The New Smoker Issue No.9- The Dispensary Guide 2019

THE NEW SMOKER

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Bringing class to grass™ The New Smoker Magazine Issue No.9 January 2019

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S.G. Clarke SJ George

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Soren Gray Luca Belloiu Caroline Ryder Barby Garcia Kaisha-Dyan McMillan Bobby Birdplane Frank Lauria Chef Tiffany Friedman Alex Mirzaian Clark Greene Dyson Bronti

All contents © 2017 The New Smoker, LLC. The New Smoker has nothing to do with tobacco or any of it’s related products. The New Smoker magazine is published and distributed by issuu.com. The New Smoker does not condone or endorse any illegal use of any products or services advertised herein. All materials are for educational purposes only. The New Smoker recommends consulting an attorney before considering any business decision or venture. We take no responsibility for the actions of our readers.

A number of characters and images appearing in this magazine are parody, satirical or fictitious. Any resemblance to any persons, living, created, or dead, is purely coincidental.

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ISSUE No.9 CONTENTS: QUALITY QUALIFICATIONS What To Look For When Looking For The Best Dispensaries.

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CANNABIS CLUBS IN THE U.K. 11.

What Dispensaries Are Like On The Other Side of The Pond.

LET'S DISPENSE WITH THE PLEASANTRIES A First Timer's Experience In A Dispensary.

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THE NEW SMOKER DISPENSARY GUIDE 2019 Featuring Only The Best of The Best.

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IT'S A KIND OF MAGIC A Selection of Magical Ways To Enjoy Sweet Sinsemilla.

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DISPENSING WISDOM Interview with Steve DeAngelo.

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THE VAPE PROBLEM Better For You, Worse For The World.

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DELIVERING THE GOODS Is Cannabis Delivery As Awesome As It Sounds?

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MIMI AND ULRICH

A Dusky Tale of Punk Rock & Vampires.

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PLENTY FOR EVERYBODY

The Cannabis Industry Owes It To Itself To Diversify

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HOW TO PICK YOUR NEXT VAPE FROM A DISPENSARY 68.

So Many Vapes, So Little Time.

SOUR DIESEL A Gas Powered Strain Review.

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DISPENSING VIBES A Curated Selection of Albums Dispensaries Should Play.

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM OUR HIGH-LIGHTS 80.

5 Of The Best Of Best Reviews From TNS' Product Feature Site.

CHEF TIFF’S RECIPES Winter Recipes From Chef Tiffany Friedman

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FRANK TALES - THE SECRET OF THE GREAT PYRAMID Frank's Tales of Classic Cannabis Continue.

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THE NEW SMOKER

Notes from a New Smoker Welcome to the ninth issue of The New Smoker magazine:

The Dispensary Guide

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n our continuous pursuit of quality, excellence, and sophistication in modern cannabis culture, we turn our eyes this issue to the booming industry cannabis dispensaries.

There have been many incarnations of cannabis outlets: from the apothecaries of the late 1800's, to the first post-prohibition medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco in the 1990s, to the big booming free-for-all of barely regulated cannabis collectives in Los Angeles in the late 00's when they outnumbered all McDonald's and Starbucks in the LA area... combined.

Even previous prohibition advocates like John Boehner, former Republican Speaker of the House, are getting in on the action. Green is Green is Green after all.

tion and creative expression, and makes it hard for anyone without a few million bucks to get their foot in the door. Which can then force them into the grey market.

Medmen Inc, a top down corporately run dispensary chain, is unabashed in its pursuit of profit over people. Where most dispensaries started small, as medical marijuana collectives aimed at helping members heal themselves from a wide variety of ailments, and then grew from there; Medmen is the first major brand to secure millions in investments to set up shops all over the country with the express goal of selling to the masses. Which seems to leave the individual behind.

Tighter regulations also limit the amount of suppliers who can get a license to sell, which leads to redundancies. Like liquor stores, one can go to most places and see same products in every shop. This isn't necessarily bad, but it is a diminishment.

Now that recreational cannabis has hit California -the biggest market in the country- in January 2018, the whole game has changed yet again. With new regulations superseding the old ones and seeming to change every other month it makes it hard for the shops and products to keep up.

While there's a place from corporations to enter the market -they help legitimize the industry and give weight to the cause, they inevitably push out the little guys.

It's becoming harder and harder for the Ma and Pa shops to compete. And these are the shops where people with special needs tend to get the most focused attention.

Adding pressure, corporate cash has started to flow in earnest as everyone wants to get rich in the Green Rush.

Regulation creates conformity which works for consistency and unifying the industry, but often cuts down on innova-

So dispensaries must focus on other features other than products to make their spots stand out: Innovative Themes, Design, Atmosphere, Knowledgeable Staff, Expanded Services, and whatever else they can create to bring in and keep customers.

With all of this in mind, we've gone looking to see who's elevating the dispensary game and bringing class to grass.

We're focusing just on LA and SF for this issue. What we offer here is a "Best of the Best". If it's in this issue it's worth a visit.

-S.G. Clarke

EDITOR- IN-KIEF

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QUALITY QUALIFICATIONS What to look for when looking for the best dispensaries.

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here’s a big shift in the style, form, and function of dispensaries these days as recreational marijuana takes over the largest cannabis market in the country, California. Medical Marijuana is getting pushed into the background or absorbed as adult-use fully kicks in. It’s old school into new school.

Medical into Recreational. Health into Profit.

Mostly gone are the cagey closed off collectives buzzing you through from the outside to the atrium, to main room; the security guard looking you over twice with some suspicion. Never feeling quite like you belong there. Like you’re doing something wrong.

Now clean, stylish, modern dispensaries with open floor plans are

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taking over. And with them a sense of legitimacy and validation for the whole cannabis industry. The corporate element is seeming to quickly dominate as outside money floods in and things ramp up. High tech, Apple-style stores are becoming the new norm. Ma and Pa local shops are losing ground. The Hot Chick Problem (HCP) -only having attractive female budtenders who may or may not know what they’re taking about- is becoming less of an issue, but still exists. The same products now fill the shelves of most places since they are the only ones who have the correct licenses. Lowell, Kiva, Kingpen, Canndescent, Flow Kana, THC Design, to name but a few… are becoming ubiquitous.

and comfortable. If you don’t feel welcomed by walking in the door, maybe walk back out and head to another one near by. Not just from the people who work there, but the vibe of the place itself. If it doesn’t feel good to be in there, why go?

The staff should be both friendly and knowledgeable. For a budtender -or "Cannabis Consultant" as they would like to be known- their job is much more than just handing you weed. These days a cannabis consultant needs to not only know all about the different varieties of cannabis, but the methods of consumption and their various effects and then how to put them all together and recommend them to each individual customer’s unique needs.

In general, a good dispensary should A cannabis consultant needs to be feel inviting, friendly, even cozy a bit of a therapist, a pharmacist, a

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• Sustainability: Are the environmentally friendly? Do they recycle vape pens? Eco consciousness is vital these days. If they don’t have a vape pen recycling program they might not be environmentally Here are a few suggestions of things aware in other areas as well. to keep and eye out for when choosing a high quality dispensary: • Organic: Are the products mostly organic? If they aren’t boasting • Design: Is it a unique and quality about being organic, they probably designed dispensary? Some shops aren’t. just throw a couple of glass counters down on a warehouse-style room • Variety: How good is the variety and throw up a couple of those big of their selection? A wide variety tacky HDTV menu screens around of quality products is best. Are they the place and call it done. If they reasonably priced? $35-$55 for an aren’t design conscious, they prob- 8th is a good average zone. ably don’t pay much attention to other important details like quality • Staff: How friendly, attentive, and health of the products, and are and knowledgeable are the cannabis consultants? Are they just pretjust in it for the money. ty faces or do they actually have • Atmosphere/Vibe: How does it deep knowledge? HCP* actually feel to be in the dispensary? A good dispensary should feel • Location: is it in a decent area? inviting, friendly, comfortable. Not Have they used their surrounding just by the people who work there, space to their advantage? While but also the feel of the place itself. some cities regulate dispensaries to shadier/industrial parts of town, bartender, a researcher, and a salesperson all rolled into one. This can be harder to find in the corporate model, and what the smaller, more personal shops tend to excel at.

many are beginning to allow them in city centers and more accessible areas.

Conclusion: While not all good dispensaries are going to have all of these qualities, the best ones will try to incorporate as menu of these as possible. In general, you can’t go too wrong these days. But why settle for mediocre when you can enter elegance.

*HCP - Hot Chick Problem might not seem like much of a problem to some, but we find it unnecessary, distracting, and gives off a "Hooters" vibe.

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CANNABIS CLUBS IN THE UK

By BOBBY BIRDPLANE

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he UK has a strange attitude towards cannabis. We have a sort of, “We don’t mind if you do it, just don’t let us see you doing it.” It’s a sort of keeping up appearances act - or even a stiff upper lip - where one doesn’t make a scene of one’s own habits and vices. In such a zeitgeist, cannabis clubs in the UK tend to be fairly innocuous and, in most instances, you wouldn’t even notice such a building unless you knew what you were looking for. Ozone generators and the generally 11

quiet, relaxed atmosphere inside these clubs mean that they can stay hidden, even in plain sight.

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annabis clubs aren’t exactly new to the UK, and there have been Amsterdam-style cafés around in the UK since the late-90s and early-00s (and probably some from further back) . Many are billed as “private members clubs”, and will only allow entry to those they trust, but usually they tend not to last long due to either legal pressure or just

the owner’s change in life circumstances.

However, there has been a drastic change over the past 5 years. Where once cannabis clubs were highly secretive and unique, they are now much more numerous in number.

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bout 10 years ago, there were maybe a handful (at most) across London, Manchester, Birmingham and a few other smaller towns throughout the UK. Now, in London at least, a person can probably find a cannabis club within a few miles’ radius of their home, simply by looking through Instagram and a few other social media platforms. In fact, there are some entrepreneurial spirits who even make their own edibles and will quite happily send you a special package through the post or via a trusted delivery person. There are also several stores quite legally selling flowers and other products that contain only CBD.

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he people of the UK are not known for their loudness or brashness, so it seems very unusual that we would so brazenly flout or challenge laws in such a manner. What the British do have, though, is a sense of fair play. Yes, we prefer gradual to sudden change, but laws that are an affront to this sense of fair play brings out the revolutionary in even the most reserved Brit.

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o, what brought about exporting it to legal marthis change in attitude? kets smacks of double There are several good standards. reasons, including: reedom of choice - as he Science - as we have cannabis is generally learned more about the more well-tolerated and endocannabinoid system less harmful to the human (ECS) and how cannabis body than alcohol or toworks, alongside the huge bacco, restricting it whilst number of patients who allowing more harmful have come forward and substances to be sold legalsaid “cannabis has helped ly is irrational. or saved me”, the reasoning behind keeping canna- emographic Shifts - the bis illegal seems more-and- children of the 60s and 70s as well as the ravers more nonsensical. of the late-80s/early-90s, he Children - there many of whom may have have been several stories already been quite tolerant over the past few years, of cannabis, have grown such as that of Deryn up and become a major Blackwell, Billy Caldwell voting block. and Ava Barry, where canusic & Culture - several nabinoids have arguably genres of dance music, improved or perhaps even saved lives. We’ve all seen hip-hop and dub/reggae all middle-aged people using generally have accepting cannabis for their cancer, attitudes towards cannaand even then many were bis, and the music & culskeptical. Bring a sick ture associated with them child into the story, how- has spread throughout the ever, and people’s tunes UK. start to change rather dralass - put simply, cannamatically. bis is becoming more aclcohol - drinking cul- ceptable in the UK because ture is big in the UK, wealthier people are doing and some see cannabis as it themselves and talking a generally safer alterna- about it more openly. tive. et, despite all of the usiness & Politics above and the slow acthe UK is one of the ceptance of cannabis, world’s largest producers many in the UK are reof medical cannabis, and luctant to see cannabis GW Pharmaceuticals is legalized. Getting the esbased in the UK. That the tablishment to accept even UK keeps cannabis illegal medical cannabis, let alone and arrests people for us- recreational cannabis, was ing or growing it despite an uphill task. Even those

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who usually have no issue with cannabis use are wary of legalizing it, often with the idea that keeping cannabis illegal will keep it from gaining widespread exposure and acceptability in a similar manner to alcohol. Where some see this as perfectly normal, others see it as merely adding another problem to fix.

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his ultimately means that cannabis clubs in the UK are in a twilight zone, where they are somewhat accepted by local communities, but in a precarious situation legally. In some ways, this affords the people who run and use such clubs some freedom to operate, but this freedom is tempered by the fact that there are few if any safety or testing standards. This might be less of an issue for the casual, recreational user, but for a medical patient this is life-or-death. In many ways, the UK cannabis club scene is where the Colorado or California cannabis dispensaries were about 10-20 years ago. Hopefully, this will change soon in the UK, and

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o, if all of this is going on under people’s noses and being advertised on social media accounts, surely the police know about it and we’d be seeing shutdowns of cannabis clubs regularly? Whilst I do not purport to know what the UK police know, 12

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it’d be more shocking if they didn’t know about the existence of such clubs.

They might not know the precise location or who is involved in them, but they definitely know about their existence. So, if the police know about their existence, why aren’t they going after and shutting down cannabis clubs?

Surely it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel and some easy money for them?

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here’s several good reasons why it’s not necessarily worth police going after these clubs, but there is one main, solid piece of reasoning: sometimes, it is better to go with the spirit of the law rather than the letter of it. Yes, if you are caught, you may well be charged; but, if you keep out of trouble generally and don’t use cannabis in busy public spaces, you will likely not be bothered. Arresting people - many of whom are normal, hard working taxpayers - for merely possessing an eighth of cannabis may mean targets are hit, but may also mean that the police lose the trust of the community.

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as the arrival of cannabis clubs been a positive one for the UK? In general, I would say, “Yes, but with caveats.” Whilst there are many great clubs providing or connecting people to high-quality produce for a reasonable price, others price their cannabis at

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extremely high prices, for a product that is no different from what you’d get when going to an honest street dealer (yes, they do exist!).

