NORTHERN NIGHTS BRINGS BEATS AND HEAT TO REDWOODS

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. 

DIRTY WEED WORDS: COMMERCIAL VIABILITY

Commercial viability may be the phrase that has changed in cannabis the most over the decades for the industry.

During my chat with First Smoke of The Day, which dropped last week, the subject of commercial viability came up. Basically, I said once you got past the lovely people that got screwed by circumstances of licensing or location, there are a lot of people who got eaten up by the times because they wouldn’t change their ways. This received the most positive feedback of anything I said during the hour-and-a-half talk. While I’ve attempted to articulate the idea of people not being able to keep up with the game, it was never with the ethos of how many of the world’s best growers hit me up or tagged me on Instagram over the last week. 

At its core, the attempt to define commercial viability in cannabis has proven a double-edged sword. On the one side, the meaning represents progress in the game. The bar for commercial viability has risen with the progress of the times across every market. This includes recreational and the still massive underground cannabis economy thought to dwarf California’s legal market at least 2 to 1, given the vast swaths of the state without legal access and people everywhere else wanting our weed. The pot has certainly increased in quality on both sides of the market. 

On the other side, not all ships have risen with the tide due to various circumstances. Be it their own stubbornness to not change their ways as advancements in the game had been made, or never actually knowing what the bar was for commercial viability in the first place whenever they jumped ship from whatever industry expecting to carve a piece of the cannabis industry for themselves.

Let us not forget a mere 20 years ago, brick weed stuffed in a tire was commercially viable for American distributors. So imagine you’re a person operating under the protection of 215 in that era. Ninety-nine percent of the domestic marijuana supply is absolute garbage. It’s fair to say you’re a hot cookie at that moment. 

But, as the years rolled on, the bar went up.

Commercial viability got to the point where it didn’t just mean you were talking about the quality or price of the product, but also accessibility and ease of transport. California has a firm grip on illicit domestic cannabis production as the feds’ annual plant eradication counts firmly show. But it’s not the same. In the past, the worst cannabis California has to offer used to get scooped up faster than Olive Garden breadsticks coming out of the oven. 

Now we’ve reached the point where people don’t have to buy California’s worst product anymore. California cultivators aren’t competing with Mexican brick weed anymore. They’re competing with the Oklahomas and the Maines — hell, there are probably even some decent beaster packs from Canada still making it over the border.

A lot of the lost souls in California on the illicit side are those who couldn’t keep up with people growing decent weed in those places where people could drive to pick it up. The best weed in the world is still grown in NorCal, especially on the illicit side of the market. Not being able to grow commercially viable pot in the rec market is one thing, but if you are having trouble on the other side, maybe it’s time to do some soul-searching on your craft. Do those little things you see your neighbors doing that you didn’t want to because you convinced yourself you knew what you were doing. 

The most important thing you can do to survive in this market is to grow the best cannabis possible. People that worry about pinching pennies first are destined to fail. At that point, the quality of the marijuana is the second most important thing to you, and you’ve already lost.

GROWING BELUSHI GOES GLOBAL FOR THIRD SEASON

We talked with Jim Belushi ahead of the third season of Growing Belushi as he looks to take the brand international. 

The third season will also be the biggest run for the series yet with Discovery doubling the order to six episodes after a 30% jump in rating from Season 1 to 2. It makes sense, there are plenty of things to talk about in the cannabis industry at the moment, both foreign and Domestic. Belushi told L.A. Weekly should things go well, they have the footage for a couple more episodes.

Some regulars who will be tagging along and making appearances on this season’s tale of survival and expansion include Dan Aykroyd, cousin Chris and Larry Joe Campbell.

Belushi is excited. 

“We’re on Wednesday night! And we are following Moonshiners. So it’s like, grab your illegal whiskey and grab your legal weed and it’s go for the evening,” Belushi told L.A. Weekly. “Third season, it’s going a little more national and global. I’m really taking it from the little flower to going to see what’s going on in the national picture.”

After the first two seasons at his cannabis farm, Belushi is excited about how far and wide they went for the latest installments of the series. Production saw the team visit 14 states and three countries, including Canada and Albania. 

Belushi really enjoyed his time diving into the Albanian scene. 

“It’s beautiful. They’re building it. It’s incredible what’s going on in that country. It’s gonna be the new resort area for tourism, and tourism is just skyrocketing because the prices are really great. The food is great. It’s a very young crowd there,” Belushi said. “They’re very curious about expanding medical cannabis for export there, and I know the Prime Minister and Albania, and he wanted to pick my brain.” 

Belushi explained part of this season is him letting his ego get the best of him. Hence the call for expansion and international market domination, the latter probably mostly a joke, but rooted in high hopes.

We asked Belushi what it’s like to shoot in this more touring style compared to sharing his personal trials at the farm. 

