FIG FARMS DOUBLES UP AT SOCAL CANNABIS CUP Fig Farms continued its 2023 run of excellence by winning two out of three flower categories at the High Times SoCal Cannabis Cup. The victories came in the Indica and Hybrid categories. Animal Face won in the hybrid category after winning best indoor flower at the 2022…
FIG FARMS DOUBLES UP AT SOCAL CANNABIS CUP
Fig Farms continued its 2023 run of excellence by winning two out of three flower categories at the High Times SoCal Cannabis Cup.
The victories came in the Indica and Hybrid categories. Animal Face won in the hybrid category after winning best indoor flower at the 2022 Emerald Cup. Blue Face won the Indica category a few months after winning both best indoor flower and best indoor at this year’s Emerald Cup. This is just further validation for the work Keith and Chloe Healy are doing with their team of monster growers in Oakland.
The Blue Face took home two top prizes this year and is absolute rockstar cannabis. Fig Farms describes the aroma as a combination of acetone, tree bark and pickled ginger. The Animal Face that took home the top hybrid is absolute gas and fuel terps. I judged the hybrid category it won. I saved the Animal Face for last to see if anything would top it. Nothing did, but the same could be said for the 20 Emerald Cup flower judges who didn’t see a strain or farm when they picked Blue Face, just the heat in the jar and a number. Regardless of mine being labeled, we came to the same conclusion on Fig’s different flavors.
Animal Face
Fig Farms finds itself among a small group of people who have been holding strong in certain contests for the last few years. It raises the question from others as to whether these contests are even worth it. Do they matter?
“They do for sure. We got offered space in Oakland the next day after we won the Cannabis Cup,” Keith Healy, Fig Farms founder and CEO, told L.A. Weekly.
They were negotiating on an Oakland location and one in Sacramento.
“The day after winning we got offered the Oakland space,” Healy said. “I wouldn’t have been as confident to perform. I wouldn’t have been as confident to pull it off.”
Fig has been selective in the contests it has entered in the years since that win. But after winning The Emerald Cup earlier this year, it returned to the Cannabis Cup for the first time since that 2017 victory that changed everything. Fig was certainly thrilled with the results of its comeback.
“To win two out of three was just mind-blowing and honestly confusing since, like you win the Emerald Cup and High Times, trying to explain to somebody like a stranger that these things aren’t easy,” Healy said emphasizing he doesn’t have the confidence of being some egomaniac.
The catch-22 of that lack of confidence Healy claims is that he only enters his absolute flame. By the time he’s convinced it’s fire, it probably is, as opposed to someone that needs that new hype strain to keep their thing going. So it’s easy to understand why everything they entered this year, in everything, did so well.
Blue Face
We asked Healy which of the accolades the farm has received in recent years meant the most to him.
“I think being on stage with Chloe while she was pregnant at the Emerald Cup win in 2022 was pretty incredible because that was the first time that I’ve been able to share a stage with her,” he replied.
Healy went on to note that another thing that has made each win special was the timing. Just like the 2017 win got him into that new space, these other wins have each meant something in the moment.
“Every single one has come at a time when I needed it,” Healy said. “That kind of time where it’s like the confidence to push forward on the next task, whether that’s building out more space or it’s just the confidence to keep doing what I’m doing.
The High Times win meant a lot to Fig because it was so different from the win at The Emerald Cup. High Times is essentially people’s choice compared to the expert panel The Emerald Cup brings in for judging. We joked with Healy about how many cup kits he bought, he laughed and noted just one to try the other flavors.
Despite their continued dominance, Animal Face and Blue Face need to keep an eye on their shoulders. Fig recently worked with Zeclair and their whole catalog. We got to check out the pheno hunt a few weeks before it was chopped down. Everything was absolute heat and you can expect some crazy Z terps from Fig Farms soon.
ADVOCATES WANT CANNABIS DESCHEDULED NOT RESCHEDULED
Last week’s leaked letter from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommending that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reclassify cannabis from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance under federal law was lacking for advocates who want to see it descheduled.
All of the OG cannabis reformers are weighing in. Congressman Earl Blumenauer has been involved in cannabis reform for 50 years. He founded the Congressional Cannabis Caucus in 2017.
“This is a step in the right direction, but it is not sufficient. I hope it is followed by more significant reforms,” Blumenauer said. “This is long overdue.”
Blumenauer noted he pushed the Biden Administration to deschedule marijuana last December. Later in the spring, he called for more transparency in the wider Controlled Substances Act scheduling process.
NORML, the nation’s oldest marijuana reform organization, noted the DEA said as recently as 2016, cannabis had no current accepted medical use regardless of all the babies with Dravet’s Syndrome that started the CBD explosion making national headlines for years at that point. The DEA will have the final say in all of this; we know how it went the last four times.
