Chris “they call me Chitty” Chitwood
Manufacturing Facility Manager
About your Best Bud:
Chitty is the coolest person to ever come out of Arkansas. Seriously. From the narwhal tattoo on his calf to the astronaut helmet he wore at our last company party, Chitty is as rad as they come. And he’s the only person alive who can come across as professional in purple pants; that’s exactly what he did during this interview. But he can be serious too, because that’s what it takes to end up where Chitty has landed: in two years’ time, he has climbed from budtender to grow assistant to Manufacturing Facility Manager, and at twenty-four years’ of age, he’s now the man responsible for running The Greenery Hash Factory. If you’ve ever enjoyed any of the Moroccan Hash, Bubble Hash, Kief Brick, Rosin, or Caviar we sell in our dispensary, you did so thanks to Chitty’s hard work. And this month, we thought you should meet him:
Q. When did you start working for The Greenery? Chris. “September of 2015.”
Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana? Chris. “I love our Kief Brick. It’s got all the flavors and terpenes from the original flower because it’s as close to unadulterated as it gets when it comes to concentrates, and it makes a perfect bowl-topper because it kicks you hard. It’ll also make a bowl usually big enough for only three people big enough for six, and that’s awesome.”
Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity? Chris. “I love skiing in the winter and I’m trying to get into snowshoeing, but I need some snow first. And I love rock climbing in the summer. I’m all about that dirt-bag life.”
Q. Tell us about your pet. Chris. “I have no pets at the moment, unfortunately.”
Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery? Chris. “I love crunchy jams and serious funk. Word.”
Q. What do you like most about working at The Greenery? Chris. “I love the people, because we all get along and communicate. And I love the job itself, because it’s chill but challenging.”
The simple fact is that Chris Chitwood will be with The Greenery for quite some time because he’s one of the lucky young professionals who found his niche early in life right here in the marijuana industry. He’s a pleasure to work with because he doles out high-fives generously, and his easy-going manner makes the day fly by (not to mention that he brings value to this company by consistently pumping out the best hash this side of Amsterdam). Mr. Chitwood, we’re in your debt, and because of that, you’re December’s Best Bud!
This week’s post is just gunna be a quick-and-dirty alphabetical listing of all the cannabis concentrates out there on the market, because one of the top-ten questions I hear as a budtender is “what’s the difference?” So, I wanted to write something short and simple you could use as a reference, if you needed to. As to the list itself, it’s important to remember that some concentrates can be dabbed, because they’re “full-burn” or “full-melt,” but some cannot (these work best as “bowl-toppers,” or concentrates you sprinkle on top of pot to kick things up a notch); I’ll make sure to tell you which ones are which. And here we go…
1.) Badder or Budder. This is exactly why things are so confusing when it comes to marijuana concentrates—the terms “badder” or “budder” deal with the consistency of a concentrate, not the concentrate itself. Cannabis oil can be whipped and heated into a consistency reminiscent of cake “batter” or room temperature “butter,” and that’s where the names come from (stoners replaced the t’s with d’s because that’s what you do when you’ve got bud on the brain).
2.) Bubble Hash. There’s no difference between “bubble hash” and “ice-water hash,” so the two terms are interchangeable. We make this concentrate at The Greenery Hash Factory by submerging marijuana in ice water and agitating it. The cold water freezes the trichomes on the surface of the plant matter, and the agitation breaks them free—once this is complete, we drain the slurry and run it through a series of filters. Then we collect, compact, and freeze the hash, before weighing it out and selling it to you for $40 a gram. This concentrate isn’t full-burn, so the best way to enjoy it is to sprinkle it on top of a bowl, or to mix some in with your flower when you roll a joint.
3.) Caviar. Caviar isn’t dabbable (did I just make up a word?) either, but it’s some of the best stuff on earth: a trifecta of potency, as we call it. This is another product we make in-house, and we do so by taking premium marijuana flower, painting it with oil, and then battering it in kief. You simply put it in your pipe and smoke it, and then forget about things for a while… all things. For a long while.
4.) Crumble. This is another one of those consistency-only concentrates: crumble is nothing more than wax with a different, honeycomb-like consistency.
5.) Crystalline. Quite plainly, this is the world’s strongest cannabis concentrate. Crystalline is a purified resin (which I’ll tell you about in number nine) consisting of 99.99% pure THC. Frankly, it’s like marijuana crack (but without the addiction and associated murder rate).
6.) Distillate. This concentrate is made by refining cannabis oil, but for it to be considered a true distillate, a still needs to be used (yes, just like the ones they use in the Ozarks to make moonshine). However, solvents can also be used in some instances. Distilling the oil purifies the concentrate, and makes it more potent. It can be dabbed or vaporized, but this concentrate is also used in many of the edibles on the market.
7.) Isolate. This concentrate is made by using chemicals to “isolate” the THC or CBD from marijuana plant matter. It can be smoked in a number of ways, but since isolates are most commonly white, powdery substances that dissolve instantly in water, this concentrate shows up in infused beverages more often than not.
