THE BUZZ

Pretty Things to Make You Happy

Flower by Edie Parker’s colorful mid-century-inspired collectibles are made for friends in high places.

The rst brand to fully merge the worlds of fashion and ower, Flower by Edie Parker is the line of cannabis and smoking accessories that portray the same clever, fashion-forward wit as its namesake, Edie Parker—the accessories brand known for its signature acrylic clutch handbags. (We’re partial to a pink one emblazoned with a cursive “weed” in big, bold letters—subtlety is overrated.)

“Edie Parker is all about surprising and delighting and displaying your accessories— showing them o , whether it’s a handbag or an ashtray,” says the brand’s founder Brett Heyman. Under her direction, Edie Parker launched Flower by Edie Parker in early 2019, not just as a cannabis-adjacent accessories line but as an actual cannabis line with Edie Parker Flower THC products available in California and Colorado (Michigan and Massachusetts on the way).

The progression into cannabis came naturally for the Edie Parker team. Riding the high of the successful launch of its home collection in 2016, the small, all-female group knew there was still so much more they could do. The fashionable women with re ned-yet-playful sensibilities began talking about “the lack of considered—and frankly pretty—cannabis accessories,” Heyman shares. “Everything in our experience has been either something you buy in a

headshop or something extremely masculine, or something that felt very medicinal or like things you hide away in your drawer.”

The line is cheeky in the best of ways, with nary a fan leaf marring any of the o erings. “We’re accessory designers,” Heyman laughs. “We would never do something that obvious. We are used to marketing products that can infer something. You know what it’s for—you know it’s end use— but it doesn’t have to be hitting you over the head.” (The limited-edition “This is How I Roll” t-shirt collection that dropped earlier this year exempli es this sentiment. See the one picturing two fried eggs and the phrase “these are your boobs on drugs” for proof.)

Elsewhere in the very giftable Flower by Edie Parker line are stash jars, hard-edge lighters, grinders, rolling trays, joint clips, doob tubes (“supHerb storage containers”), “Weedie Parker” smell-proof stash bags, and a bunch of other colorful covetables. But what we covet the most are the tabletop lighters, which start at $450 and come nestled inside their own ashtrays—because that’s how they roll.

BY THE NUMBERS

15

MARKETS

The number of markets across the U.S. about to publish print issues of Sensi in April 2020. Then COVID-19 hit

LOVE

For everyone who kept the faith and kept us going—yes, you included. We couldn’t have done it without you: our team, our clients, our friends, our families, our readers, our cannabis community.

93

MAGAZINES

The number of digital-only Sensi magazines we’ve made since April 2020. No, really! You can read them all at sensimag.com. So. Much. Good. Content.

Sup reWork Sweet Nature Crewneck ($120), Superette & 4ye

Vintage garments made modern with handdrawn illustrations depicting cannabis culture make every item in the Superette + 4ye collab a win.

[HIGH] FASHIONFORWARD

While we were away, we kept our eyes on these brands—the coolest kids in cannabis right now. Except for the grannies. They’re the hippest grannies in the game.

Fleur Marché is the one-stop-shop for rigorously vetted, top-tier CBD products and brands. Tokyo Smoke, the hip Canadian shop for the sophisticated and curious cannabis explorer, is for “those who embrace high design and alternative states of mind.” Mister Green is a lifestyle brand and retailer that distinguishes itself through “a minimalist design sensibility and dedication to a new cultural perspective.” Miss Grass is a brand on a mission to make the world good at weed. (We’re obsessed with the “Good at Weed” sweatpants.) Designer Adam Lippes is a partner in the LGBTQ-owned and led Farnsworth Fine Cannabis in the Berkshires, where the luxury dispensary is stocked with vintage accessories, including an old lighter of Jack Kerouac. Sundae School is where cannabis meets casual streetwear collections. House of Pu makes luxury smoking accessories for the modern woman and was founded by a former art mag editor—and we're obsessed. Superette is a retail brand dedicated to “creating moments of delight” and making buying cannabis and accessories as enjoyable as consuming it.

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BILITIES

BY STEPHANIE WILSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF

1 BONG CARTS ARE THE NEW BAR CARTS. It’s gonna be the

hottest home decor trend of 2022, just you wait...as long as we can get people over their hang-up about the word bong. The whole bong cart concept: re. Getting people to call their newly transformed bar cart into a holder of bubblers and bud by its obviously awesome name, the bong cart: not so re. Let’s troubleshoot. My Insta DMs are open, @stephwilll.

2 POSHMARK TIP: Never buy an item outright. Hit the heart, like the item, and sit back and let patience be a virtue. Typically within 24 hours, the seller will o er you a discounted price and boom! You’ve saved money and you are a proud consumer supporting the circular fashion movement, breathing new life into a used item. Everybody wins.

3 APPARENTLY THERE’S A POSHMARK FOR GEN Z and it’s

called depop, but I cannot con rm or deny whether there’s a heart for you to like to potentially save money because I’m the most elder of the millennials and only just learned about depop via New York mag earlier today.