NORML’s deputy director and longtime policy ninja, Paul Armentano, weighed in on the letter.
“It will be very interesting to see how DEA responds to this recommendation, given the agency’s historic opposition to any potential change in cannabis’ categorization under federal law,” Armentano said. “Further, for decades, the agency has utilized its own five-factor criteria for assessing cannabis’ placement in the CSA — criteria that as recently as 2016, the agency claimed that cannabis failed to meet. Since the agency has final say over any rescheduling decision, it is safe to say that this process still remains far from over.”
Like Blumenauer, NORML has been calling for cannabis to be removed from the Controlled Substances Act for years. They recommend doing it in a manner that’s similar to liquor and tobacco.
“The goal of any federal cannabis policy reform ought to be to address the existing, untenable chasm between federal marijuana policy and the cannabis laws of the majority of US states,” Armentano said. “Rescheduling the cannabis plant to Schedule III of the US Controlled Substances Act fails to adequately address this conflict, as existing state legalization laws — both adult use and medical — will continue to be in conflict with federal regulations, thereby perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.”
Armentano closed, noting it’s the same level of intellectual dishonesty to categorize cannabis next to anabolic steroids as it is in its current situation on the list next to heroin.
With the US recreational cannabis market worth more than ever, it would seem something is going to have to be done to remedy the situation. Last week, California announced it had taken in just over $5 billion since the legal market kicked off in 2018, New York City’s first shop did $12 million in its first six months, and there are about 50 more data points off the top of my head why states aren’t going to let this fly.
In the end, descheduling is likely. But the road is going to be a bit longer. And you can expect it to be the result of a future Congress and White House taking some kind of mandated action that the DEA won’t have a say in.
Every year there is even cooler stuff available for cannabis consumers on 4/20.
It will be no different in 2023. There is a wide array of new products and strains sure to take our breath away in the coming months. Here are our must-have products for 4/20/23 next week:
Puffco Wizard
Courtesy of Puffco
While the Gandalf-style pipe is nothing new, Starfish Designs was famous for pumping them out back in the day, in the past, glass versions have generally been designed for flower. With Puffco’s new Wizard attachment to complement the Proxy, you’ll now be able to smoke hash Gandalf, too. While it looks cool, some people find that little bit of extra space compared to the stock Proxy attachment rips a little bit smoother. The Wizard is $99.99,
Talking Terps Clothing
Courtesy of Talking Terps
Few artists have been able to get the cannabis scene as excited at the concept of high-end art as Talking Terps. Their knack for limited editions and luxury now sees their products gracing the offices and homes of some of the coolest folks in the cannabis space. Some recent hits include the Terp Fetti sweatpants. They look like one of those delicious vanilla confetti cakes but are super comfy to match. We haven’t tried them out yet, but the new footholders they’re about to drop look pretty sick, too.
Globmops Slurper Cleaner
Globmops are nothing new, the company has long been one of the two main titans of cleaning your quartz after a dab with a lab-grade cotton swab that’s spun a lot tighter than a Q-tip, so you don’t have to worry about it breaking up and leaving behind anything on your quartz banger. But now, Glopmops has a Slurper Cleaner design perfect for Terp Slurpers. They’re kind of a hassle to clean with the standard Globmops so a lot of people would dunk them in iso after every dab; this will make it a bit quicker.
Wizard Trees Seeds
Courtesy of Wizard Trees
Wizard Trees is one of the most celebrated cannabis farms in California in recent years. While they had traditionally been known for making excellent selections in pheno hunts and then producing great flower, they’re now making an even deeper jump into genetics with their first seed drop ever. It was initially timed with the Spannabis festivities. The drop is available at WizardTreesGenetics.com and there are a lot of RS-11 crosses on the list that are easy to get hyped about.
Free Seed Day
With the timing of this year’s 4/20 issue, we’re thrilled to be able to let you know you can get out to Free Seed Day this Saturday, May 15, at Masonic’s on Fairfax. The day is a celebration of all things Los Angeles cannabis genetics. We dove into its three-year evolution with Masonic Smoker last week. As the name entails, there will be plenty of free seeds to go around with bags ready for the first 1,000 people that come out. But even if they run out of the official bags, you can expect to not leave empty-handed if you really love seeds.
Oni Flowers
Courtesy of One
The long-awaited first drop of flowers from the legendary Oni Seed Co hit California dispensary shelves in recent months. So far the flower is holding up, as more people around the state get access. The phenos were selected from a big pheno hunt, when you pop a lot of seeds, of Oni’s storied genetics collection. Two of our favorites so far have been the Zahiti Rainbow and Purple Something, the latter helping fill a bit of the purple void in the marketplace at the moment.