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nother issue is one that’s already been mentioned, and that is testing for cannabinoid & terpenoid ratios and impurities & pathogens, but this is an issue that can be overcome by legalization. The last issue is one of aesthetics. Most cannabis clubs are badly furnished and generally not welcoming places to be. Little attention is paid to décor or just providing simple things like a comfortable seat or even heating! Whilst customers shouldn’t necessarily expect much from an illegal outfit that may have to shut down at a moment’s notice, it would perhaps make it less of an exercise in profit and perhaps even create a nicer environment where people actually don’t mind sitting and talking to others. Not every cannabis club in the UK is like this, but they probably are the majority.

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annabis clubs in the UK are, from what I have seen, very quiet, calm places - the very opposite of most pubs or bars. Moreover, such clubs will not likely allow you in if you are visibly under the influence of alcohol. Drunk CONTINUED ON PAGE 90

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LET'S DISPENSE WITH THE PLEASANTRIES A First Time Experience

By Luca Belloiu

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t should be well noted that I am essentially new to the whole “smoking marijuana thing.” While I dabbled during high school there has essentially been a near 20 year blackout on weed. This means close to two decades of not being up to date on advancements in the cannabis arts nor the secret handshakes that unlock hidden pot parties.

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hen the mention of pot dispensaries entered my radar I considered them to be nothing more than “pot popups” destined to be crushed under the thumb of Johnny Government. At best it would rise with the tides of what’s fashionable and eventually fold under the scrutiny. Like the DeLorean.

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lways game, I decided to see what the fuss was about. I obtained my med card from a seemingly above board and nonplussed doctor working out of a Hollywood strip mall. Though to my wallet's chagrin, I found out later I didn't really need it.

I looked for a video camera so I could lift my shirt and show the team of armed men in the security wing that I wasn’t packing any heat. Before I was able to sway their fears the door opened to what appeared to be your run-of-the-mill smoke shop.

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hile I initially found the whole notion of a brick and mortar pot shop that operates within the bounds of the law as an amusing non-starter, I found it a pipe dream that has turned very much into a reality. It can be the modern candy shop for adults or a place that provides the keys to natural healing and self-examination. My impetus was somewhere in the middle. A purely novel curiosity.

But where was all the weed?,” I thought. A diminutive security guard that had an uncanny resemblance to Steve Buscemi held all the answers. I approached him carefully.

This had been the first time since high school that I was operating in any sort of marijuana circles and I was trying to figure out if he was a narc or not.

Then I realized I was no longer in 1996 New Jersey and the world has changed for the better. “Just play it t was not a hot tip that cool,” I reminded myself. sent me to my first disoing the polar oppopensary but the ever pressite, I leaned across ent handiness of Google Maps. It told me that this the glass pipe case and particular shop in the west asked sheepishly, “Sooo, valley was the closest in I can just go ahead and proximity to me. “Pot is purchase some marijuana pot,” I thought and so the here?” The security guard nearest dispensary will was quick to correct me. hardly differ from the far- “You mean cannabis?” thest. was clearly being judged pulled up to a nonde- as a rube by the vocabscript building on a busy ulary police and I needed thoroughfare that, for the to quickly redeem myself. exception of a giant green I then decided now must cross on the façade, could be the time of the grand have just as easily been unveiling. So I reached a tax accountant’s office. into my back pocket and At the door hung a hand produced both the diplodrawn sign telling me to ma-esque certification press the buzzer for entry. from the Hollywood doc-

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gainst my better judgtor saying I was kosher to ment I asked if she toke along with my state had any “White Gold.” issued driver’s license.

She looked at me through waited for Buscemi-lite the tiny shadows of her to type up my info, con- eyebrow rings as if I had tact Interpol and signal to just wandered in there by the overseers upstairs that accident. While expertly I passed the screening. It hiding her disdain for me turns out I’ve been watch- she asked if I was looking ing too many movies. Af- for a Sativa or an Indica. I ter the quickest of perus- countered with, “Which is als, I was buzzed through the sleepy one?” to an adjacent room no oon she was reaching bigger than Mariah Carinto a large glass jar for ey’s third shoe closet.

There, awaiting me, was something called “Heroan energetic twenty some- juana.” She assured me thing year old pixie sur- that this was just the thing rounded by enough weed for my sleep issues. I was and edibles to send me and emboldened by this and so all my distant cousins into I decided to inquire about the candied edibles gracing permanent hyperspace. the shelf behind her. When pon entering I was she started mentioning handed a singular the varying amounts of wrapped cookie by a large milligrams in each I began man wearing a Raiders to get cold feet. Scared by jersey. He was there to the prospect of doing math promote a new edible for- problems to figure out how tune cookie and I was now high would get. the lucky recipient of one free sample. I told him I then remembered how could not eat this here be- I was still holding onto cause I had a long drive a free fortune cookie and home. He just shrugged that I didn’t want to make his shoulders. The vibrant the Raiders fan feel bad young dispensary teller about me choosing anothwelcomed me graciously er edible over his. He of and asked if she could be course was happily texting of help. I had remembered away, having already forhow I really liked this one gotten about me. To finalstrain I tried at a house ize the transaction I placed party once but the name my money on the counter escaped me. I thought it much like I do when betwas something along the ting cards in Vegas. For lines of “White Gold” or some reason I kept thinksomething equally deca- ing we were being monitored by an eagle-eyed... dent sounding.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 90

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DISPENSARY GUIDE 2019

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n this guide we highlight top quality dispensaries only. If we mention it, it’s worth checking out.

Dispensary Legend:

A Spark: Good to go! (Doesn’t have everything, but there’s something there) One puff: Really Good (Well run.

Works for whatever you might need) Two puffs: Excellent - Go back for more. (A great place to make your regular spot) Three puffs: Exceptional - Got to go!

(A must visit spot to go out of your way to see)

Based On: Appealing Design – Quality layout and floor design.

Friendly Vibe – Feels welcoming and makes you want to come back.

Knowledgeable Staff – Can accurately recommend the right products.

Well Stocked – Has everything one needs.

Uniqueness – Has something that sets itself apart.

Points Deducted For: • HCP = Hot Chick Problem* • Bad Vibes • Over Pricing • Boring Layout • Tacky Decorations • Lack of Imagination *Staffed with only overly-attractive female budtenders, not necessarily well-informed, distracting, giving a tacky Hooters vibe.

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Malibu/Venice 99 HIGH TIDE Collective 2775 Pacific Coast Highway Malibu, Ca. Nestled above an itty bitty mini-mall along the PCH in Malibu, floats 99 High Tide. Walking in is like diving into an ocean oasis of awesome; like stepping onto a live action set for the Little Mermaid but made for adults to play in. Run by Yvonne DeLaRosa and her team, this sole dispensary in Malibu sets a high bar for any that might try to follow. With its focus on self healing, attention to its older local clientele, and soon to open a massage therapy spa next door, 99 High Tide uses the cannabis plant’s medicinal properties to its fullest. Though they do only have female cannabis consultants and might qualify as having HCP, but it’s run entirely by women which is much needed in the industry... plus sometimes they all transform into mermaids, so that’s pretty cool NOTES Seaside underwater theme. Nice selection. Very active in community. Super caring owner. Friendly staff, older clientele, health focused.

STATS

•PRICE: $35-$65 x 8ths LOCATION: Paradise-adjacent in Malibu LICENSE: Medical Only (Recreational soon) DELIVERY: No

RATING: 2 Puffs: Excellent - Go sea it! www.99hightide.com Follow on Instagram: @99hightide

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Image credits: Buddha Fountain (this page) and inside 99 Hightide (following page) by IG:@mylifeincannabis

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Image source: 99 Hightide - www.99hightide.com

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Malibu/Venice ROSE Collective

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411 Rose Ave. Venice, Ca. Beating in the heart of Venice, the Rose Collective feels like an old style dispensary in mid transition into a new one. The staff are friendly and well versed in their products. The interior is lackluster, but time will tell as they adjust. They have most everything you need. It’s a great place to go if you’re on your way to the beach and need some quality products from some quality folks.

NOTES Image credit: Green Goddess Mural photograph by IG:@mylifeincannabis

GREEN GODDESS 1716 Main St. Venice, Ca. NOTES

Great Staff, Nice Selection, simple space, good prices STATS PRICE: $25-$45 x 8ths LOCATION: On a Rose Venice

Nice outside Murals. Underwhelming interior. Tourist LICENSE: Recreational/Medical trap vibe. Basic selection. Basic space.

STATS PRICE: $35-$55 x 8ths

•DELIVERY: No

LOCATION: Edge of Venice LICENSE: Recreational/ Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: 1 Puffs: Really Good www.rosecollective.com Follow on Instagram: @rose_collective420

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go.

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Image credits: Rose Collective photograph by S. Gray

GREEN DOT 4200 Lincoln Blvd. Marina Del Rey, Ca. NOTES Forest themed, Basic vibe, HCP, Good Selection, Pricey STATS PRICE: $40-$70 x 8ths

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LOCATION: Borders Venice & Marina Del Rey LICENSE: Recreational/ Medical DELIVERY: Yes

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go. www.thegreendotla.com

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Mid-City/West Side THE POTTERY LA

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5042 Venice Blvd LA, Ca. Between Hollywood and Santa Monica is a Mid City mystery land with big wide streets and industrial warehouses intermixed with white picket residential homes. Here resides The Pottery, a wonderful example of what the modern dispensary should be: well designed, well stocked, and well staffed. The Pottery not only has all the top products in stock, but it has its own line of premium indoor flower grown onsite! Owned and run by the personable and passionate Nick Danias of High Line Distribution, so you know they care about the products they put out. The Pottery is a great dispensary to make your regular spot as you commute back and forth from the west side on all those auditions.

NOTES Modern Look, Professional Vibe. Great selection. Nice staff. Grow their own on site.

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STATS PRICE: $45-$65 x 8ths LOCATION: Amidst the Mid-City LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: Yes

RATING: 3 Puffs: Excellent example of a modern dispensary www.thepottery.la

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Image credit: The Pottery photograph by S. Gray

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Image credit: The Pottery Staff Member, photograph by IG:@mylifeincannabis

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Mid-City/West Side

Image credit: The Pottery Owner Nick Danias, photograph by IG:@mylifeincannabis

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HE EL RLB HCE R B C ELL W W O O LO LO

A A S SS L L S G G TUBES

TUBES

T ISCT I C AS A L L P P TUBES

TUBES

• Made •inMade China in China • Cost .02 • Cost cents .02 each cents each Sit in landfills for eons for eons • 100% •recyclable 100% recyclable • Sit in• landfills • Not biodegradable • Certified • Certified food grade food safe grade safe • Not biodegradable • 100% •natural 100% natural material material

• Not BPA • Not free BPA free

• BPA free • BPA free

• Illegal • Illegal to selltofood sellinfood in

• Leaks• nothing Leaks nothing into into • no toxicological • no toxicological testingtesting the flower the flower • no environmental • no environmental testingtesting • Leaks• chemicals Leaks chemicals into the into flower the flower

S ASFAEF E P U R E A NP DUN RAT E A UN RA D LN AT U R A L

T OX T OX IC IC CHEAP AC NH DEWA A P SA TN ED F UWA L STEFUL

lo w el l s m okes .com

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CANNERY West

Mid-City/West Side FIREHAUS

2435 Military Ave. LA, Ca.

2000 Cotner Ave, LA, Ca.

NOTES

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Sister-store to The Pottery. Nice open space, friendly, knowledgeable staff, well stocked, easy access.

Friendly knowledgeable staff, great selection, a little pricey, a bit claustrophobic, non remarkable design.

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PRICE: $40-$70 x 8ths

PRICE: $40-$75 x 8ths

LOCATION: Off Pico by the 405

LOCATION: East of the Westside

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

DELIVERY: No

DELIVERY: No

RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good www.cannarywest.com

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RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good www.firehausla.com

Image credits: Cannary West photo from www.cannarywest.com - Inside Firehausla photo from www.firehausla.com

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ERBA Collective 12329 Pico Blvd, Culver City, LA, Ca. Just under past the underpass sits Erba in mid-flux.

It’s just upgraded itself from the old style closed off medical marijuana collective with opaque windows separate from the world, to the new inviting open style recreational dispensary with the opacity being figuratively and literally scraped off. A real sign of the times.

Inside, everyone is buzzing around like busy little bees in a freshly opened hive. The helpful and friendly staff, and well stocked selection, make it a great spot to grab what you need. Plus, there’s a full extended Dosist vape pen section built in! (Rumor has it they share owners). So that’s pretty sweet.

NOTES Newly remodeled, open floor plan, Dosist built in, busy & friendly, well stocked, STATS PRICE: $20-$60 x 8ths LOCATION: West of the Westside

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LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good ww.erbacollective.com

Image credit: Erba Collective photograph by S. Gray

28

Mid-City/West Side LA BREA COLLECTIVE EUPHORIC THE NEW SMOKER

5057 Pico Blvd, LA, Ca.

10655 Pico Blvd. La, Ca.

NOTES

NOTES

Rasta themed. A shade of its former self. No more onsite consumption. Good selection. Nice staff. Last of the first wave of LA dispensaries.

Small Ma n Pa style shop, Family Biz, dad cured cancer with cannabis, got into biz, sisters run it. Knowledgeable. Basic space. Decent stock. Emphasis in Medicinal. Neighborhood spot.

STATS

STATS

PRICE: $20-$45 x 8ths LOCATION: Middle of Mid City

PRICE: $35-$45 x 8ths

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

LOCATION: Middle of the Westside

DELIVERY: No

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go www.labreacollective.org

29

Image credits: La Brea Collective photograph by IG:@mylifeincannabis

•

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go

•

Hollywood/West Hollywood THE NEW SMOKER MEDMEN - WEHO 8208 Santa Monica Blvd West Hollywood, Ca. While we didn’t want to like this corporate cannabis chain store, we can’t deny its quality products, streamlined Apple-Store-service-center style high-tech approach, and knowledgeable staff. But like the top down staff of most mega-stores there’s a forced feeling of friendliness and impersonal disconnect from the human element. That “staff required to be nice” vibe one gets from big chain stores. It’s a quality solution to any recreational needs, but not a place you need to visit more than once.

