dispensary deals Archives | Page 10 of 11 | The Grand Junction Greenery

Posted on June 16, 2018 - 9:00 am

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In the beginning, we had no idea what they were going to throw at us when it came to taxes. Frankly, back in ’14, businesses such as ours were willing to accept even the most astronomical rates simply so we could get away with selling legal marijuana; it was a means to an end. And “they” knew we’d put up with anything, so the rates kept climbing and climbing, and our out-the-door prices jumped all over the place like a kangaroo on crack. Because of this, we made the decision early on to not include taxes in our advertised prices because we never knew what was going to happen from month to month.

But a few months ago, when they tried to raise taxes even higher, we threw a fit. Our house counsel lobbied lawmakers and we started a petition and we got together as an industry and marched on city hall with torches and pitchforks. They gave in and agreed to keep our combined tax rate at 20%, which is insane enough as it is.

Think about it: if a customer comes in and spends $500, which happens all the time, they end up paying an additional $100 in tax—when this happens, I like to tell the customer that they single-handedly paid to fix a pothole with the tax that came from their purchase. But that’s just the way it is, and at least things have leveled off. And the good news is that since marijuana sales tax has become static (albeit extortionate), we’ve decided to include tax in our advertised prices, and since we had to change things anyway, we decided to make a few other adjustments, and I wanted to use this week’s blog to tell you about them. So, from now on, we’re going to have four tiers of flower pricing that represent your ‘out the door’ cost:

Craft: This is the crazy-good stuff, the flower you’d think of as true top-shelf marijuana. There will be times when our Craft flower comes from other small-batch growers, but for the most part, we grow all our Craft cannabis. We baby these plants; we play music for them and water them by hand and give them the love and time they need to grow the best buds on earth. From now on, with tax included, our Craft strains will sell for $24 a gram (of course, there are always price breaks for quantity).

Premium: These strains will usually come from featured growers around the state who are renowned for cultivating the most terpene-rich, potent strains in Colorado. You’ll need to check our marijuana menu from time to time to see what’s available, but these strains will sell for $18 per gram.

Choice: I’d hate to call our Choice strains “mid-range” because they’re still better than most of the other stuff in town, and you shouldn’t feel as if any quality is sacrificed per our Choice strains. These buds are still grown by some of the best cultivators in the state, and the potency is still in that Colorado range that put us on the map. Our Choice flower will cost you $12 per gram.

Select: This flower is still quality, but it might come in popcorn form (little buds) or have a lower THC percentage. This is the stuff you’ll want to buy if you decide to roll a comically-large joint or if your house is full of guests with vacuum lungs (you know who I’m talking about). And our decision to offer Durango a Select strain is something new for us, because now, you’ll be able to walk out the door with a $9 gram, which is awesome.

And we didn’t stop there. When we decided to restructure, we went all the way and adjusted our concentrate pricing for all you dabbers out there. From now on, you’ll be able to leave The Greenery with grams of concentrate for these tax-included prices (but of course, all the prices in this blog are subject to change because city hall might forget about the pitchforks):

Select Wax: $30 per gram

Premium Wax: $45 per gram

Shatter: $50 per gram

Live Resin: $60 per gram

Rosin: $60 per gram

HCFSE (Crystalline): $84 per gram

Isn’t that awesome?! All the premium concentrates we sell come from Madrone, which is the best producer of new-school hashes in the state. I’ll write more about them in a separate blog because they deserve it, but for now, please trust me when I say that there simply isn’t a better dab in Durango, and these prices are definitely worth it (if you’ve dabbed Madrone before, this isn’t something I need to tell you).

And that’s that! It’ll take us a week or so to bring in the Select Wax, but all these other changes will go into effect on Tuesday, June 19^th. Our menus will be simpler, our prices will be easier to understand since tax will be included in everything (even for our edibles), but most importantly, you’ll save some money. So, if you’re over twenty-one and you have a valid I.D., come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue for the best-priced, highest quality cannabis products in Durango!