Brothers Broadleaf
Florida-based Brothers Broadleaf has exploded onto the blunt scene over the past couple of years. We were originally put on to them by Adam Ill at Kushstock a few years ago. In the time since it was like watching a snowball roll down the hill with all of their varieties becoming a massive hit. Even the discount Dudz line made up of imperfect leaves is considered among the top of the game. You can use discount code “JimiD15” to get 15% off on Dudz.
Preferred Gardens
As we highlighted in our explanation about what makes mixed-light cannabis awesome earlier this year, Preferred Gardens is among the most respected names in all of cannabis cultivation. This can be said for both indoor and mixed-light greenhouse operations. They’ve now taken the act on to Florida with more states on deck, but fear not, the weed here at home is still heat. It feels like it’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen something competitive with Preferred in that $35 an-eighth price bracket.
L.A. Family Farms
L.A. Family Farms winning The Transbay Challenge
Known for both the quality of their flowers and concentrates, L.A. Family Farms continues to shine locally. The Rainbow Belts rosin the farm won Transbay with was some of our favorite hash of 2022 for sure. In addition to all the great product, L.A. Family Farms’ logo is a common sight at cool events around town, its team in attendance, or sponsoring stuff based in the more authentic wing of the Los Angeles cannabis industry.
Doja Pak Coffin Candy
Doja Pak continues to revolutionize the way Los Angeles looks at Thursday night, as the strain premiers continue to be a massive hit with L.A.’s headiest. Their latest big new strain is a doozie. Coffin Candy is technically (Runtz x (Z x (Gelato 33 x 18 Coffins)). With Doja going all in on supporting the new flavor, we have high school expectations, given their epic run of curating hitters over the last few years.
Runtz Wraps
Already Runtz up your life? No worries gang, now you can Runtz up your blunts, too. Runts’ new line of Dominican leaves for rolling blunts is awesome. First off, you get six in a pack. For most five packs of blunts, I end up tossing one. Since you never have to toss out the loose leaves, it basically works out to two free blunts in every pack. They are also very stretchy compared to most blunts and forgiving.
CURE ACT WOULD OPEN FED JOBS TO FORMER POT SMOKERS
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee moved forward with a bill that would expand federal employment opportunities for people who used cannabis at some point in their lives.
The Cannabis Users’ Restoration of Eligibility Act passed the committee in a 30-14 vote. It would allow federal agencies to consider applicants with a prior history of cannabis use when they are making employment and security clearance decisions.
NORML, the nation’s oldest cannabis reform organization, praised the move by Congress.
“Applicants for federal employment and security clearances should not be unfairly disqualified solely for their past cannabis use,” NORML’s Political Director Morgan Fox said. “While it is disappointing that the committee did not see fit to stop federal agencies from discriminating against those responsible adults and patients who are current consumers of cannabis, this legislation will nonetheless open up new opportunities to millions of Americans, increase the talent pool available to federal employers, and ultimately make our country safer.”
Fox went on to note many agencies are already reducing the impact cannabis use has on their hiring processes.
“The Office of Personnel Management has similarly recommended that all federal agencies limit the window of time during which one’s past cannabis use is considered for denial of employment,” Fox said. “And a growing number of states are taking steps to protect the employment rights of responsible cannabis consumers and increase the opportunities available to them. Congress should do the same, and this overwhelming bipartisan vote today shows that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are moving in the right direction.”
After the FBI loosened its policy on marijuana smokers in the summer of 2021, it famously said that smoking marijuana more than 24 times would disqualify potential candidates. As Marijuana Moment noted at the time, there was no explanation of how the FBI got to that number. Use prior to someone’s 18th birthday would not disqualify them, so you had to have broken the law 24 times as an adult.
The concept of opening the door for more people with a history of cannabis use is nothing new, but a decade ago in the months after Colorado and Washington kicked off our grand legalization experiment, it was a little “too soon” for some lawmakers. Then FBI Director James Comey joked to Congress that the amount of people who smoke weed these days is making the hiring process a bit trickier for the nation’s chief law enforcement agency,
“I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Comey said at the time according to The Wall Street Journal.
While still a senator, Jeff Sessions got mad at Comey claiming his words could be construed as something supportive of cannabis use. Comey clapped back that was certainly not the case, but his hiring reality, and he was determined to not lose his sense of humor regardless of how serious a job it is to run the FBI.
Gallup noted in 2021 nearly half of all Americans have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives. It seems like preventing half the population from getting a government job is absolutely madness. As more and more states move forward with legalization, it will become even more unsustainable to prevent our best and brightest from serving their country in some capacity because they smoked a little bit of cannabis.
Hopefully, the CURE Act will continue on its path through Congress and onto the president’s desk, to give these people a shot at doing whatever they see fit in service to the rest of us.
