Church’s & Pot Cannabis

Co-Ops, Clinics, Dispensary’s 

I would describe this as grapey, candy-like, sweet, with a slight 
undertone of spice, said DeAngelo, a longtime activist and hemp 
promoter who is now chief executive officer of Harborside Health 
Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland. He was holding the 
tasting at home where he could properly and legally — at least in 
the eyes of California, if not the federal government — evaluate 
some samples. To prepare, he’d taken off his green tweed coat, 
loosened his tie and settled in a chair near his vaporizer, an 
apparatus that allows him to breathe vapor instead of smoke, because 
it’s less harsh.

It is grapey, but I get flowers, said Rick Pfrommer, the 
dispensary’s purchasing agent, as he inhaled a strain called the 
Purps. I would use the word pungent. It has a pungent funk undertone.

It is grapey, with a hearty musty bottom, added Elan, the center’s 
manager, who preferred not to use his last name despite the fact that 
he, like Pfrommer and DeAngelo, is a card-carrying medicinal user and 
dispensary member.

DeAngelo arranged the tasting to show how far marijuana has come 
since the 1970s when, as a common joke goes, there were two kinds of 
pot, good and bad. These days, especially in the years since 
California approved medical use, there are too many to count. 
Harborside offers about 40, each recommended for various ailments and 
conditions. Sophisticated growers, who can manipulate color and 
cannabinoids — pot’s active ingredients — bestow their seeds and 
strains with exotic names. Some have taken landrace or indigenous 
breeds from Burma, India, Mexico or California and crossed them to 
create, said Elan, these crazy strains. Center clients can swap 
reviews or seek information on the Internet at sites like 
weedtracker.com (for medicinal users) or newsstands about the 
burgeoning array of options.

There are glossy magazines and cannabis cups, including High Times 
magazine’s long-standing annual event in Amsterdam where pot smoking 
is legal. Marijuana guru Jorge Cervantes, author of a Medical 
Growers Bible and probably the closest thing the weed world has to 
the wine world’s Robert Parker, appears in an online High Times video 
where he talks about his contest judging system. Seated at a table 
covered with a white cloth and a few dozen samples spread in a 
semi-circle, he demonstrates how to squeeze the buds and rate olfactory nuance.

Some of the fragrances you should look for are sweet, spicy and 
musty,; he says, dressed in a black jacket, a black beret covering 
his long black hair. If it’s sweet, what’s it like? Is it like 
bubblegum? Is it like honey? … Is it minty? What does that mean? Is 
it like a rose? Or a cherry?

As the quality and variety of marijuana products in pot clubs have 
grown, so too has an emerging marijuana connoisseurship or, as some 
call it, cannasseurship. I guess, said DeAngelo, when asked about 
the term after trying several samples, I’m a cannasaurus. In 
medical marijuana circles, the treatment potential of a certain 
strain, whether it produces a body high or a head high that dulls 
pain or stimulates appetite, treats pain, nausea, sleeplessness or 
other ailments, is paramount. But to a distinct and discerning 
subculture, there is another dimension.

And if there is a center in the United States for this breed of 
maven, it is California, particularly the Bay Area. In a region of 
wine and food buffs, where there is a constant quest for the best 
bread, cheese or olive oil, it’s no wonder that marijuana, in its 
semi-legal status, has become a new frontier for expertise. There are 
medicinal consumers who covet designer strains and varietals — such 
as the one grown and harvested only by women in a remote northern 
county — or who want organic products and say they can taste what 
soil or fertilizer was used and want to know the lineage of what they 
consume, as well as the expected effects.

"In the Bay Area if you hand a joint to someone, they’ll say, ‘What 
kind is that?’ said DeAngelo. In Wisconsin, they’ll just say, ‘Oh, 
thanks …’ It is a great time to be in the cannabis business.

As in any industry, say some insiders, some of this is hype and 
bluster. Dale Gieringer, California coordinator of the National 
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), says smoking 
various strains and being able to tell the difference is a mystery to me.

I’ve been to cannabis cups and I can look at them and smell them and 
judge on appearance, but when it comes to smoking it’s impossible to 
differentiate [between types], he said.

Cervantes, who now lives in Spain, says part of the publicity about 
new strains can come down to money, money, money in America. 
Consumers in Northern California, for example, are crazy about purple 
strains, he said. In general, they’re not as high quality as green 
varieties, but someone has figured out that purple sells.

People try and be bigger and better than someone else and they make 
a lot of it up, he said in a phone interview. Since it’s not a 
controlled industry people can use a good story to make money.