4 PELOTON’S GOT NOTHING ON SOULCYCLE,

and this is a stance I will ride until I die. Sure, I’ll be riding a Peloton, but I’ll be doing it to the beat of the music playing from my iPad where I’m streaming one of Ross’s motivational movement therapy classes from the Equinox app.

5 BUT THE EQUINOX APP has absolutely nothing on any class taken at any studio IRL. Real humans bring real energy into a room that can’t be replicated even in the best virtual setting. There’s no digital substitute that measures up to the human connection.

6 “TIE-DYING” IS NOT A EUPHEMISM for recreational drug

use. Long story, but a funny one. I’ll tell you it the next time I see you in real life.

High 5

After a full year of enduring the same old, plain old things day after day, we all deserve a break from the ordinary. These items elevate your consumption ritual to an art.

1

2

3

4

Products

1. Crack is Wack Rolling

Tray ($60) by K. Haring

Glass Collection

D.A.R.E. was right in this case: crack is wack indeed. 2. Cookies X Stündenglass

Gravity Hookah ($600)

A work of engineering art in a sleek design that can send you to the moon: this thing o ers a full 360° of “woah.” 3. Nude With Attitude

Matches (three for $12) by Higher Standards x

Rogue Paq

These retro matches will quite literally charm your pants o . 4. Gucci Swirls Resort

Collection Rolling Papers ($28 for the kit) by

Papers + Ink

Spark an abstract ode to the cruise collection with these customprinted organic papers. 5. CBD Ritual Wild Berry

Gumdrops ($45) by

Lord Jones

Hand-crafted confections with natural fruit essences and 20 mg hemp-derived

CBD in each must-taste morsel. Gwenyth

Paltrow and Oprah

Winfrey approved.

5

AFTER THE PLAGUE CAME THE RENAISSANCE

Even if you haven’t heard of him, Rube Zilla is already watching you through his ubiquitous art in the cannabis space and beyond. And the Scorpio is on a mission to show us hope in the ashes of the pandemic.

According to astrology, rebirth and revival are written in the stars. According to Ruben Del Cabrera (Rube for short), they are also written in the Zodiac-themed artwork Sensi created for the cover of this magazine. The piece invites viewers to get lost in a solar system of faces while trying to discover and interpret the 12 signs of the zodiac illustrated among the astral elements—subtle details depict the completion of a cycle, a return to our societal roots.

Hidden amid a black-and-white maze of emotions depicted in Rube Zilla’s signature style are symbols representing a restart. A slogan of hope is becoming popular as so many try to make it through COVID-19: After the plague came the Renaissance. Looking at the world with Rube's vision, you see a modern renaissance has already begun.

IT’S ALL IN THE EYES Look around, and you’ll notice Rube Zilla eyes staring at you from all sorts of places—from large-scale murals in cities across the country, from Timbuk2 bags, from custom-commissioned shoes. They look out from the Zilla Charter tour bus in Denver, in which top street artists like Dinkc lead cannabis-friendly tours to discuss their works around the city. You’ll fi nd those eyes on a tin of full-spectrum rosin gummies by Dialed In, in his coloring book by High Times, and on carb caps, bangers, rolling trays, and pipes.

Rube’s illustrations cover dispensary waiting rooms across Colorado and adorn the Buddy Buddy Indoor Natural in San Francisco (the California cannabis producer has even created a Rube.Zilla Kush). You’ll even notice them in New York at a Buff alo Bills game, in Miami at Art Basel, in Los Angeles at the LA Art Show, in a still-in-development-andso-cool immersive space planned for Las Vegas. You’ll see the eyes on public artworks commissioned by the city of Denver and even on the walls of a Colorado middle school. You’ll see the cannabis artist’s unmistakable style everywhere...but you won’t see a fan leaf in any of it.

“I don’t have cannabis motifs in any of my work,” Rube explains when asked what makes him a cannabis artist. “But I feel like at this point in my career, I’ve made my faces synonymous with cannabis culture.” And what lies within that association of art and cannabis is the power to propel the societal rebirth Rube believes art can drive.

A former marine with Puerto Rican roots and a Buff alo, New York, upbringing, Rube is a bit of a dichotomy—but he’s not a Gemini. He’s a Scorpio, which means according to astrology.com that he travels in a world that is black and white with little use for gray. The black and white that covers most surfaces in Rube’s world represents the illusion that we are individuals separate from others. The straight lines and the complementing curves stand for a necessary balance in structure and creativity, male-female energy, and emotion.

“Since the beginning, black and white has always represented the duality and polarity of reality,” he says as he sketches the fi rst faces on what becomes the zodiac-themed canvas. It’s late July 2021, and we’re at his friend Jeremy’s place in downtown Denver. Jerm, as he’s known, was the fi rst person to ever buy one of Rube’s pieces, cementing a friendship and

kicking off a collaboration/representation relationship between the two. Rube’s son, Remy, watches his father work intently.