8.) Kief, or Kief Brick. Kief is sometimes referred to as “dry-sift” because that’s the way it’s made. We make this one as well, and we do so by tumbling marijuana in a filter drum. Then we collect the kief (trichomes) and compress it into a brick which we sell for $30 a gram. This concentrate isn’t full-burn, but since all the marijuana terpenes live in the trichomes, kief is by far the most flavorful concentrate.
9.) Live Resin. This concentrate is made by flash-freezing an entire, living marijuana plant, and then by using a chilled solvent (butane) in the extraction process. I’m not going to get too deep into purge times or extraction techniques because your eyes would glaze over, but basically, frozen pot is stuffed into a huge metal tube through which cold butane is pumped. They open it up and scrape up the live resin, which once dried, looks like little crystals mixed with honey. Sometimes, you’ll hear people talk about marijuana “sugar,” but that’s just a form of live resin that has the consistency of granulated sugar. All live resin is full-burn.
10.) Moroccan Hash. This concentrate is made by decarboxylating (heating) kief, and kneading it with a little water. The final product is a darkened ball of awesomeness that’s enjoyed best on top of a bowl (you can’t dab it because it’s not full-burn). This one is my personal favorite, so much so that I wrote an entire piece about it you can read here.
11.) Oil. You’ll see many types of oil on the market, and they’re separated via the differing chemicals used during the extraction process; CO2 and Butane extracted oils are the most common. And you’ll hear a bunch of other names for marijuana oil like “CO2 oil,” “BHO,” which stands for “butane hash oil,” “hash oil,” “dragon tears,” which is just a proprietary name, or “dragon balls,” which is just a unit of measure (given that a dragon ball is a ten-thousand-dollar glass ball filled with 3,000 grams of high-THC oil, I doubt that you’ll get it mixed up with the other concentrates). Oil can be dabbed just like all the other full-burn extracts, but it can get pretty messy, so most people prefer to use a marijuana vape pen when smoking cannabis oil.
12.) Resin. This is the black stuff that accumulates inside your pipe that you scrape out and smoke with shame when you’re too broke to buy pot. We’ve all been there.
13.) Rosin. This stuff is way better than the last one, and it’s one of the only full-burn concentrates on the market that’s made without solvents. We make this one in our factory by compressing cannabis flower between two heated metal plates. The heat and pressure work in concert to squeeze out all the cannabinoid-rich “rosin,” which looks like light-brown tar. This one is dabbable (I’ve decided officially that “dabbable” is a word), and we always have rosin on our menu.
14.) Sap. This one is just oil with a thicker consistency—this stuff has the viscosity of tree sap, and that’s where the name comes from. Totally dabbable.
15.) Shatter. This concentrate is made in a tube or a vacuum purge oven just like live resin, but the temperatures are different. Butane is used when extracting this concentrate, and the final product is an amber, translucent sheet that looks like hard candy. And it’s easy to break, which is where the term “shatter” comes from. Also, totally dabbable.
16.) Wax. Wax looks and feels like wax, and it’s extracted just like shatter. Different temperatures in the purge stage produce differing consistencies, and wax is just shatter that was produced at a temperature leading to a fluffier, wax-like product. Technically, both “wax” and “shatter” are consistency-based names, and both concentrates are actually subsumed under the “BHO,” or “butane hash oil” category. But yes, you can dab wax all day long.
That’s it! I guess the list didn’t end up as “short and simple” as I planned, but worse things have happened. And as always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to give us a call at (970) 403-3710, or come in and see us at 208 Parker Avenue, right here in Durango, Colorado. We’re Your Best Buds, and we’ll tell you all you need to know about the differences between cannabis concentrates; all you need to do is ask.
Moroccan Hash by The Greenery Hash FactoryKief Brick by The Greenery Hash FactoryBubble Hash at The Greenery Hash Factory
This newest generation seems to think they came up with “dabbing,” but maybe that’s just the way it’s always been—maybe the youth has always sapped credit from the people who came before thanks to short memories. After all, “Flatliners” is in the theaters again, with a new cast of pretty millennials acting out a carbon-copy plot from the eighties movie I remember, and Disney just announced that they’re remaking “Flight of the Navigator,” which is simply sacrilegious, if you ask me. Actually, “The Magnificent Seven” just came out for the third time, if you’re keeping track, and something was stolen from my father’s generation that they stole from the generation before. Everything old is being made anew, and it’s no different when it comes to smoking pot.
I’ll take a step back and explain: “dabbing” is the newest term for smoking full-burn marijuana concentrates. And I know this subject can get a little convoluted, so I’m going to walk through it step by step just in case you’re a complete newbie. A “full-burn” concentrate is something like rosin, shatter, wax, or live-resin. I’m not going to get into the specific differences between these four concentrates because that’s a subject deserving a separate blog, but basically, these concentrates are made by extracting the cannabinoids (the stuff that gets you high) from all the green plant matter you think of when you picture marijuana. When you smoke a full-burn concentrate, all of it evaporates and nothing is left behind, ergo, “full-burn.”
