.” As for musical favorites, a retro theme permeates Roper’s tastes. “I don’t keep up with new music as well as I should. Of the old, I like a lot of psychedelic rock, early ‘70s ambient synthesizer stuff, krautrock.” Still, he won’t rule out the possibility of being blown away by a new discovery. “I’d love to find something I’m crazy about. Most of the time, I feel like it hasn’t been done better than it was decades ago.”
Roper’s visual inspirations are similarly removed from current trends. “I really like N.C. Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth,” he says, referencing two American giants. Roper goes on to praise Gustave Doré from the “golden age of illustration” of the 1800s and English Romantic painter JMW Turner, as well as ‘40s visionary artist Ernst Fuchs. “This may go without saying, but I like Rembrandt’s stuff — more than your average master,” Roper adds with a laugh. These painters favored the atmospheric style also prevalent in Roper’s creations. “A lot of those I’ve mentioned have a mastery of lighting and chiaroscuro. They create an environment with the lighting itself.” Roper’s workflow is entrenched in tradition. “I mostly use watercolor, gouache, pencil, and liquid ink. I’ve been scanning my stuff and delivering it that way for years.” Advances in the digital realm have begun to force their way into his process, however. “Tablet technology has gotten to the point where the responsiveness of the screen is very tight. I won’t say it’s like paper, but it’s extremely good.” So, after more than twenty years of rock illustration, does Roper have any interest in putting out a collection of his music-themed creations? “I’m going to undertake getting one published. I’ve put it off for a long time because I knew the longer I waited, the more stuff I’d have. Some people put our retrospectives after three years of working. I feel like saying, “Give it some time.”
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
ARIKROPER.COM @ARIKROPER
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Gatekeeper One by Arik Roper
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
WE ALL HAVE THAT ONE FRIEND...
YOUR BEST FRIEND’S FAVORITE EXTRACT. @stickyfrog #stickyfrog phatpanda.com
High quality cannabis doesn’t have to be unattainable.
#SCOUTEDBYDOPE
WRITER | ANDREA LARSON
PHOTOS | JORDAN SWENSON
ART + FUNCTION ACCESSORIES YOU CAN GET EXCITED ABOUT
I
t’s the Art Issue, and as such, we wanted to showcase a few cannabis accessories that are either a bit quirky, handmade or have a unique history. We hand-selected a small assortment of cannabis accessories from Mendocino County to Berlin, Germany. Treat yourself this fall and support the arts in one swoop!
PROTO PIPE CLASSIC Handcrafted in Mendocino County by Phil and Richard Jergenson alongside an intimate team, the Proto Pipe Deluxe is celebrating over 50 years in existence. In 1968 Phil Jergenson had the vision to create a gadget for the ages – a cleanable, multi-functioning pipe to achieve that ideal “puff of magic medicine.” After placing an ad in Rolling Stone Magazine in 1972, Jergenson’s pipe dreams were off to the races, and he hasn’t looked back since. The company has had its hiccups with shady investors and trouble stemming from Regan’s War on Drugs, but nevertheless, the Proto Pipe lives on. Be sure to check out the company’s other pipes and read the About Us section of the website for the full download.
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PRICE WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
$149.95 PROTO-PIPE.COM @PROTOPIPE
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
EMPIRƎ GLASSWORKS – BUG’S LIFE SPOON PIPE
Empir Ǝ Glassworks pipes and accessories are fashioned via a process called lampworking, and all of their glass is either imported from Europe or from right here in the United States. Established in 2013, Empir Ǝ Glassworks has been creating vaping and smoking accessories with a team of highly skilled glassblowers. Whether you’re looking for a pipe in the shape of a doughnut, avocado, flamingo or something more whimsical like the Bug’s Life pipe featured here you’re sure to find what you’re looking for through one of the company’s online retailers. The best thing about Empir Ǝ Glassworks is that they give back. A portion of proceeds from many of the shop’s pipes goes back to benefit companies like the WWF, Coral Reef Alliance and Environmental Defense Fund to name a few.