NOTES Nice Staff, Nice Selection, High-tech like an Apple Store, Corporate vibe STATS PRICE: $35-$60 x 8ths LOCATION: Yeehaw in WeHo

•

•

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

•

DELIVERY: No

RATING: 1 Puffs: Really Good www.medmen.com

Image credit: Madmen photograph by S. Gray

30

Hollywood/West Hollywood

THE NEW SMOKER

HERBARIUM 979 N La Brea Ave. LA, Ca. Located in the middle of the flats of Hollywood on one of its busiest North/South streets, tucked into a tiny parking lot, sits the silver-faced Herbarium like a mirror reflecting the world’s needs. Stepping in, one is welcomed into an open friendly space that immediately leaves the external world behind. Their friendly and knowledgeable staff are ready to help with any needs, plus they deliver!

NOTES Clean, friendly, large selection, knowledgeable staff, central location

LAPCG (Los Angeles Patient & Caregivers Group) 7213 SANTA MONICA BLVD LA, Ca. NOTES

STATS

Small, friendly knowledgeable staff, well stocked, old school style, quality spot

PRICE: $35-$80 x 8ths LOCATION: Deep in the heart of Hollywood LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: Yes

STATS

•

PRICE: $35-$55 x 8ths LOCATION: East of West Hollywood LICENSE: Recreational/ Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: 1 Puffs: Really Good www.herbarium.la

RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good www.lamedicalmarijuana.com

31

Image credit: Herbarium photograph by S. Gray

•

•

THE NEW SMOKER

THE GREEN EASY

HOLLYWOOD MMD

8311 Beverly Blvd LA, Ca.

1515 N. Cahuenga Blvd, LA, Ca.

NOTES

NOTES

Doctors office feel, HCP, good selection, a bit pushy, Urban vibe, underground (literally), well stocked, old school, pack em in, pack em out, buy or leave.

STATS STATS PRICE: $30-$50 x 8ths PRICE: $35-$80 x 8ths LOCATION: Beverly Hills Adjacent LOCATION: Down the Cahuenga Corridor LICENSE: Recreational/ Medical LICENSE: Recreational/ Medical DELIVERY: No DELIVERY: No

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go. www.greene420.com

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go.

•www.hollywoodmmd.com

•

Image credit: The Green Easy photograph by S. Gray

32

Eastside/Downtown California Caregivers Association (CCA) THE NEW SMOKER

2815 Sunset Blvd #201, LA, Ca At first one might think this spot is a bit underwhelming with “CCA” in big plain white letters on the windows of its basic exterior located on the second story of a cramped mini mall. Especially since it’s in Hipsterville LA, aka Silverlake, one would think it would have a bit more style to it. But once you get passed the basic waiting room and into the small but product packed main area, the amount of awesome selection makes everything much better. And while they do have a Hot Chick Problem, these girls really know what they’re talking about and makes their attraction-distraction ignorable. Definitely a great neighborhood spot worth trying.

NOTES Great staff, great selection, nice neighborhood dispensary, old style, HCP STATS PRICE: $35-$60 x 8ths

•

•

LOCATION: Between a Silver Lake & an Echo Park LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: 1 Puffs: Really Good

Image source provided by CCA

33

•

THE NEW SMOKER

CORNERSTONE 2551 Colorado Boulevard, LA Ca. Just off the 2 fwy on Colorado Ave, there’s a nondescript building that you’d never know was one of the nicest dispensaries in Greater LA. It’s fitting that it looks more like a 1960s doctor’s office, because at Cornerstone they’re way serious about their product and have always approached Cannabis as medicine.

Employees are there to help: they are kind, easygoing, and know what they’re talking about, so listen up! This women-owned - and mostly operated - classic gem is worth the LA mileage even if you don’t live close.

Image: CONERSTONE www.cornerstonecollective.com

LA WONDERLAND 150 Venice Blvd, LA, Ca.

NOTES Friendly super-knowledgeable staff. NASA level clean. Science over stoner. A+ flower, cannaisseur-level curation.

NOTES Gritty Downtown area, Nice open industrial space, urban rasta vibe, big selection, brusk staff, low prices

STATS

STATS

PRICE: $30-$55 x 8ths LOCATION: Eagle Rocking it LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: No

•

PRICE: $25-$50 x 8ths LOCATION: Down in the downtown

•

LICENSE: Recreational/ Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: 2 Puff: Excellent

RATING: A Spark: Good to Go.

www.cornerstonecollective.com

www.la420deals.com

34

NoHo/Green Mile

THE NEW SMOKER

URBAN TREEZ 11376 Ventura Blvd, studio city, LA Located in a mini-mall on the banks of the Green Mile in Studio City, this welcoming example of a modern LA dispensary has everything you need and a wonderful staff to help you find it. Once you walk through the door you know you’re in the place you’ve been looking for.

NOTES Nice clean modern space, medicinal section to focus on special needs, friendly knowledgeable staff, great selection STATS PRICE: $30-$60 x 8ths LOCATION: Central Studio City LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: No

•

•

RATING: 2 Puffs: Excellent

Image credit: URBAN

35

TREEZ photograph by S. Gray

•

THE NEW SMOKER

BUDS & ROSES

California Compassionate Care Network (CCCN)

13047 Ventura Blvd, Studio City, Ca.

4720 Vineland Ave, North Hollywood, Ca.

NOTES Clean cozy space. Friendly knowledgeable staff. Good selection. Basic set up STATS

Friendly staff, Great selection, Plain look, Low prices STATS

PRICE: $20-$65 x 8ths

PRICE: $20-$55x 8ths

LOCATION: Edge of the Green Mile

LOCATION: The Heart of NoHo

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

DELIVERY: No

DELIVERY: Yes

RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good www.budsandrosesla.com Image credit: TURBAN

NOTES

•

RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good

•

TREEZ photograph by S. Gray

Image credit: BUS & ROSES photograph by S. Gray

36

San Francisco/Oakland HARBORSIDE Collective THE NEW SMOKER

1840 Embarcadero, Oakland, Ca. Before there were dispensaries everywhere, there was Harborside. Owner Steve DeAngelo is one of the main cannabis activists who got the whole medical marijuana movement going. He’s one of the primary reasons dispensaries are able to exist today. And his level of passion and innovation shows in the Harborside Collective. Harborside sets the standard of what a caring compassionate and proactive dispensary can be. Hightech about their “high” tech, this Collective offers an amazing product selection, including what they grow themselves, and a attentive and friendly staff. They even offer and consultation section for those who might need a bit more in depth help. If you want to see what a dispensary should be, go to Harborside. You won’t be disappointed.

NOTES Clean, comfortable, efficient, great selection, cutting edge high-tech service, consultation center, great for the amateur or professional customer, sets the dispensary standard • STATS

•

PRICE: $25-$70 x 8ths LOCATION: East Edge of the Bay LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: Yes

RATING: 3 Puffs: Exceptional www.shopharborside.com

37

Image credit: HARBORSIDE www.shopharborside.com

•

THE NEW SMOKER

BARBARY COAST – SOMA 952 Mission St. SF, Ca. What if pirates and merchant sailors weren’t known as a bunch of rum addled alcoholics, but instead had become great champions of cannabis. And what if they had landed upon the piers of San Francisco harbor with the intent of plying their pot trade by establishing an elegant example of an old world influenced cannabis dispensary. If so they would have made something like Barbary Coast. This dispensary gives the feel of the old world, while giving us the bountiful budding benefits of the new. Classy and charming, this is a must visit for any self-proclaimed cannasieur.

NOTES Great style, retro sailor theme, friendly knowledgeable staff, huge selection, a bit pricey.

STATS PRICE: $35- $95 x 8ths LOCATION: Middle of Lower Mission

•

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: No

RATING: 2 Puffs: Excellent www.barbarycoastsf.org

Image credit: BARBARY COAST www.barbarycoastsf.org

38

San Francisco/Oakland

THE NEW SMOKER

SPARC - SOMA 1256 Mission St. SF, Ca. Long been known as one of the more cutting edge dispensaries in San Francisco, Sparc in the South of Market area is a great example of what it means to be “high”tech. From the modern abstract art exterior to the clean sparse spacious linear interior, Sparc is perfect for the tech town SF has become. Classy and innovative, if you’re a fan of stylish efficient minimalism to help get you high, Sparc is your spot!

NOTES High-tech modern style, clean, efficient, helpful, friendly, well stocked.

STATS PRICE: $35 - $70 x 8ths LOCATION: Soooo SOMA LICENSE: Recreational/Medical DELIVERY: Yes

RATING: 1 Puff: Really Good www.sparcsf.org

39

•

•

THE NEW SMOKER

APOTHECARIUM - Castro BLOOM ROOM 2029 Market St. SF, Ca.

471 Jessie St. SF, Ca.

NOTES

NOTES

Vintage apothecary vibe with a modern twist, helpful knowledgeable staff, a bit small but cozy, excellent additional services, great selection, central location.

STATS

Intimate, friendly, knowledgeable, good selection, tucked down in an alley, good for what ails you.

PRICE: $40 - $65 x 8ths

PRICE: $30-$60 x 8ths

LOCATION: Lower Upper Market

LOCATION: Central Studio City

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

LICENSE: Recreational/Medical

DELIVERY: Yes

DELIVERY: No

• RATING: 2 Puffs: Excellent

STATS

•

RATING: A Spark: Good To Go www.bloomroomsf.com

•

www.apothecarium.com

Image credit: APOTHECARIUM www.apothecarium.com

40

THE NEW SMOKER

It's A Kind of Magic A selection of Magical ways to enjoy the spirit side of Sweet Sinsemilla.

1.

1. Crystal Pipes: Available in various semi precious stones. Quartz, Fluorite, Jasper, Amethyst, Labradorite and more - Elevate Jane $59.00 - $69.00 2. Golden Girls Pipe: A luxe line of ceramic pipes. 22k gold hand-painted accents. - Miwak Junior $140.00 - $160.00

2.

3. Aurora Bong: Iridescence and magnetism displayed within a multipurpose vase /bong. A bong to be displayed with pride.

- My Bud Vase $89.00 4. Haute Smokes Fumette: Elegant extensions for the modern smoker. Gold and silver joint holders, available set with diamonds or semi precious stones.

- Elevate Jane $65.00 - $295.00

3.

5. Illustriously Illustrated Book: This beautiful book brings to life the hidden world of mysterious mystical faeries who protect each cannabis strain. From Blue Dream to White Russian. Written by SJ Gray. Illustrated by Valentina Brostean.

- Green Flower Faeries $25.00 including shipping 6. Regenbogen Ashtray: Designed by Fundamental Berlin. Heavy lead-crystal treated with an iridescent film to create an interplay of colors. Tetra $80.00 6. Vintage Wizard Roach Clip: Faerie Jane showcases the finest jewelry and vintage smoking accessories. - Faerie Jane $68.00 5.

4.

7.

6.

42

THE NEW SMOKER

Dispensing Wisdom An Activist's Duty is Never Done

by SOREN GRAY

I

first heard of Steve DeAngelo like most people, from the first cable TV reality show "Weed Wars" about daily life in his dispensary Harborside.

It wasn't the best example of a great reality TV show, but it did give some insight in to the peaks and pressures, the "highs" and lows if you will, of what it was like to run a dispensary in the much simpler time of 2010.

It only lasted a few seasons, but it made a major mark by bringing modern marijuana to the masses and showing cannabis as a real business was viable entertainment.

works devoted to the sub- where Mr. DeAngelo is ject. Thanks to Mr. DeAn- but another big player in gelo. the booming industry he helped define and create.

In fact we can pretty much thank Mr. DeAngelo for His has now expanded the existence of modern his Harborside empire medical marijuana dispen- into multiple dispensary saries as they are today. locations around the Bay Area, as well as HarborHis tireless activism since side Farms where they the 70s fighting along side grow much of what they fellow cannabis luminary sell in their shops, plus sell Jack Herer and others, has wholesale to other cannahelped shaped the canna- bis businesses. bis industry as it is today.

The Harborside dispensaIn the 80s and 90s he ries have become models helped organized the bills for what a modern dispenthat made medical mari- sary can and should be.* juana legal in California, They adjust to each new then he set up one of the regulation and change first cannabis dispensaries that comes down the pike, in the country: Harbor- while trying to stay innoside. vative and ahead of the curve.

Fast forward to 2019

Now, there are entire netImage credits:: Harborside Photographer Jamie Soja 43

Steve DeAngelo's little empire may even be growing in more conventionally corporate ways with recent talks of expansion and rumors of certain mergers and/or acquisitions in the works. But he carries his activist conscientiousness with him and that informs everything he does and how his businesses will move forward.

We sat down with Mr. DeAngelo at his office in Oakland, California and had an in depth hour and a half conversation, only some of which we could fit here. *** Edited for clarity & length.

TNS = The New Smoker SD = Steve DeAngelo

*See our review of Harborside in this issue

THE NEW SMOKER

TNS: Let’s start at the be- up walking back to my ginning. What was it like parents' house. And on the first time you got high? my way home, through a park that I always walked SD: The first time that I through; I never really noconsumed cannabis was a ticed much on those walks transformational experi- through the park. This day ence for me. I had a fairly was different. I started nopositive attitude towards ticing all of these things cannabis at this time. I'm that I had just never noa young teenager in Wash- ticed before. The sound of ington, D.C. from a civil my feet as they crunched rights family, and I'd been on the leaves. The smell going to anti-war demon- of those leaves wafting up strations. This was the to my nose. Looking up to Vietnam War. the trees and seeing the sunlight coming through TNS: What year is that? the leaves. Feeling that sunlight on the back of my SD: We're in 1970, 1971. neck and feeling it start And I see cannabis being raising sweat, and hearsmoked at the demonstra- ing the gurgling of a creek tions, so that's a positive in the background. Seeassociation for me. Some ing my shadow projected of the rock & roll bands onto the path, and having that I like are smoking a moment of understandcannabis, but I had nev- ing-- a really profound er really had the chance moment of understanding to try it until I'm in 7th myself as being part of this grade. I'd just gone to this web of life. Looking backnew school and I'm hang- wards, I understand it as ing out, and one of my my first genuine spiritual classmates, a girl, asked experience. My spiritual me if I want to come to a path has been nature-diMexican tea party after rected ever since. At the school.

