My First Harvest Ball
Written by Isabella DeChard
The Emerald Cup hosts the Harvest Ball in Santa Rosa, California each year. Farmers and cannabis brands from all over the Golden State join to celebrate the bountiful crops and cultivars meticulously cultivated this season.
However, among the handful of other cannabis events I’ve gotten to recently experience, this two-day event felt significant among the others. Throughout the entire Harvest Ball weekend, the collective empathy and perseverance I always recognized about this cannabis community was stronger than ever.
Even though this was my first time at the Harvest Ball and an Emerald Cup occasion in general, I had never felt more welcome or comfortable at a major cannabis event.
Last tolerance break in Paris
Written by Matthew Dean
Ahhhhh…. The T-Break, AKA the tolerance break. No matter what your thoughts - whether you are a cheerleader or chastiser, a willing participant, or in my case, had the T-break foisted upon you, this is not a diatribe on the pros and cons of taking a tolerance break. It is a journey into the unwanted absence of my love, cannabis, in the city of love itself.
I figured, once free of the family, the wedding, and France, I would treat myself to a week in Amsterdam while the family flew to Rome to see the Pope or something. The major issue was making sure Nina had weed: Period, point blank. And she PROMISED that she would. A rare thing for my lovable but sometimes not all that dependable cousin.
To be clear, traveling with my family wasn't going to be a nightmare, it just wasn't the ideal option to be traveling with Mom and Nana. Despite this, I knew that some weed would be just what I needed to ease into the trip, and Nina had a friend in Amsterdam supplying decent weed and hashish.
Ethereal Adventures of Dr. Merl The Astonishing Metaphysician: Metascapades - Diving for Quantum Arcadia
Written By Grant Mitchell
Hear Ye, Hear Ye! You Are Hereby Cordially Invited to Join Us on Our Metascapades in Ethereal Realms: Diving, Hunting, Searching, and Exploring the Mythical Quantum Arcadia.
As the legend goes, in the year 2070, Professor Saxemillian Merlinius von Vaporblaster: Doctor of Science in Dematerialization, or “Dr. Merl,” for simplicity’s sake… is alleged to have achieved the unimaginable.
At 11:11 AM, in the flash of a moment altering the very fabric of the spacetime continuum itself: Dr. Merl exhaled a spark and was granted temporary powers, although unaware of them at first. Gifts like ultra-intelligence, clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis, supernatural deduction, hyperluminal dematerialization, metaphysical chakra harmonization, lucid dreaming, and transmutation were harnessed through the Fluxflower.
Combined these fantastical concepts are dwarfed in comparison to the underlying mystery: Where is the Protostone Flowerflux phenomena drawing its magical energy from?
My Journey Into Cannabis -Part 4: Get Your Grow On
Written By Jason Bird
After getting arrested twice in 2 years over my fondness for The Herb, I was forced to take a timeout and regroup. I spent a year and a half on probation and then got permission to move to Oregon, so I packed up and left the East Coast in the summer of 1996 and headed west.
Best road trip ever!
I witnessed some epic music events that summer on my journey. At the tail end of the adventure and concert psychedelia, I picked up 2 friends and moved almost 3,000 miles to Oregon to begin my adventures in cultivation. I enrolled in a 2 year Horticulture Degree program and began taking classes in the campus greenhouse. After transferring my probation, I was released from active supervision after 3 months.
Not long after that I started growing my first cannabis plants indoors. It was a strain called “The Cough.” It was the original Northern Lights #5 x Haze. What. A. Strain.
My Journey Into Cannabis - Part 2 : Road Trippin’
Written By Jason Bird
It’s a glorious thing when the lights go down and everyone lights up. There’s nothing like the smell and taste of fresh lit fully cured herb. It was around this time that 4:20 became more widely popularized and was adopted as the unofficial stoner holiday.
There were so many good vibes surrounding that Cali adventure in the Bay Area, sitting in Golden Gate Park. On a friend's farm in Santa Cruz. Secret spots in Big Sur and Ben Lohman. All throughout the hills of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity Counties… The Kind Bud revolution was underway.
It still seems surreal to me now, years later, but you have those moments in your life where you transcend everything you know, or thought you knew, about something, and I was certainly having mine with The Kind at that time.
48 Hours in Utah: I Want to Be SedatedPart II - Good Morning Salt Lake City and Donut Falls!
Written By Grant Mitchell
Cruising the train back towards the airport, facing forward, gratitude struck my heart for the whole gift, realizing the value of the ability to travel medically. I jotted a profound note: Impermanence makes me philosophize on how valuable, unique, and special all the fleeting moments are. In a way, we’re all simply passengers on the ride of life and should pause to cherish the preciousness in all our experience snapshots.
48 Hours in Utah: I Want to Be Sedated Part I - Cannabis at the Crossroads
Written By Grant Mitchell
‘Twas a solid 12 years since meeting up with my ol’ buddy, M.W. After a few formalities were exchanged on LinkedIn, we decided that a rendezvous in late July around the proverbial “Crossroads of the West'' was long overdue. Whilst getting my regular items in order, you know, I began to ponder over the new Medical Marijuana laws in Utah. On November 6, 2018, Utah legalized medical marijuana and, nowadays, for holders of a license from some states, reciprocity would honor my Nevada card.
Due to the top-secret nature of M.W. 's history, I can’t go into the details too much about how I know this person - even writing what I did might be too much. But let’s just say, they are the agent with all the information. So, M.W. constructed a grand plan to reconnect the day after I landed, which was perfect for an outing to report on the current state of affairs in at least two cities. It seemed I was set to spend about 48 hours in Utah, licensed by the state to get sedated.