Heart of Dankness

by Mark Haskell Smith

  Aaron was about to go back to draining the fish tank when his cell phone rang. He apologized for the interruption; it was his wife calling to tell him she was bringing their newborn daughter to the shop. His face took on an expression of parental concern.

  “Hey, babe. Watch out for the puddle in front of the store.”

  What’s unlikely about the DNA story is how likely it is. It’s the same rags-to-riches success story of any artist, inventor, or businessperson with a good idea and the chutzpah to turn that idea into reality. Only in Don and Aaron’s version, the young entrepreneurs didn’t come to America to make their fortune; they flipped the myth, abandoned the land of opportunity, and moved to Holland.

  They met in the usual way: Aaron was a pot dealer and Don was one of his customers, but they soon discovered they had mutual interests. Both of them were frustrated by the low quality of the cannabis available for sale. “It was,” they said, “complete schwag.”

  Like all innovators, they decided they could do it better. Or, at the very least, they could try to do it better. They were already experienced growers, so they started with what they knew and began experimenting, cross-pollinating various strains, growing out those seeds and seeing what the combinations created. They’d been saving seeds from various bags of weed they’d purchased over the years and they started trading seeds and cuts of cannabis with other growers, acquiring as many exotic varietals as they could. Working through trial and error—trusting their nose and instincts—they became self-taught botanists. It didn’t take long for them to realize they were on to something special. Unfortunately, Aaron suspected the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Los Angeles Police Department might be on to something, too. Namely, him.

  “So we came up with a plan. We moved over here to Amsterdam and I said, ‘In two years we’re gonna win the Cannabis Cup.’ ”

  Although Aaron might not be quick to admit it, love had something to do with this decision, and not just love for the reefer.

  He and Don supplemented their income by working as carpenters and painters. They were hired by a hip Melrose Avenue retailer to go to Brussels to help build a store. As Aaron tells it, “Long story short. He doesn’t show up. We spend about four weeks waiting around in the freezing cold and rain and then I’m like, let’s go to Amsterdam, bro.”

  Because they bought their return tickets for when they thought the job would be over, they had three months to kill before returning to Los Angeles. They got a job in Amsterdam refurbishing a youth hostel called the Flying Pig, and it was there that Aaron met Kim, a young Canadian who was working at the hostel.

  When Don and Aaron eventually went back to California, Kim stayed, living in the city and working as a waitress. It didn’t take long before Don and Aaron were back, only this time they had a plan.

  True to Aaron’s word, at the 2004 Cannabis Cup their strain L.A. Confidential won third place for best indica. A year later, in 2005, they burst into the cannabis world’s consciousness with a rare double, taking first place for best sativa with Martian Mean Green and second place for best indica with a new, improved version of L.A. Confidential.

  • • •

  Botanically speaking, Cannabis is the genus of the family Cannabaceae, and the plant contains three distinct subspecies: Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, and Cannabis ruderalis. Each of the plants has unique traits: The indica is low and bushy and indigenous to the mountainous regions of India and Iran. It is a robust plant and has naturalized in such diverse parts of the world as Europe, North America, and Brazil. Cannabis sativa tends to be long and rangy, preferring hot, tropical zones, like Africa and Southeast Asia. Cannabis ruderalis is the red-headed stepchild of the group. Hardy and quick flowering, this low-growing plant has such modest levels of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis, that it hasn’t been, historically, used for medicinal or recreation purposes, although various breeders have recently begun experimenting with hybrids using Cannabis ruderalis.

  For decades Cannabis indica has been the species of preference for growers, as it needs less room to mature and is quicker to flower than a sativa.

  L.A. Confidential, one of DNA Genetics’ Cup-winning strains, is a serious indica, the kind of cannabis that gets you stoned, that knocks you on your ass and gives you a sensation often referred to as “couch lock.” A lot of people enjoy indicas—they like becoming well-baked couch potatoes—but the current trend among serious connoisseurs is for a lively sativa, like DNA’s Martian Mean Green, something uplifting and energizing.