TNS: Is that code?

SD: Yeah. In those days, all of the weed that we saw was Mexican. So Mexican tea party-- I got that code and happily agreed. We smoked some cannabis at her house and I didn't really notice anything immediately, even though I was kind of looking for it, right? So I was a bit disappointed, and ended

“And I had a really profound moment of understanding myself as being part of this web of life.”

time, all I knew was that something really intense had happened to me, that this plant was incredibly groovy. I was a precocious kid. I liked to study things, and so I wanted to learn about cannabis. And there

was actually times when I was skipping school to go hitchhike out to the University of Maryland and sneak into their libraries there, and go to the old card catalogs to find what little material was available in those days, in the early 1970s.

SD: That was the mission. I was like, "All right.

I'm not going to be happy without cannabis. I'm not going to give it up. I won't be a criminal."

TNS: That it shouldn't be illegal...

SD: It was a prerequisite TNS: Botany books, or--? for my own personal happiness in life. I thought we SD: Botany books, old would get the job done in history books. A lot of two or three years, and I old, old magazine articles. would be on to other chalI found the 1898 East In- lenges. The reality is that dia Commission report on this has taken, thus far, my cannabis that had been entire lifetime, and we're done. The 1921 Canal far from finished yet.

Zone Report on cannabis.

The 1944 LaGuardia Re- TNS: Does it seem like port. All of this material when you were imagintaught me that cannabis ing that it was going to be had been made illegal for done back then, did you the most horrible of rea- imagine it at this kind of sons. It was always about level? the people who were using the plant. It was about SD: Yes. I always imagfinding a way to control ined a fully developed, brown people and black mainstream cannabis inpeople and hippies and dustry. A cannabis indusweirdos and artists; people try that would see cannawho live on the margins bis products placed even of the mainstream. And more mainstream than it is that pissed me off. It really today. Within my lifetime, we will see mainstream pissed me off. mass-channel sales outlet stores, delivery services, TNS: That lit the fire...

Internet platforms.

SD: I knew that for me, really, to be happy in life, TNS: What do you feel cannabis needed to be a the federal path to full lepart of that life. And I was galization to be? The statenot willing to live the rest by-state is there, but how of my life as a criminal does that federal change under laws that were com- happen? pletely unjustified.

SD: The reason that the TNS: So that began the ac- cannabis movement became successful is because tivism?

44

THE NEW SMOKER

we began attacking at the underlying stereotypes. It was a long process, not just of years, but of decades of talking to the American people and explaining to them, no, cannabis is not an addictive, dangerous, harmful substance like Meth, even though it's been presented to you that way. It actually is a natural healing substance.

And so the trajectory of the movement was that in the 1970s, we made a tremendous amount of progress. But all of that progress was based on the idea of arguing for cannabis as an individual right, and saying, "Look. It's no more harmful than alcohol, and so we should have the right to use it." And that only gets you so far, right? We passed about 14 decriminalization bills in the 1970s, and then Ron45

ald Reagan was elected.

And he came along, and he said, "Individual right doesn't matter. It's bad for society. It's a bad plant. It does bad things. It's going to hurt productivity. It's going to harm the education of your children. It's going to slow down your careers. It's going to make us less competitive. It's unhealthy. It's addictive.

Your brain is going to fry, just like this egg on the griddle."

TNS: Yeah, that's what I grew up with in the 80s.

SD: That's what you grew up in. Completely and totally inaccurate. Not based on science. The basic argument that it was bad for society trumped the individual rights argument. And so what were we going to do to counter that? What

we did was tell the truth about cannabis. That it's an industrial raw material that can make 25,000 different kinds of products that we need.

TNS: Yeah, for hemp products.

laying the framework for medical cannabis for a number of years, traveling around the country, telling people about it, showing them the stories of patients. But Dennis was this brave man in absolutely the right place at the right time. When the AIDS crisis hit he was right in the middle of it.

He just did what you naturally do, right? You give to your friends. You help your friends. Then people started noticing that the people who were getting cannabis were living longer and having a higher quality of life. So that was the trajectory of it.

SD: Anything you make out of a tree or oil or cotton, you can make out of cannabis. And you can make it in a much more Eco-friendly way, and in a less expensive way. You can get four times the amount of biomass out of an acre of hemp in a season as you can out of planting trees that take years to grow. Educating people about the medical TNS: What was it like in the trenches? What was benefits of cannabis.

Jack Herer like?

Then Dennis Peron came along and took di- SD: The trenches are brurect action, we had been tal, man. You got hurt in

THE NEW SMOKER

trenches.

TNS: In what way? The danger factors? The risks you were always taking...?

SD: The risks. I mean, in the beginning, I started

“ You can see the pictures of my spine and my ribs that were broken by the nightsticks of those cops in the smoke-ins � out as a street activist in Washington, D.C. One of the main things that I did every year for more than a decade was put on the annual 4th of July White House smoke-in, where we'd gather thousands and thousands of people

and commit an act of civil disobedience by consuming cannabis in public.

And depending on who was president, we would either be met with really hostile cops who didn't really do that much to you, right? But were kind of mean-looking and threatening, right? To having lines of dozens and dozens of park police mounted on these huge horses. I'm not talking little horses.

These are horses that are way bigger than you are.

And these cops who are in armor, okay? And they had these nightsticks that were like polo sticks, four feet long, and they would come through bowling over hippies just like they were playing polo on the polo field. When you got whacked with one of those things, you went to the

hospital. You can see the pictures of my spine and my ribs that were broken by the nightsticks of those cops in the smoke-ins. So the trenches, right? It was a physical battle. We got arrested. We got hauled off to jail. People had their kids taken away. Heads were cracked.

I didn't just want to be a weed dealer. I started creating a variety of different businesses The first was a rock & roll production business. I took the same speakers and sound systems we used for the protests and started doing rock shows and concerts.

SD: Well, I just grew up, right? I started thinking about a family and a career and building my way through the world.

TNS: So you were mostly an east coast activist.

TNS: And where were TNS: How many years did you at the time? you do that for...?

SD: That's Washington, SD: I did that from 1974 D.C. into the early '80s. About the better part of a decade.. TNS: When did you end up coming out here?

TNS: The early '80s. How did things change after SD: I didn't come out here that? until 2001.

SD: Mostly east coast. My next thing after rock and

Image credit: Harborside Oakland Exterior, image provided by Harborside

46

THE NEW SMOKER

roll was a company called Ecolution, which lasted the better part of a decade.

We made industrial hemp goods. Blue jeans, hats, accessories, out of hemp that we sourced in Romania and Hungary. So I was spending a lot of time going to eastern Europe just after the fall of communism. It was a very exciting time to be there.

In 1998 I was the lead organizer and fundraiser for Initiative 59, which was Washington, D.C.'s medical cannabis initiative. It was sort of a supercharged version of Prop.

215. We passed that initiative with 69% of the vote.

We carried every single precinct in the city. But we were unable to implement the law, because in

family home, uproot my aged mother and move us all out to California.

The intention was to set up nonprofit, community-oriented cannabis dispensaries. Prop. 215 was passed in '98, but there was no local licensing or state licensing of dispen-

nabis retailing. To prove that this activity could and would bring benefits to a community rather than harm. So that was the mission.

and safe and consuming cannabis and helping other people around the world be free. It is absolutely unacceptable to me if we have a big profit-making industry that's TNS: Are there current making billions of dollars battles for cannabis rights and fortunes for people. that you're doing right Cannabis prohibition around the world is largely a creation of U.S. government policy and pressure.

What we've seen is that as we've been successful in diminishing the impact of that U.S.-driven prohibition by passing so many state reform measures, other countries around the world are reforming their laws.

TNS: Right. And then you get Portugal, you get Uruguay.

SD: Before U.S. made them stop, it was part of doctors' kits. They had a system where, if you had an addiction problem, that you weren't arrested.

You were put into medical healthcare instead.

“We will not rest until the last cannabis prisoner walks free.�

Washington, D.C., being the U.S. Congress vetoed that measure. That struck me as a remarkably poor reward for 25-plus years of activism.

And I got elected representatives coming in and invalidating an election that we won with 69% of the vote. It didn't seem like there was any real possibility of achieving change.

I had been active in California. I'd been a supporter of medical cannabis organizations. I decided to sell my company, sell the 47

saries until 2005 in the city of Oakland. Oakland became the first city anywhere to license cannabis dispensaries. We won one of those first six cannabis licenses that were issued to dispensaries anywhere in the United States.

TNS: And that started Harborside?

SD: Yes. The vision from the beginning was to create a gold standard of can-

now?

TNS: Treatment. Not SD: You can take a look prison. at my book, The Cannabis Manifesto, and the SD: Treatment. Then very last line of that book the U.S. forced them to makes a promise, okay? I change their laws and now and people like me, who they've gone extreme. have dedicated our lives Someday we can do anto this cause, will not stop, other interview on the and we will not rest until history of cannabis in the the last cannabis prisoner U.K., because actually the walks free. It is absolutely U.K. played a really, realunacceptable to me that ly, critical role in spreadwe have people in Califor- ing cannabis around the nia who are comfortable world. And it's a super in-

Image credit: Car park Entrance to Harborside Oakland , Photographer SJ Gray

THE NEW SMOKER

TNS: What are the negative things that came out TNS: Sounds intriguing. of Weed Wars?

Shifting gears, what do you love about having cre- SD: Well, the negative thing that came out of ated Harborside?

What sort of gives you the Weed Wars is it was probmost satisfaction about it? ably the main reason we were targeted by the federSD: There's two main al government for civil forsources of satisfaction that feiture, and that required flow out of Harborside for me to spend millions and me. One is that we were millions of dollars-- probsuccessful in changing ably north of five million the laws. We showed the dollars over the course of world a picture of canna- a few years-- and almost bis that was an attractive all of my executive attenand a compelling picture. tion for the organization, Then when Discovery to keep the federal govcame to me in 2010 and ernment from successfully said that they wanted to shutting us down. bring TV cameras into the TNS: So it did put a target on your back. But you were able to push it off? teresting story.

“ The Federal Government is now... trying to tax us out of existence. ”

dispensary and show everything we were doing, almost every single one of my advisers was like, "Steve, you've got to be crazy. Absolutely you cannot do that, because you're going to be busted the next week if you do that." I was like, "Absolutely. There's no way that I can not do this. Because this is the reason that we created Harborside, was to create a model. And we have an opportunity to project that model around the world. I don't care what the risks are. We are not going to decline that opportunity."

SD: I always knew they were going to come after me. I came to this industry not as a businessperson whose goal was making money. I came to it as an activist whose goal was to change the law. So I knew the law very, very well, and I knew the opponent that I was up against.

I knew that they were unalterably, almost religiously, opposed to the idea of cannabis. And that if I was so audacious as to create a gold standard example of cannabis retailing, and then take it the next step and put it on national TV and show it to people, I knew they assuredly were coming after me.

TNS: So you got ready.

SD: We battened down the hatches. We put on our armor. We understood the law. We hired the very best attorneys. We put millions of dollars away in reserve legal funds. And so we were prepared when the battle came.

TNS: Is it still ongoing?

SD: The federal government has been using two major mechanisms to try and drive us out of business. One of them was the civil forfeiture mechanism, which they initiated in 2011, and which they dismissed with prejudice-they basically gave up-- in 2016. The other is, they're trying to tax us out of existence. And this is the IRS, who initiated a case against us in 2009.

I challenged their judgment in that case and it took us until last year to get that case into court.

We had a four-day trial which I think went exceptionally well. I expect to win that case, but we have not received a verdict yet.

TNS: What do you think makes an excellent dispensary?

SD: The basic thing that makes an excellent dispensary is having a close relationship with the clientele that you're serving, understanding what their needs are, and meeting those needs; meeting those

needs more effectively than anybody else. That varies according to what kind of clientele you're serving, right?

One of the things that we're seeing in the world of cannabis now is the development of niches. This is because we're a much bigger community than ever before. Think about master growers, okay?

You hear this term, master grower, all the time. There are thousands of master growers and there's absolutely no standard for it.

People will pitch business plans to you and they'll say, "My guy is really the best grower in the world."

They say that because in their minds it is true, okay? Because we used to live in these isolated, small communities where a grower would be serving 100 or 200 or 300 people, right? And for those people that was the best grower in the world, man. And it was.

So now we’re a much bigger community, and there's more of a basis of comparison, and we're seeing niches. Now we have breeders who specialize in breeding cannabis that's really great for extracts. We have other breeders who specialize in breeding cannabis that's really great for smoking.

Same thing's happening...

CONTINUED ON PAGE 90 48

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AVAILABLE TO BUY ON AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE WWW. STEVEDEANGELO.COM 49

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THE VAPE PEN PROBLEM G

enerally perceived as an environmentally aware group, modern cannabis culture is actually failing in many ways when it comes to sustainability. From non-sustainable growing practices to non-recycled plastic eighth containers. One of the biggest problems on the rise are cannabis vape pens.

There’s nothing like the ease and convenience of cannabis vape pens. They make getting high almost as easy as breathing; as easy as pulling the pen out of your pocket, pulling a couple of hits, and with nothing more than a momentary herbal odor like some hippy kid just passed by, the deed has been done and no one is the wiser.

No more time wasted rolling up joints, or breaking up bud to pack bowls. No more smelling like a Willy Nelson’s tour bus rolled through your dorm room.

Just hit it and quit it!