But you can’t smoke a full-burn concentrate conventionally because it’ll just melt—if you try to smoke something like wax with a pipe and lighter, it’ll just turn into liquid and pool in the bottom of your pipe, which is nothing more than a messy waste of money. So, you need to “dab” it. And this is where we get back on track: my generation called dabbing “knife hits.” We’d take two butter knives and get them red-hot over the stove, and then we’d press them together with some hash in between. The hot knives would vaporize the hash and we’d breathe in the smoke. And yes, we even knew how to make full-burn hash with an iron and wax paper, so you whippersnappers didn’t come up with that, either.
Anyway, a decade or so after knife-hits faded in popularity, the Atlanta hip-hop scene started to mature. A new dance came out in 2012 called “dabbing,” wherein you’d duck your forehead into the crook of your arm while sticking your other arm straight out to the side; Cam Newton made the move famous because he did it every time he scored a touchdown for the Carolina Panthers. But the “dab” didn’t come from sports or hip-hop, because the gesture is meant to look like what someone does after taking a huge concentrate hit: you turn your head into your elbow and cough like the world is ending, and you hold the other arm out as if to say, “dear god, keep that stuff away from me” (or at least, that’s where most people on the internet think it comes from). “Dabbing” was associated with smoking marijuana long before the dance came out (regardless of what the dance’s inventor, “Skippa Da Flippa,” might have to say about it), and the move is just another dance in a long line of dances meant to emulate everyday motions, like the “running man,” the “lawnmower,” or the timeless “bump-and-grind.” And it’s not even the first marijuana-related motion dance to pop up because people have been “passing it to the left” ever since that reggae song came out in the eighties.
However, when it comes to dabbing marijuana, I must admit that this newest generation has taken something we invented and made it much, much better. Now, instead of knives and a cooktop, we use a dab rig. Basically, these rigs have a “nail” that you heat up with a small blowtorch (these nails can be made from glass, ceramics, or metals like titanium). And then you “dab” a little of your concentrate onto the nail (which sits where the bowl of a pipe or bong used to be) and inhale the smoke. It’s easy and clean and ridiculously potent. Since all of the plant matter has been taken out of the equation, a few of the concentrates currently on the market come close to 99% per THC content, and that’s insane. The high is mind-bendingly intense and it hits you quick and pure, like only a concentrate can. At the Greenery, we have basic dab rigs that start around fifteen bucks and a complete line of full-burn concentrates. If you come in, we’ll show you how to put the two together.
But quite a few people are put-off by the idea of using a blowtorch to smoke pot—to them, it feels a little superfluous and strange, a little over-the-top. And because of this, I’ve noticed that most dabbers over thirty prefer a handheld vaporizer like the Cloud V that we sell in our store for around sixty bucks. Frankly, I’m one of these “people over thirty,” and I doubt that I’d dab if I had to use a blowtorch. I prefer discretion: the Cloud V is battery-operated and it fits in your pocket. It has a little ceramic bowl and a heating element; all you do is load it and push a button and inhale. It couldn’t be simpler.
But just like with everything else pot-related, it’s what you put in your pipe that matters, not the pipe itself. You’ll hear me talk about this quite a bit from now on, but recently, our company expanded to include The Greenery Hash Factory, and we’ve started making our own concentrates. And just like the flower that comes out of our grow, our concentrates are the best on the market. But we’re doing it the old fashion way—without the use of caustic solvents that’re inimical to flavor—so only one of our concentrates is full-burn: our Rosin.
We make our Rosin with nothing more than heat and extreme pressure: premium flower is squeezed with a heated pneumatic press (it’s an amped-up version of the iron and wax paper I told you about previously) and the thick, gooey goodness called Rosin seeps out of the flower. We sell it for $60 a gram before tax, and it’s worth every penny. The batch I have loaded in my Cloud V right now comes from Chemmy Jones flower, and it comes in at 75.9% THC, which is incredible because we didn’t use the chemicals commonly associated with high-THC concentrates. But it is what it is, and at close to seventy-six percent THC, just a little dab will do ya’ when you’re smoking our Rosin (and yes, I know I just stole an advertising slogan from my parents’ generation, but whatever).
Our Rosin really is worth trying if you’ve never “dabbed” as the millennials are calling it these days, because the flavor, convenience, and potency surpass old-school hash by a country mile, regardless of who thought of it first. So please, come in and let us show you what you’ve just read about—let us introduce you to something new, something better than what you’re used to. We’re Your Best Buds, and when it comes to dabbing, that’s what we do.
Every so often, after I’ve sold someone marijuana in our dispensary and handed over his or her order, he or she will look at me as if they’ve been left holding the bag (quite literally). He or she will hold their pot like it might bite, and then he or she will confess: “Um… this is my first time buying marijuana legally… what’re the rules?”