BUG’S LIFE SPOON PIPE $120 WEBSITE EMPIREGLASSWORKS.COM IG @EMPIREGLASSWORKS
STONA GRINDER Designed in Bavaria, Stona grinders come in an assortment of colors including warm gold, pearl gray, deep gray and new silver and are a multi-use mortar, grinder and grater in one. Not only can you grind your favorite flower in it, the Stona is ideal as a kitchen accessory for slicing dried flowers and herbs. It comes with two microblades (fine and medium), cleans easily after use and has an air-sealed storage chamber. At just nearly four inches tall and a tad over three inches wide, the Stona takes up little counter space and is built from stainless steel, space-grade anodized aluminum and locally sourced wood from Bavaria. On top of all of that, taking care of your Stona is a cinch – a little bit of linseed oil toweled onto the wood is all you need to keep your mechanism running smoothly for years to come.
ONE STONA $89 TWO STONAS $167 WEBSITE IAMSTONA.COM IG @STONA_OFFICIAL
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WEʼRE NOT NASA, BUT WEʼLL GET YOU THERE.
@PHATPANDA | phatpanda.com PHATPANDAstore.com | growopfarms.com
@hotsugar @FLAVRXTRACTS
@FLAVRX
hotsugar.com | flavinc.com
ITʼS A PARTY FOR YOUR TONGUE. NEW RECIPES. NEW LOOKS. SAME GREAT STUFF.
STRAIN
WRITER | GIANNA SPANGLER
PHOTOS | JORDAN SWENSON
CABANA KUSH CANNABIS PASSION IS IN FASHION
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t the Copa, Copacabana, music and passion were always the fashion.” Cabana Kush by American Hash Makers’ Friends With Flowers brand had me ready to whip out the fruit-hat and bust into a samba. The flower smelled like a dizzying tropical fruit medley with an OG Kush olfactory backsplash. As I am one with the dance, the effervescence that came after snapping a bowl of Cabana Kush had me moving about like Selena in her prime years of shakin’ ‘n’ bakin’.
PRODUCED & PROVIDED BY AMERICAN HASH MAKERS
AVAILABLE AT THE GREEN NUGGET 322 E FRANCIS AVE
T HC 25.56% TECHNOLOGIES, INC. TEST TESTING Testing-Technologies.net WEBSITE INSTAGRAM FACEBOOK
AMERICANHASHMAKERS.COM @AMERICAN_HASH_MAKERS @AMERICANHASHMAKERS
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SPOKANE, WA 99208
EDIBLE
WRITER | JEFFREY RINDSKOPF
PHOTOS | JORDAN SWENSON
WILDSIDE CANNABISINFUSED HYDRATION WATERMELON FIZZ FOR FOCUSED RELAXATION
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aybe it’s the placebo effect, but this infused soda from WildSide seems to kick in faster than most. The fizzy watermelon flavor lingers on my tongue long after swallowing, an energy drinkesque aftertaste I’d attribute to all those scientificsounding additives on the ingredient list, like “potassium sorbate.” I drink two of the 12-ounce bottle’s three servings on one occasion, and my head rush gradually evolves into a pleasant bodily numbness, a relief on my sore knee and stiff writer’s fingers. Walking through a crowded farmer’s market proves a bit disorienting under the influence, but otherwise, I feel a stoned sense of focus – a little sluggish but immersed in what I’m doing. Relaxing but not paralyzing, this is a great beverage to sip on a lazy day while appreciating your surroundings with a calm mind and loose muscles.
PRODUCED & PROVIDED BY GREEN REVOLUTION
T HC 24.75 MG PER DRINK CB D 3.2 MG PER DRINK LABORATORY TEST PRAXIS Praxis-Laboratory.com WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
GREENREVOLUTION.COM @EXPGREENREVOLUTION
AVAILABLE AT LOCALS CANNA HOUSE 9616 E SPRAGUE AVE SPOKANE VALLEY, WA 99206
LOVELY BUDS 4107 E SPRAGUE AVE SPOKANE, WA 99202
WALLA WALLA CANNABIS CO. 927 W MAIN ST
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WALLA WALLA, WA 99362
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
CONCENTRATE
WRITER & PHOTO | STEINFARM
TROPAYA PIE
PARADISE FOR YOUR BANGER FROM X-TRACTED
X
-Tracted’s Tropaya Pie is the perfect summer evening concentrate. With lineage in Tropicanna Cookies, Papaya and Purple Pie, this indica-heavy oil is relaxing. The tropical and gassy notes come through strong with this stuff, both with a lingering smell and taste of a tropical oasis. One thing I appreciate about X-tracted’s packaging is their attention to listing their collaborations. The flower used to make this oil was grown by Royal Tree Gardens, a producer of premium cannabis in Tacoma, and a frequent collaborator. After crushing through most of this gram, I find myself dreaming of white sand beaches and Florida coastlines.
