Show Manager

on our cannabis industry, our cannabis community here in Spain. Nobody expected that. Not even me. And we had the first-ever rosin competition in the world because… OK, let’s talk about that. There was one single event in the states, If I don’t remember the name correctly, my bad, it was called Squash Off, I think, it was during some kind of festival, and that was just one thing there. It never happened again. It wasn’t just a cup. The idea of Masters of Rosin was to be like an Emerald Cup and happening not only for Europeans but as a World Cup. It’s an International Cup. We always make it during the dates of Spannabis, which is like the biggest cannabis expo here in Europe. Spannabis is also an annual event here in Barcelona for three days, but it’s not only three days. It’s about 1 week. But everybody who’s at Spannabis knows that you should come to Barcelona for at least ten days because there’s so much to do. And so much fun. And so much food (laughs). Yeah, and so much dank rosin.

I think that the rosin stage is huge now here in Europe. Masters of Rosin every year...I mean, we believe we see real fire, and we have more and more hash makers involved in this matter, and this is really, really cool. I feel like The Masters of Rosin Competition is helping to open up the rosin culture here.

Not to mention all my beautiful team that help me every year, having my back all these years. Huge respect to my dear friend and right hand in the organization Arnau Tango. Then Nikka T., who is our annual host except the last edition due to the Covid restrictions he couldn’t fly to Barcelona, but hey, we’re waiting for him for the next one. Nikka, bro, we love you. And then all the team, the dispensary team… special thanks to Vince. Also, Andrea, he helped a lot when he worked here in HQ. And our beautiful media team, Inti, for making all the dope pictures.

And of course, I have to say that the most important thing to say about Masters of Rosin, is our brother, my big friend, a person who is a part of HQ family forever, who is behind all the images and the design of Masters of Rosin. Venya Son is the guy who creates all the art, illustrations, and videos for Masters of Rosin. So big up for Venya Son.

So in 2022, we will be holding a Masters of Rosin event here in Barcelona in March because we are also keeping our tradition to make it the same dates that Spannabis should happen. I say should because it didn’t happen in 2021 and 2020. But, even without Spannabis, we were having Masters of Rosin here. Big up to all our sponsors, to all the competitors, to all the connoisseurs, to all the judges. It’s a very very important what you do, not only for our community here in Barcelona, but Internationally all over the world. We know that people from all over the world want to bring their rosin to Masters of Rosin.

Before 2021, we were holding Masters of Rosin in a secret place, for a limited number of people, with a lot of stuff, a lot of food, a dab sesh, with Nikka T as the DJ & event host.

All these things that we love to do, we’re hoping to do that again in Mid-March of 2022, but we’re not sure yet due to the Covid restrictions. If we can’t do it like we used to, we’re going to do it like we did last year, for a small number of people — only for the competitors and judges inside The Club.

When we announce the winners, the winner gets The Golden Iron. So, it’s our prize every year. Last year, the whole piece was golden, so there was 3,000 euros of value of gold inside the first prize of the competition. The second-place winner receives silver, the third bronze. It is just like in the Olympic Games. This year, as in all the years, there’s a unique topic or theme. Last year it was The Adventures of Plancha Boy. The year before, it was Rozilla, and this year is Rosin Gods. I’m announcing this for the first time here that the 5th Edition of Masters of Rosin is about Rosin Gods. So this is something you guys will see very soon in our Instagram and in our media. You’ll be seeing the new edition artwork, pictures, videos, animation, interactive comics where you can choose, actually, what’s going to happen. We’ve got a lot of interesting stuff and surprises, secret shit, so yeah, just come check the posts and stories of Master of Rosin.

FH: I love how you share education and how you uplift both men and women in all that you do — could you tell us more about your guiding ethos and principles that are helping you to create such an empowering platform and message?