How to Identify Quality Marijuana

Posted on June 9, 2018 - 9:00 am

Part of me wants to say, “go to The Greenery and look at our marijuana because that’s what quality looks like,” but I’m not going to do that to you. I’ve been writing these blogs long enough to assume that I’ve built up a bit of ethos with at least one of you, and I don’t want to lose your trust. So, this week, I’m going to teach you how to tell the good from the bad when it comes to all the green stuff that’s on the market.

I see it every day: someone new will walk into our shop and look down at the twelve strains we have on display, and they’ll have no clue where to start. But can you blame them? Some of our strains are purple, some have white crystals and orange hairs. Some strains are neon green and some are dark as moss. How’s a newbie supposed to figure out what’s what? There are well over four-thousand named strains of marijuana and they all look different—if I didn’t work with weed all day every day, I probably wouldn’t know where to start either. So, when a new customer looks up from our display and asks, “um, how do I tell which one is good?”, I tell them these things:

1.) Look at the pot.

I know that sounds stupid, but it isn’t as easy as you’d think to tell whether flower is “quality” just by looking at it. We all know what good food looks like because food has been legal forever, but pot hasn’t, so for that first-time shopper, all the visual differences can be difficult to judge. So, one of the first things to look for is density, and that’s what I tell our customers. Pick up one of our display jars and shake it a bit. If the pot rattles around like a little rock, it’s dense, which is good because it means the flower is highly resinous, and that it was grown and cured properly. If the pot feels light like a ball of grass, it’s “larfy.”

For the record, I’ll admit freely that most of the words we use to describe cannabis are ridiculous, and they’re usually lazy versions of real words. For example, the word “larfy” means “leafy,” and it’s the term used in the marijuana industry use to describe fluffy pot, which usually isn’t as good as the dense stuff. And the “usually” matters, because sometimes, a fluffy strain (like the 30% THC King Kong we’re selling right now) will come along that’s better than a lot of the dense stuff.

Secondly, look for crystals. Technically, the crystals are dehydrated trichomes (the resinous glands that grow out of a plant’s epidermis), but all you really need to know is that crystal-covered flower is usually awesome because plants that produce a ton of crystals are usually potent and flavorful, and that’s always a good thing.

Third, check the bud structure. Round or conical buds are usually the best because the shape suggests the plants were grown properly. For instance, if you see long spindles of bud shooting off here and there (these are called “foxtails”), it could mean that the plant was grown with too much heat, which will affect the taste and cannabinoid content. But again, the “usually” matters, because there are a few awesome strains out there (like Casey Jones) that grow foxtails no matter how they’re cultivated.

2.) Smell the pot.

Again, it’s not nearly as easy as it sounds. Just like a fine wine, good pot will have a distinct “nose,” and even though it sounds snobby, we use that word in our industry too. But it’s tricky to pick out pot by its smell. You wouldn’t think it, but some of the best strains smell bad. The UK Cheese we sell in our shop from time to time smells like a mild cheddar, but the taste is creamy and the high is spectacular. We sell a Sour Diesel strain that smells like a gas station, but the high is energetic and blissful. And we sell a Chem Dog strain that smells like bleached linoleum, but again, the high is perfect.

My point here is that you need to reevaluate what you consider to be a “good” smell and start sniffing for specifics. After all, a flower’s smell is determined by its terpene content, and different terpenes do different things. For example, if you come into our shop, smell one of our display jars, and encounter a musky, skunk-like smell, the strain you’re sniffing most likely contains a high concentration of B-Myrcene, which is a terpene that’s thought to provide relaxation and pain-management possibilities.

And you can do this proactively: if you’re looking for an uplifting strain, avoid the skunk smells and sniff around for something that smells like pine or lemons—these smells come from the terpenes Pinene and d-Limonene respectively, and they’re famous for day-crushing energy and creativity.

3.) Lastly, ask questions.

There are a few other visual cues and at least ten more terpenes that really matter, so come in and ask one of our budtenders to explain what you’re looking at and smelling. Tell them the type of high you’re looking for and your quality/price range, and our budtenders will point you in the right direction, because I promise they’ve looked at and sniffed more pot than most of us could ever hope to. And the iPads we use to ring you up when you shop at The Greenery double as computers; we’ll always take the time to look up answers to your questions if we don’t know them readily.