PRODUCED & PROVIDED BY
X-TRACTED | ROYAL TREE GARDENS
T HC 69.61% CBD TRACE CREEK ANALYTICS TEST MEDICINE MedicineCreekAnalytics.com WEBSITE INSTAGRAM TWITTER
X-TRACTED.COM @X_TRACTED @REFINESEATTLE
AVAILABLE AT SATIVA SISTERS – SPOKANE VALLEY 10525 E TRENT AVE SPOKANE VALLEY, WA 99206
GREEN2GO – TRI-CITIES 214307 E SR 397
72
KENNEWICK, WA 99337
DEFENDING OUR PLANT EVERYWHERE
Retail cannabis shop for sale in strip mall location directly located in the Heart of Mukilteo. • Profitable, well established (3 years) turn-key operation with $2.2M gross sales FYE 2018
• Tons of parking (ADA) in well lit strip mall next to McDonald’s & several restaurants
• 1100 square foot retail space, 3 point of sale registers, cash machine etc. • 12 years left on 15 year lease ($4500 rent/month)
• New regional commuter airport w/ multiple area hotels, 160,000 area travelers in first 90 days of operation, airport located just 1/4 mile from shop
Secure location, professional staff w/ • awesome google review history
• 40,000 vehicles per day, highway in front of shop
Contact for pricing and f inancial information
Email: garrett88@gmail.com | Cell: 206-579-5394 Please: Do Not contact or visit this business w/out prior written Owner approval
STORE
WRITER | LEONARD BUTLER
PHOTOS | COURTESY OF HEIDI SWOBODA FROM SWOBODA PHOTOGRAPHY
AMERICAN HARVEST RURAL RETAILER WELCOMES LOCALS AND TOURISTS ALIKE
THE PLACE
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American Harvest, a Wenatchee Valley cannabis retailer in Peshastin offers tourists and locals from the area a warm and welcoming place to peruse an assortment of cannabis products. Kelani Mirau and her family thought about the setting when designing American Harvest: they opted to design the shop with an abundance of open space, not unlike a comfy barn, where locally-grown goodies are happily sold. The boutique-style, farm-to-table ambiance in the shop fits perfectly with Central Washington’s agriculture traditions, especially in a place known for the state’s highest apple production. The shop sits right outside Leavenworth, a popular Bavarian village where polka parties and oompah music never stop. So, if you’re visiting Leavenworth this fall or happen to be celebrating the annual tradition of Oktoberfest stop by American Harvest and see what this quaint Peshastin store has to offer.
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THE PRODUCT American Harvest’s inventory has been thoroughly vetted by the staff, which often includes visiting local cannabis farms to learn about their growing methods and “[check in on] how happy the plants are,” Mirau said. The shop offers a wide variety of products for those looking to alternate their consumption methods … you’ll find more than flower at American Harvest. Mirau is especially proud of the team’s focus on helping customers with their medical needs, not just those who want to get mellow during Oktoberfest or the Christmas lighting. Two state-certified medical marijuana consultants, including Mirau and Melissa Reynerson, are always happy to educate patients about options for pain management as well as a myriad of other wellness needs. Consultants are on hand to provide additional information or videos about alternatives to pharmaceuticals for those looking to expand their knowledge base.
“TWO STATE-CERTIFIED MEDICAL MARIJUANA CONSULTANTS, INCLUDING [KELANI] MIRAU AND MELISSA REYNERSON, ARE ALWAYS HAPPY TO EDUCATE PATIENTS ABOUT OPTIONS FOR PAIN MANAGEMENT AS WELL AS A MYRIAD OF OTHER WELLNESS NEEDS.”
THE PEOPLE Most of the employees of American Harvest are locals, so they understand the needs and wants of their regulars. More often than not, they know their customers by name, having attended school, played sports, skied, worked or shopped alongside them in this tight-knit community. The first name basis culture instantly creates a great sense of trust and loyalty that’s reinforced by superior service. Mirau says much of the staff has been employed at American Harvest since its inception, making the staff a valuable commodity in Mirau’s eyes. She wants to make sure everyone always feels appreciated, so she focuses on creating a fun work environment that also includes full medical benefits.