In a market where truly exceptional cannabis is a rarity, The Ten Co.’s combination of premium quality, remarkable branding and Zushi remains unrivaled.
Our last conversation with The Ten Co. came on the heels of their monumental success in 2021, when they claimed top honors at the inaugural Zalympix event. The competition scene reached new heights after Greenwolf, Los Angeles’ premier heat retailer, stormed out the gates with their top-shelf box contest.
Now, two years later, Zushi has once again emerged victorious. During its initial triumph, some skeptics attributed the win to mere hype. Yet, the myth and allure surrounding Zushi were proven to be well-deserved, evident in the four-hour-long queue that formed at their booth during the recent Zalympix ceremony. However, the mystique surrounding Zushi was even more pronounced two years ago, causing people to fall into various camps of belief. Some staunchly reaffirmed their faith in Zushi after the W, while others criticized the influence of hype. There were also those who may not have personally favored Zushi but acknowledged why it emerged as the winner.
This time, subjectivity was eliminated through blind entries. Zushi had to withstand the scrutiny of over 120 entries just to secure a place in the finals. Once there, it faced fierce competition within the most challenging Zalympix box to date, alongside a plethora of exceptional Z terpenes, as we previously highlighted when reviewing the entries. Undoubtedly, this victory was well-deserved.
We reached out to Staks, the founder of The Ten Co., to inquire if he ever felt concerned about the abundance of exceptional Zkittelz flavors in this year’s competition.
“Absolutely. Z has held the championship title for quite some time now. There were numerous entries that were just as impressive as mine, which was fantastic to witness. It’s about time the industry started emphasizing light green cannabis again,” Staks candidly shared with L.A. Weekly.
Staks acknowledged that the game has significantly evolved since the first Zalympix. He believes that people are actively searching for new and unique offerings that can compete, hence the outstanding quality of this year’s entries. However, until proven otherwise, Zushi remains the reigning king. Staks appreciates the competitive environment within which The Ten Co. operates, considering it beneficial for their business.
Now, the focus is on delivering the hype directly to consumers.
“We are currently directing more attention towards the direct-to-consumer approach,” Staks revealed. “We previously launched but decided to take a step back and now we’re in the process of building up our online delivery capabilities.”
The direct-to-consumer format will enable Zushi to reach consumers as quickly as possible. Given the premium price that people are willing to pay for this product, Staks wants to ensure that the experience is preserved for every individual fortunate enough to acquire one of their bags.
“We have a specified timeframe during which our products can remain on the shelves. If it exceeds this four-week period, or even three weeks, it is promptly removed, making room for a fresh batch. This way, we can maintain stringent quality control,” Staks explained.
While Zushi continues to steal the spotlight, The Ten Co. currently boasts around ten strains in rotation. Additionally, Staks recently cultivated a variety of seeds he acquired from Europe, embarking on a search for the exceptional flavors of his youth, such as Cheese and Sour Diesel. In the coming month, he will undertake a meticulous selection process to identify standout winners worthy of joining their award-winning catalog.
We asked Staks if, when participating in a contest like Zalympix, he meticulously examines every batch or simply puts all his chips down on Zushi.
“I felt compelled to carry on the Zushi legacy for as long as possible. Personally, I believe this strain has so much to offer, and it continues to exceed our expectations,” Staks explained. “We conduct numerous tests with Zushi, and she never fails to impress us. With each batch, we aim for better quality and more pronounced flavors. Our use of live-soil facilities contributes to preserving those unique characteristics. Our plan is to explore different mediums and light spectrums to ascertain what Zushi prefers to express.”
Naturally, we couldn’t overlook the recent Zushi rosin craze. Two-gram jars of their limited release in collaboration with West Coast Alchemy were fetching a staggering $1000 each. This price tag represents the highest ever seen for rosin, yet demand remained strong. The remarkable hype surrounding Zushi flowers seamlessly transferred to their terpene-rich products.
Regarding the price, Staks clarified, “The price point was determined by the market; it had nothing to do with us. The exclusivity and rarity of our collaboration with West Coast Alchemy played a significant role. We never produced these in large quantities; a few batches were exclusively reserved for family and friends.”
Keep a close eye on The Ten Co.’s website for upcoming flower releases and merchandise drops.
We headed north to the redwoods for the latest installment of the original cannabis-friendly music festival, Northern Nights.
The festival’s geography plays a significant role in its place in the history of cannabis progress. The venue, Cook’s Campground, sits in the heart of the Emerald Triangle stretching across the county line separating Mendocino and Humboldt. In addition to all the fine local cannabis, attendees spend their weekend enjoying up-and-coming EDM acts across numerous stages, and floating on the river.