  But by far the most popular strains—and this is where underground botanists like Don and Aaron come in—are the hybrids, the mix between indica and sativa that offers the best of both worlds, a sativa-like high coupled with the muscle-relaxing effects, shorter flowering times, and bigger plant yields associated with indica. A classic DNA hybrid is Connie Chung, which is a cross between L.A. Confidential and a more sativa-leaning varietal called “G-13 Haze.” It’s one of the strongest strains they produce and, according to their website, guarantees “to make you ‘Chinese.’ ”

  In what way it makes you Chinese is unclear.

  • • •

  Aaron came out of the back room wearing a clean California Angels jersey—“I gotta represent Cali over here”—and waved me into the back office. Although there were desks and computers and lots of files and things generally associated with offices and business, it looked more like a stoner’s dream lounge. There were stacks of T-shirts, hoodies, and hats; boxes filled with custom bongs and water pipes, and bookshelves containing their inventory of seeds. One wall was the back of the giant fish tank—the fish look much happier now—the other was filled with a spray-painted mural of a jolly green Martian.

  I pointed to the mural and asked Aaron what it meant for them to win the Cannabis Cup.

  An irrepressible smile bloomed on his face, but it wasn’t arrogance or some kind of ego trip. His expression was a mix of bemusement and amazement, as if he still couldn’t believe he was actually here, doing what he does.

  “On a business level it’s like having the first flight to outer space. It boosts your business, your reputation. It gets you known throughout the world.”

  “And on a personal level?”

  “On a personal note?” He took a moment to scratch his goatee and consider the question. “On a personal note, it means that we did something right.”

  Aaron and Don have done a lot right. They’ve won more than forty major cups and awards from the cannabis industry since they opened for business in 2003 and DNA Genetics has become one of the top three or four seed companies in the world.

  “How would you define ‘dank’?”

  “You mean a strain or a plant? Because sometimes, bro, a plant can be really dank. You know? You can just smell it. It doesn’t matter what strain it is.”

  “I guess I mean, what strain do you, personally, think is your dankest strain?”

  I admit it’s a strange question. Aaron took his time to consider it. “Our Headband is dank. Chocolope is dank.”

  Then he leaned forward, his eyes flashing with a touch of that mad-dog passion, as he suddenly got serious. “L.A. Confidential, OG Kush, OG #18. There’s a lot of dank around here, bro. I think in order for us to make seeds of it, we have to consider it dank.”

  “So dank is the minimum basic requirement?”

  He shot me a look that said “Duh.”

  “There’s a process. Is it good enough? If it’s not good enough, it’s gone, we’re not gonna make seeds of it. So it has to be dank to start. Then there’s above dank.”

  “Really? What’s better than dank?”

  Aaron doesn’t hesitate. “Super dank. Holy grail dank.”

  Holy grail dank. I wonder what the Linguistics Department of the University of Oregon would make of that.

  “I thought the holy grail is supposed to be unattainable.”

  “Yeah, but for me personally, I think there is a holy grail plant. It’s called the Sleestak.”r />
  Sleestak, named after the green googly-eyed reptilian insect monsters from the ’70s TV series Land of the Lost, is a relatively new sativa-indica hybrid developed by DNA.

  “I only smoke dry-sift hashish or resin and not every plant makes good resin, but this is the best that I’ve found.”

  I wondered what was so great about it, and Aaron shifted into connoisseur mode.

  “It’s mostly sativa with an old-school flavor, kinda hazy on the exhale, great room smell, great uppity high. I mean, it can still knock you down, bro, but it’s phenomenal. I love that strain. It’s pretty much all I smoke.”

  “Is it the dankest of the dank?”

  Aaron shrugged.

  “I don’t know, bro, but if I could grow rooms of Sleestak and make hash out of it, I’d be the happiest motherfucker on the planet.”