“Oh, well, there are a lot of personal trials,” Belushi replied. “That’s the whole point, like national expansion isn’t that easy with every state having different compliance, different rules and some are medical states, some are recreational states. So that’s what we can explore a little bit.”

We asked Belushi what going national meant to him. Was it licensing intellectual property? Setting up gardens in other states?

“Lot of it is licensing. But vetting out the growers and the companies,” Belushi explained. “We got a great opportunity and Shelbyville, Illinois, taking over indoor grow that was a charity grow, all the profits go to charity. And we are taking that over and actually kind of doing like a Bar Rescue of like going into this girl upgrading everything and it becomes a Belushi Farms in Illinois. So we’re going to be growing in Illinois. We’re growing in Oregon and we’re licensing other places, other states, and possibly growing in Albania.”

Keep an eye out for new episodes of Growing Belushi starting Wednesday, April 5. 

Belushi’s Farm

WHAT THE KILLERS ARE GROWING 2023

It’s that time of year when we ask our favorite cannabis brands and people what they’re most excited to grow this year. 

The early stress tests are done for the season and folks are getting ready to put their new winning phenos into full blast. While this happens all the time indoors, the work outdoor cultivators do in March and April will help set the standard for the quality they’ll be chopping down when Croptober hits. 

Here is what people told us when we asked them what they are hyped on. Here is what they told us:

Fidels

Fidel in the garden. Courtesy of Fidels.

Runtz x Jealousy, multiple banger phenos hunted, now being scaled up to the masses. The cool thing about this project is that it’s not bread by me, it’s bread by Julio aka @nineweeksharvest. Julio and I had a Genuine conversation. He’s an amazing breeder and pure soul! He blessed me with Runtz X Jealousy. 

We hunted over 60 beans and had many selections that look, smell and smoke phenomenal. I’m excited to share these selections with the masses and have them scaled up properly.

Masonic 

Oh man, Karma Genetics, The great gardener, Barbara bud hybrids, and some of the stuff I’ve chucked along the way. I already went down a lot of the landrace rabbit hole.

Rez from DNA Genetics

I’m hyped about the ’93 Octane crosses. Super heavy gas. I’m looking for that borderline rancid, super offensive-pungent, baby Shit level funk.

Capulator

Diamond Lungs Co-Op grow. 70 pheno hunters, 888 beans. Also, Vintage Sunset Cheese, Gas and Cheese, and Caps Frozen Oranges. I’m on a hot one right now.  

Ryan from Doja Pak

So basically, Duke of Erb and I started with a strawberry diesel from Res Dog, pollinated it with a Northern Lights male selected a male and pollinated an OG18 Pheno that we hunted from DNA. That cross was named 18 Coffins.

We worked the line through the generations and hit the Gelato 33 from the Bakery with pollen from an F318 coffins male. That cross was called Strawberry Gelato. The female keeper was put into production and then the male we collected pollen and dusted the original Zkittlez. This cross was named Strawberry Zkillato. Planta grows this cut currently.

The SZ Male pollinated a LCG/Runtz and then we selected multiple keepers; Planta runs 1 and Dave from Preferred Gardens runs another. We again selected a male and hit our whole lineup. Those are the crosses I’m selling and selecting now. 

Anna from CAM

Things I’m running that are new. Grape Gas, Lemon Cherry Gelato x Permanent Marker, Animal cookies x Z, Devil driver (Melonade x sundae driver ), Pure Kush and Rozay. 

Erin from Royal Key Organics

Gelapop, Velvet, Candy Walls hash, new seeds and new potential from Equilibrium Genetics.

Drew from Green Dawg

Green weed 2023! D1 is my biggest recent push. I’m not disclosing genetics officially, but it’s the closest thing I’ve had to a real Sour Diesel/Dubb flavor profile in a decade. It’s an anti-candy. We hunted her from seed. Everything else was hay except her. I think she’s special and is going to do numbers this year.

Sour Wavez

Surefire and I have something special coming up, haven’t named it… RS11 x sherbanger F1 male. Besides that, some stuff I bred: Gelloz (gelatti x OZX), Betrayal (Zkittelz x OZX), Real Ricky Bobby (Xeno x OZX), Chess not checkers (Pink Z x OZX), Sidepiece (Pure Kush x OZX).

Besides that I’m growing Sherbanger (Boston roots), Sour diesel (karma bx2), I have four different OGs, Permanent marker via Doja pak, Zazul (Archive), Detroit runtz (Tiki) and from Mendoja the Larry Z and Cherry pie x OZK .

Kevin Jodrey 

I’m hyped about the older cultivar revival Purple city coming out with ssh kali mist hybrids.

Cypher going to weave the red Lebanese x puck into his work. On the east coast you have the piff haze crew going hard in that direction.