This past weekend we got the chance to sit down with many of Northern Nights’ co-founders as they celebrated the festival’s 10th anniversary, including Andrew Blap, Peter Huson, Matty “Worldfamous” Roberts and Emily Wilson.
The festival has long been associated with legal cannabis sales after hosting the state’s first at music festival in the wake of Prop 64’s implementation. Following Northern Nights’ lead, major festivals around the country jumped on board with the idea, including EDC Las Vegas and Dirtybird Campout. In past years, those sales were confined to specific areas — last year even featuring two stageside dispensaries and a main cannabis activation area. This year the entire cannabis footprint was integrated into the heart of the festival, a short walk from the mainstage under the shade of the region’s massive trees.
We asked the Northern Nights team what it was like pushing that further integration this year.
“I think the big thing in working in two counties is first and foremost the context of where you are putting things,” Huson told L.A. Weekly. “When it comes to the history of cannabis events here, it’s the local jurisdiction, you have to start there. Mendocino passed their ordinance and we could bring a couple of dispensaries into Mendo.”
Courtesy of @y.s.a
But there was a lot of separation between those dispensaries.
“And ultimately, I think the premise of boundaries, aka fencing, has been a big thing in terms of limiting the number of sales,” Huson said of the caged-in areas. “I think the different places that we were putting the dispensaries if you wanted to get them, for example, all the way out to the river, it’s a lot of overhead.”
A big part for the team was making sure those local sponsors from the cannabis industry felt right. Huson notes there have been a few folks in the space doing these events for a while, but the brands taking part fund the progress to prove what can be done.
Courtesy of @anthonysvendsen
Matty Roberts added pushing boundaries is in line with the general ethos of the festival over the years.
“We’re booking cutting-edge shit, which makes our lineups very eclectic. We pick all this cool music because we’re kind of in a sweet spot. We’re not a big event. We don’t have a ton of money behind us, so we have to get scrappy and find a lot of new stuff.”
Roberts laughed, noting people look at the old posters from over the decade and act like the performers back in the day were bigger, but they didn’t actually know who a lot of those now big-name acts were when Northern Nights booked them.
“Now you look back, our lineup from eight years ago looks like a $2 million lineup,” Roberts said.
Roberts spoke of coming from the Midwest where a stem on your shirt would land you in jail. He’s thrilled to help facilitate a good time for a younger generation that never has to know those horrors.
Emily Wilson went on to speak that filling the void that Reggae on The River left in the hills is an honor.
“But there is a lot of responsibility as well. That means, we have to do the due diligence in finding new and up-and-coming music, working with local cannabis businesses and producers who have been working in the community a long time and supporting it through these transitions.”
@y.s.a
Wilson argued sometimes that means bringing in both the little guys and the big guys. She said that is a responsibility you can see they take seriously across the festival with not just cannabis but local wineries and breweries, too.
“Every single facet that we can, and where we’re able, we want to support local and present the best that Northern California has to offer. We’ve got Humboldt Bay Oysters fresh from the docks,” Wilson said.
One of the things Wilson said she enjoys the most is those people that have stuck with them since year one. Through all the trials and tribulations of being a small independent festival and the learning curve that came with it, they kept coming back, and that meant a lot to her.
The actual cannabis section itself was really well done. As in years past, it provided a shady reprieve from the Northern California sun that hit 94 degrees Saturday in what felt like 1,000% humidity. One of my favorite parts of the festival was the morning sound bath in the cannabis zone. You would see people tiptoeing around all the people laid out, to get to the ATM for their weed money. Everyone was really respectful, but even then, the visual was hilarious.
This year’s switch to delivery was a good move. While it took five minutes longer, it allowed for the entire Northern Nights cannabis experience to be more streamlined than had there been fences everywhere to facilitate a temporary retail site.
The actual weed people were buying was no slouch. Some cannabis activations over the past couple of years have gotten a bit midsy. Sometimes you’d see these brands that can’t even get dispensary shelf space taking a lead at festivals — gross. Thankfully, Northern Nights did not have this problem. I would argue that The Lantz from Ridgeline Farms is the nicest weed for the price I’ve ever seen at any festival. Eighths were only $35! I bought seven over the weekend.
Hopefully, other festivals trying to get into the cannabis game will take note of how well Northern Nights did it.
Purple weed was already a thing when Ken Estes got his hands on Grand Daddy Purple in Mendocino County and brought it back to his grows in the bay area, but that journey south really put the winds in its sails.
We ran into Estes during our recent travels to cover Spannabis and the wider Barcelona club scene. He noted he had spent much of the last decade dealing with his health — this is what originally forced him to take his foot off the gas back in the mid-2010s. But his impact to this day is undeniable. We’d catch back up in California to talk purple a few weeks later.