Honestly, I’ve had to assure customers in the past that they wouldn’t be arrested as soon as they left—as if our store were nothing more than a trap rigged by the man—and I understand; one hundred years’ worth of nonsensical marijuana laws are bound to make the first-time shopper a little nervous. So, when I encounter the “now what?” type of question, I always do my best to assuage the fears associated with purchasing marijuana, and I give those first-time shoppers a little legal lecture that goes something like this:
“Here at The Greenery, we always staple your bag shut with the receipt on the outside—as soon as we do this, your purchase becomes a ‘closed container,’ and so long as you keep it that way and out of the driver’s reach, you’re good-to-go regarding traffic stops.” At this point, I usually staple the bag for emphasis, and then I continue…
“And it’s perfectly legal to possess the amount I’ve sold you. But in case you were wondering, in Colorado, you can legally possess a maximum of either one ounce of marijuana flower, eight-hundred milligrams of edibles, eight grams of concentrate, or any combination thereof that does not exceed the ‘marijuana equivalency rules.’ For example, you’re allowed to have on your person a half-ounce of flower, two grams of concentrate, and two-hundred milligrams of edibles. But you don’t need to worry about that when you shop here because we will never sell you more in a single transaction than you’re allowed to possess.” This is usually when my fearful first-timer will start to relax…
“Also, you must be 21 or over with a valid ID proving as much to purchase or possess marijuana, but you already knew that because I carded you when you walked in the door. And it’s important to remember that it’s a felony to give or sell marijuana to a minor.”
For the record, this is one of the longstanding marijuana laws that I agree with wholeheartedly. I have a teenaged daughter, and another one who isn’t far behind, so I have strong opinions when it comes to children and marijuana. And just like with alcohol, kids will walk around “tapping shoulders,” as they call it, asking grownups to go to the dispensary for them. It’s important for first-timers and regulars alike to know that saying “yes” is a federal offence, and at The Greenery, we simply will not sell to a customer who we suspect might’ve had his or her shoulder tapped. Anyway, moving on…
“When it comes to driving, it’s important to remember that it’s illegal for a driver or passenger to consume or use marijuana in a vehicle, and just like with alcohol, it’s illegal to drive under the influence of marijuana. The legal limit is five nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood, and it’s very easy to get to this limit, so please don’t smoke and drive.”
At this point, the first-timer is usually completely at ease, but they might have a follow up question or two, like, “well, if I can’t smoke in my car, where can I smoke?”
“Well,” I say, “it’s illegal to consume marijuana in public. You’re only allowed to smoke or consume marijuana on private property with the property owner’s permission. If you’re staying at a hotel, just ask someone at the front desk if it’s okay, because plenty of the establishments in Durango are 420 friendly.”
And that’s about it. I’ll ask if there are any other questions, I’ll answer them if there are, and then the first-timer and I will part ways, usually with a handshake. Today, I simply wanted to be proactive and write about Colorado’s marijuana rules and regulations because you might be a potential first-timer, and this is stuff you need to know. But if it’s still a little foggy, just check out Good to Know for more information. Or, if you’d prefer, just stop by our dispensary; we have flyers in our store you can take for free that sum up everything you just read. And as always, please don’t ever be afraid to come in and ask one of our affable budtenders about the rules and regulations. We’ll make sure your first-timer frown turns upside-down, because We’re Your Best Buds, and that’s what we do.
Savanna Bristol is a wee bit clumsy; running into things is a hobby of hers. Actually, I’ve seen her come close to death three times in a single shift. And she definitely needs to stay away from sharp objects. The last time we worked together, she got a metal splinter stuck in her finger (you know, “somehow”), and then when she walked by the couch, it “bit her leg” and she started bleeding. And her affliction goes beyond the workplace as well: this one time, Savanna decided to stand on top of Baker’s Bridge, and it didn’t go too well. Her friend didn’t want to jump, so Savanna may, or may not, have pushed him off. And then when she jumped after, she landed in a sitting position, and it broke her back—two of her vertebrae went “poof,” as she says it, but Savanna still looks back with a laugh when she tells the story.
However, her clumsiness doesn’t matter because Savanna has brains—she’s our assistant compliance manager, and it’s her job to steer our dispensary through all the weird, esoteric little regulations the state throws at us. She checks potency profiles and child-resistant packaging and font sizes, and she dedicates 100% of her attention to making sure we’re compliant (maybe that’s why she’s so clumsy). But here’s the rest of her story:
Q: When did you start working for The Greenery?
Savanna: “March of 2016.”
Q: What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?
Savanna: “I love dabbing—it’s one hit, one high. And right now, I love the rosin we’re making. Seriously. The flavor is awesome, and the high is perfect!”
Q: What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
Savanna: “I love tubing the river or paddle-boarding the lake with my dog.”
Q: Tell us about your pet.
Savanna: “Nala is a seventy-five-pound Pitbull, but she’s a baby. She just has too much love to give.”
Q: Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?
Savanna: “Whichever one suits my mood, but it’s usually Die Antwoord or Disney music… I love Disney music.”