“There’s always someone watching,” says Rube, who laughs as he draws another face. The eyes specifi cally are inspired by a recurring scene in Scooby Doo, one of his favorite cartoons growing up, when the only things seen on an otherwise dark screen were sets of glowing eyes peering out from the dark. “It was the creepiest thing in the world!” Rube laughs. “Just knowing that people in the dark are watching.”

WHAT DO YOU SEE WHEN YOU REALLY LOOK? It’s fun to watch Rube work. He doesn’t plan out his pieces; he just picks up the pen (or marker or can of spray paint, depending on the project) and gets started. He’s a thinker, a dreamer, as well as a makeshit-happen doer. It’s easy to like him; it’s easier still to see why people like to be around him. He’s got the best interests of his communities in mind. He has been envisioning a more utopian future for quite a while now, and he’s doing what he can to make it happen.

Make no mistake: Rube is a badass on his way to being the badass, the guy who doodled his way into the zeitgeist and then sketched out the defi ning spirit and mood from within. He’s expressing himself through a defi ned visual identity that’s a relatively recent development. (Scroll back to the start of his @rube.zilla Instagram page for the visual proof.)

What’s surprising is that he’s relatively new to the whole art thing. After spending 10 years in the military, he settled in Denver and began working in fi nance. He was bored out of his mind. He had been doodling since he was a child, and he made the risky decision to pursue art full time rather than stay miserable in a more stable career. He took a job at a hotel in downtown Denver, “just working overnight security, hours to burn,” he says, “and I would doodle, I would draw.” The position aff orded him the opportunity to just create, to see where his mind took his markers on the paper.

Rube Zilla's now-signature style soon began showing up—the faces—in his drawings. The motifs struck him as “hauntingly beautiful,” so he began working on their structure and form. He had only been at it for a few days when one night as he was arriving for work, he had the traumatic experience of witnessing a man jumping to his death. “A moment like that will change you,” Rube says.

Rube Zilla Spirit of the Zodiac, 2021 24" x 36" Acrylic on canvas

“I relived that moment every day for a year,” Rube says, feeling trapped in the trauma—and it was through drawing mazes of augural faces depicted by the stark black lines and curves of a Sharpie that he mapped his way out. The night of the incident, he stayed at the hotel. “I just grabbed a stack of computer paper and a box of Sharpies and I just kept drawing faces over and over,” he says. “In a way it was to just process emotion—just to fi nd a way to move through it. It’s funny how if you follow these patterns—follow grooves and stay the course—it’s like seeking a new plan, fi nding your fl ow. And it ends up creating these once-in-a-lifetime moments.”

BRINGING EVERYTHING TOGETHER Cannabis has been a part of the healing process as well. The night of the incident, Rube smoked a joint with “the valet kid,” a young guy named Jerm (see above). Jerm now runs Enigma Projects, representing a community of artists, including Rube Zilla. “We went from this thing that happened—the birth of these emotions—and we were able to ride that energetic transition to the light in a sense.”

Jerm commissioned a custom piece by Rube, asking him to deck out a Timbuk2 bag with his illustrations. While in San Francisco a short time later, Rube wore the bag to an event attended by the brand’s CEO, and it caught her eye. “Shoutout Patti Cazzato!” Rube says. “That night, she said to me, ‘I’m going to change your life tonight, young man.’ And she didn’t lie.”

Rube seeks a communal relationship between art and cannabis. “Cannabis and art have always had a connection,” Rube says. “Smoke weed and holy shit you talk to god, you go paint on walls. Now they call it hieroglyphics—cave dwellings and whatnot.” Rube feels that we are at the start of a second renaissance. “Real talk though: ‘After the plague came the Renaissance.’ It was the artists who gave life back to the world. People came out to see the murals, they couldn’t wait until Michelangelo was done with the Sistine Chapel.”

Rube is a walking, talking art history lesson, focusing on the Medici family, which fi rst attained wealth and political power in Florence in the 13th century. It was the family’s support of the arts and humanities in the 1400s that made Florence the cradle of the Renaissance, according to History Channel editors.

Rube’s lesson is a little less formal: “There was a family that was like, ‘Yo, we got all the gold and jewels on this side of the world. We got money. So, we control now. We want to control then and the future.’ So how do you control history? You tell the story. The Medici family understood that they needed to tell the story, so they asked themselves, ‘How do we support the people who will carry on for the next generation?’ So they supported the artists.”

In the renaissance we are entering now, Rube suggests that the arts can be supported not by a single family but by an entire industry that’s already focused on changing the world.

“The cannabis industry can be the Medici family,” Rube says. What if we’re able to support and uplift the people who are telling the story about why cannabis is important? Then we control the history of it.”

A successful cannabis industry “can’t be why we have more space billionaires,” he says. “It needs to be why we have more community sustainability. It’s all about passing the joint, passing the kinetic energy, the success, and bringing it back to our circles at the end of the day.”

We’re collectively hungry for art, culture, and connection. Rube cites Crush Walls’ urban art event that took place September 2020 amid COVID-19. “What did people do? They pulled up to the streets, smoked weed, and looked at art. That didn’t stop. That happened in the renaissance.”

Rube with his son Remy