Mark Haskell Smith - Heart of Dankness: Underground Botanists, Outlaw Farmers, and the Race for the Cannabis Cup

Moist

Delicious

Salty

Baked

Copyright 2012 by Mark Haskell Smith

Signal is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

Published simultaneously in the United States of American by Broadway Paperbacks, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Cultivating and consuming marijuana for medical use is legal in the state of California and, at the same time, illegal in the United States under federal law. Because of this, the author has changed names and identifying details to protect the privacy of some of the individuals in this book.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Smith, Mark Haskell.

Heart of dankness : underground botanists, outlaw farmers, and the race for the Cannabis Cup / Mark Haskell Smith.

eISBN: 978-0-7710-3971-3

1. Marijuana industry. 2. Cannabis Judging Netherlands Amsterdam. 3. Cannabis Varieties. 4. Marijuana Varieties. 5. Marijuana Law and legislation California. I. Title.

HD9019.M38S65 2012 338.17379 C2011-904428-5

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
One Toronto Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2V6

www.mcclelland.com

v3.1

For Mr. Jones

UNDERGROUND BOTANISTS

Aaron, DNA Genetics, Amsterdam

Don, DNA Genetics, Amsterdam

Franco, Green House Seeds, Amsterdam

Arjan, Green House Seeds, Amsterdam

Reeferman, Reeferman Seeds, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada

Swerve, Cali Connection, San Fernando Valley, California

OUTLAW FARMERS

Crockett, Sierra Nevada mountains

The Guru

Slim

Jerry

E

TRIMMERS

Red

Chuva

Cletus The Dingo McClusky

ACTIVISTS

Debby Goldsberry, Oakland

Richard Lee, Oaksterdam University, Oakland

CURATORS

Jon Foster, Grey Area, Amsterdam

Michael Backes, Cornerstone Research Collective, Los Angeles

Eli Scislowicz, Berkeley Patients Group, Berkeley

The Paradiso shifted in the water and cut its engine as it swung into the Brouwersgracht canal. The windows and roof of the boat were glass, making it look like a floating greenhouse, and tourists sat planted in rows, like some kind of sentient flora, taking in the sights of Amsterdam on a crisp November afternoon.

The static-spiked voice of a prerecorded tour guide rumbled from speakers inside the boat, a multilingual travelogue chockfull of facts and delivered with all the enthusiasm of an airport security announcement. The passengers followed the narrator, craning their necks in unison, perfectly synchronized sightseers.

I sat on a bench overlooking the water and watched the passengers blink up at the architecture behind me. The buildings alongside the canal slouched, leaning against each other for support like drunk friends, posing for the tourists who raised their cell phones and digital cameras, concentrating their gazes on the tiny images in their hands, oblivious to the life-sized versions that stood in front of them. From their awestruck and excited expressions I could tell that this was the site of something historical. Something momentous must have happened here.

The Paradiso revved its engine and, with a sputter and burbling surge, continued down the canal. The sound of the boats motor faded and the sound of Amsterdamthe chime of a bicycles bell, the squeal of children playing, the clang and rumble of a tramreplaced it.

The Paradisos propellor had churned the Brouwersgracht, leaving a wake that bounced off the sides of the canal and caused the water to ripple and refract, the surface reflecting the fading afternoon sun, turning slate, then blue, then violet, and then a color Id never seen before, a color you cant find on any color wheel. It flickered and flashed along the canal like a special effect from a 3-D movie. It was breathtakingthe kind of blue Pantone would kill for.

It was my first trip to Amsterdam. Id come to check out the annual High Times Cannabis Cup, to do some last minute fact-checking on a project, and to chronicle the experience for the Los Angeles Times. I wanted to experience the coffeeshops, to see what legal cannabis consumption might look like, and maybe go to the Van Gogh Museum and eat some pickled herring or pannenkoeken. But the real reasonthe reason behind the other reasonswas to sample what was purported to be the best marijuana in the world.

I was not disappointed.

It was nothing like the Kansas dirt weed Id smoked in high school. Back then wed pile into Mark Farmers bedroom after class, light up a doobie, and choke on its harsh smoke, getting as high from oxygen deprivation as from the scarce tetrahydrocannabinol in the crumbly leaves. Wed pass the shoddily constructed joint aroundas seeds exploded inches from our faceswhile we discussed the important teenage topics of the day: girls, motorcycles, girls and their breasts, electric guitars, what certain girls would look like naked, and the astonishing ass-kicking abilities of Bruce Lee.

The all-important incense would be litto cover the smell of the dirt weedwhile we settled into a languid stupor, the faint taste of strawberry-flavored rolling papers on our lips, and let the power chords of some stoner epic like the Whos