Q: What do you like most about working at The Greenery?
Savanna: “I love my coworkers and my customers. It doesn’t matter who you are; when you come into The Greenery, you’re in a good mood.”
Well, that’s Savanna. In a way, she’s our dispensary diva. She likes things her way, and if she doesn’t get it, she’s likely to throw a big bag of pot at your face (and fall down in the process). But frankly, there’s nothing wrong with her way, because she knows this industry inside and out, and it’s due to her efforts that we run a completely compliant dispensary. And she has good taste in pot, which is important—Savanna’s second duty is to order all the flower on our menu, and thanks to her, we’re able to offer ten premium strains of boutique flower to Durango each and every day. For her steadfast dedication to compliance, and for keeping our shelves stocked, The Greenery is in Savanna’s debt, and because of that, she is Your Best Bud for October! Thank you, Savanna!
Thirty years ago, my father had a poster hanging on the inside of his closet door: it said, “a puff of kief in the morning makes a man as strong as a hundred camels in the courtyard.” The poster was warped and creased with age, the font was straight out of the sixties, and a tall hookah was pictured on the left with smoke wafting from the bowl at its crown. And as a child, I had no idea what it meant. I assumed it had something to do with drugs, because those are the things you “puff,” but I ruled that out quickly because my father didn’t do drugs; he loved his polo shirts and his hard-to-read books and his government job. However, the years passed, and I finally figured out that the poster was indeed a relic from my father’s hippy youth. But I still didn’t know what “kief” was.
Fast forward to my freshman year: a guy named Drew gave me a homemade kief box as a gift. As a side note, they call them “pollen boxes” now because kief is still illegal in most backwoods states, but that’s irrelevant. Anyway, when Drew gave me the box, I opened it and looked inside. There was a fine screen in the bottom with another compartment below it. I asked Drew what the hell a “kief box” was, and after giving me an incredulous look, he told me to keep my weed in the box and shake it gently from time to time—Drew told me that the “kief” would fall through the screen into the compartment below, and that I could take it out and smoke it.
So, I did exactly what Drew suggested. And after an eighth or three of that good west coast weed, I’d collected a decent dusting of kief in the bottom of my box. I took it out, sprinkled it on top of a bowl loaded in my bong, and I smoked it. I sat back in my dorm room and I waited for the strength of one-hundred camels; I waited for the superpowers promised by my father’s poster. They never came, of course, but at least I figured out the riddle to that poster (by the way, Google says it’s worth $1000 now), and at least I discovered kief.
Kief is an Arabic word meaning “pleasure” or “intoxication,” which, if you think about them, are two pretty damn synonymous words to start with, so it makes sense that the Arabs would use only the one word. But the kief I’m talking about is something you smoke: it’s a naturally-made marijuana concentrate formed from the dried trichomes found on cannabis flower. And frankly, kief is one of my all-time favorite ways to get high. But it’s always been difficult to find, just like all the good stuff in life, because most kief is homemade and so good that most people won’t share it. However, that’s an annoyance from the past because The Greenery Hash Factory has started manufacturing and selling old-school kief right here in Durango, Colorado.
We make it simply and naturally—we put premium, boutique flower in our dry-sift machine (using a 150-micron filter), and we let friction do the work. The flower tumbles around for a while and all the wonderful kief falls into a collection bin below (it’s like that little wooden kief box of mine, but on steroids). We take out the powdery kief and compress it into a brick with a pneumatic jack, and then we cut it up into grams of “kief brick” that we sell for $30 before tax at our local dispensary. The batch I smoked just before writing this (yeah, that’s right) was made from Indiana Bubblegum flower, and the numbers are incredible: the THC came in at 44.9%, and the CBG came in at 3.1%. At this point, especially if you’re a regular reader of marijuana blogs, you’re probably bored to tears when it comes to information on cannabinoids like THC and CBD because it’s ubiquitous, however, CBG is an up-and-coming cannabinoid you should pay attention to—this odd little chemical is actually the parent of both THC and CBD, it’s thought to have anti-inflammatory properties, and it might even be a neuro-protectant (smoking high-CBG concentrates might actually protect your brain, despite what your mother told you).
However, just like I said in last week’s post, the numbers don’t matter much, nor does the science—it’s the experience that counts: our kief is incredible, and I’m pretty sure this is the stuff Tinkerbell sprinkled on the Lost Boys to make them fly. And smoking kief is like eating the frosting first and leaving the cake behind, because you’re smoking the trichomes without the sticks and stems you’re used to. It’s flavorful and rich, and the smoke expands in your lungs, like a genie trying to get out of his claustrophobic lamp. The high is complex and long-lasting, with warm body notes and a cerebral giddiness that seems way too intense for something that costs only thirty bucks per gram.
But it’s the flavor that’s remarkable.