So, if you’re over twenty-one with a valid I.D., come to The Greenery at 208 Parker Avenue. We’ll show you our quality marijuana, and we’ll take the time to explain the differences, because We’re Your Best Buds!

Things to do in Durango

Posted on June 2, 2018 - 9:00 am

Did you know there’s more to do in Durango than buy marijuana from The Greenery? I know… it’s crazy.

In a way, I’ve been doing you a disservice by only talking about cannabis and not telling you about all the other things this town has to offer. And I know it for a fact because lately, the tourists who find us on Google mention these blogs, but then turn around and ask, “so, what should we do while we’re in town?” Well, I apologize, and for this post, I’m going to talk about Durango instead of the best dispensary in it. Here we go:

***

I’m never moving.

This town has all the best parts of home without Alaska’s winter darkness, and it has all the best parts of Colorado without Denver’s crowd. The only way this town could be better is if it had a saltwater beach and palm trees hidden somewhere in the south, because Durango has everything else. We have rivers and mountains and culture and history and a ton of love, and this place has become my home, which is a rare thing for an Alaskan because most of us are clingy when it comes to what we call “home.”

But Durango is also The Greenery’s home more so than it is mine. The Greenery was born here, and our business model was breed by locals. We’re staffed with locals, we’re the local’s spot, and even if you’re not a local, we’ll treat you like one while you’re here. If you walked in and asked us what you should do after stopping at The Greenery (quite a few people really do come straight from the airport), we’d tell you to go see these places:

The Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

Did you know that our hometown train was the one in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and that Robert Redford and Paul Newman rode that train? It blew my mind when I figured that out, even though to my daughter, Paul Newman is “that guy who makes salad dressing and lemonade.”

And even though our train creeps through our town seventeen-hundred times a day blowing that dissonant whistle and belching plumes of smoke, I love that thing. I love that there’s still a real-life steam engine that’s fed with coal, and I love that you can ride it along the cliffs or walk along the tracks and pick up heavy chunks of its black food. If you’re visiting Durango, you need to click on the link at the top of this paragraph and see our train.

The Animas River

This river got its name thanks to all the souls it took when this town was being founded back in the late eighteen-hundreds, so if you’re visiting and you want to raft the Animas, I’d suggest taking a guide like 4 Corners Whitewater. Those people know what they’re doing.

But if you just want to sit by our river and smell what Colorado is about, we have miles of the Animas running through town, and it’s crossed by bridges and bordered by trails. Just go find the river and then spend a day enjoying it. That’s all it takes.

Purgatory Ski Resort

It doesn’t matter if you like skiing when it snows or doing backflips on a mountain bike during the summer months: Purgatory has it all. They have trampolines and ziplines and big-ass slides and a lake for paddle boarding. If you like outside, Purgatory is the place for you while you’re in Durango.

Powerhouse Science Center

If you have kids, take them here. Or if you’re an adult who acts like a kid when you get stoned, go here. This huge, brick-built building once powered all of Durango, but now it sits restored along the banks of our river, and it’s packed with science and educational fun (which I swear to you is a real thing). The Powerhouse is close to downtown, so you can learn things and then take a short walk to buy and eat things.

Ska Brewing

This place is to beer as The Greenery is to bud. That’s all I’ll say.

***

But even after reading all of that, it’s not like you can’t walk into The Greenery and ask, “so, what should we do while we’re in town?” because most of our budtenders know more about Durango than I do. Everyone has his or her favorite spot or attraction, and it never hurts to ask. So, come see Your Best Buds at 208 Parker Avenue if you’re over twenty-one with a valid I.D., and we’ll share our home with you, right along with the best marijuana in Durango.

Top Shelf Marijuana in Durango

Posted on May 26, 2018 - 9:00 am

Word abuse should be illegal. That way, if someone said “irregardless” or something else nonsensical, real-life grammar police could come along and issue a citation while the rest of us watched and shook our heads slowly. But grammar police aren’t real, and believe it or not, the word “irregardless” has been added to most unabridged dictionaries simply because it’s been said enough times to become a real word; the definition in Webster’s is “regardless.”

