BUDTENDER Q&A

MARYLAND LEAF BUDTENDER OF THE MONTH MATTHEW “PYRATE”BLANCHARD

TRULIEVE

1526 YORK RD. TIMONIUM, MD TRULIEVE.COM @TRULIEVE_ (443) 486-3643 9-9 MON.-SAT. 10-6 SUN.

PYRATE OVER AT TRULIEVE in Timonium is known as “the dab guy” and is bringing the heat with his smiling face and badass steampunk style. His first time smoking was rolling a joint with blank pages from The Bible, and that experience showed him that Cannabis had the same effect as his ADHD medication – without turning him into a robot. In his free time, he plays games, scuba dives, and spends time with his 12-year-old cat, Savannah.

TALK TO US ABOUT THE NICKNAME. First, my demeanor and the way that I dress. I also used to get really bad migraines right above my left eye, so I would have to wear an eye patch – which is where it originally came from. Then a couple other people tended to call me that for other different reasons, and it stuck. I like it with a Y instead of an I, to make it different.

WHAT MAKES YOU “THE DAB GUY” AROUND HERE? I pretty much only smoke concentrates and I have tried just about everything that we get in. I switch between different rigs – I’ve got a RIO, Puffco and Honey Badger. I smoke a little bit of flower, switching back and forth between it and concentrate, but a lot more dabs. I really like Sunmed Labs and Kings and Queens – I am more of a terp-chaser than anything, which is why I fell into concentrates.

WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES YOU UNIQUE AS A PERSON? I am a big gamer, not just video games – I also do lots of board games. Really obscure, complicated, weird board games. I used to play a lot of DND, but haven’t as much since Covid happened. I had a first edition DND campaign, that went for almost eight years straight – we played every Sunday. We each had three or four different characters, and at one point the party split – and we had good characters and evil characters – and we had to fight ourselves. I’m also a master scuba diver; I was able to scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef down in Australia – including a night dive with UV lights, which felt like an alien world.

“I PRETTY MUCH ONLY SMOKE CONCENTRATES AND HAVE TRIED JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT WE GET IN.”

WHERE DID YOU GET THE PASSION FOR SCUBA? I actually took a class in college to get one of my gym credits, and they offered a scuba diving class over the summer that allowed me to eventually go and certify at Guppy Gulch Quarry in Pennsylvania. I did the class, got the certification around 2010, and waited about a year before scuba diving. I fell in with some people at Divers Den, which is a scuba shop on Harford Road, and pretty quickly accumulated over 100 dives. My parents were also both heavy into skydiving, which gave me the passion for extreme sports.

DO YOU ENJOY THIS TIME OF YEAR? WHY? I am a big fan of Halloween, it definitely helps me fit in more with the way I dress between the kilts and the jerseys. I collect a lot of jerseys from a company called Geeky Jerseys. I’m not as big of a fan of Christmas. But I do love the cold, being Scottish, French and German. I don’t do too great in the heat, because you can always put more clothes or blankets on when you’re cold, but you can’t take your skin off if you’re too hot. I’ve worked retail pretty much my entire life, but I truly enjoy the chaos and the hustle of the retail seasons.