All the terpenes for which marijuana is famous are found in the trichomes—these terpenes are what give marijuana its smell and taste, and when you’re smoking pure trichomes, the flavor is multiplied exponentially. You can taste all the fruit and citrus and pine notes as if they were highlighted by a big marker, and all the subtle nuances that were hinted at before in plain flower stand out in kief like the stars they truly are. And this stuff smells exactly like it tastes: pungent, like intoxicating potpourri.
Actually, you just need to see it for yourself. You need to smell this stuff in person. You need to smoke it and sit back, and experience if it’ll make you feel stronger than one-hundred camels in the courtyard. So please, come in to The Greenery and ask one of our budtenders to show you our kief; this stuff is just as good as it sounds, and we’ll share it too, because that’s what Your Best Buds are for.
The Berbers are a people of ancient Arab stock—they’ve lived in the mountainous Rif region of Morocco for as long as records have been kept. Their eyes and hair are deep brown, their traditions are exotic, and they paint their houses and streets blue to mirror the sky, to be reminded always of a god living above. And they make hashish, just as they always have, because it’s a part of Moroccan life.
In the Rif, the soil is red and rich, and the air smells salty because the Mediterranean Sea starts where the mountains end. And hidden in the highlands are terraced hills covered with flowering marijuana. The Berber men tend their crop until it’s time to harvest, and then they reap their fields the way their fathers taught them to. The harvested marijuana is set aside to cure for a month, and then the flower is trimmed from the stalk. The green bud is ground gently, and then placed on a silk drum—the silk acts as a filter: the pollen falls through while the plant matter stays trapped on the surface. The Berber men cover the flower with a tarp, and then start beating on it rhythmically with bamboo canes; they call this “making music.” When the hash-song is done, the men uncover the beaten flower and throw it away. They take the silk head from the drum and look inside; the brittle trichomes that filtered through the silk sit in the drum’s bottom. Light brown, pungent, intoxicating.
The men press the powdery hash by hand, heating and kneading it gently, and they smile as their Moroccan hash darkens. They roll it into balls, keeping the best for themselves, and then they send their hash out into the world; these Berber men make half the world’s supply. But oddly enough, marijuana is illegal in Morocco. Lenience is given to the Berber tribes because it’s easier than policing them, but once their hash leaves the mountains like snowmelt flowing downhill, it loses its protection. It’s coveted and fought over just like anything else that makes you feel good, and it’s always been ridiculously hard to come by in the States. I’ve only had authentic Moroccan hash twice in my life—I could tell by the tribal stamp pressed into the bricks I bought—and I didn’t want to think too much about how I got what I got, because most of this hash is smuggled out of Morocco in a very… personal way. But each time I smoked it, I loved the feeling Moroccan Hash gave me, and after each time I ran out, my smile turned upside-down.
But that’s over: now, The Greenery Hash Factory is making their own Moroccan Hash, and we’re selling it at The Greenery for thirty-five bucks a gram. And the craziest part is that the stuff we’re making is better than the stuff I’ve smoked before; maybe we should call it “Durangan Hash” and smuggle it into Morocco so they can see what they’ve been doing wrong for centuries. For one, we use the best marijuana in Colorado to make our hash—our cannabis is grown in a controlled environment with living soil by a badass Master Grower, not out in the wind and rain of a Moroccan mountainside (and we don’t have to worry about goats eating our pot, which is nice).
Secondly, we use modern technology to make our “music”; quality control is much easier to achieve when you’re using a dry-sift machine instead of bamboo canes. And when you do everything scientifically, from using an exact heat to caramelize the hash to testing the hash in a modern laboratory, you end up with a superior product. Our most recent batch of Moroccan Hash is simply awesome: we made it from Skunk #1 flower, and the THC came in at 65%, the CBD came in at 1.3%, and the CBN came in at 2.3%. Today, when most marijuana concentrates are made using a chemical extraction process, these numbers are exciting because we did it the old-school way, naturally.
But in the end, it’s the experience that counts, not the numbers or the three-letter-acronyms, and I swear to you that to smoke our hash is to know perfection. The flavor is deep and musky, like a velvety dark chocolate or a fragrant black tea. The high is focused and intense, with profound relaxation and a centered calm. It’s the high I’ve been looking for through the years since I held those tribal-stamped bricks of the real deal, but taken to another level in the hands of our hash craftsmen. So, come in to our dispensary and ask one of our affable budtenders to show you what I’m talking about; you can smell it and see it for yourself. From now on, we’re offering this Moroccan Hash to Durango and our neighbors because it’s just better than what has been offered before—that’s what you’ve come to expect from Your Best Buds, and that’s what you’ll get if you try our house-made Moroccan Hash.