And the idiocy doesn’t stop there: if you look closely enough, you can find “gourmet” foods in the gas station, or “artisanal” meals in the frozen foods aisle. I mean seriously, is a TV dinner actually “artisanal” if you have to microwave it? Does the raw cardboard packaging really mean that what’s inside is somehow better than anything else you find next to the frozen waffles? No. It’s just advertising, word-doctoring, and it’s insidious, when you think about it.

True, I work in sales and advertising, so it’s possible that I’ve gerrymandered semantics a time or two, but in the end, I’ve found that honesty really is the best policy—gas station “gourmet” food will get you sick, and then just a little bit, the word “gourmet” loses some of its meaning, which is the reason word abuse should be illegal in the first place.

It’s no better in the marijuana industry. There are plenty of dispensaries that throw around the word “organic” even though their products are anything but (since marijuana is federally illegal, it isn’t regulated by the FDA, so people use the word “organic” without oversight). But the worst case of word abuse in this industry is the misuse of the term “top shelf marijuana.” It’s frustrating, so please pay attention to this: marijuana cannot be “top-shelf marijuana” just because someone put it on the top shelf. It irks me to no end because at least once a day, someone will come in and ask why our top-shelf strains are costlier than the ones downtown.

I’m always kind to these customers, because after I thought about it for a while, I realized it wasn’t their fault—they’d been lied to thanks to all the false advertising in other Durango dispensaries, and if anything, they deserve the truth (literally, I have a T shirt that says “grammar police” on the front). So, I take my time with these misguided customers, and I tell them this:

At The Greenery, our top-shelf marijuana is on the top shelf because it’s the best cannabis on earth.

My boss would get uber pissed at me if I told you exactly how we operate our grow because that’s the kind of knowledge people pay us to learn, but I can tell you that we’re straight-up scientists: our growers run around and shoot lasers at our plants to make sure the canopy temperature is perfect; we drop particulate gasses on the fanleaves of our plants to help them breathe; we use light-emitting ceramic bulbs and engineered growing mediums and all sorts of super-secret stuff, but I’ve already said too much. My point here is that our buds really are Your Best Buds because there’s no shelf in Durango that’s higher than our top shelf.

Why? The other guys use hydroponics and nasty-ass greenhouse grows just so they can pump out as much mid-range pot as they can. The other guys don’t take their time when they’re trimming or curing. The other guys take subpar pot, slap a “top shelf” label on it, and then piss me off because like I said, word abuse should be illegal. Yes, you’ll pay more for true top-shelf cannabis, but that’s how life works. Good beer costs more than the stuff with a blue ribbon on the front, good food costs more than the frozen stuff, and good marijuana costs more than the pesticide-sprayed stuff that’s sold elsewhere in this town. I’m sure that sounds harsh, but it’s true.

So come see us at our Durango dispensary on 208 Parker Avenue and talk to one of our budtenders. We’ll take our time and show you the difference between our “top shelf” and all the others. We’ll let you smell the difference between ours and theirs, and once you smoke it and taste the terpene-rich awesomeness, the term “top shelf marijuana” will start to mean something again.

Solventless Saturday Deal

Posted on May 12, 2018 - 9:00 am

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I love Taco Tuesday. Actually, in the year 2020, Cinco De Mayo falls on a Taco Tuesday, and my calendar is already marked because that day is gunna be epic. But if I’m being honest, I think I like “Taco Tuesday” for the two “tee” sounds instead of the “taco” or the “Tuesday” part, because I’m not really a fan of either one when they’re apart.

But I digress…

My point here is that most day-specific deals are fun because the alliteration makes them sound so cool: we sell a half-priced gram on “Marvelous Monday” when you buy one at full price; “Waxy Wednesday” gets you fifteen percent off shatter and a few other products; “Thankful Thursday” lets you pick any one item to discount by fifteen percent. See what I mean? They’re catchy and fun and easy to remember, just like the rest of our daily deals that you can read about HERE.

However, the weekends have been neglected by The Greenery, and we apologize. Saturdays and Sundays have always been crazy enough given that our cannabis really is the best in town, so we’ve been afraid to add to the mayhem by throwing a discount into the mix. But you know what? Our Hash Factory makes solventless hashes, Saturday is a perfect day to smoke said hashes, and “Solventless Saturday” sounds super-cool thanks to all the susurrations. I might even like it better than taco Tuesday, but that kind of decision takes time to make.