DM: Yeah, thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. So my approach is based on my real-life experience and a strong education beginning in The Soviet Union. My roots are from there. My principles were born in Moscow. I traveled a lot, but for the last 20 years, I’ve been living in Barcelona. I’ve been working in the weed industry for a long time. I’m 44 years old, and believe me, on one side or another, it’s a long story.

I’ve been a smoker for 25 years, maybe even more. I began smoking heavily at 16, so believe me: this is what I do, this is what I love. This is what I believe that everybody who loves it should have a right to do, so this is what we strive for. I think that the principle of staying above ground is very important. HQ is a close-knit community of people. It’s a family — there’s not a slogan that says “not everyone is welcome.” That’s important. We’re about the privacy of our members but also about sharing information. As you can see, our videos and pictures show us washing hash or making rosin — there are a lot of things that we do that we share with people. We really spend a lot of our time, energy & effort creating media to share with the people. We feel that this is very important. HQ is a special place to be. It’s like being at home in your loft and smoking and having all these special things perfectly adapted for smoking.

What you see is really what I love to do… it’s hard to explain... it’s a perfect place to meet, to be, to enjoy your right while smoking or while dabbing. Actually, I’m not smoking so much anymore. I’m always dabbing now because I use more and more rosin every day. Let’s just say hash joint is one time at night. Weed, yes, of course, because I have to try a lot of weed during the daytime — maybe I make a couple of puffs, and that’s it. Rarely do I just finish it. Maybe when I go into nature for a trip, I smoke joints, yeah—just pure weed, nothing else. But yeah, I can still do a hash joint with tobacco still like at night when I’m home.

So, my principles: I could talk for hours about them, but I really feel that I like to be fair. I like to be very direct and personal while at the same moment caring about what you say and just being very clear about how to manage this business. But the weed industry here is not an absolutely legal field.

Let’s say it like that, in soft words. We’re here in the grey area, absolutely. And what we do is a struggle and what we have right now, for example, is a very complicated situation.

The government is slightly turning its back on this case, and The Supreme Court is saying nonsense like we can’t dispense weed. But we’re here, we’re struggling, but The Club is open for our friends, our members for sure.

FH: What are some of the largest challenges in Spain in operating a legal cannabis club?

DM: It’s this grey area. We struggle here. It’s all about the Constitutional Right of staying together and smoking in private places like HQ. We share a common crop, so we’re not even selling things. It’s a long story. We’re not here absolutely legally. The City Council is putting pressure on us now by sending all the clubs letters, but it’s just a letter, nothing else. But the letter is like saying: “Hey, we understand that you can’t operate with weed inside the Club or distribute it. But you can get together and talk about it. That’s it.” You know, so it’s a joke because here in Barcelona, we’re a community of about 200,000 cannabis consumers. So, what are they wanting us to do? Sell on the streets? Yeah, we’re worried about the situation but nothing else. Unity is the key. We should stay together. I can see there’s a lot of fear in the people in the industry just because some letters came, but nobody knows what’s going to happen, we just stay around, you know? This is what we do in HQ.

FH: What is your favorite strain right now for water hash?

DM: Speaking of water hash, Babushka Farms is my personal, small-batch project that is only about washing hash. Everything is fresh-frozen. Right now, our personal favorites are Mitten Cake Batter, which is a Seed Junky Strain that is like, absolutely amazing. It is gassy but also lemony with a touch of terps. It has amazing resin — we get amazing results making water hash and rosin with it. And another one is Tang. Right now, it’s a special one from a big friend of ours from Fresh Cup in Zaragoza, Sergio. Big up to him. So many thanks for sharing this beauty with us. And this is like an exotic pineapple/ lollipop terps. It’s like a pineapple but with a special twist like a fermented pineapple. So it’s crazy. I just actually washed it yesterday (laughs), so today, I just pressed some and dabbed it today. It’s crazy good. So, wow. I’m super excited to be washing it a second time. The second time is always better, right?