While not as prominent in the era of 40 new exotic flavors a month, GDP, as Grand Daddy Purple would be known to many, still dots menus up and down California. Prior to the rise of dessert weeds following Cookies hitting the scene, GDP was where people went for a combination of flavor and impact. Even Cookies’ most famous sibling Cherry Pie was the Durban F1 used to make cookies paired to GDP.
But before all that came to be, GDP was the last stop for those looking for high-impact cannabis that wasn’t OG Kush. Some would also argue the purple was a bit more couchlock-heavy than the OG Kush of the time. And while Ken Estes certainly didn’t invent purple weed, he changed the demand level, all while living through the dark ages of cannabis.
And he was loud. Few pushed the limits like Estes. During an event in 2010, he opened a dispensary 20 yards from the steps of Oakland city hall. When he wasn’t executing his business plans, he was hitting city council meetings, eventually opening one of America’s first chains of dispensaries with his Grand Daddy Purple Collective shops in NorCal. His being so “out there” during that era led to frustrations for both his peers and city officials, but folks certainly had a knack for following Ken into town.
Estes’s path to cannabis would start after a motorcycle accident at age 18 in the 1970s paralyzed him from the neck down. Prior to the accident, Estes had been playing soccer at an elite level in California. Pele, in town with the New York Cosmos at the time, gave him a call of support from the hospital’s lobby so he wouldn’t have to fight the crowd there to support Estes in the days following his injury.
Six months into his rehabilitation, he experienced cannabis for the first time with a group of Vietnam veterans who were in the same care facility. This began his lifelong connection to medical cannabis.
“I was a young kid. I was 18. My first personal experience with weed was pretty strong. But I went back to my room and I slept all night. It was the first night in six months I slept all night,” Estes told L.A. Weekly.
He recalls how common the idea of marijuana being medicine was. All the nurses and doctors knew. And he certainly knew it was medicine from his first experience. After that first joint, Estes would end up having eyes on the scene for the next 45 years.
“I’m shocked and surprised where this movement went,” Estes said. “I thought we were just in California getting it for patients. When I started, it was the gay world that came from fighting for gay rights to we have people dying in San Francisco of AIDS. Why can’t they use marijuana? And then Brownie Mary got arrested and that changed the game.”
Mary Jane Rathbun was a San Francisco General Hospital volunteer. She eventually became famous for baking hundreds of brownies a day as the AIDS epidemic hit San Francisco hard. Between 1981 and 1992, she was arrested three times for her famous brownies, but her activism helped push Prop 215 across the finish line. Now, Brownie Mary Day is Aug. 25, in San Francisco.
But we quickly turned back to that first rotation in Vallejo. Since he was still fully paralyzed, the orderly had to hold the joint to his lips for him. But over the next few years, he would work to the point that allowed him to gain some independence.
“It really took me years of intense exercise, but I was an athlete. It was three years, four years, before I really started being able to transfer onto my bed. I could transfer (to) the floor, put my knees together, leaned forward over my legs to transfer back to my chair,” Estes said of his rehabilitation.
That moment he was able to transfer on his own signaled to him he would be capable of living on his own. Marijuana was already his lifestyle well before that day. He was still fully paralyzed the first time his friends took him up to Arcata in Humboldt County.
“I found the Skunk. I found Thai Stick. I found people with Columbian Gold and Panama Red,” Estes said of that first trip at age 19. “I found marijuana so awesome that I wanted the good stuff.”
He’d run into brick weed. The compressed nugs were far from medicine and he knew it. It further motivated him to search for the best options. That first trip north arose from a friend telling him he knew a guy with sensimilla.
“I said, what is sensimilla?” Estes noted with a laugh. “It’s a seedless weed? And it’s green, lime green? Let’s go there.”
The locals hooked him up, given his medical situation. He scored his first pounds of sensimilla for $100 bucks. That would be about $460 today.
As for the traditionally tight community up north, especially during the early era of enforcement, “My disability broke me in. People were very compassionate and they understood medicine,” Estes said.
Estes noted his original host in Humboldt understood the benefits of medical cannabis all too well having recently lost his father to cancer at the time.
“He lost his dad. His dad had cancer. He got help from cannabis. They think it dragged his life another two years, but he swears he was happier. He saw other people who were on pharmaceuticals dying. They were miserable, moaning, and his dad (had) weed on the way out. He really is a compassionate man,” Estes said.
Estes pointed to the statement “all cannabis use is medical.” He said he gets it, to different degrees. But in his case, it wasn’t really up for debate, and the farmers of The Emerald Triangle showed him a lot of love.
Part of it was because they knew in addition to it being for his own medical use, he was paying top dollar. Some of the brown frown was going for between $30-$50 a pound. Estes wanted nothing to do with it.