Anyway, as of today (5/12/18), The Greenery will be selling our house-made solventless concentrates for fifteen percent off, and we’ll do so every Saturday because the weekends deserve discounts too, as does anyone who appreciates the purity of a traditional hash. And just in case you don’t know what qualifies as a true “solventless” hash, here’s the list:

Lebanese Hash. This stuff is usually blonde, but that doesn’t matter because it’s the best. We squeeze freakishly-potent kief in a twelve-ton press until it starts to goo together, and then we cut it up and sell it by the gram. A Lebanese Hash high is my favorite because it feels like that first-time high from way-back-when, and it feels like it every time.
Moroccan Hash. We bake our kief to make this one, but I’m not going to tell you how we do it because that’s super-secret stuff (read all about it HERE). The hand-rolled balls of Moroccan we sell at our Durango dispensary are dark and deep, just like a storied hash should be.
Kief Brick. This is the simplest, unadulterated hash on the market, and the taste is like standing in a wind-swept field of cannabis (I might’ve been stretching a bit on that one, but I promise there’s no purer way to add flavor and potency to a bowl than with a dusting of Kief Brick).
Rosin. We make ours with kief instead of flower, so it’s potent. Yes, the taste is robust and the high is insane, but you can handle it. This is the only dabbable concentrate that’s included in our Saturday special, but that’s because Rosin is the only true solventless hash you can dab.
Bubble Hash. All it takes to make bubble hash correctly is a little ice-water, some of the best cannabis on earth, and a few months of trial and error, so don’t try this at home—our Bubble Hash is agitated and strained and cured, and that’s not the type of thing that should be left to amateurs.

I swear to you that the five hashes we’re discounting this Saturday and every Saturday are some of the best products available anywhere. In fact, the hashes we make are so good that they’re sold in about ten percent of all the dispensaries in Colorado, and it only took us a few months on the wholesale market to get there (seriously, look at our map HERE). Isn’t that awesome? Now you can buy some of the best hash in the world directly from the people who make it, and you can do so right here in this tiny mountain town for a price that’s better than you’ll find anywhere else.

So, come see Your Best Buds at our Durango dispensary on 208 Parker Avenue this Saturday for our solventless special. We’re open from ten to nine-thirty, and our hash will be discounted all day just for you, which is way better than tacos on Tuesday, now that I think about it.

April’s Durango Dispensary Sale Days

Posted on March 24, 2018 - 9:00 am

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Everybody thinks he or she knows the origin story of April Fools’ day. Sometimes, it’s about one group of people making fun of another group, like that story about the sixteenth-century Parisians (who celebrated New Year’s Day on January first) who made fun of the rural townsfolk because they’d always celebrated the New Year on April first. Or it has something to do with Chaucer and that ridiculous poem he wrote centuries ago. Or it comes from a religious text, or some obscure wartime victory in the Netherlands when one side or the other lost a battle on April first. It’s never the same.

Isn’t that strange? All the other holidays in this country come along with a dubious explanation we’ve all agreed upon since childhood, and yet everyone’s explanation for April Fools’ Day is different. But in a poetic little twist, even though all the origin stories seem contradictory, they’re all true. For some reason, people just like to play tricks on other people in the spring, and they do so in every country: all the different origin stories come from different places on the globe, because our species has always been wily in the spring.

Why? My theory is simple: we’re just animals. We’re instinctual. We perk up in the spring just like all the other mammals on this planet, and we do stuff that we couldn’t do thanks to winter. Some species migrate, some grow antlers, and some stretch saranwrap over toilets because messes are funny, I guess.

But April does feel different, when you think about it. It’s a heady month, with all that new heat in the air, and something atavistic wakes up inside each of us and wants to go for a walk, preferably with a joint. And April is going to be one hell of a month for us here at The Greenery, so if you get the urge to go on that walk (or if you don’t have a joint), you should definitely come see us on these dates:

March 31^st: Durango is having its first Cannabis Crawl. For the record, I get that “cannabis” and “crawl” sound cool next to each other, but nobody crawls after getting high like those drunk fools who crawl from pub to pub, so maybe they should’ve gone with “weed walk” or “bud bounce” or “ganja gallop.” Oh well. But we’re a part of the Cannabis Crawl here at The Greenery, and we’ll be selling one gram of Greenery-grown bud for $10 before tax to all you crawlers, but we’re limiting it to one gram per customer, because after hitting so many dispensaries, we don’t want you to go over your legal carry and purchase limit of one ounce.