ADDRESS 7550 US- 97 PESHASTIN, WA 98847 HOURS: SUN-SAT: 9AM-9PM WEBSITE AMERICANHARVESTCANNABIS.COM INSTAGRAM @AMERICANHARVESTCANNABIS TWITTER @AH502CANNABIS
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OZ GARDENZ
‘SPREADING THE LOVE’ OF CANNABIS AND FAMILY
THE PEOPLE Everyone that works at Oz Gardenz, a Tier I indoor grow in Bellingham, is family. After three decades working in videography, husband and wife Amy and Jonathan Ross decided to apply their business expertise to cannabis when they found a facility discounted on Craigslist in January 2018. With the help of their two adult sons, Parson and Andersen, they renovated the barebones space with new rolling tables, checkerboard lighting patterns, dehumidifiers, raised ceilings and a double-tiered “bedroom” with twice the growing space. For Jonathan, the resident “sommelier,” who’d been illicitly growing and consuming cannabis daily since age 13, it’s been amazing getting to pursue “the thing I’m most at peace with” for a living, but, he says, “The most rewarding part is the whole family is working together for the first time ever.”
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“THEY’VE INVESTED EVEN MORE TIME AND ENERGY ON PHENOTYPE HUNTING AS THEY HAVE ON RENOVATIONS, REFINING THEIR STABLE OF NINE STRAINS OUT OF MORE THAN 60 CANDIDATES.”
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THE PRODUCT Oz Gardenz’ four flower rooms each produce about 22 pounds every eight weeks, but due to their stringent quality standards, not all of that will necessarily make it to pot shops. “If it doesn’t have the effects, the look, and the smell, then we’re not going to take it to market,” insists Amy. Utilizing Jonathan’s penchant for exhaustive research, they’ve invested even more time and energy on phenotype hunting as they have on renovations, refining their stable of nine strains out of more than 60 candidates. As well as developing “a broad spectrum of experiences,” they strive for flowers with complex fragrance and bouquet, finding the combination of terpenes and THC delivers the best experience for customers – some of whom can now identify their strains, like Slurricane or Miracle Alien Cookies (M.A.C.), through blind “scratch-n-sniff” tests alone.
THE CULTURE Ever since Parson and Andersen were kids, their parents would encourage them to “spread the love,” a Ross family mantra that’s now evolved into Oz Gardenz’ business philosophy. “Once you spend the time and get to know the plants’ lifecycle,” says Parson, “you want to bring positive energy around [the plants], and make sure the whole business is run with positive energy.” Their openness has been received with open arms, in contrast to the cutthroat film industry they came from, with neighbors in their cannabis-oriented business complex freely sharing knowledge and offering support. Down the line, Amy and Jonathan are looking to expand into a larger Tier II facility with an additional 10,000 square feet of growing space, before passing on control to their sons, making this a real, intergenerational family business. “We feel when we’re creating this product, we’re spreading the love, sharing this medicine with people that are in need of it,” Amy elaborates. “It goes along with the culture of cannabis, which is love, share, be well.”
WEBSITE INSTAGRAM
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PRODUCT
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A woven hemp rug from Conabeare's Beech House Studio.
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Hemp Catnip Mouse crafted by Purrfect Play.
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MACRAMÉ ART (JOLANTA SURMA)
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The KannaKraft Shop in Augusta, Maine.
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CULTURE 88
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SENSUAL, STUNNING ROPE BONDAGE WRITER | GIANNA SPANGLER PHOTOS | COURTESY OF FRED RX
S
Shibari is an ancient form of Japanese rope bonding that is fueled by a connection between the person doing the tying, the “rigger” and the individual being bound. Its origins are intricately tied to the Samurai tradition during the Edo period (the 1600s to the mid-1800s), which remained in use regularly until WWII. Samurai used a martial art called hojōjutsu to restrain prisoners with cord or rope. In the late 1800s, hojōjutsu began to take on erotic elements, and eventually transformed into an erotic art form called ‘kinbaku,’ meaning “the beauty of tight binding.” In the West this type of binding is often referred to as Shibari. Those involved in the Shibari community experience rope as a transcendental art form, an erotic liberation, an immersion into new and fresh spaces. It is a beautiful display of the human body, defying gravity and showing angles of the human form that we rarely see in our daily lives. Before rope bondage ensues, the rigger establishes boundaries in an effort to keep the tying safe, consensual and a wholly positive experience for those involved. The waltz between pain and pleasure characteristic of the BDSM scene is not the primary objective of Shibari, though it does play its role. There is an evocative tenderness that permeates the atmosphere at tying events, and what emerges is sensational living, breathing human art.