“When I got the first Skunk, which was fluffy, I had 24 bags. I sold it for $100 a bag and I would buy that. Next time I bought the Skunk it was $200, the next time it was $400 a pound and after that it was $500 a pound,” Estes said.
We asked Estes as he watched the pound price creep up, when did he know it was time to become his own supplier and get in on the cultivation side? He laughed and said it was right around the time he saw that first $500 pound. He’s already been collecting seeds in film containers and noting what they were.
In 1977, he would purchase his first hydroponic system. He said it took him about a decade to get to the point where he is comfortable looking back and saying he was dialed in. To help put that into perspective, the biggest movie of the year in 1987 when Estes started growing heat was Beverly Hills Cop 2.
The first grow went well, but he missed the part about changing the plants’ light cycle to get them to flower. By the time he did, they had been vegging for a couple of months. The plants exploded and he started selling grams for $5 after the harvest.
“I actually started catching a BART to the 51 bus on Market Street. The 51 bus took me over to Haight Street and Stanyan McDonald’s right there. I’d set up with little tiny bags in there. And I could sell down the street over there for 20 bucks,” Estes said. This was around 1984 and 1985.
Estes would move his garden outside. That wasn’t a bad thing — in that era, the best outdoor was widely regarded as the best cannabis available, period. He said it took another decade for the best indoor to start beating out the sungrown.
He saw cannabis grown under High-Pressure Sodium lights for the first time when one of his buddies took a light from a baseball field. Eventually, the HPS lights got a bit more normalized, but there was only one place you could buy them at first. Going in and grabbing more than one light was a red flag to anyone casing the store. Estes and others would send friends and family to grab a light each, until they eventually had enough for whatever size room they were trying to put together.
“If they saw you putting 10 lights in your car, they followed you home. You had a search warrant on your house a week later. So we were all nervous about that,” Estes said.
In the late ‘80s, he moves back indoors and starts building out grow houses. The product would eventually end up in Dennis Peron’s San Francisco dispensary. He would go from a 10-light house to a 100-light operation in Oakland in 1992.
While it was a big jump doing 10 times as many lights, he was confident in his standard operating procedures. He also had a lot of faith in his nutrients and pest management ability, too.
When Peron shut down, Estes went on to work a stint at the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club. Eventually, Estes decided to open up his first dispensary in Concord in 1997. As Estes went from city council to city council attempting to open more shops in places with no ordinances around medical cannabis, he faced a lot of opposition. Some of the very cities that he went to battle with are now booming cannabis commerce hubs.
But back then, he was attacked by 1990’s and 2000’s NIMBYs, terrified of the thought of cannabis in their town. They would call him things like a street dealer.
“I said you have never spent one time in my house and at my table having dinner with me. You don’t know who I am at all sir, or ma’am. But I was attacked all the time. That was the way they did it back in those days for sure,” Estes recalled.
He said San Mateo was the most vicious municipality of all back then. He estimates he probably opened 20 clubs over the years in different cities.
Estes credits his activism to meeting disabled activist Dan O’Hara. O’Hara rolled his wheelchair across America and the length of the Mississippi River. He was a vocal advocate in Sacramento and Washington D.C., for the disabled. He was even honored by President Jimmy Carter for his efforts, and the Vatican. Estes and O’Hara became friends.
“So I became very, very active, much more of an open activist. It was not a secret. I wasn’t behind the scenes.”
Estes has witnessed every level of cannabis regulation in California. We asked what it was like seeing things go from Prop 215 to the legal era. He thought it was all going to move a lot faster, given how fast he opened a shop in the wake of Prop 215 passing.
“Even though I wasn’t granted a license to have my facility, and I’ve always lasted about one year in these towns, it was enough to start the dialogue, to start the process where other people came behind me pushing, getting attorneys. And next thing you know, there are ordinances,” Estes said.
The conversation would turn toward the purple weed Estes helped turn iconic. Back when he was exposed to purple on his earliest trips to The Emerald Triangle, it didn’t denote some special quality. He’d see the haze Jimi Hendrix made famous in the late 1970s. He said it was good, but it wasn’t great.
But in the early 2000s, he started to notice some purple strains were bomb. The Purple Erkel was high on the list for quality, but it was a very finicky plant to deal with. Estes argues the Erkel is really just Lavender and everyone changed the name.
“It was finicky, but when you smoked it, it was fire. It had that taste,” Estes noted.
In 2003, his relationship with purple would change forever. He was showing his friends Charlie and Sarah, they were Blackfoot and Pomo Indians. The Pomo have a deep history in Mendocino.
The Pomo traditionally lived in what is now the area around Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and the Russian River watershed. The Pomo spoke seven different dialects while living in small independent communities that relied on hunting, fishing and gathering to meet their needs.