FH: When creating the Masters of Rosin competition, did you think that it would have such global recognition? I feel like there really isn’t a worldwide rosin competition like yours.

DM: Let me tell you frankly speaking, yes, I was thinking about that. It’s true. I thought about making something new before anyone else would do it. It’s always challenging, but it’s always a win-win situation if you go for it. I mean, if you open a restaurant, you should be competing with thousands and thousands of other restaurants—the same with every other thing. But when you do a rosin-only competition, that was my challenging thing because everybody from my team was like: “David, are you sure? Because you know, maybe you won’t have enough people or enough interest. Maybe we should make it also with water hash and another category.” And I said: “No. We should do it only with rosin.” First 3 years, we had two categories: hash rosin & flower rosin. But, the last one was only rosin because there was no point to have hash rosin and flower rosin because there’s no such technique in the world to analyze and give with 100% certainty that this material is coming from hash or from flower. So, we think it’s unfair for someone to come into the flower rosin competition, for example, with some fire hash rosin, and win it because we can’t justify for sure if the material is flower or hash rosin. I’m not saying that flower rosin is bullshit. Not at all, no. But what I’m saying is that more quality, more work, more everything, more professionalism, and more steps to follow when we talk about hash rosin. It’s more complicated to perform. If you make it flower rosin & hash rosin, you’re going to have hundreds of samples.

No judge can go through hundreds of samples in 2 or 3 days. If you judge 100 samples in 3 days, the quality of the judging is going down, the quality of the competition is going down. This is what we don’t want.

FH: Where do you see the future of the cannabis industry going in Spain, and what needs to change to make that happen?

DM: Interesting question. I don’t know, but I hope that I’ll see in my lifetime here in Spain that they’ll legalize the work of clubs like HQ. We need to legalize the process of this thing. I hope that in 20/30 years, maybe that it’s legal here in Europe. I hope we can see it.

FH: Do you think cannabis will be globally decriminalized in your lifetime?

DM: I hope so, but we don’t know. We don’t know because we see what happens in the States, in Canada, now in South America, but here in Europe, as we can see now, we have movement. A lot of the government is moving towards legalization, so that’s why we think that a lot of the decision of the Supreme Court is nonsense and stupid. Maybe they just want to keep a hundred clubs open only with licenses. But we’ve been here for a while. Soon we’ll be seeing our 8th anniversary, so we hope that we’ll be seeing our members not only from here in Europe but also you guys. All the members are welcome, always. To be a member of this club, there’s only one but one very strong thing: and this is to be a friend of ours. If you’re a friend of ours, you are a member of The Club. This is the first rule here.

Thanks to our sacred plant medicine and thanks to the Skunk team, especially Julie, I know that you’ve been working for a long time, inviting me to be a part of what you guys do there at SKUNK. We really respect your work. Hey, thanks again, not only from me but from all the team.

WORDS AMY SHORT PHOTOS DOUG BALDWIN

Amy Short of Glass Vegas sat down with Katy Szczerbaty to discuss her life in glass.

AS: When did you first fall in love with glass blowing?

KS: I fell in love with glass when I took my 1st class 9 years ago at Zen Glass Studio in St. Pete, Florida. Even with burning and cutting my hand, I still wanted to keep going and learning more.

A: What is it that drives you and excites you most in your creative pursuit with glass?

KS: What drives me is the fact that people are supportive in this industry and shows like Glass Vegas that have these competitions that I really enjoy and excite me and push me to compete more, create new designs, push my skills and limits. I get support for it and love it, so why not keep going? It’s amazing!

AS: What’s your favorite piece you have ever created?

KS: The Medusa that I just won in the GV 2021 World Series of Glass Pendant category. I had a mental picture in my head of the piece, and it’s so awesome to see it come to a reality, the opal eyes, the fact that it’s a little bit larger than what I usually make. It’s a big statement piece, and I love it!

AS: What artists inspire you, glass or otherwise?