Better for you, worse for the world

By Clark Greene

Pure, refined, and arguably healthier, these modern marijuana tech wonders have changed the cannabis game for good. But maybe not for the best. Convenience always comes with a price. We sure love our short cuts. Why spend 20 minutes cooking a fresh tasty meal when you can nuke a crappy one and save 15 minutes you desperately need to zone out on social media! Humans are innovative-ly lazy by nature. We invent stuff to save us effort and time.

Sadly, it seems with many human inventions, what may make our lives easier usually makes the planet’s life harder. And vape pens are quickly becoming a new problem for the planet.

We've seen a recent analogous example synonymous with waste created for haste: the Keurig coffee single serving pods.

Also made to simplify ingesting a popular drug, in this case caffeine, Keurig

has created almost entirely non-recyclable wasteful single-use plastic pods that end up in landfills by the billions each year. All because people can’t be bothered to make their home brew with a couple of extra steps. And with other companies jumping on the coffee pod craze, the problem is only getting worse.

Vape pens are the Keurig pods of the legal weed world. They’re even beginning to become the preferred method of consumption for many cannabis consumers, competing equally with cannabis flower for space on the shelves of every dispensary. As the industry booms, so do the number of vape pens produced.. and so do the piles of waste.

These days, almost any marijuana grower can manufacture cannabis oil.

And then it’s only a few overseas orders away from cheap cartridge companies in China eager to create

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a whole vape pen line to brand and sell. Not only is there waste produced in making the pen components, there’s also very little quality control for said cheap components.

This ends up producing a guesstimated fail rate of 5%-10% of many pens produced. These failed pens in turn get sent back to the producer, where they are generally thrown away instead of being reused and recycled because it’s not “cost effective” and considered too difficult to recover the cannabis oil.

Fail rates aside, each manufactured piece still gets thrown away eventually: the plastic/metal/ceramic cartridges; the plastic or metal battery casings; and the most problematic piece of them all, the lithium ion batteries. These batteries, like every battery, should be carefully disposed of correctly and never put in regular garbage dumps. But instead they’re getting thrown out 52

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like yesterday’s news back essarily over-design their • Quality control to catch when newspapers were packaging only adding to bad pens before they hit still a thing. the mountains of garbage. the market and reduce fail rates.

The most wasteful vape So what can we do? No pens are the “disposable” one wants to give up too • Have expiration dates ones. They sound amaz- much convenience. I know for the oil and battery life ing and easy, like throw- I don’t. I love a good vape to reduce fail rates. ing out a cigarette when pen. But there are ways you’re done. But it’s more we can reduce, reuse, and • Reduce/simplify packlike throwing away a recycle. Here are some sus- aging to reduce waste. phone for a new one every tainable suggestions the time you pay your month- cannabis industry could • Make cartridges easier ly bill. Not only that, but begin to incorporate: to refill if one so chooses. the battery tends to run Vape pen producers sell reout way before the oil • Make the pen compo- fillable cartridges and bulk does, and you end up hav- nents out of more biode- oils to reduce waste. ing to throw the WHOLE gradable materials. Hemp thing away: precious left- papers and hemp plastics • Individually, we can over cannabis oil, the little come to mind. all help reduce vape pen non-rechargeable lithium waste by going back to babattery and all.

• Set up recycling pro- sics when ever possible: grams at every dispensa- joints and pipe and bongs Wrapping up all of these ry teaming up with vape are actually the friendliest varieties of vape pen are pen producers. Many dis- for the planet. Barely any all the layers of outer pack- pensaries have already be- waste when consumed aging each of these differ- gun recycling programs. It (other than smoke). ent pens come in. Many should be required and imcompanies tend to unnec- plemented everywhere).

Herbal vaporizers are a healthy happy medium.

Even refillable extract vape pens are more earth conscious. Less parts to throw away. Though concentrates themselves are creating other issues of their own*.

The sooner the cannabis industry can get ahead of the vape pen problem, and start to implement basic sustainable practices of reduce, recycle, and reuse… the better it will be for the future of the canna-biz, and for the future of the world.

\

*For more on concentrates read “To Vape or Not To Vape, What Was the Question?” in issue 3 of The New Smoker magazine Here

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DELIVERING THE GOODS

W

by JOHN G. FLOWERHEAD

hen it’s time to stock up, I’ll usually head out to my Cheers of weed dispensaries, Cornerstone in Eagle Rock - the crown jewel of all LA dispensaries - because it’s always great: the people, the presentation, the product. What’s not so great is driving around this city at the wrong time of day, which makes the delivery option a welcomed one.

These days, you can get some top-shelf California flower, or anything else under the sun, brought to your doorstep via a website on your trusty hand-held or laptop device.

Among one of the largest companies EAZE -which reports 500,000 deliveries since Jan 1 2018 legalizationthere are hundreds of delivery companies statewide. I tried out just four of them so far:

HERB

board box that looked more like it GRASSDOOR was from a creative Etsy merchant HERB is one of LA’s cannabis de- then a weed shop - complete with a I noticed a billboard for GrassDoor Thank You note. Nice touch! livery pioneers. on Venice Bl and thought I’d see how they do it. Turns out this is the Canndescent describes it’s Connect A perk of this company is being able place to go if you want weed - no to instant chat via their webpage 407: “Opens your mind allowing name weed - like, right now. but you can also call if you prefer. new perspectives and possibilities The online menu is fairly limited The budtenders know their inven- to flow into conversations with and generic, which is surprising tory well & make great recommen- friends and family.” in this new era of branding. There dations. I picked a couple different were three choices of flower in And then: grams on the spectrum of the triedthree different categories - Indica, &-true Canndescent and an eighth Hybrid, Sativa. Banana Strawberry I went out for drinks with my pal, of some THC Design XJ-13. sounded tasty enuff. I also chose a The order arrived at my front Casey and we laughed our asses off. Tangie Sativa PAX Pod vape cardoor within a reasonable 30 mintridge and a Blue Dream preroll. utes, packaged in a branded card55

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The website allowed delivery tracking online, and an astounding 12 minutes later, I was notified that I should step out to meet the driver.

Here's where it took a turn. The driver pulled up in a murdered out Sedan and the transaction was like an ‘ol fashioned drug deal thru the passenger side window. I was surprised how all-around “nostalgic” this experience was, but not in a good way. From the drop off to the shitty 90’s graffiti font that just said “Strawberry Banana” on the plastic container. Mystery weed. Not to mention super dry mystery weed at that. Didn’t trust it. Not great.

recommended Gelato from their house grown, Fade Co., and a jar of Canndescent’s sun-grown brand called Good. Fragrance for days.

BOVEDA humidity packs into the container. Three nites later I took the Banana Strawberry for a spin and ended up getting WAY into constructing an IKEA Malm for my Fiancé.

EAZE

noisseur to the newbie. There are daily flash sale type discounts on different products, too. My choices were a Caliva hybrid, the label of the Humbolt Farms looked cool so 15 minutes later, the same guy that I threw that in the cart, and the Ishelped me online, rang my doorbell land mini prerolls, too. Love those and handed me a branded ThePot- mini joints. tery pouch. (I always wanted a weed butler.) It was quick and easy Even though the driver showed up and everything weed delivery can pretty quick, like GrassDoor, I reand should be. ceived a text to come outside and meet the driver, another curbside delivery which, let’s face it, is toAnd then: tally unnecessary now that this serHung out at Scott’s place to check vice exists today. If any of the adout the 5.1 surround sound mix of verts told me I’d be leaning into a the Beatles White Album. I heard beat up Hatchback with Jack in the And then: every note. Perfection all around.

Box wrappers littering the seats and floor and an open glove box brimI ended up sticking one of those ming with open mail, I’d have just

You’ve probably noticed that Eaze is in town. The aggressive push to become your delivery service of choice is definitely working for them. At an intimate intro party the company hosted in the spring, we all THE POTTERY placed orders from our phones and delivery was almost instant. For the Luckily, we can experience the sake of this experiment though, I beauty of The Pottery LA store- wanted to see how it all rolled out front right from home by way of a for an average order. nice site with a 3-D virtual tour and a well-chosen menu for delivery.

Being a sort of UberEats of cannaThe person I connected with on in- bis, the menu is relatively small but stant chat was friendly and knew well-curated, and seems to appeal their product well. I settled on a to everyone from the weed con-

driven myself to Cornerstone.

And then: Shared a mini with my girl and watched Tales From The Tour Bus (highly recommend).

Conclusion: Cannabis delivery is not just a great alternative to leaving the comfort of home but it can also be fun and convenient if it’s done right. Sometimes, though, it’s worth going out of your way, and nothing beats finding that neighborhood place where everyone knows your name.

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Mimi and Ulrich

BY CAROLINE RYDER PART 1.

THE VOID

A

gloomy cliff overlooked an abyss whose swirling mists hinted at untold horrors. There, standing on the precipice between life and damnation, was Mimi Bright, GG Allin blasting in her headphones. Mimi smelled like patchouli and leather and her hair was dark and greasy. A terrible person afflicted by all manner of personality disorders and addictions, when Mimi said hello, all certainty disintegrated. Her kiss was bitter as peyote, and her presence always signified a shuddering descent into the underworld. Mimi wasn’t for everyone.

Image credit: Elza Burkart @elzaburkart on Instagram

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S

omeone, something, appeared behind her.

Ulrich. Stern. Teutonic. Eyes glowing with insatiable hunger. He stroked Mimi’s cheek with a pointed nail and whispered “Jump!”

Mimi turned down the music.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear a word you said.” Ulrich, not fond of repeating himself, growled, “JUMP!” Mimi peered into the churning aethyrs, the bottomless nothing.

“You jump.” Ulrich rose up into the air, levitating before her, his cloak spread like the wings of a bat. “Run towards the fear, woman!” Mimi folded her arms. “No.” This left Ulrich with no choice.

With a swift jab of his heel, he sent Mimi and her insolence tumbling into the freezing fog.

HOLLYWOOD

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imi woke from her nightmare with a scream. She sat bolt upright on the couch, her hair matted at the roots with black wire wool ends that expanded in all directions except the one intended by gravity. Her black Cleopatra eye paint was smudged from hours of contact between pillow and face.

On the TV, the landing screen of a horror DVD flickered. A movie starring Ulrich, the vampire from her nightmare, blood dripping from his fangs.

Sophie, Mimi’s sister, turned the lights on and asked Mimi if she was alright. She was used to the screaming nightmares by now, which she blamed on the movies Mimi watched at night, something fiercely disputed by Mimi, who claimed horror was calming.

Before they could pursue the discussion further, Sophie’s husband Steve appeared in the doorway in his pajamas. He surveyed the 59

room. Piles of black clothes scattered about the floor. Ray-Bans on the coffee table. Overflowing ashtray. “I wish you’d clean up, Mimi,” he sighed.

Mimi ignored him, focusing instead on the demonic entity sitting inside her open suitcase on the floor. It was Quinoa, Steve’s old cat, who had peed on her favorite Christian Death shirt three days ago. “Back off, asshole,” said Mimi, shooing Quinoa off her case. Steve called his beloved kitty over. “Come here, princess,” he crooned. “Let’s go sleepies with papa on the pillow.” He took her back to bed.

“You can’t leave your belongings on the floor and expect Quinoa not to pee on them,” Sophie said.

Mimi nodded although she knew that Quinoa was merely using urine to communicate the obvious. That she had long outstayed her welcome. On the TV screen, Ulrich’s bloody grimace, covered in blood.

Sophie wished her sister would at least try and confront her issues, and had spent countless hours talking about her in therapy. Mimi’s unruly behavior had always felt dangerous, tinged with foreshadowings of future sadness, something Mimi had always seemed happy to embrace as part of her wounded, gladiatorial persona. Notoriously prone to recklessness, she was once capable of consuming vast amounts of tequila while still putting the world to rights with breakneck grandiloquence, thanks to the regularly-filled Adderall prescription that once kept her conversation sharp, if her judgment shaky. Even as a teenager, her desire to test her limits, to be knocked over, pulverized by a force greater than herself, had been evident and when it came to life choices, she had always preferred to carefully maneuver herself into positions of thrilling surrender at every turn, searching for miracles through brushes with danger. It wasn’t until the death

of their father a few years ago that the conversation had dulled, the search for miracles had ceased as the depression finally set in, with Mimi fully committed herself to the end-phase of a spectacular downward spiral whose cyclonic centrifugal force seemed to inevitably flatten all and any who dared venture close to it.

“Mimi, did you even open that book I gave you?” asked Sophie.

On the coffee table, a book called “Inner Peace”, covered with black nail polish. “I am at peace,” Mimi shrugged. “I’m dead inside.” “OK, no more ‘dead inside’” announced Sophie. “And no more fucked up movies in my house—tomorrow the TV’s going in the garage!”

Before Mimi had a chance to express her lack of enthusiasm for the idea, a scream echoed down the hall. Steve burst into the room, cradling the lifeless body of Quinoa.

“She’s dead! Poisoned by Mimi’s bad vibes!”

Quinoa was twenty three years old, geriatric for a cat, but Steve seemed sure it was Mimi’s fault nonetheless. He turned to Sophie, trembling, as he described the strange, angry look on Quinoa’s face, seconds before she keeled over. “I don’t think she could take it any more…being around this!” he said, flashing a hateful glance at Mimi. He handed the deflated fur balloon to Sophie, and begged her to dispose of Quinoa, unable to look upon her corpse.

Did I really kill Quinoa with bad vibes, Mimi wondered as Sophie gently placed Quinoa’s body on the coffee table, covering it with a Trader Joe’s brown bag like a bell jar. “I’ll lay her to rest,” Mimi declared, feeling a little twinge of guilt. “Somewhere pretty. It’s the least I can do…”

THE NEXT DAY

A

huge, black 1960s Cadillac funeral hearse rolled over the crest of a hill.

In the window, an arrangement of fake flowers read MIMI. People on the street stopped and stared as it passed; a young mother covered her baby son’s eyes as the driver’s window rolled down to reveal the driver. Black sunglasses, black hair, black heart—Mimi, next to her on the passenger seat, a Trader Joe’s bag containing a dead cat.