You got Sjoerd Brooks lighting up in lake county and has the haze valley nursery coming online. Equatorials modified for our area but still retaining the traits that made them legendary. No one young ever got to smoke them and Brooks is a bad motherfucker.

It’s not so much a specific plant as a feel. Herb from an era where the quality of the effect was what drove the sale more so than the amount of hype. You see the work being woven into a lot as well. 

The stores are losing so much ground to the trap because they live and die off of the distribution model. That model is a safe bet. Purple color only. Over 26% only. That leaves about 30 plants that every nursery in the state sells and forces every grower to compete with each other for shelf space. Customers are bored. 

I’m flying to Jamaica tomorrow to document Charles Scott’s operation for a company I’m helping to build in Massachusetts. A lifetime of equatorials being sifted for what will work best in today’s world. I’m stoked because the crop is outdoors full sun organic and at 18′ latitude, so we can see what they look like in their natural environment. 

Those selections will be sifted indoors and released in a market where that kind of effect is desired and needed. 

Fieldz from Zkittlez

Braindropz, gelonoidz, wapanga, NYZ., zyrup. All of our own gear of coarse. 

Champelli

Stuff that is smoking and is killer. I have a few OG back crosses. I’m excited about bringing back that real gas for body smoke mostly green weed, but I also have a few different candy Z crosses that are neither overly zee or overly candy leaning basically their own thing New flavors I like it when stuff comes out and it’s not leaning too heavy on one thing or relying on one Terp it’s always Pass when they get together become friends and decide to have a new expression of flavor. That’s the most exciting part creating something you could actually call newish.

The Village – Symbiotic Genetics

We are really excited about the Gassy Taffy line collab with Grow Low Key. There is a Grease Bucket x Gassy Taffy pheno that is extremely promising, very gassy. We are calling it Benzina, which is gas in Italian. Also the Amarelo x Gassy Taffy I’m really excited about and that’s going to be called Ego Death. Also the Candied Bananas which is Z2 x Banana Punch, Z2 is Zkittles bag seed. 

Mike from Fig Farms 

The flowers I’m most excited about right now are in-house crosses that recently graduated to production. The next two that will be released are crosses to Figment pollen, both are outstanding.

The first cross, Kush Mint Cookies x Figment #5, has an overwhelming Original Cookies terp presence that really pulls at the olfactory memory. The second cross, Blue Face x Figment #7, has an undeniable exotic Fig Farms look with a complex gas profile that we can’t wait to share. You are going to continue to see a lot of Fig crosses coming from us in 2023. The pollen and the winning female plants that we’ve been collecting and testing are like colors on a painter’s palette. Our palette’s range is deep, and we are using our palette to create the next generation of classics.

Photos courtesy of IC Collective

IC COLLECTIVE STRIKES BACK

The Legendary cultivators are prepping for their first Illinois drop and gave an update on their return to California 

Few things have been more devastating to the California top-shelf cannabis smoker in recent years than the night IC Collective burned down in July of 2021. We caught up with founder Ben Brown as he prepares to enter the Illinois market and return home when possible. 

Backboned by Brown’s links to the Chem Fam, the network of famous OG growers that ran the Chemdog strain found by Greg Krzanowski in Massachusetts over a quarter century ago, IC Collective was famous for having the gas. Over the years, Brown collected a variety of killer flavors he would pair with the Chem and each other. The results would start filling their trophy shelves in 2013 and lead to their famous mantra, “We run on fuel.” 

In a world of dessert weeds and new equatorial concoctions that breeders pray may end up the next cookies or Z, most still associate the most potent marijuana in the world with that petrol or fuel smell that much of IC Collective’s catalog possessed in spades. And even the things that weren’t fuelly smelling were notable representations of whatever they were. I stand by the statement the best Zkittelz I ever saw that wasn’t grown in Mendocino was grown by Brown.

Despite the large volume of cannabis being grown in California, there are only a dozen or so cultivators that can compare to IC Collective. Hence, even with all that other weed, the void they left behind was massive. Especially given how few other people in that dozen actually specialize in fuel. 

But things are looking up. After a massive 1800-seed pheno hunt of gear Brown has been working on or hoarding for a decade, they are ready to send their first product to retailers in over two years. In the end, it looks like there will be about a 26-month gap in production. 

“I think our last delivery was July 2? Or July 1 2021. And then we burned down on the fourth. Two years dude,” Brown told L.A. Weekly. “The only thing I say that at that building was some mom plants.”

Thankfully the 12 strains he was able to rescue were some of his bangers. But not all made it, the Ziablo that was winning a lot of stuff was among the fallen. But Brown pressed on with what he was able to save until he finally got his Illinois rooms going. 

IC Collective got the permit for Illinois a week after the fire in Oakland. Needless to say, the week between was one of the more stressful of Brown’s cannabis career. As the pound price has crashed in California, we asked if he ever considered throwing in the towel in The Golden State, despite the presumption it’ll eventually be the production capital for the global connoisseur class of smokers that buy top-shelf products from people like Brown. 