KS: Glass Artist is LACEFACE, is a kick-ass female glass artist, and she is amazing. She makes amazing pieces and has made a name for herself in this industry when it was harder for women to get recognized for their art. She inspires me with all her competition wins and is an all-around awesome person, someone to look up to in our industry. Also, Audrey Kawasaki in which I have a collection of a ton of her work, her paintings are phenomenal and move me to create. I love the feminine energy in her work.

AS: Do you have any fun collabs you have coming up? Hopefully!

KS: I do not have solid plans for any collabs at this exact moment; however, MELT is coming up, and I am really excited to create some phenomenal collabs there. This year at MELT is my 1st year, but I hear it’s amazing and the place to be to get collabs in with some killer artists.

AS: What are your hopes for the cannabis industry, and how would you like to see it grow?

KS: My hopes are that it continues growing and that we get more legalization happening so that it’s not taboo for me to share & sell my work with the public. Also, so that shows don’t get shut down, as these are the driving force for me to sell my art. I don’t want to get hassled when I travel, and I want our industry to thrive! I want to be able to grow my own weed in my backyard without the fear of doing something I shouldn’t be doing because I am not. It’s a plant, its medicine.

I strive to work with more female-owned and operated businesses and smoke shops and artists, and I want to see more females emerging in our industry. I want to see more girls doing what they want and doing it well, and succeeding.

Fun Facts: I have a green thumb and am good at gardening. I am a crazy cat lady. I have had blue hair since I was a teenager, and because of that, my hair fades to light blue. I am an art school dropout turned professional artist. My fiance works for me, and it’s now his full-time career.

Ensorcelling Sources

WORDS MATTHEW GATES

The health of an organism is a product of many factors: all life exists within a set of parameters, both environmental and physiological. Some factors are extremely hard or impossible to directly measure for cultivators of plants, like the genetic makeup of a plant or its constant and fluctuating metabolic processes like immune response and nutrient sequestration. Though, for good reason, growers attempt to mitigate or even selectively determine when it happens as much as possible, plants are constantly stressed.

At the most basic level, waste byproducts like oxidative agents resulting from the simple metabolic processes that regulate plant dynamics in the face of changes in nutrient load, temperature, or humidity, as well as more intensive immune processes involved in severe heat or cold exposure, physical damage, and multiple pressures from pests with their own immune response and sophisticated immune disruptive compounds and proteins coevolved over millions of years of association, employing even their own microbiome to this end.

Even the mutualistic relationships in which plants engage like the famous exchange of nutrients and beneficial effects between mycorrhizae, other microbiome agents, and their plant symbionts constantly require resources tied to regulating these delicate interactions, including the discrimination between more- and less-beneficial microbes and those with parasitic tendencies that communicate with the same chemical language. Our collective comprehension of these plant health dynamics increases every year, and so too does its complexity, obviating and replacing older, narrower perspectives about the soil microcosmos. Simple answers to complex questions are a bane to that understanding as they belie that complexity is often for a price, touted as solutions by professional and seemingly trustworthy sources.

For experienced and new cultivators alike, it is vexing to observe the deluge of contradictory information received daily and to parse the applicable from the most theoretical, correlative, poorly proven or controversial—even with outside assistance.

There are proxies that can approximate some of these processes related to plant health like brix tests for dissolved solids such as sugars, but levels of these sugars change constantly and differ between stem, petiole, leaf, and fruit tissues, arguably complicating the question of a plant’s overall “brix level” and what can be extrapolated therein. Redox potential and pH also affect plant health and development fundamentally, but they too are hard to assess internally or externally in the substrate, reducing the utility of these metrics. Genes and their products associated with resistance to pests

INJURIES ALONG THE BLEEDING-EDGE OF PLANT HEALTH RESEARCH

“For most of its recent history, scientific research related to Cannabis has been highly contentious, from its evolutionary origins to the heritability of various traits desired by cultivators and consumers alike.”

and receptiveness to mutualistic microbes must orchestrate a symphony of chemical reactions that augment the body of the plant in reversible and sometimes irreversible ways to deny space and nutrients, directly damage, or receive external help against the detected threat.