The hearse cruised past a kid’s playground where some teenagers hung out by the merry-go-round, huffing nitrous oxide. A girl wearing a spiky leather jacket and a “Miley Cyrus Is Dead” t-shirt handed the can to her friend, a slender Goth who sucked hard on the canister as they watched the hearse roll by.

Mimi drove the hearse into a strip mall and parked in front of a pet store called ‘Pawsitive Pets’, Mimi’s workplace of the last four days. Mimi stepped out of the driver’s seat, holding the bag, wearing a black sweatshirt that said “NOT FUNNY”. A boy gawked at her.

“Is that a taxi?” he asked. “Yes,” said Mimi, “for dead people.” It bothered her when the boy started crying, so she hurried into the pet store, and into the back office where she closed the blinds and sat down at her desk. She set the bag containing the cat next to her battered laptop, whose keyboard lacked various letters.

Mimi’s colleague Estelle poked her head around the door, talking in that high, little girl voice of hers. “Hey. Elvira. Your car’s scaring the customers.” Estelle walked over to the blinds and yanked them open, flooding the room with sunlight. “You look like the fucking Babadook. Where do you get those outfits, anyway?

The morgue?” Estelle noticed the bag. “What’s in there?” she asked.

“Quinoa,” said Mimi. “Quit bringing your weird stinky salads in here, how many times have I

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told you, no food in the OH MY FUCK!” Estelle recoiled at the sight of Quinoa’s body, legs sticking straight in the air now that rigor mortis had set in. “You Blair Witch freak! What is this, some kind of sacrificial totem?” Mimi frowned. “I told you it’s Quinoa.

My brother-in-law’s cat. I couldn’t leave her in the car. She’ll decompose.”

While glad to be asked to go away, Mimi understood that she would probably not have a job to come back to afterwards. So she drove around Hollywood for a while, slightly more depressed than usual, contemplating the question that had plagued her for some time. Where am I going? She veered onto a familiar street and parked, blocking the driveway of a clapboard bungalow. She walked onto the porch, the door mat saying GO AWAY. She pulled a key out of her pocket, unlocked the front door and stepped inside.

Black metal music rumbled from a speaker as mall Goth interns milled around, packing copies of “Scream” magazine into envelopes. One of the interns noticed her; Avril from Azusa, with a huge koi fish tattoo’d on her neck.

“Excuse me, who are you?” “I’m Mimi, I have a key.” “Waaaait.

Are you...Mimi, the ex?” Mimi ignored the question and slouched towards a door marked EDITOR IN CHIEF. In the office, a brooding magazine publisher, Byron Bates, leaned on the corner of his desk, reading a furled copy of “No One Belongs Here More Than You. Stories by Miranda July.” Dark and mysterious, his black hair was slicked into a Nick Cave pompadour and he carried his furrowed brow well.

As Mimi walked in, he set down his book and frowned. “Wow. Shit. Hi.” Mimi set the key on the desk, casually. “Can I bum one of these?” she asked, helping herself to a cigarette from a pack on arm of

the couch. She lit it up, noticing a framed movie poster on the wall. Ulrich the vampire, standing on the edge of a cliff next to a demonic bride in a white mini wedding dress, a red “X” painted on her chest. The movie was called “Memoir of an Ice Widow”, the words “A Victor Dutoit Film” in huge letters at the bottom. It looked better in the bedroom, Mimi thought.

“So, where are you staying now?”

Byron asked. “Still at my sister’s,” said Mimi. “Drove the cat to an early grave. It’s on ice in my vehicle.” Byron ran his fingers through his hair. “Trippy. Listen, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is kind of a bad time. Our cover interview pulled out at the last minute…”

Avril poked her candy floss pink head around the door, holding the phone. “It’s the printer,” she said, adding that there was a funeral car blocking the driveway, and should she get it towed? Byron told her “It’s alright,” and took the phone from Avril. “Condolences for the cat, Mimi” he said. Then he smiled and left the room.

Mimi stubbed out her cigarette and flicked her cigarette at the poster of Ulrich. It hit him square in the face.

SERGEI’S FAMOUS 24 HOUR PAWN SHOP Mimi walked into the dark, cluttered space holding a box of her belongings. Sergei’s pawn shop had been gathering dust since before the Internet. All manner of objects were for sale here—a sex swing. A blow up doll. Pliers.

Dusty oxygen tanks. An oil drum.

Sergei’s head popped up from behind the counter. He wore Coke bottle glasses and a tuft of white hair sprouted from his otherwise bald head. His breath smelled of pizza and garlic bread. “Mimi!

You want Palo Santo oil? I got 400 gallons in back.”

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61

M

imi pulled her beat up PC laptop out of the box, and Sergei inspected it as he might a diseased animal.

“Why you no drive Uber, make money like normal people?” he asked. Sergei worried about this strange, sad girl.

He wished things were easier for her. “I give you thirty,” he said, inspecting the underside of the laptop In the box, an award trophy rested atop a pile of old letters. Mimi offered it to him. “My God! Why you pawn this? No, no, no. Mimi, I cannot. Milaya devushka you must keep this. This is your very special award for make very special writing!” Mimi pointed out that she had bills to pay, a cat to bury, and no cash. A trophy was no use to her. Sergei nodded, and threw in another thirty bucks for the trophy.

As he rung her up, Mimi noticed a letter in the box. She picked it up and looked at the address on the back of the envelope. Ulrich Jungenmann, Pascha, Morongo Valley, CA. Forgotten correspondence, from many years ago. Mimi put the letter in her back pocket.

Sergei, handed Mimi three twenty dollar bills and asked, “why you so broke? Is it crack? Opium epidemic? You make my heart breaking.

If I have talent like you, I be someone. Someone great, like Putin!

Get some therapy. Or buy some self-help book, for your head!”

THE STREETS OF L.A.

T

he hearse cruised along the city streets, passing by the homeless in their tents. Mimi was at the wheel, depressed. She twiddled the dial on the radio and a classical song came on, Claude Debussy’s Clair de

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Lune. What the fuck. She changed the station. Clair de Lune on the next station, too. She switched off the radio, pissed, and stopped at a traffic light. That fucking song again! The song has been following her for years, but she had no idea how, or why.

On the dashboard, the letter. Ulrich Jungenmann, Pascha, Morongo Valley, CA. The light turned to green and the car behind her honked. She looked at the bag on the passenger seat and pulled onto the 10 Freeway, heading east, toward the desert. In her mind, disappearing into the desert to bury a cat was at worst an adventure, at best a shortcut to the place she was already headed…hell.

10 FREEWAY, EAST

M

imi drove in the slow lane and talked to the cat in the bag.

“You know, you and I have a lot in common, Quinoa. We absorb other peoples’ shit. That’s why we’re assholes. Shit in, shit out. My sister’s right. We have to be more positive. Manifest some law of attraction shit.”

The hearse had a top speed of fifty.

Outside A Gas Station Somewhere on the 10 A flimsy canopy swayed over a windswept, insalubrious freeway gas station, the kind where you don’t use the bathroom. Standing at the pump, Mimi fished in her pocket for the money Sergei gave her for her computer. Almost immediately, the wind whipped the three twenty dollar bills out of her hands and carried them away. Perfect.

INSIDE A GAS STATION SOME-

WHERE ON THE 10

I

nside the gas station, an attendant with pencil thin eyebrows and dark lip liner observed Mimi curiously as she counted out quarters and dollar bills.

“Five, ten, fifteen, sixteen -- ugh, I hate math.” “C’mon lady, hurry up,” said the trucker waiting in line behind her.

Mimi slapped her money on the counter. “Fourteen dollars and forty eight cents on pump fifteen.”

Afterwards, she used the horrible bathroom. On the door, someone had written “question everything”. Underneath it, Mimi wrote, in black lipstick, “why?”

MORONGO VALLEY, POPULATION 1003

M

imi drove up a long winding desert highway, winding northward, flickering and undulating like a snake’s tongue, its sides bound by serrated rocky outcrops. She passed by a series of dilapidated mobile homes on the side of the highway. An abandoned motel, its swimming pool empty. Mimi turned off the highway and onto a bumpy dirt road.

She made a wrong turn into some deep sand, hearing loud, desperate revs as the wheels of her vehicle got stuck. Shit.

Mimi got out of her hearse and looked around. The cottony quiet, the rock faces in varying shades of nipple. A tall jack rabbit watched her with bulging eyeballs…or maybe I just think it’s watching me, Mimi mused. Maybe, it’s just going about its business. What the hell does he care that I’m here?

She remembered a time when this place was an instant fix, a dose of the good stuff. Fiery sunsets, all that jazz. From honeymoon came boredom, then resentment, then regret. Joshuas reaching for

Image credit: Elza Burkart @elzaburkart on Instagram

62

heaven, the smell of creosote after the rain, lying on her back and star-gazing; none of that shit worked anymore. Now the desert was like a lover whose face and scent are suddenly repellent.

Before her, a seemingly abandoned desert house. Mimi peered closer. A sign outside the house read “I WILL SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE”. In the front yard, dozens of mock gravestones and white crosses, like a makeshift party graveyard from several Halloweens ago. She observed the names on the gravestones.

Rozz Williams. GG Allin. Michael Hutchence. Mimi smiled.

“Quinoa, these are your people. I think we found your spot.”

She pulled a shovel from the back of the hearse and began to dig, enjoying the crunch of metal on earth as thoughts floated in an out of her mind. Out here, noise is the biggest fish in a small pond.

A silence that conceals, in a place where nothing can be hid. Do not mistake the silence for peace.

By feigning muteness, the desert learns all your secrets. If you’re not careful, she’ll throw them in your face.

Once upon a time, she would have written down her thoughts. But now, there was no point.

A CREOSOTE BUSH

M

imi rested on her shovel. In front of her a small mound, under which Quinoa’s body now lay, amid the faux graves, her burial mound decorated with little pebbles, arranged in a heart shape. Mimi cleared her throat and made a little speech. “Quinoa.

You have shuffled off this mortal coil and now you must journey to that huge litter box in the sky.

May the lords of the underworld rain catnip upon thy soul. I guess 63

I’ll see you around.”

PASCHA

“Hey!”

M

Mimi spun around to face a woman with hostile eyes and an exceptional body. She was wearing a flimsy floral dress and holding a hammer. She looked Mimi up and down. “Black hair. Black clothes. Black car. You’re one of his people, aren’t ya,” she sneered.

“Whose people?” said Mimi, concerned about that hammer. “Ulrich. Ulrich Jungenmann. Don’t play dumb, I can spot you guys a mile off.” Mimi pointed to the freshly dug mound. ”I was merely burying a cat.”

The woman stepped closer. “Listen, Sabrina. Ulrich don’t like cats, and he don’t like stalkers.”

She tapped her hammer menacingly in her palm. For a second, the thought crossed Mimi’s mind that perhaps these weren’t fake graves after all. Mimi pulled the letter from her pocket and showed it to the woman, indignant. “Listen, fuckface. I’m not stalking Ulrich. He stalked me.”

MINUTES LATER

C

hains clanked as the desert dweller, now in her truck, heaved the hearse out of the sand. She yelled out the window to Mimi.

“Hallelujah!” Mimi punched her fist in the air in solidarity.

“Amen!” “No, that’s my name!

I’m Hallelujah Jones!” Hallelujah jumped out of the truck, and unchained the hearse. “So, how do I get there, to Ulrich’s?” Mimi asked. “Go to the water tower, turn left. Road bends at Jupiter Lane. You’ll see a donkey, tied up by the red barn. Do not fuck with him. Another half mile and you’ll see Ulrich’s place. You can’t miss it.”

imi got out of the hearse and stood in front of Pascha, Ulrich’s house, her black hair and pale skin dusted with sand. She stared at the magnificent, angular home, a cross between the Emerald City and the Sydney Opera House, a structure made from wood, glass and steel with a roof that jutted in all directions, like Johnny Rotten’s hair.

She noticed a flickering NEON SIGN with an arrow over the word “PASCHA”. She walked up to the door and knocked. No answer. She knocked again. A face appeared in a small window in the door, obscured by the shadow.

“Hi, I’m here to see Ulrich, I have a letter.” The front door swung open. In the doorway, holding a shot gun, stood a fine-featured, super model-esque punk rock vision. A black mini dress, shredded tights and combat boots. Smudged black eyeliner, lush mouth and peroxide blonde hair, he was like Marc Bolan, Kurt Cobain and Anna Nicole Smith reincarnated as the same person. A flowery apron over his outfit, a dusting of flour on his cheek. “What letter?”

INSIDE PASCHA

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imi followed him into in a vast white living room, empty except for two large white bean bags and a hanging fire pit. “Welcome to our little desert Shangri-La,” said the man, who’s name was Frankie. “You came at the exact perfect time. I just baked cookies.”

Mimi noticed three paper-maché sculptures of dogs, about four feet high, all with Ulrich’s smiling face. On the wall, a strange, looping projection of Ulrich’s face alternately scowled and smiled.

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This place is dope, thought Mimi, who had been expecting black walls, torture chambers and flame torches illuminating stone walls.

“Mimi!” As if on cue, a voice boomed behind her and Mimi turned to face Ulrich. He was wearing a white turban and white linen pants with a Nehru collar shirt. Ulrich stared at her as one would a long-lost child that is your greatest disappointment. “You’re late,” he growled.

To be continued...

"Mimi and Ulrich" is adapted from a feature script of the same name, and was inspired by Caroline Ryders friendship with actor Udo Kier whom she met while living in the desert.

CAROLINE RYDER

A journalist, author and screenwriter based in Los Angeles. She has written for Dazed, T magazine, Vulture, and the LA Times. She wrote "Dirty Rocker Boys", the memoir of 90s Sunset Strip hair metal icon Bobbie Brown, and "Let There Be GWAR", the story of shock rock band GWAR. www.carolineryder.com

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Plenty for everybody

By Kaisha-Dyan McMillan

Why the cannabis industry owes it to itself to prioritize diversity.