He emphasized he’s plenty familiar with the challenges of California. But he’s one of the people that grows fire that’s good enough to deal with those headaches. 

“We did the same amount of money every year because we didn’t have the funds to build outright,” Brown said. “So I know that challenges in California, like how expensive it was. Even though we were successful, we really didn’t make any money or be able to progress our situation. So I was constantly trying to get better. Get my situation better in California. So that’s how I got to Illinois.”

When the firefighters let Brown rescue his plants the next day, he was but one of over 400 applicants hoping to cultivate in Illinois. He didn’t know how the next week would play out.

“And so that was like a long shot, and then I had already been trying to get a bigger building in California. And on the 15th, we won the license. So July 15, 2021, 10 days later, we won the license in Illinois, and then later that night, I got approved for my conditional use permit for another town in California,” Brown said. 

Coming Home

That town was West Sacramento. He just needs time and revenue to get back to doing it properly in California. Come early October, he’ll have both.  

“I have the building, I have two licenses for distro and manufacturing. I have building permits. I have half of the equipment. Like it’s a real thing,” Brown said, “It’s just you ask the question like you, you watch this, the 2021 market, and yeah, I’m scared and I think we can do it right.”

Brown said anyone who can make it in California can make it anywhere since they’re basically selling bottled water next to a waterfall and still surviving. 

“But yeah, it’s hella scary to come back to work here,” Brown said. “And before it was just all me, everything I work for I dumped in, and now I have supporters and like if a fear of disappointing other people, you know, or like failing is the ultimate fear for me. So we are slow rolling California, but I mean, I was just on the phone with the municipality the other day telling them that we’re still in the game.”

When asked if he expected to have the gassiest weed in Illinois come September, Brown replied, “1,000%.”

BRUNO ROLLS TO THE CANARY ISLANDS

Bruno Van Holland, one of California’s premier joint rollers, took his act on the road to judge the Canary Champions Cup.

As the world exited the pandemic, one of the aspects of the cannabis industry that exploded the fastest was the hand-rolled joint scene. And in addition to the material going into them, the rollers themselves have become the stars of the show. Their ability and access to high-end flowers turned them into more natural likable influencers than the many trying to force it. 

Bruno Got in Early

Van Holland is one of a few at the top of the pack. He got in the mix early, and his signature outfits and upbeat attitude quickly made him a staple on the event circuit. At many of the state’s most fantastic weed parties, you’ll find Van Holland posted in a bright corner rolling up cannons. 

Given how things have gone for Van Holland, it was no surprise the Canary Champions Cup selected him to judge the pre-rolls.

“My first takeaway is how friendly everybody was,” Van Holland told LA Weekly. “The cannabis community over there is as inviting to us as foreigners – like it was, it was just a welcoming, like the way that they treated us. It felt like an honor just to be there. They treated us great. The first thing that comes to mind is just how well we were welcomed.”

Van Holland added the atmosphere those people are able to create at the social clubs he experienced was really special. 

“The vibe there was amazing, the fact that we can go inside of a social club and play pool, smoke and by and by, and all in the same place. It was much different than what I’m used to here,” he added. 

What Bruno Witnessed

Van Holland went on to note he appreciated the flower selection. There were many more sativas than he was expecting. He loved the fruit notes found in a lot of them. Given it was his first time hitting cannabis clubs outside America, he was excited to see those California strains that have a spot in his heart. 

As for the contest, Bruno liked what he saw. 

“In my category, I was impressed with the way that their joints were rolled,” Van Holland said of the entries. “Seeing back rolls is something that I’m not used to seeing here in California. And that hash wrap, I’ve never seen a hash wrap entered into a pre-roll contest before – that was impressive.”

Van Holland added he gets to see the best pre-rolls in the world in California. They are tough to beat. But the ones he saw abroad had their own unique style, which is tough to compare.

Comparing Tenerife to California

Van Holland went on to explain the differences between the sesh scene in California and the clubs in Tenerife. 

“I found that people were talking a lot more at these ones. Everybody was kind of sitting around and talking more than the event that I was at today in California,” he said.

Another big difference was the spliffs they smoke.

“So they chain-smoke like crazy, and every couple of minutes, they’re lighting up a new spliff. I thought that the scene there was so much cooler. I thought the way that they had the social club setup was so much cooler than the way that we have the dispensary setup in California,” Van Holland said. 

The event organizers were excited to have Van Holland in the mix. 

“We were lucky enough to have Bruno in town, the black gloves and friendly smile are iconic. What a wonderful human, always kind and always rolling up just at the right time! He’s a certified hero,” Lawrence from The Canary Champions Cup told L.A. Weekly.