April 10^th: It’s our Birthday! Seriously, three years ago, The Greenery opened its dispensary doors and started slanging legal weed, and since then, we’ve mastered the game. But if you come by and see us on our birthday, we’ll get you something: 20% off everything in the store, and $4.20 pre-rolled joints before tax (limited to two per customer).

April 20^th: Yes, it’s 4/20 once again (click HERE to learn why that matters), and all day on April 20^th, this Durango dispensary will be selling everything in the store for 20% off, and if you spend more than $50 before tax, we’ll throw in a $1 joint.

Nice, isn’t it? No gimmicky jokes, no April tricks, just a month of specials on the best marijuana in Colorado, because We’re Your Best Buds, and that’s an origin story all of Durango knows.

Colorado Marijuana Laws

Posted on October 28, 2017 - 9:00 am

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.

Caviar Marijuana

Posted on October 21, 2017 - 9:00 am

People get pretty pretentious when it comes to fish eggs. Think about it: the only true “caviar” comes from the critically endangered beluga sturgeon—a monstrous fish that swam alongside dinosaurs—and it sells for $290 an ounce. It’s salty and black and usually enjoyed by people who wear suits and snobby expressions, like James Bond. I’ve only eaten it a couple times, and I didn’t understand the hype; it didn’t taste any better than the fish eggs you get at sushi restaurants for a fraction of the price. But that sushi stuff is just called “roe,” and to some people, that matters, I guess. And to these people, it’s annoying when the rest of us refer to garden-variety roe as “caviar,” but really, we only do so because it’s a crap-ton easier than saying “salt-cured fish eggs that come from a species outside the acipenseridae family of fish.” Know what I mean?

And in a way, it’s ironic, because just as “caviar” has become a blanket-term for fish eggs, so too has it become a blanket-term for infused cannabis flower. But then again, people get pretty pretentious when it comes to pot as well. Technically, the only true caviar marijuana is made by soaking a bud of Grape God in Grape Rhino hash oil, and then coating it with Grape Rhino kief. If a different flower, oil, or kief is used, the end product is just an unnamed variety of “infused flower.” But the confusion doesn’t stop there: instead of “caviar,” some people (usually from the west coast) use the term “moon rocks,” or they think that moon rocks are buds coated with cannabis wax. But that’s not accurate either—true moon rocks are made by soaking buds of Girl Scout Cookies in an oil made from the same strain, before coating it in more GSC kief. So, thanks to all the vagaries and confusion, the three terms have become somewhat synonymous, and frankly, here at The Greenery, we don’t have a problem with that: “moon rocks” is just the Californian way of saying “caviar,” which is just the Coloradan way of saying “infused flower.” At the end of the day, none of it matters because caviar marijuana is ludicrously awesome and it gets you high as hell, so who cares what it’s called?

Anyway, at The Greenery, we’ve always sold caviar, and our customers love it so much that we’ve started making it ourselves. For our first batch, we used Dark Star flower from our own grow, but instead of dipping it in hash oil that’d been thinned with alcohol like most places use, we painstakingly painted each bud (yes, with an actual paintbrush) with pure hash oil that’s just as thick and golden as the gooey-goodness in Winnie the Pooh’s honeypot. And then we battered each sticky bud in our own kief, just like fried chicken, before letting it dry. The result was wonderful: our caviar came in at over 55% THC, which is mind-blowing, but the best part was the texture. Most caviar is oversaturated with oil, and when you try to grind it, it clogs up your grinder and makes a hot mess. But our caviar crumbles perfectly and it’s easy to handle or roll into joints: it’s the perfect trifecta of potency, and just a little bit goes a long way. The high is quick and potent, the flavor is rich and decadent, and the best part is that you don’t need to be James Bond to afford it: before tax, our caviar sells for only $25 per gram, or $20 for a one-gram, pre-rolled joint, and we always have plenty in stock.