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got my first job in the 1990s as gardener’s assistant for UC Berkeley, a gig I scored through the local youth employment program. The role mostly required me to pick up garbage all over campus and was pretty demanding physically, but I needed the money for college so I didn’t complain. One of a handful of female employees on staff at that time, I was always placed in one-on-one shifts with men. I walked into storage sheds with and sat in campus vehicles next to adult male coworkers who didn’t feel the need to hide their wandering eyes, trying to ignore the comments about my beauty and my body from the

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dudes who were supposed to be training me and supervising my work. I was 17 years old.

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t was my entry into a professional life that never stopped viewing me as “other”: one of a few women, the only black woman, or the sole black person in the company, on the team, working the tradeshow booth, and at the work function. I worked in publishing, digital advertising, retail merchandising and consumer product development, industries where white men typically ran the show as CEOs, VPs and Directors. White women held some roles in management and the rest of us were mainly in support positions; these were environments in which I rarely saw black people promoted into leadership.

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nd being both black and female, I was always dodging micro-aggressions: being accused of “yelling” at a white female coworker when I used my normal speaking voice to challenge her unprofessionalism towards me; a male department head asking me how I was able to afford a recent vacation; a boss calling me beautiful during a team dinner, then later referencing an episode of “Key & Peele” and pointedly asking me, the only black person there, if I watched the show; a white colleague joking, “How’s your black friend?” in reference to a mutual professional contact. These were companies that hired women and people of color without actually doing any work to make them feel included, heard, or even just welcome.

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I

left my previous career to become a writer in the cannabis space two years ago partly because I was desperate for the clean slate, a blank canvas of an industry in which things could be different from the start. And the moment I dove in I met founders, investors, entrepreneurs and leaders who were not only of color but middle-aged, gender non-conforming, queer, disabled – it was a breath of fresh air. And yet…

sity in the workplace5: companies with gender diversity are 15% more likely to experience financial returns above their national industry peers, while those with ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to outperform. But prioritizing diversity and inclusion is not only better for the bottom line - it’s just the right thing to do.

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• The number of women in executive positions dropped by 9% in just two years as more senior-level male executives left traditional companies for the cannabis industry.4

annabis is rising from the ashes of nearly a century of prohibition and estimated to generate $25 billion in revenue by 20256, but its history is rooted in activism and we mustn’t lose sight of that. Regulations have increased the barriers of entry for women and minorities, the very people who have suffered most thanks to our nation’s longstanding gender and racial pay gaps. In the most convoluted of ironies, those convicted of marijuana-related crimes are barred in some markets from participating in the legal market.

• Only 5% of senior roles in the cannabis industry are held by female minorities.

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• Reportedly1 81% of cannabis business owners are white.

• It’s estimated that 1% of dispensaries in the US are owned by black people; in Colorado 2, roughly 9 out of 10 dispensary owners are white.3

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his persists despite the proven financial benefits of diver-

1.https://mjbizdaily.com/chart-19-cannabis-businesses-owned-founded-racial-minorities/ 2. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ article/amandachicagolewis/americaswhite-only-weed-boom#.mvGQ9NpVe 3. https://mjbizdaily.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/10/Women-and-Minorities-Report.pdf 4. https://mjbizdaily.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/10/Women-and-Minorities-Report.pdf

t a time when our country’s leadership disregards the sexual assault of women while encouraging law enforcement policies like stop and frisk, our industry has the ability to go another way. So cannabis industry, let’s really change the world by doing better.

5. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ ruchikatulshyan/2015/01/30/racially-diverse-companies-outperform-industry-norms-by-30/#c66e45911326 6. https://www.newcannabisventures. com/u-s-legal-cannabis-market-projected-to-triple-by-2025-to-25-billion/

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HOW TO PICK

YOUR NEXT VAPE FROM

A DISPENSARY Online shopping is quick and easy but there are moments when we find ourselves in physical shops.

Some of us get excited by the immediate access we have with the products that we have to choose from. This is certainly true when it comes to seeing vaporizers at our local dispensaries.

by Alex Mirzaian

vapes are high-quality and they may leave you with a device that is mediocre at vaping. If you are thinking about purchasing a vaporizer device from your local dispensary, here is a guide that will give you a better idea of what you should be looking for.

harmful effects that come with smoking marijuana using traditional methods such as pipes, blunts, and joints. When you use a lighter to burn the marijuana in these forms, the smoke that is inhaled is dangerous and can cause health problems. Vaporizers, on the other hand, What’s a Vaporizer for? avoid this by heating up your substances until the However, it is important A vaporizer is a device active ingredients within to understand that not all that is used to avoid the the herbs become a vapor,

which is safer to inhale.

Do You Want to Vape Dry Herbs or Wax? When you go to a dispensary and you see vaporizers, you are going to be able to choose from a few types of devices. Some vaporize dry herbs and others vaporize solid waxes or oils.

These devices will come in two different forms.

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DRY HERB VAPORIZER

enough. Your dab pen should come with come a dab tool. Use this to scrape the wax from the container and dab it onto the coil. Close the mouthpiece and heat up your wax. Slowly inhale from the mouthpiece.

OIL PENS

A dry herb vaporizer is a device that is built to use dry herbs only. This device uses an internal heating component and a battery to vaporize your cannabis.

It then turns into vapor that is inhaled through your mouthpiece. Weed vaporizers come in multiple sizes Just like a wax vaporizer, oil pens heat up the oil in and shapes. Some are portable while others are desk- the cartridge which is usually concentrate. Unlike any other vapes, oil pens use a cartridge which is easily top and stationary. refilled with light consistent waxy oil. This can make it more discreet and easy when you’re out in public. It How it Works: usually is mixed with a sweet flavor which gives off a Using a dry herb vaporizer efficiently is an art of its sweet aroma. If you want to vape very discreetly, oil own. Being able to know what they need to do, and pens are the best way to go. when, makes the biggest differences.

How it Works: First, you want to turn your weed vape pen on by clicking the power button. Grind your herbs really Unlike other vapes, there is not much to do with oil well. Using a dry herb grinder can really help. Load up pens. As long as you have the right battery, simply the chamber about ¼ to half way. Pack it down tight. screw on the chamber to the battery. Batteries on vape Then set your temperature to the desired setting and pens are usually 510 thread. Click the battery five times close the mouthpiece. Wait until it has reached its final to turn it on. Click the button to heat the cartridge and slowly take a draw. temperature then slowly inhale.

DAB PEN A dab pen is a device that is designed to heat up wax concentrates. These devices feature much more powerful heating components in the form of coils to heat up your waxes to the point of vaporization. Wax vaporizers come in different forms because the size can change but the atomizer is usually different. There are many different wax atomizer coils and each one usually has its own pros and cons.

How it Works: Just like a dry herb vape pen, you want to make sure the temperature is at an optimal level. Too low and it won’t vaporize well. Too high of a heat and you will waste some of it. If it doesn’t come with a temperature selection option, the default heat should be good 69

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Features of a Good Vape No matter whether you’re looking for a dab pen or a dry herb vape, here are some of the features that you should be looking for when you’re searching for a vaporizer in a dispensary or smoke shop.

Dual Use If you’re someone who enjoys both dry herbs as well as wax, you are going to want to look for a vaporizer that is dual use. This means that your vaporizer will have the features necessary to allow you to use

feature that is absolutely necessary if you are a vape or marijuana enthusiast.

Precision temperature controls will allow you to experience the way that your marijuana reacts at different temperatures throughout the vaping session. With different temperatures comes different flavors and textures. Traditional vapes will not have any temperature control options. Controlling your temperature is also good when you want to be Temperature Control able to use different herbs.

Temperature control is a Marijuana will vaporize both of these materials.

Some vaporizers will have a chamber that can handle both substances. However, it is best that you purchase a vaporizer that has the different components necessary to vape either choice. Not only will it save money by cutting the need for two vapes into one but it will also save space. Make sure to pick a dual use vape that has most of the following features.

at a different temperature than lavender or kanna, maca root and much more.

There are more herbs to vape than just cannabis.

Discreet Smoking marijuana still carries somewhat of a stigma and this is especially true if you plan on using your new vape pen in public. When choosing a vaporizer for your marijuana sessions, you will want to choose one that is discreet. This way you can vape comfortably without having to worry about

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people watching you. Try to purchase a vaporizer that is extremely small or one that does not even look like a vaporizer to have discreet vaping sessions. There are also ways to make sure you’re being as low key as possible.

Size Size plays a big role in discreetness and portability as well as whether or not you are going to get a high-quality session out of your vaporizer. Smaller, compact vaporizers are great for carrying around and for keeping secret.

These will have some of the features of larger vapes but you may have to sacrifice some features with the compact size. Larger vaporizer will often have more features but may be bulkier and harder to discreetly carry around with you. Size also matters when it comes to durability and it is important to consider whether or not a

vape will break when you a big battery life. Most vapurchase it. porizer batteries will last hours to days depending Power on the frequency of your Power is important when vaporizing. If you can, also it comes to vaping since it try to get a vape that has is the power that will be interchangeable batteries helping to vaporize your or pass through charging cannabis. If you are look- capabilities. Interchangeing for a dry herb vape, able batteries will give you try to go for temperatures the ability to charge batterwithin 140°F or 60°C to ies beforehand and simply 428°F or 220°C. If you are replace the current batterlooking for a dab pen, try ies when they die during a to aim for temperatures at vape session. Pass through around 350°F or 176°C charging, for those who to 500°F or 260°C. Keep do not have a vape with in mind that with some interchangeable batteries, of the dab pen vaporizers, will give you the ability you may not be given a to continue vaping while specific temperature but your vaporizer is charging. rather voltages. Make sure These are all desirable batto do your research before tery features. you purchase a vaporizer that only uses voltage lev- 510 Thread Connection els so you know what you Vape pens will typically are purchasing. have interchangeable parts that will help you to cusBattery Life tomize your device. If you Unless you are a vape en- are leaning towards the thusiast who vapes fre- dry herb pen vaporizers or quently, you are going to the dab pens, you are gowant a vaporizer that has ing to want to search for

pens that have 510 thread connections. Oil pens almost always come in 510 threading since it is almost universal. These connections will ensure that your vaporizer is compatible with a bunch of different pieces that work on other vape pens. Without a 510 thread connection, you lose the ability to customize your vape pen unless you can find custom pieces or pieces that luckily work with other vapes.

It’s important that you are careful with which vape you choose when shopping at a dispensary. Using this short guide, you will now know what you are looking for and what type of features you should expect your vape to have. Keep in mind that not all dispensaries will carry high-quality vapes so if you are unable to find the vape that you want at a dispensary, wait until you can find a dispensary that does carry your chosen device.

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Image credits: Sour Diesel Artwork designed by Califari

SOUR DIESEL

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An Gas Powered Strain Review

by Dyson Bronti

here are few strains that stand the test of time. Most get bred out into specialized hybrids of some sort.

But some weed through all the tinkering because they are simply bad ass and don't need change to be better at getting you high. Sour Diesel is one of those classic strains.

our Diesel is an invigorating sativa-dominant strain named after its pungent, diesel-like smell. This fast-acting strain delivers energizing, dreamy cerebral effects that have pushed Sour Diesel to its legendary status. Stress, pain, and depression fade away in long-lasting relief that makes Sour Diesel a top choice among medical patients. This strain took root in the early 90's, and it is believed to have descended from Chemdawg 91 and Super Skunk.

(Go to leafly.com for a more in depth review and to find this strain nearest you. State laws apply)

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Dispensing Vibes

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Music To Chill By...

Curated by Barby Garcia

Barby is the host of Vagabond Radio on KRCL, UT on Tuesday nights (8pm-10:30). She also has worked for Ugly Magazine as a music journalist interviewing bands on & off camera.

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any dispensaries these days are in desperate need of a remix. Their background music tends to be either clichĂŠd reggae, hip-hop, or worse... spa music. Or they have no music at all. So we've asked radio DJ and music aficionado Barby Garcia to give us a diverse selection of albums made for chilling. This way we may present an alternative to those basic background playlists at most shops and inspire them to step up their game.

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o sit back, relax, and enjoy all of these albums on our Spotify playlist you can find here*, as well as all our other curated playlists, while you read the rest of this magazine. Puff puff listen...

*Link to TNS "Music To Chill By": https://spoti.fi/2QXati7

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Leon Bridges // Good Thing (May 2018; Columbia Records) Leon Bridges’ 2018 release of “Good Thing” has been the treat of the year. Giving us the nostalgic sounds of the old Rhythm & Blues we all love and seem to never get enough of. This modern day version of classic soul is a reminder of how timeless this music truly is. Leon Bridges, 28, effortlessly takes us on a journey of heartbreak and all things complicated by love. The Texas singer-guitarist updates us on sweet and innocent elements of a really good R&B album.

Find Leon Bridges on The New Smoker Spotify Playlist

The Luminañas // Shadow People (2018; Because Music) The French duo’s album “Shadow People” is a reflection of all the things I love about French music from the 60’s. The track “Dimanche” was the first I heard from this album. It was such a banger that it lead me to the explore the other 9 songs. The psych-rock vibe with both French and English vocals is something out of a Serge Gainsbourg pop-erotic dream. While listening to the track “The Gift” I was so hypnotized by the resemblance of New Order; a non-mistakable 80’s guitar riff that will stop any true new wave fan in there tracks. I quickly realized it was a collaboration with Peter Hook, which brought the album to a “I’m not worthy” status. The album is full of guest surprises, like Antone Newcomb from The Brian Jones Towns Massacre, who also produced the album. It also features vocals from French actress and musician Emmanuelle Seigner.

Find The Luminañas on The New Smoker Spotify Playlist

Rhye // Blood (February 2018; Loma Vista Recordings) If you’re familiar with the artist Milosh, then you’re probably aware that the sexy sweet voice belongs to his side project Rhye. The softrock like album “Blood” is beautiful from start to finish. It’s a soft tempo of sweetness and delicate rhythms. It translates emotions you feel when you hear a really beautiful melody that tugs at your heartstrings. This album is surely a mood setter and quite the romantic bedroom soundtrack. Even if the album is clearly a breakup anthem if you listen to the emotional lyrics carefully. It’s still a very lusty album and a sight for sore ears nonetheless.

