Heart of Dankness

by Mark Haskell Smith

  “But don’t people have their favorites?”

  He nodded. “For sure, but if you smoke different varieties you need less to achieve the same effect. You don’t build up a tolerance.”

  This was news to me. I know that daily users can build up a tolerance to THC, just like someone who drinks every day builds up a tolerance to alcohol. But I’d never heard about mixing it up as a way to avoid that.

  Franco waved his finger in the air to make his point. “That’s why we encourage people to grow several strains instead of one. Variety is key. That’s why we sell five strains in a mix pack.”

  These are feminized seeds, so that the amateur grower will be guaranteed to get female plants—the ones that produce the THC-laden blooms—and because the seeds are color coded, they’ll know which plant they’ve planted. I’ve heard other seed companies mock the colored seed concept, calling them “Fruit Loops” and saying “Trix are for kids,” but it really is an ingenious way to take the guesswork out of the process for the amateur grower. And home growers are the customers who account for a large portion of Green House’s sales.

  Franco knows I have a fondness for sativas so he pulled out a strain he called Special Sweet Skunk.

  “People who need to perform in their lives, for sure they prefer sativas. But when I like to relax, at the end of the day, then usually I like an indica like Cheese.”

  “I like a glass of wine at the end of the day.”

  Franco grinned. “That’s good, too.”

  He slid a small plastic box toward me. Inside were a dozen chunky nuggets of Special Sweet Skunk. I inhaled and got a very clean and fruity, almost Hawaiian Punch flavored, scent off the buds. They smelled pungent and lively, just like dank cannabis is supposed to smell.

  While Franco rolled a fat spliff, I watched Davide put his charas smoking apparatus away. He handled each object reverently, moving slowly and precisely, like a Santeria priest storing his fetishes.

  Franco lit the spliff, took a drag, and handed it to me. I took a big hit and felt my lungs explode. They didn’t explode in a pleasant way; they exploded in an explosive way. I coughed. And coughed. And then I really start coughing.

  The fruity sweet smoke I was expecting had been replaced by the burnt-leather taste of tobacco. The aftertaste hit me like a bad memory, specifically, being in college and making out with this punk rock girl who smoked a lot of cigarettes and wore cherry-flavored lipstick. It was like licking out an ashtray and discovering an old Lifesaver stuck to the bottom.

  In between convulsions, I looked at Franco and raised an eyebrow. “Tobacco? What the fuck, Franco? I’m from California.”

  Franco burst out laughing. “Oh, man. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  Personally, I don’t know why Europeans like to mix tobacco with their cannabis. For me it defeats the whole taste and smell pleasures of a nice weed or hash. It’s like pouring a Miller Lite into your pinot noir.

  “I’ll roll you a pure one.”

  Franco laughed some more, then looked at Davide. They both took a deep breath, and then erupted in laughter again. I didn’t see what was so funny, but the Italians found it hilarious. Franco doubled over, pounding the table with his palm.

  “So sorry, man.”

  “It’s just that we don’t smoke tobacco in California.” I really hoped that didn’t come out as whiny as it sounded.

  Franco took a hit off the tobacco and Sweet Skunk spliff to stabilize himself. He looked over at Davide.

  “That’s right. When I was there, in L.A., I wanted cigarettes and I had to walk five blocks to find a place. Meanwhile I’m passing two or three marijuana dispensaries.”

  They continued chuckling while I swished my mouth out with some ice water. If I could’ve brushed my teeth at the table, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

  I wanted to talk to Franco about Super Lemon Haze. It was the reigning Cannabis Cup champion, having won two years in a row, and one of the most popular strains in the world. I had tried some at the previous year’s Cannabis Cup and I liked it a lot. It has a mild citrus flavor and a clear sativa high. It’s easy to see why it’s such crowd pleaser. I was curious how they developed it.

  “Well, it’s a very old-school classic taste with a new twist. The father is based on Super Silver Haze and the mother is Lemon Skunk.”

  Franco leaned forward. He wanted to make sure I heard this right. “Lemon Skunk is a very special plant. Combining the two has been a natural success story. And actually the breeding was very easy. We just made an F1 hybrid from the parents, planted a bunch of them, and made a selection. Select, select, select. That’s the key to finding something amazing. It was amazing to me that you can take out a champion from just an F1 hybrid.”