  I was curious, naturally, about this Sleestak dry-sift resin. Aaron took a small plastic cylinder out of his pocket. It was about the size of a roll of quarters. He opened a pocket knife and dipped the point into the cylinder, removing a tiny clump of straw-colored powder—it looked like sand—and tapped it into the bowl of a large bong. He slid a serious looking lighter toward me.

  “Tell me what you think.”

  Grasping the miniature blowtorch, I crème brûléed the resin and sucked in a large hit. The smoke was clean: flavorless on the inhale, not even tasting like smoke. I exhaled and got a dry floral taste. Again, the smell was clean, not skunky or tasting like fuel or much of anything, to be honest.

  I felt a brief skitter of THC into my head, but the high itself unrolled slowly, building at an almost imperceptible pace. After about fifteen minutes I was baked, but it was a clear and relaxing kind of baked. And, like the John Sinclair I’d smoked previously, it was unlike any marijuana I’d ever experienced. It wasn’t about overpowering you, beating you down to the couch, or turning you into a drooling fool. There’s a real clarity and focus that comes with smoking Sleestak resin, and yet it produces a mild psychedelic effect.

  I found it oddly reassuring.

  Aaron took a hit and relaxed. Our conversation digressed and we talked about what it was like to live in Holland. He was worried about where his daughter would end up going to school. If he stays in Amsterdam, he’ll be staying for a long time. He’s not going to yank her out of school once she starts.

  “None of that military family bullshit for her.”

  He sounded like most new parents. I told him about a friend in London who’d already got her newborn daughter on preschool waiting lists.

  “Yeah, I figure I’ve got two years and then I’ll have to figure it out.”

  He was born and raised in Los Angeles and misses his friends and family. “I don’t go out much here, bro. I don’t go out with the Dutchies too often.”

  “But Amsterdam is such a beautiful city.”

  Aaron nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, bro. I love Amsterdam. I feel safe here. If I had this business in L.A., some fools would try and jack me. I’d have to keep one of those Beretta policestyle shotguns behind the counter or under my bed, and I don’t want to. In Amsterdam I can sleep at night.”

  A homesick smile crossed his face. “But I really miss Mexican food.”

  I knew what he meant. Why is it that in Europe I miss Mexican food, but in Mexico I never miss European food?

  The next day Aaron was in the middle of an intense phone conversation. I didn’t know what, exactly, he was talking about or who he was talking to, but he wasn’t messing around. This is not to say he wasn’t polite; he was polite, but direct. He doesn’t have time for bullshit. The DNA Genetics office responds to a couple hundred emails a day from customers around the world. They bombard Don and Aaron with questions about soil, indoor versus outdoor growing, organic versus chemical fertilizer, lighting, drying, storing, and even the odd query seeking relationship advice. If they’re not emailing, they’re calling. While Aaron and I were talking, his cell phone never stopped buzzing. The seed business was booming.

  I followed Aaron into the back office again. He was ready to give me a lesson on the basics of botany. Just as we sat down, an alarm on his iPhone erupted. He stood and announced that it was time for lunch and he really needed to eat. He was ravenous.

  “When I’m in Amsterdam I never eat breakfast. I go back to L.A. and I’m eating first thing. I don’t know why.”

  He shrugged and walked into the other room, a small pantry area, and returned with a freshly microwaved pizza. Aaron made sure Raf got a couple of slices then sat down and began the lesson.

  “Having pure genetics for us is like having primary colors for an artist.”

  He took a bite of pizza and chewed thoughtfully before continuing.

  “We have those primary colors in our vault, so when we want to play, you know, start making some new colors up, we can.”

  I like the metaphor of primary colors. It’s clear, it’s basic, and it helps me understand how they concoct the various hybrids that make up the seeds they sell. Red and yellow make orange, which has characteristics of both red and yellow but is actually its own thing. From there you can experiment further, making various shades, hues, and tones. But without the primary colors, you can’t start. That explains why they expend so much time and energy collecting various strains from around the world, putting together an extensive genetic library of what’s called “landrace” strains.