Find Rhye on The New Smoker Spotify Playlist

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88 Palms // Love Safari EP (May 2018, Bandcamp ) The Brooklyn based band released their Love Safari EP that consist of 6 tracks that will have you craving an ocean beach drive while you’re in search for the nearest disco ball. The sultry vocals and lyrics of Ria Bouttier and the master musician Morgan Wiley of Midnight Magic will take you and that much needed chill music escape.

A vacation for the ears, an awakening to your hips and everything sexy. It’s disco meets beach party. As it reads on their Facebook page - Cocaine and Piña Coladas. Sex on the Beaches. Sunsets in Slow Motion. Miami with the Top Down. A Secret Beach in Mexico. A Disco Love Safari. It doesn’t get better than that. I can’t wait to hear more from 88 Palms.

Find 88 Palms on The New Smoker Spotify Playlist

Agar Agar // The Dog And The Future (October, 2018; Bandcamp) Agar Agar are a part of a new great wave of music coming out of France.. Clara Cappagli and Armand Buthleel created the electro-pop duo while they were both in art school in Paris. The album “The dog and the future” is the perfect mix of catchy synth and hypnotic sounds that include the sultry vocals of Clara. As much as I enjoyed this album, I do have to say that I favor the song “You’re high” that was released as an EP in 2017. But as a result of that song I sit here a big fan of the band and their unique sounds. The album is all in English, as Clara explained in an interview that they tried it in French and it just didn’t work.

Find Agar Agar on The New Smoker Spotify Playlist

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WONDER PIPES - Unicorn Pipe

"Reviews" 5 best of the best of the BestEST

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n case you’ve missed out, maybe stuck in some sort of smoked out haze under a rock under your house under your head, we here at The New Smoker post daily "reviews" on our feature website of the current cannabis cultural trends and premium products that are out there right now. Anything that brings class to grass. We “review” them on our website by taking what is best and worst about them, and making it fun fodder for the maniacal mental machine-guns of our... um, imaginations...? Sure, why not.

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n any event, we present these to you, our loyal TNS readers, these high-light features as more short-stories than reviews, more automatic writing than observations, more impressions than true experiences, to help you navigate and sail through the green grass waves of the modern cannabis world.

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ere are five of our featured favorites:

Mythical Highs...

Brenda loves unicorns. She hunts them in fact. Not to kill, but to ride and too comb and to dance with among the Ruby Trees of Rainbow Valley. This is what she calls her backyard after smoking a few bowls from her Standing Unicorn Pipe. The ruby trees are of course in reference to the tool shed, the several spare tires leaning against the fence and the broken chaise lounge. Brenda wears her Unicornin’ shirt every time she gets high with her Unicorn Pipe. It’s just a little something she made using a glue gun and several fistfuls of sequins. Think of it as ritualistic garb.

The most sacred part of this ritual is of course the grand unveiling of the aforementioned “Standing Unicorn Pipe.” She keeps it hanging from her dream catcher and uses her unicorn hoof gloves to raise the pipe high above her head like Simba in the Lion King. She then makes what she believes to be unicorn noises and gallops from her bedroom to the living room, through the dining room and also into the conservatory where she says hello to Col. Mustard and Miss Peacock.

Finally Brenda is out on the sun deck where she smokes from her beautiful turquoise and gold pipe and looks for what she calls “Uni’s.” The neighbors are understanding and her family is forgiving.

The Unicorn life is not for everyone.

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ZOMA CANNABIS

DANIEL NELSON’S PORCELAIN BONGS

Stylin’ & Profilin’…

Flower on Flower…

ZOMA is not some new modern art museum they’re building in DTLA that looks like a frustrated architect wadded up a yet another failed blueprint design and threw the crumpled paper to the contractor and said, “Screw it, build that.”

What is old is new again. This includes the eye catching floral wallpaper of your childhood home, circa 1987. Daniel Nelson’s Porcelain bongs are a real throwback of floral design and one’s first impression is, how high must one be to feel nostalgic about floral print? The only true way to answer that question is to pack a bowl and maybe a bag and travel down the colorful byways of your subconscious with real floral flare.

No, ZOMA is a boutique L.A based cannabis company that seems to go that extra design mile in true Angeleno fashion; a cut above. Starting with the sleek sophisticated design of its premium packaging, to the classy canna-contents inside of said packaging.

Exceeding the standards for pot cultivation, ZOMA Cannabis is an overachiever in its own right. With THC & CBD, all free to be you and me! These premium pot products should make their premium pot-parents beam with premium pot-pride.

The artistic you desires more you say? Very well, perhaps take a few rips from your gladiola covered bong and paint a bowl of fruit to get into the whole flower theme. Maybe wear a red beret and a neck-kerchief to boot. Crocs and culottes are optional of course. The weed is not.

Images from IG @dcnporcelain

www.thenewsmoker.com

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www.greenflowerfaeries.com

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MELLOWS EDIBLES

BAE - Vape Pens

Why Stress When You Can Mellows…?

A BAE Day...

The following “High”kus are edible-inspired:

Noise, clatter, chaos Surrounded on every side Time for your Mellows.

Time is elastic Mellows touch the infinite eternal moment.

Bubble bath is poured

My BAE comes in just for the day. I peep her vape clouds before I see her rollerskate down my driveway. She wears colorful thigh highs with gold dusted stilettos and when she takes a pull of her “Sativa: Pink Punch” she starts singing in falsettos.

She’s getting her glam squad together for a night of dancing and drinks where they toy with young prey and offer only sly winks. It’s ladies night from dusk till dawn so lay down your cards and sing this song. “My BAE’s got the vapers and my Boo’s got the papers. One rolls a J and the other vapes throughout the day…”

[This is where you would cut to a D.J. scratching a dope rhyme on his turntables.]

Images from baevapes.com

with water almost too hot Mellows make magic

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hef Tiff’s Recipes P

By Chef Tiffany Friedman

Personal Chef Tiffany Friedman shares with us a few of her favourite Winter inspired recipes with ...

reparation

1. Combine cilantro, tahini, lemon juice and water in a food processor (or blender); process until very smooth, adding additional room—temperature water by the tablespoon as needed for a smooth sauce.

2. Crudité - Any raw vegetables you like to dip in the tahini.

Carrots, Celery, Green beans, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Snap peas Radishes

Pumpkin Cannelloni

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ngredients

Green Tahini Crudite

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ngredients

• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped • 1/2 bunch of fresh dill picked • 1/2 cup tahini at room temperature • 1/4 cup of lemon juice • 2 tablespoons of water at room temperature, plus more as needed.

• 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley • 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

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• • • • • • • • • • •

1 1/2lb. pumpkin peeled, seeded and large disced.

1 1/2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 1/2 cup of ricotta 1/2 cup of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano 1 1/2 tbsp. finely chopped fresh sage 1 tablespoon of grated nutmeg 1/4 tbsp. salt 1/2 tbsp. of freshly ground pepper 1 package oven- ready lasagna sheets 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter 1jar tomato sauce

D

irections

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. convection roast 2. Place pumpkin, on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper heat.

3. Lightly season with salt and pepper and place in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until tender and mashable.

4. Remove from the oven place in a bowl or food processor and mash or blend until smooth.

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8. Cover tightly with foil. Bake until heated through and pasta is tender, 20 to 25 minutes.

Cook butter and sage leaves in small skillet over medium-high heat until golden-brown. Drizzle over pumpkin cannelloni and serve immediately.

Chef Tiffany Friedman

5. Stir cheeses, chopped sage, salt, pepper, and nutmeg into mashed pumpkin. Set aside.

6. Bring a large pot of water to boil. Cook lasagna sheets until tender, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a plate and drizzle with olive oil to prevent pasta from sticking together. Reserve 1/4 cup pasta water.

7. Liberally brush a medium baking dish with oil. Place a lasagna sheet on a clean work surface.

Add 4 tablespoons pumpkin mixture to center of lasagna, roll into a cannelloni tube, and then transfer to prepared baking dish with pasta sauce on the bottom. Repeat with remaining sheets.

Chef Tiffany is a lifelong student of the culinary arts. Her goal is to always continue to grow and direct her passion toward bringing people joy.

She describes her culinary talent as,“a gift I hope to share with your taste-buds.�

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1974: THE SECRET OF THE GREAT PYRAMID can * nois * seur ( kan’ us sur’ ), n. one competent to render critical judgment on the qualities and merits of Cannabis.

By Frank Lauria

S

ince childhood I had dreamed of visiting The Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt. In the Sixties I had trekked to the Temple of Solomon in Baalbek Lebanon in search of illumination and hash, and came away with a bit of both. Back then I made the trip by bus now I could afford plane tickets and a decent hotel. The Great Pyramid was the focal point of my new novel.

Through the summer in Morocco I took the plot to the point where it moves to Egypt. And I was ready to move with it.

Suddenly The Israeli/Arab War broke out and all flights to Egypt were grounded.

Undaunted we visited with my mom it Italy while waiting out the war. A month or so later the Cairo airport opened. The next day we booked a plane and that night we landed in Cairo.

It was night, and the road to the city was lined with sandbags. I had decided to stay at Shepheard's Hotel, long renowned as the domicile of the early British and Italian explorers who had made so many major discoveries that revealed the art, astronomy, architecture, mathematics, medicine--and magic-- of the great civilization of Ancient Egypt. More advanced 5,000 years ago than Europe in the middle ages.

Of course the original Shepheard's had burned down in 1962 but that didn't mar the romance. When we arrived the windows were blacked out and the building was lined with sandbags. I mentioned this to the desk clerk while checking in to which he replied, "You're in a war zone sir."

'Sir' meaning dummy. The fact that the airport was open didn't mean the fighting had stopped.

For me however, it was all grist for my research mill.

The main perk of being in a war zone is that there are few other tourists crazy enough to visit, which meant we were the only two people going into the Pyramid that morning. The outside of the massive structure is imposing as is the magnificent Sphinx, but inside is a whole other dimension.

One ducks through a small entrance and goes down, not up, at first. Then a right turn, you climb a few feet and emerge. My first sight of the Grand Gallery stopped my heart. There in the center of the Great Pyramid is a perfectly engineered, artistically spectacular, stairway leading to the King's chamber above. I immediately recognized the source of Art Deco. Going slowly up the stairs I noticed the notches cut into the stairs on either side to the

telescoping walls. These notches, our guide explained, were for rods placed as rollers, presumably to bring the Pharaoh's sarcophagus to it's resting place. However no mummy was found in the Great Pyramid. In fact in all the 90 odd lesser pyramids in Egypt no mummy has ever been found. A big crack in the theory that they are giant tombstones. Our guides holding flashlights we headed into the darkness above.

At the first landing to the left, is the Queen's chamber. A fifteen by fifteen room in the center of the great granite structure. Empty and perfect. Going up further you come to the King's Chamber, slightly larger than the lower, and dominated by a granite sarcophagus carved from the same stone as the pyramid. One edge of the sarcophagus has been chipped away by tourists seeking a souvenir.

Otherwise the chamber is another impressive facet of the pyramid's incredible interior. We lingered (no photos allowed) and slowly descended the magical, stairway, finally blinking as we exited into sunlight, as if waking from a dream.

Little did I know of the adventures yet to come.

Image credit: Image of Frank Lauria from Cannoisseur.blogspot.com

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@littlebrittons | www.littlebrittons.com

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 48 - Interview ...with the dispensaries.

We have dispensary models that are geared towards convenience. We have dispensary models that are geared towards budget. We models that are geared towards experience. I think that there is a place and a need for a lot of different brands, a lot of different models. And that was always our mission, so that's why it perfectly blends with that. There's going to be all sorts of different choices that we can't even really imagine right now.

And as you know, my belief is that cannabis can change this world in some profoundly beneficial ways and potentially save us from self-destruction.

So that's what I want to do. Simply.

TNS: This seems like a good note to end on.

Thank you so much for your time today and your activism always.

SD: Perfect. Thank you.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 - UK Clubs ...people tend to be far louder, more belligerent and talkative - all things you don’t want to have in your vicinity when you’re keeping under wraps. Indeed, these clubs have provided an alternative for those who are not necessarily interested in the

drinking culture of the UK, and provided them a social outlet by allowing them to connect with like-minded people rather than sitting at home. Hopefully, the growth of cannabis clubs continues, and shows people that they are nothing to fear.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 16 - 1st Time ...team of ex-Mossad agents.

I

thanked my millennial friend and buzzed myself back into the front smoke shop where I was once again castigated by the Buscemi clone. “Make sure you put that away walking out there!” Then I realized I was holding both the fortune cookie and the eighth of Indica like a pair of Maracas. I frantically stuffed them into my pockets and walked out with my head hung low, even though I could hardly conjure up a person I would feel ashamed to walk out of a pot dispensary in front of.

Old hang-ups die hard…

I

t wasn’t until I was back on the 101 freeway heading north, with no fuzz on my tail that I was able to appreciate the entire process. A paradigm shift was clearly on the horizon and while I wasn’t as hip as I once imagined myself to be I would be a hell of a lot happier when I got home to sample this legal score.

Time to stop looking in the rear view mirror.

90

THE NEW SMOKER

S

o ends another fact & fun filled fully dispensed edition of THE NEW SMOKER magazine.

W

e hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed making it.

We appreciate each and everyone of you for taking the time to

read what we've written. Especially those of you who have made it as far as the end and are reading these words right now. Well done!

W

e would like to thank all of our amazing contributors, writers, design team, photographers, artists, and of course our sponsors,

all without whom this magazine would not be possible.

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tay tuned to your interwebs & get on our mailing list for updates and upcoming news of Issue No.10 of THE NEW SMOKER: “Music�

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If you would like to contact us about anything is this magazine please send all questions, comments, or letters to the editor to: editor@thenewsmoker.com 92