You can pick your platitude—oil and water, family and business, drinking and texting—because they all work: children and marijuana don’t mix. Trust me, I’m speaking from experience: I was one of those not-so-good children who started smoking way too early, and I have a precocious teen who smells a little suspicious from time to time. She’ll walk in our door after a night out and start being super nice, which for a teen, is a dead giveaway that something is amiss (the red eyes and copious amounts of perfume round out the trifecta of obviously-stoned-minor). Of course, I tell her that smoking pot at such a young age isn’t the best of ideas, and of course, she always comes back with the classic teenaged rejoinder: “dad, you smoke, and you work in a dispensary, so you’re a hypocrite.” But am I? Am I failing to practice what I preach, as my daughter would have you believe, or am I making a prudent parenting choice by yelling “hell no” every time my daughter thinks it’s okay to ask her parent who works in this industry for marijuana? Well, I’ll tell you the same thing I tell her, and let you decide. And if you’re a parent, please take notes because this information might come in handy.
The first issue to consider is addiction. Most professionals in my situation will tell you that marijuana isn’t addictive, and to an extent, this is true because all the studies out there show that the human body doesn’t become chemically dependent on cannabis, even after long-term use. As a side note, did you know that it’s actually possible to die from alcohol addiction withdrawals? Crazy, right? Anyway, while marijuana might not be chemically addictive (like every other recreational drug known to man), I will admit that it’s possible to become emotionally addicted to pot. For the record, it’s also possible to become emotionally addicted to donuts, and diabetes will kill you, so I’d still argue that pot is safe for adults.
The National Institute for Drug Abuse calls an emotional addiction to weed “marijuana use disorder,” and as a parent, it’s important to know that teens who start smoking at a young age are four to seven times more likely to develop this condition. The reason for this is simple: the frontal lobe of a child’s brain (the place where decisions happen) isn’t fully developed. If a child makes a decision, like using marijuana as a coping mechanism, and the decision turns out to feel beneficial, the choice becomes validated mentally and the teen becomes more likely to make the same decision over and over again. The teen will start to rely on marijuana as a crutch because it worked out the first time—this same thing can happen with alcohol and sex and all the other things we try to steer our children away from. That’s why it’s important to have an adult’s maturity and life experience before smoking pot: we know what’s responsible and right, just as we know what’s just a temporary fix, like getting high.
The health risks associated with marijuana use also need to be considered. The truth is that we just don’t know what happens to children when they smoke because it hasn’t been studied sufficiently. True, we know for a fact that medical marijuana offers a much better alternative to traditional pharmaceuticals when it comes to treating seizures, the pain and appetite loss associated with cancer, and many other illnesses that befall the young, but we really don’t know what stems from chronic recreational marijuana use by children. The experts say it might interfere with cognitive development or that it might lead to a lower IQ, but only time will tell. And that’s why it’s important to arm yourself with something better than “I’m a grownup and it’s legal for me, and you’re a kid who will get in trouble, so that’s why I can smoke and you cannot.” Teens will rebel against such a line with all the angst in their arsenal, and it’s important to tell them the truth: children who use marijuana might become dependent or underdeveloped mentally, and they don’t have the maturity needed to make good decisions about repetitive marijuana use because their brains aren’t as developed as an adult’s. Saying something like this to your child will shut them right up because no amount of teenaged attitude will defeat facts and logic, and there’s no way they’ll be able to call you a hypocrite.
At The Greenery, we take this issue very, very seriously. We’re stewards of this industry, and quite a few of us are parents; we don’t want our kids smoking pot just like we don’t want your kids smoking pot. We card everyone who walks through our door, and if the ID doesn’t prove that someone is twenty-one-years old, we kick that someone out our door with quickness. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t support an adult’s right to smoke marijuana openly if they have children. That’s why we provide for parents in our dispensary educational pamphlets on how to talk to your teen about marijuana, that’s why we write blogs like this one, and that’s why we’ll take the time with any customer who asks to talk about being responsible with marijuana around children. Doing so is completely possible. We recommend that adults keep their marijuana locked away from their children, just like a responsible parent would do with alcohol and firearms. And believe it or not, there’re products on the market designed to help you get it done. There’re lockable, odor-proof stashboxes out there like this one—hell, there’re even safes out there like this one that’re designed specifically for keeping marijuana edibles in the refrigerator. All the tools you’ll need to be a responsible, marijuana-smoking parent are out there; you just need to look, and you just need to ask. So please, do exactly that. Come in to The Greenery and pick up one of the pamphlets I mentioned, or ask one of our budtenders about ways to keep your marijuana use discrete. We’ll give you the tools and advice you need, because that’s what Your Best Buds are for.
Darth Vader is cool only because he has theme music. Granted, the lightsaber helps a little bit, as does his freaky ability to choke fools from a distance, but if it wasn’t for the sonorous, tonal music that follows Vader wherever he goes, he’d be average at best. All the other aliens in that far, far away galaxy wouldn’t even notice when he walked in the room, despite his awkward breathing, and there’s no way he could pull off that goth cape without his theme song. It’s sad, but true.
That’s why I’ve always wanted theme music. Sometimes, when I’m especially high, my brain obliges. I’ll be walking from point “A” to point “B,” and something groovy will start playing in my head. My walk will morph into a strut, and I’ll start humming “Stayin’ Alive” by The Bee Gees. The world around me will slow down and start to sparkle, and I’ll bob my head to the rhythm. And if that were to ever happen in the real-world, I’d know that I’ve arrived, because anybody who’s anybody has theme music.