DISPLAY OF THE HUMAN BODY
To learn more about the Shibari scene, DOPE sat down with Averie, an enigmatic rope enthusiast with three and a half years of tying under her belt. When asked what it was about rope bondage that connected with her, she responds, “Shibari is beautiful and serene. When I first saw it, I was amazed by the stunning display of the human body. The connection between the two people was powerful and beautiful, like a dance. There is beauty in the vulnerability of seeing people in their most pure form.” As a rigger, Averie takes care to receive proper consent from those she is tying. Miscommunications do happen, but she emphasizes the importance of minimizing risk through effective communication early on in the process. Communicating risks, hard limits, soft limits, wants, relevant history with Shibari and medical history are essential when being tied, and understanding that it is not a “one size fits all” experience is fundamental to the art form. Different dynamics exist between different sets of people, and partners must assess one another and set limitations. Consent flows both ways, and when utilized properly, can give birth to transcendental experiences and mind-blowing sensations.
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OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Averie, like most of the community, would like to see Shibari shadows. Most people who are involved with the rope scene have to live “double lives,” using pseudonyms and keeping their social media accounts private. Many do not want to be subjected to judgement from those outside of the community who disapprove of the kink/BDSM lifestyle, so they remain hypervigilant in their lives to keep the areas separate. Maintaining this level of privacy can be exhausting, but the tides have been turning in favor of normalizing kink and, by extension, Shibari. Today, more and more people are opening up to the possibilities of kink as a lifestyle. Popular media is normalizing kink though films, television and other mediums, and kink communities have been multiplying across the country. Averie has seen Shibari in the Pacific Northwest grow in the past several years, and she is excited to see it continue to grow. She feels that “something magical happens when somebody discovers kink” and it is as though they are “stepping into the world for the first time with avenues of open possibilities.”
“SOMETHING MAGICAL HAPPENS WHEN SOMEBODY DISCOVERS KINK, WHEN YOU SEE SOMEONE NEW TO THE SCENE IT IS LIKE THEY’RE STEPPING INTO THE WORLD FOR THE FIRST TIME WITH AVENUES OF OPEN POSSIBILITIES.” – AVERIE
SHIBARI 101: TIPS FOR BEGINNERS Start slow, determine what attracts you to the art form and your end goal for learning the craft. Check your ego at the door. Accept that there is a strong learning curve. If you are a rigger, frustration is inevitable. Patience is key. When you learn a new tie, take pictures every step of the way so that it can be replicated. If you are being tied, be sure to establish strong boundaries with your rigger beforehand. Go with your instinct. If something doesn’t feel right, say something. Learn about yourself: how to speak up for yourself, how to be in tune with your body.
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Understand miscommunication and mistakes happen, and it is important to learn from them in order to get the most from the experience.
PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST Photographers, want to see your work in the pages of dope magazine? As a lifestyle publication, DOPE Magazine is committed to cultivating creative expression within the cannabis community. We’re looking to feature your creative work in the next issue of DOPE Magazine! There are no limitations or restrictions—hit us with your best shot! HOW TO ENTER Head to www.dopemagazine.com/dope-contests and submit your favorite capture and win the chance to have your work featured in a beautiful 2-page spread in our National publication. Shoot what inspires you. Ready. Set. GO! WHAT TO ENTER To ensure eligibility for the contest, please submit files of at least 300 dpi in landscape format. Entries may originate in any format - digital files, digital prints, color transparencies, color prints, or black and white prints - so long as they are submitted electronically in a .JPEG .jpg or .png form. Entries should include full name of photographer and a brief caption. ELIGIBILITY Dope Shots (“Photo Contest”) is open to all professional and amateur photographers who have reached 21 years of age at the time of entry. By submitting an entry to the Photo Contest, entrants certify that their submission in the Photo Contest gives DOPE Magazine the right to publish this photo. DOPE will provide artist credits. By entering, you agree to release and hold harmless DOPE and affiliates from and against any claim or cause of action arising out of participation in the Photo Contest. ENTRY PERIOD The Photo Contest is recurring; beginning on the tenth of each month and ending the last day of each month. JUDGING Photos will be judged on the originality, composition, technical excellence as well as overall impact and artistic merit.
Images by Emily Nichols, Dope Magazine