Estes showed the pair some Big Bud x Erkele from Bodhi. A lot of people thought that was the GDP, but it wasn’t. It did do well though, taking home top honors at an early cup in L.A. at one point. This put the purple, and the affection Estes had for it, on Charlie and Sarah’s radar.
During a later trip to visit their home on the Eel River, Estes saw some suits as he was pulling up. He provided the pair with cash from a score he had made that day to keep their home. Charlie would go on to tell some other folks in the tribe about what Estes had done.
Eventually one of the members of the tribe showed Estes what they called Purple Medicine. It was phenomenal.
“He brought it to me. And I had a bright light shined on them. I was like, oh my god, this is amazing. The color was amazing, purple everywhere. But you could have rolled that pound out of the bag like a bowling ball. It all stuck together,” Estes said. “They had it for 18 years. You could peel buds off the pound like velcro.”
A GDP outdoor crop.
Estes wanted to buy as much as he could, but after a few rounds, the tribe didn’t want to do business with him. They gave him the cut of Purple Medicine so he could run it himself. It became what we know today as Grand Daddy Purple. Estes went all in on his new cut and changed all of his operations to GDP. When he couldn’t produce enough in his 200-light operation, he brought it north for his friends to grow, too. Since he was paying $4,000 a pound, they were more than happy to run it for him.
“I know what I got. I’ve got this. This is it. This is to me just like the Grand Poobah. It’s like the grand something, Grand Daddy Purple, and then I high-five Charlie,” Estes said, remembering how he came up with the name.
As he started making the trip more regularly, farmers would wait for him south of Garberville to try and catch him before he spent all his money on someone else’s weed. One time a utility truck flagged him down at night, the pounds were inside the bucket you would use to do maintenance on a telephone pole.
Estes said the best GDP came from all over. It wasn’t a particularly challenging plant to grow, so a lot of different people in various conditions were able to make the most of it.
On his way back from up north he would call his friends’ answering machines and just say Grand Daddy Purple and code word that it was on its way south. Eventually, he would open his shop in Oakland’s former Oaksterdam neighborhood. Oakland loved purple.
“People back then thought purple meant it was overdried or always moist or something. And then there was no purple on any menu,” Estes said.
In the earliest days of trying to convert Oakland to purple, Estes would hand out nugs to the people in line at his competitor and offer refunds to people who bought eighths if they didn’t like it.
“Pretty soon, within six months, we got E40 and Keak Da Sneak are smoking it. It was on Weeds. It was in Pineapple Express. Snoop Dogg said on Howard Stern it was his favorite strain. It was just this crazy blow-up thing. I did kind of have the idea it could happen, but I didn’t know it would happen as fast as it did,” Estes said.
Estes began collecting seeds from the 200 lights. Every run there would be a dozen or so. When he decided it was time to hunt for a male, he had about 60.
“I backcrossed it to stabilize the genetics. I tried to focus on the traits that I like, the rock-hard buds, the nose, the nice branching, the dark green waxy leaves, so that we came up with Ken’s GDP,” Estes explained. He argued some people liked Ken’s GDP better than the original. In the most technical terms, Ken’s GDP was essentially Grand Daddy Purple Bx1.
He also took that male and put it in a room with seven of the bomb strains out at the time. Estes said a lot of people won cups with the seeds that came out of the room. He believes a big chunk of what’s commercially viable in the market dates back to that breeding project.
Estes ended up dealing with a federal case for six years. Nobody wanted to touch him at the time.
“You have to almost like, stop doing what you’re doing to get them to leave you alone,” Estes said. “I remember being in their office in San Francisco and asking, why do I have this target on my back?”
One of the things that caused Estes some headaches was his choice to start declaring his cannabis income on his taxes early. He figured if he was paying his taxes, how could they say it was illegal? Well, they certainly took the money no problem.
“I want all my cases, but it took me six years. I had three federal cases. I got raided in 2005, 2008, and 2009,” Estes noted.
One of his shops was caught up in the massive San Diego sweep of 2009 that saw 13 stores shut down. People would tell Estes they weren’t growing the Purple anymore because he was too hot and he shouldn’t come around.
But the more cultivation in urban settings got normalized, the less he needed people up north to help, as GDP would prove to be an indoor strain. When you run it outside, it’s 80% leaves and 20% buds; thankfully it’s the exact opposite indoors. While it wouldn’t quench the thirsts of the eventual three-pound-a-light crowd on the hunt for maximum dollars, it was always heat.
These days Estes is doing his best to keep GDP alive. He recently had it tissue-cultured. While a popular long-term storage method, tissue culture is also a way to clean a plant of diseases. The freshest piece of the meristem is cut before it has a chance to be infected like the rest of the donor plant. Two people are currently running the clean version of GDP.
“I just want to be the brand ambassador,” Estes closed laughing.