And none of this makes any difference to the federal Drug Enforcement 
Administration, which doesn’t recognize the state’s medical marijuana 
law. Whether it’s called White Widow, Sour Diesel or Bubble Berry, 
grown organically, hydroponically or on Aunt Martha’s porch, it’s 
illegal as long at it contains tetrahydrocannabinol, known as THC, 
the main active ingredient in marijuana. THC levels have soared since 
the 1970s as growers moved indoors and learned more botany, going 
from an average of 2 to 3 percent to as high as 20 percent, according 
to Greg Sullivan, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division.

It’s a marketing thing, truly just marketing, he said of dope 
diversification. We know they are different strains, like with 
wines, but we don’t analyze that. … Marijuana is marijuana. They’ve 
gotten very good at growing marijuana. It’s become an art.

The Botanist

In the introduction of his book The Big Book of Buds, longtime Bay 
Area medicinal marijuana activist and writer Ed Rosenthal describes 
the history of cannabis, from its origination in the foothills of the 
Himalayas to making its way on caravan routes in Asia and the Middle 
East and then to Europe and America. There, he says, laws prohibiting 
marijuana cultivation are what pushed growers to become more skilled 
as they moved underground. The laws actually inadvertently promoted 
a breeding program exceeded by no commercial plant, he says. 
California’s medical marijuana law further pushed the pioneers, 
turning underground botanists into boutique producers who can market 
to licensed clubs.

Marijuana in the last 20 years has undergone an incredible change, 
more than at any time in history, says Andrew, a landscaper, who 
only wanted to be known by his first name because he has a side job
as a gardener for medicinal marijuana patients. It is in its golden 
era now … Marijuana does not look like it did when I was young.

K, another grower, who wants to be identified by his first initial 
because of security concerns, also has watched the transformation of 
the marijuana industry. In many ways, he embodies it. At 42, he is 
the co-owner of Trichome Technologies, a 10-year-old company that 
produces plants for medicinal clubs, and an award-winning grower 
who’s been voted the best producer in the history of High Times. I’m 
not boasting, just stating my credentials, he said when we first 
spoke. When we met a few weeks later, he asked if I was surprised to 
see him, not in hippie or Rasta raiment, but in an ordinary pair of 
jeans, white tennis shoes and baseball cap. We talked at the Sea 
Breeze Market & Deli near the Berkeley Marina because he said he 
couldn’t at this time show his growing operation, although he has 
not been shy about his business. A recent High Times spread showcases 
his high tech warehouse and research facility, with its custom light, 
exhaust, temperature and irrigation systems.

K traces his fascination with marijuana to his childhood in Napa 
Valley. I’m familiar with the wine world and that’s why the genetic 
makeup of things has always piqued my curiosity, he said. I’ve 
always admired George Washington Carver and Luther Burbank.

He started cultivating on his own at 13, he said, when he ordered his 
first hydroponic kit, the Hydropot. It was not exactly a smashing 
success, but an endeavor which kept him out of the perils and 
pitfalls that befall an average teenager. While his cohorts in 
middle school were out discovering drugs and alcohol and sex, he was 
hunkered down at home studying horticulture and botany on his own. 
Saying he had a green thumb would be an understatement. K couldn’t 
even discard house plants. He still has a philodendron — named 
Herman — that someone scavenged from a funeral 20 years ago and gave 
him to take home.

He admits he smoked my crop in the early years, but only after 
school and homework. His parents, although not thrilled with his 
personal science project, respected the fact that he didn’t let it 
interfere with school. He graduated, he said, at the top of his class.

After high school, he continued studying botany on his own, forgoing 
college to focus on home study of marijuana. I got my education the 
hard way, he said. No mentors, no professors.

He eventually started experimenting with aeroponics, suspending the 
plants in air instead of in soil. It was magnificent, he said. I 
loved the process. It requires someone who really likes playing with 
it." Ultimately, however, the system was too complicated.

In the mid-’80s, he continued growing quietly, never becoming a big 
distributor or seller, but producing for information. Around him he 
watched as government surveillance pushed more growers underground 
and indoors. He was experimenting with variables — soil, water, 
light and temperature — to grow better, simpler, more efficient.
He went from using conventional soil to rocks (the rock revolution) 
to rockwool, a substance that looks like cotton candy pressed into 
tubes and is less time consuming than rock to decontaminate. And he 
started collecting varieties only available by clone and not by 
seeds, until he had a dozen different plant clones and 250 seeds 
varieties. Today he grows all boutique varietals, he said, known for 
their nuances of color, potency, flavor, aroma and density of flower.