Think about it. When the President of the United States steps up to the podium, he’s accompanied by brazen fanfare—an entire orchestra announces his arrival with pomp and circumstance. When Stephan Colbert steps on stage, his audience knows it thanks to his Late Show theme song. Hell, a couple years ago at The Oscars, Tom Hanks got pissed-off because the band played the Forest Gump song when he walked on stage instead of the song from whatever movie he starred in that week; Tom Hanks is so famous he has multiple theme songs. That’s just crazy. But now, The Greenery is catching up to his level, because we have a theme song too—put that in your box of chocolates, Mr. Gump.
Dexter Davis is a student at Arkansas State, an artist who goes by ICEberg Slim, and he sent us his song a few weeks back. It’s called “The Greenery,” and really, it’s just a happy coincidence; the song has nothing in common with our dispensary save for its title, and Slim has never walked through our door. But theme songs don’t just fall from the sky every day, so for this blog, at least, we’re coopting Slim’s song as our own. And the song is alright. It sounds like the type of music Shaft would wake-and-bake to—warm and scratchy, vinyl straight from the turntable, it’s an old-school stoner jam.
Listen to it here, and then come in to tell us what you think. Feel free to walk through our door humming your own personal theme song, because your best buds won’t judge you. We know exactly what it’s like having a theme song, thanks to Dexter Davis, and just like Darth Vader, The Greenery has arrived.
Dexter Davis, aka ICEberg Slim, at a recent performance.
I’m old, or at least it feels that way when I walk into a marijuana dispensary. When I was a kid, pot was a plant you lit on fire, and that’s about it. We’d hear stories about exotic sounding hash or kief, but we could never get our hands on it, and “pot brownies” were a rare luxury. But now, I’m a budtender at The Greenery here in Durango, and things have changed dramatically.
It seems as if there’s no limit to the variety of ways one can consume marijuana—we sell every imaginable sort of edible, from caramel-coated lollypop to THC infused root beer, and we have on our shelves a veritable panoply of concentrates ranging from simple hash to carbon-dioxide-extracted live resin. And as a newcomer entering into this industry with not much more than the memories I brought from my misspent youth, it was all a little overwhelming the first time I stepped behind the counter; I can’t imagine what it might feel like to a first-time customer.
However, The Greenery is different from the other local dispensaries for one simple reason: our knowledgeable, friendly staff. As a new employee, I’ve been testing the depths of their collective knowledge with my incessant questions, and on a daily basis, our budtenders have been thoroughly impressive. These young men and women have been able to answer all my questions in a way that doesn’t leave me guessing, and I’ve seen them extend the same professional courtesy to every new customer who walks through our door. But just in case you haven’t yet visited our dispensary, I’d like to share one of my favorite new discoveries with you: the O.pen disposable vape pen.
As I alluded to earlier, until recently, I’ve only smoked flower or enjoyed the occasional edible; I’ve never ventured into the world of concentrates because I was a little ignorant. So, for my first experiment, I asked Clay (one of The Greenery’s friendly budtenders) about the easiest way a newbie such as myself could try hash oil. In case you’re just as ignorant as I was, “hash oil” is a concentrate made by extracting with carbon dioxide all the wonderful cannabinoids that live in marijuana plant matter (hash oil is most commonly enjoyed through a vaporizer similar to an e-cigarette).
Clay told me all of this and I’m sure my eyes glazed over a bit because he slowed down and started showing me all the options, the simplest of which was the O.pen disposable vape pen I mentioned earlier. Basically, the disposable vape pens we sell at The Greenery come preloaded with one-hundred milligrams of hash oil. Each one is about the size of a cigarette, and all you do is take the vape pen out of its child-resistant packaging and take a puff. It’s that simple. Each eight-second puff contains about two milligrams of THC, and each disposable pen contains roughly fifty puffs worth of concentrate; once it’s empty, you simply throw away the vape pen and move on with life. These pens are discrete and convenient and affordable; we sell three varieties (indica, sativa, and hybrid) for $25 each before tax.
Frankly, after I bought and tried my first vape pen, I felt like a fool for waiting so long. These things really are as convenient and discrete as they’re advertised to be, and the effect was perfect. My wife said the vapor smelled nothing like marijuana, but the high was one of the cleanest and quickest I’ve ever experienced. The only drawback I noticed was the fact that if I turned the pen upside-down, some of the oil leaked out of the mouthpiece, but Clay warned me about the possibility and I left The Greenery fully educated vis-à-vis the new product I was about to try. It was a perfect experience, one that was both easy and comfortable, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in branching out.
And that’s all I have for this post. Please, if you’re like me—a creature of habit who’s stuck to the same way of smoking for years—come down to The Greenery, even if it’s just to ask questions. We’d love to show you all the new things that’re coming on the market monthly, because we’re your best buds.