These factors are highly contextual and poorly articulated in Cannabis especially, yet despite the lack of genetic quantification or empirical evidence seen in other crop research, it is commonplace to see Cannabis cultivars and seeds advertised as having gene-based resistance or even full immunity to some or all pests and environmental stressors. Microbial and nutritive products that claim to enhance plant health to some degree with vague and sometimes overtly speculative or theoretical functional explanations are also commonplace. Sometimes the intended effects of these products are based on extrapolated research that may or may not be broadly applicable to Cannabis. Other times the product may be valid but perform as well as alternatives that may be less complex or resource-intensive to acquire or apply.

Desirable and undesirable technologies, particularly when new, can both appear reasonable and bypass critical analysis when presented with a charismatic narrative, trusted celebrity presence, and sleek appearance.

This is not to say that these plants or products cannot exist or have utility, but that without evidence and only surfacelevel investigation, it is hard to discriminate between suppliers that have conducted explicit research and those that have not, particularly when the practice of the plant cultivation responsible for so many fundamental societal functions is as laborious, time-consuming, and energy-intensive as it is, leaving very little for even basic investigation in a discipline that might not be one’s strength. Specialized subject matter experts can be very useful proxies and sources of condensed and detailed domain knowledge, but biases like those towards outdated information or trusted sources are always a factor, and even honest mistakes when evaluating new systems and techniques can arise. Still, collaborating with multiple people to achieve a common objective is paramount, so how does one choose which people to entrust with their livelihood?

While no system is perfect, there are a few ways to evaluate a subject-matter expert and the claims they make in a scientific or another objective context. Like previously mentioned, in order to evaluate an expert, seeking to evaluate their claims for specific supporting evidence in the form of corroborating research from credible published journals as well as claims and evidence by others that might contradict them is a common first step. Even if the subject matter may be difficult to understand in the first place, a synthesis of both claims might be more of a complete perspective than the two in isolation.

Alternatively, while a lack of corroborating evidence does not necessarily mean a claim is not correct, usually, there is more security in a claim that multiple other independent specialists agree with and have independently supported. It is crucial to consider, however if those specialists are closely associated with the claimant or a business entity which may be predicated on those claims being perceived as correct—an extremely common form of bias. Specialists can be wrong singularly or in a group, and celebrity status, even with a verifiable history of general forthrightness or confidant demeanor, is a very poor proxy for being correct about specific claims since misspeaking and misremembering details can and does happen with even the most resolute professional.

When considering contentious claims, it can be grounding to remember that the “con-” in “conman” stands for “confidence”: charisma and confidence are endearing and can signal that a person or organization is comfortable or approachable, but they can often undermine an otherwise penetrating verification process. Recall that many accomplished scientists, even Nobel laureates, have been famously correct about some claims but ruefully incorrect about other claims when tested by the broader scientific community.

If a consensus across multiple independent experts can be found, this can be a highly useful guide for decisionmaking. In the context of Cannabis plant health specifically, building relationships with multiple plant pathologists, soil microbiologists, mycologists, entomologists, and ecologists can provide a critical crucible for filtering plant health claims based on empirical works and understanding, at least for the fundamentals which may be misrepresented by those that lack this basic understanding.

For most of its recent history, scientific research related to Cannabis has been highly contentious, from its evolutionary origins to the heritability of various traits desired by cultivators and consumers alike. That dearth of information is growing rapidly. Plying the cutting edge of scientific discovery to this plant, we are bound to bleed in service to unlocking those secrets by rending crucial information from mystic ambiguity. Prominent researchers already pivot towards these answers in universities and private organizations alike, revivifying a millennia-old interest documented as far back as the Neolithic.