So please, come into our dispensary at 208 Parker Avenue and come see this stuff. Come ask one of our budtenders to show you a sample or let you smell it, and we swear that you’ll understand the hype (unlike with those snobby fish eggs), because We’re Your Best Buds!

420 Friendly in Durango, Colorado

Posted on October 7, 2017 - 9:00 am

pre-roll, joint, 420, 420 friendly, marijuana, cannabis, weed, pot, smoke

Just about everybody knows that “420” has something to do with pot, and just about everybody knows that “420 friendly” has something to do with businesses that support recreational marijuana use. But do you know where “420” comes from?

As it turns out, some kids in California coined the term, but I didn’t know that when I was a college freshman. At the time, I lived in Eugene, Oregon. My balcony overlooked Pine Street, and I remember watching from my lawn chair as all the other college kids went to class, exercised on the streets, did all the things college kids were supposed to do. I remember the taste of that west coast weed, I remember the deep bass bleeding from our living room speakers, and I remember laughing with my friends as we smoked our way into oblivion at 4:20 on some random afternoon.

Eugene is a verdant place, where the heat is ripe and everybody looks like they belong in an outdoors magazine. It’s a liberal college town, one so quintessential that you’ve seen it in movies, and pot was just a part of life. We got high every day at 4:20 because that’s what you were supposed to do. We had our rituals, we used alarm clocks. But we thought “420” was the call-code cops used to radio in a charge for marijuana possession. It made sense: when Snoop Dog said “187 on an undercover cop,” he meant murder; the band 311 chose their name because “311” is the call-code for indecent exposure; “420” obviously had something to do with cops and smoking pot (which is why it was so cool). But I was young and clueless—sometimes, clichés really do fit best—and I didn’t know the truth:

Back in 1971, there was group of Californian kids who called themselves the “Waldos,” and San Rafael was their hood. They were athletic teenaged boys and best friends. I’m sure they wore sweatbands in their shaggy hair, and striped socks pulled all the way up to their knees—I’m sure their music was loud, and I’m sure the ‘66 Impala they drove around town still felt modern and new.

One day, one of the Waldos heard about a military man who lived in the Point Reyes Forest. He was shipping out somewhere, leaving his post on the peninsula, and he wouldn’t be around to guard his pot-patch, growing somewhere out in the forest. One of the Waldos even had a treasure map. So, they made a plan: every day after school and track, they’d meet at 4:20 by a Louis Pasteur statue next to the wall behind which they usually got stoned (incidentally, this wall put the “wall” in “Waldos”). They’d start smoking immediately, and then they’d drive out into the Point Reyes Forest. They’d get out of that ‘66 Impala and they’d roam the loamy forest floor, hunting through the dappled sunlight for a hidden glen of unguarded pot plants. They never found what they were looking for, even after two weeks’ worth of searching, but they did find a form of immortality, because the Waldos created something that’ll live on forever.

The rest of the story is easy-cheesy: one of the Waldos had a loose connection to one of the Grateful Dead, and “420” found a carrier, just like the common cold. And it spread through the Waldos’ school, like things do. The virgin-minded freshmen watched with awe as the Waldos got high behind their wall, and after each graduating class, the Waldos lived on, reincarnated in a younger troop. After time, those two weeks’ worth of raiding into the Point Reyes Forest were forgotten, but the time to get high wasn’t: school still ended at the same time, so did track practice, and that statue of Pasture still stood watch over the new kids, doing his best to keep their minds from curdling. The original Waldos grew up and moved and had children of their own, and the origin story behind 420 was diluted with myth and by geography until it found me sitting on that balcony in Eugene, smoking my way into oblivion, convinced in totality that my alarm was going off because of a police call-code.