  A simple way to look at landrace seeds is that they are wild seeds, from nature, from plants that have grown together in one location and have inbred through open pollination, creating a pure—or at least predominantly unadulterated—genetic line.

  The tomatoes we call “heirloom tomatoes” today used to be the kind of vegetable you’d find everywhere. Different regions would have different varieties, but they were all open pollinated fruit that grew in gardens around the world. In modern agriculture in the industrialized world, most food crops are now grown in large, monocultural plots. The advent of hybridization and agribusiness caused tomatoes to become uniform, and the more unique, oddball types got pushed out of the supermarkets and onto the fringes, where they are primarily grown by home gardeners and specialty farmers. Some varieties have disappeared altogether.

  The DNA Genetics vault is like the stoner version of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent seed bank charged with protecting crop diversity and the historical record of plant genetics; or the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which preserves an extensive collection of plant seeds from around the world in an underground cavern tunneled into the frozen rock of the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the arctic. The Svalbard facility is funded by a handful of countries—as various as Sweden, Australia, Ethiopia, and Brazil—and private trusts such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Less than a thousand miles from the North Pole, the seed vault acts like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, preserving genetic diversity on the off chance the human race totally fucks things up.

  I don’t think the DNA Genetics vault is as elaborate, but it’s just as important.

  Aaron agreed. “It’s very important, because at a certain point, nobody’s going to have these genetics and everything is going to be crossbred and hybridized and all the same.”

  In other words, without underground botanists to preserve and manage landrace genetics, cannabis could become a monoculture crop. Can you imagine if all weed was the same?

  Aaron popped another slice of pizza in his mouth.

  “It’s important to save the landrace. I’ll give you a perfect example: Martian Mean Green. It won the Cannabis Cup and then the mother was lost to the police. But that doesn’t mean the strain is lost forever because I have the original seeds. So when I’m ready to go looking in those original seeds and do a selection to find the Martian again, I can.”

  Aaron finished the pizza and leaned back on the couch. His expression changed and I couldn’t tell if he was wistful or just digesting.

  “Listen, bro, in this day and age nothing’s that pure. Everyth
ing has got skunk in it and it’s hard to find landrace genetics. Right now we only have two strains that are pure, X-18 Pakistani that’s only been inbred to itself and the Mazar-i-Sharif Afghanistan seeds we sell.”

  “So what do you think? Is there a danger that all the genes will be contaminated? That cannabis could go the way of the industrial tomato?”

  “Yeah. Lemme give you an example. It’s definitely not hard to cross two plants together that aren’t related and get a plant that looks and smells and tastes like a completely different plant.”

  “Like a third plant? Unrelated to the parents? Is that because the genetics have been muddied by years of breeding?”

  Aaron laughed.

  “It’s weird, but it happens, because there’s only so many terpenes and smells and flavors and tastes associated with cannabis. There’s only so many combinations you can do. It’s like tulips. There’s a lot of different colors, but they’re still tulips.”

  It may come as a shock, but Don and Aaron are not horticulture or botany science graduates from the University of California, Davis or some other prestigious agriculture school. Like Floyd Zaiger—the California farmer who crossed plums and apricots to invent the pluot and aprium—they are self-taught amateur geneticists who follow their instincts. Because cannabis is dioecious—meaning it has male and female plants—the science they employ is strictly old-school. They don’t splice genes under a microscope or genetically engineer plants by tweaking the DNA; they collect pollen from specially selected male plants and pollinate female plants by hand. They grow out those seeds, select, cross, and then grow and select again. It is a time-consuming, arduous process.

  I’m curious. I get that it takes time, but what exactly happens?

  “How do you make a new varietal or strain?”

  Aaron warmed to the subject. He started speaking faster, his voice rising, his eyes becoming more animated. This is a subject he loves. This is what he likes to talk about. “Let’s look at Chocolope.”

  Chocolope is one of DNA’s most popular strains and was named one of the top ten strains of the year for 2007 by High Times magazine.