It is the aroma that most intrigues Rosenthal these days. He wants to 
isolate the odor molecules that produce fragrances in cannabis. These 
molecules, he said, can have profound effects on whether it’s an up 
high or a couch lock and what the marijuana can be used to treat. 
Different odors in the herb can increase acuity or relaxation, much 
like aromatherapy, he said. He’d like to develop marijuana stripped 
of these odor components, then be able to add them back to create 
products targeted for specific uses.

K’s company produces about 10 strains at any one time, but he said he 
is proudest of something called G13, a type unique to us, and 
purple kryptonite (kryptonite is proprietary too). What spurs him 
on is not commercial success, he explained, but the excitement of 
learning. If he didn’t have a crop to check on each morning, there 
would be a hole in my soul, he said. As one of the first 300 people 
to get a medical marijuana card himself, he uses the herb for pain 
related to sports injuries in his shoulders and knees.

But he has too much to do to use marijuana all the time, he said, 
returning to how he contradicts the stereotype of the hippie pothead 
grower. He would rather work, pursue his interest in race cars or 
play with his English bulldog.

I dream about being able to map the genomes of each and every 
variety of marijuana to find out why one is purple or has high THC,
Rosenthal added. To me, it’s never been about wanting to make money.

The Taste Gurus

The viewing (you have to look at it carefully and lovingly, said 
DeAngelo) and smelling over, the tasters were ready to begin the 
penultimate test, tasting. The buzz, of course, is the final quality 
to register.

What do we try first? asked DeAngelo, surveying the petri dishes.

The group settled on something called Satori. DeAngelo put a pinch in 
a special grinder with tiny spikes and then loaded the grounds into a 
small chamber in his Stinel vaporizer, which he calls the Cadillac 
of heat guns because of its digital temperature gauge. When he fires 
up the heat gun, the THC in the marijuana vaporizes, ending up in 
something that looks like a plastic vacuum cleaner bag. Users inhale 
the vapor by sucking on a mouthpiece attached to the bag.

The first thing I look for is how the vapor feels in my lungs, said 
DeAngelo. If it’s really good, it will expand.

He inhaled and let out the air slowly. Is it spicy or flat? he 
said. You’re looking for something a little spicy. Then I gauge the 
amount of aftertaste. I think this is spicy, neither sweet nor pungent.

The others inhaled after him and concurred. Next they tried Sour Diesel.

This is good, Pfrommer said. Oh my. What a difference. Then he 
started to cough. The flavor, it numbs your tongue and lips.

It’s not numbing, it’s tingling, said DeAngelo. I get more citrus 
notes out of this. With this particular Diesel I can taste the 
lineage from the citrusy parentage.

Next they sampled some hashish called Mr. Nice, which they inhaled 
off a hot coal, avoiding the use of a butane lighter.

Top shelf, DeAngelo and Pfrommer said together.

It has an incredible exotic taste that evokes oriental carpets and 
brass chandeliers, continued DeAngelo. Then, turning to his 
visitors, he added, This is what we do. We sit around and smoke weed 
and talk about work.

Elan said he tries to help each patient — the Harborside Health 
Center has 3,000 members and about 175 visits a day — find the right 
product, either to inhale or eat. Pfrommer chooses the center’s pot, 
arranged in three glass cases and marked to sell for about $35 to $60 
for an eighth of an ounce, from a select group of small vendors. As 
many as 40 a day, all center members with medicinal pot cards, come 
to show him their buds or cloned plants, but he buys from perhaps 10 
percent of them, he said. He examines each specimen with a scope to 
look for resin, an indicator of strength and quality — which under 
close inspection should look like a dusting of snow. He smells and 
palpates them to find the best. The rest leave with advice on how to 
make their medicine better, he said. The new generation of younger 
growers has a lot of energy. The older ones who used to make a living 
can’t do it anymore. I explain how the market has changed, that they 
need a niche or a strain that people want or they should get another job

DeAngelo said he sees Harborside, which already resembles a spa, with 
its high ceilings, turquoise walls, stainless steel cabinets and soft 
jazz, as a holistic health center. It offers yoga, hypnotherapy and 
medical qigong and he wants to add acupuncture. A marijuana activist 
since his teens when he participated in smoke-ins in Washington, 
D.C., DeAngelo said he dreamed of having a state-of-the-art 
dispensary. And now he has one.

The group eventually worked its way through five samples, then quit 
because everyone had to go back to work. They were not used to 
getting medicated during work hours, they said. Besides, they 
admitted, it was getting hard to evaluate the buzz. They were 
noticeably quieter as the tasting drew to a close. DeAngelo suggested 
a trip to a nearby Starbucks, hoping the caffeine would help them 
focus for the rest of the afternoon.