Anyway, seventeen years later, businesses have started adopting “420 friendly” as a lowkey way to advertise that they’re cool with pot; it provides for their customers an appreciated level of discretion. And at least five times a day, someone will come in and ask me if I know of any 420-friendly places in town. First and foremost, I tell these customers that per Colorado state law, marijuana can only be smoked on private property with the property owner’s permission. Quite a few of the local hotels that have smoking rooms will allow you to smoke marijuana in their rooms, but here’s the important part: always ask first. I know it might seem a bit counterintuitive to ask someone at the front desk if it’s okay to get high in your room, but trust me, these people are used to the question, so there’s no point in being timid (after all, it’s legal now). And if you’re staying in a hotel that doesn’t allow in-room smoking, just ask if you can use their designated smoking area—the same principal applies, and if you get permission, everything is peachy on the legal front.

And there are a few other businesses in town with outdoor seating that don’t mind too much if you get high on their property, especially if you’re using something discrete, like a marijuana vape pen (again, always ask). But if you’re still leery on the legality, please feel free to come into The Greenery and ask one of our knowledgeable budtenders about the regulations; after all, The Greenery is the friendliest 420-friendly place in town. We’ll tell you when and where you can smoke, and we’ll do our best to make sure your 4:20 is comfortable and legal, because We’re Your Best Buds, and that’s what we do.

Best Bud of the Month

Posted on September 16, 2017 - 9:00 am

The Greenery Grow, marijuana grow, cannabis, cultivation, Indiana Bubblegum, Pakistani Chitral Kush, Durango weed

Mike Michon
Cultivation Manager

It came up casually in my conversation with Mike that he’s seen Phish in concert fifty-two times. He said it like it was no big deal, nothing out of the ordinary. But it is, and I stopped him halfway into a new subject so we could talk about it:

Me: “Dear god man, seriously? Fifty-two times?”
Mike: “Yeah, some people think it’s strange.”
Me: “Actually, that’s pretty badass.”
Mike: “Yes! There’re so many people out there who aren’t passionate about anything. You need something like that in life, whether it’s mountain biking or model trains or Phish.”
Me: “… I like model trains. Especially the tiny ones.”
Mike: “Damnit. Now I want a train.”

Mr. Michon is The Greenery’s Senior Cultivation Manager; he’s our Master Grower. He spends his days about five minutes out of town tending our grow with a level of skill that borders on wizardry. And that’s not something I’m writing just to promote the weed we grow and sell; Mike’s pot is sublime. His Pakistani Chitral Kush is so good it made me want to get a “PCK” lower-back tattoo—Mike’s Indiana Bubblegum is so good it made me regret the tattoo I wanted to get because “IB” is the only pot for me.

Anyway, I sat down with Mike over the weekend and conducted one of the most entertaining interviews to date. However, I had to redact about ninety percent of what follows because Mike pulled the “off-the-record” card no fewer than twelve times (and for pretty good reason). Here’s the G-rated version:

Q: When did you start working for The Greenery?
Mike: “June 9^th, 2016.”

Q. What’s your favorite way to enjoy marijuana?
Mike: “Joints. And Grape Ape is my favorite strain.”

Q. What’s your favorite outdoor activity?
Mike: “Snowboarding.”

Q: Tell us about your pet.
Mike: “Walfredo is a border collie named after a Phish song.”

Q. Which station do you stream while you’re working at The Greenery?
Mike: “Grateful Dead Radio. It’s channel twenty-three on Sirius XM, but I hate Sirius XM. I’m only listening to it because of the free introductory subscription that came with my new truck. But yeah… I love The Grateful Dead.”

Q: What do you like most about working at The Greenery?
Mike: “I like plants better than people. And real jobs are a shame.”

Mike gave that last answer with a smile. I laughed. But below the hilarity lives a truth—I can’t imagine how peaceful it must be to work with those plants all day, to care for them and feed them as you walk slowly through the verdure, calmed as you go by the intoxicating perfume all around. Mike is lucky to have such a station in life, but we’re just as lucky to have him on our side, because Mike is the type of person who doesn’t suffer from a dearth of passions—he isn’t “one of those people.” He loves his dog and his Phish, he loves his east coast hockey and his deep-dish pizza, and he loves growing marijuana. He takes these things seriously, and because he grows for us, we reap the benefits: thanks to Mike, The Greenery sells the best marijuana in Durango, Colorado. And that, my friends, is why Mike Michon is your Best Bud for September. Thank you, sir!