  “F1 hybrid” is a term used in genetics that stands for the first generation of offspring from two distinct species. For example, in the case of Chocolope, to get the right characteristics, Don and Aaron had to backcross their F1 hybrid with the mother plant to create an F2. And while it’s not unusual to have a good F1 hybrid if both the parents have good genetics, it is rare to have a world-class F1 hybrid just pop up.

  “What gave you the idea of combining the two plants in the first place?”

  Franco began rolling me a pure spliff of Special Sweet Skunk while he talked. I tried to listen and, at the same time, see how he did it. He’s obviously had a lot of practice because he did it without looking. The former paratrooper could probably roll a joint while jumping out of an airplane and still carry on a conversation.

  “Creating strains is something that requires three things: landraces to start with, logistics—very big logistics are required—and it requires good knowledge of the customer base … what people want.”

  “Like any other business.”

  Spliff rolled, he licked the paper and sealed it, then continued.

  “Green House the company is in a very special position in this respect. We are one of the very few seed companies that have access to a large customer base through our coffeeshops. We have thousands of people coming over every day from literally all over the world. It’s very easy for us to get feedback and to see what people smoke here, what they like, and why they like it.”

  “So you, what? You run coffeeshop focus groups?”

  Franco nodded.

  “We knew that citrus was a new trend. We knew it three years ago when it started. Every time we add on our menu something slightly citrusy, all of a sudden people were raving about it. It was a little niche flavor in cannabis. And we felt it was ready to go. So we took a very old flavor, a sativa flavor—a flavor that people were almost sick of—and twist it with something that makes it new again.”

  He handed me the joint. I lit up and this time I didn’t cough. The smoke tasted as good as the bud smelled. Absolutely delicious.

  I assumed that Super Lemon Haze would be the natural choice to enter in that year’s competition; after all, no strain has ever won three years in a row. But Franco wasn’t so sure.

  “What we do is, every year for the Cannabis Cup, we wait for the last minute to decide what we’re gonna enter. Because we like to cure our crops and it’s hard to predict how the crop will cure. So we always have two, three, four crops that we know are very high quality and depending on how they cure, we can make the final decision.”

  Just like Don and Aaron of DNA, the final decision is more plant based than anything else.

  Franco nodded. “Of course, there are several strains that we want to promote, and we are going to make sure that those strains are going to be in the final mix. But only after curing can you be sure you’ve got a winner.”

  “How can you tell what will be a winner?”

  Franco grinned.

  “It’s what will make people flip out when they see it.”

  Personally, I was flipping out for the Special Sweet Skunk. It was one of the best strains I’d ever tasted.

  I looked at Franco as I exhaled. “What does ‘dank’ mean to you?”
<
br />   He took a sip of an espresso and considered it. “Dank is a very American concept so to be defined by a European is already a tough job.”

  “Isn’t there some European version?”

  He thought about this for a moment. “The European version of dank? I guess it would be ‘the underground.’ ”

  I wasn’t sure I followed, but Franco started getting into it, talking rapidly with lots of Italian hand gestures. “Listen, dank is a way of life, it’s a way of living, being connected with the plant—a plant that has been disconnected from the people for a long time because of its illegality, because of its status. A lot of people want to reconnect with this plant because they feel the plant has been taken away from them. And so people unite in one feeling, one community. Some of them do it recreationally; some need it for medicinal reasons. Some for religious purposes because they feel they can talk to God with the plant. There are many different reasons, but the bottom line is that humans have been in relations with this plant for thousands and thousands of years and you cannot just break the relationship by declaring the plant illegal. It doesn’t work like that.”

  So “dank” means you’re a member of a community? “I thought ‘dank’ had more to do with the quality of the plant,” I said.

  Franco took a hit off the tobacco and Special Sweet Skunk joint and wagged a finger at me as he exhaled. “ ‘Dank’ goes beyond nature. This plant is proven to unite civilizations. It’s one of the few common natural elements of mankind. It’s a common link throughout history, throughout geography. You can connect humanity with this plant. Asia, Africa, down to the Americas. Everyone has been using this plant for one reason or another throughout our history. Name another plant like that.”

  I wanted to say wheat or rice, but then I wasn’t sure. It’s true that evidence of cannabis and hemp use goes as far back as recorded history, and it’s been used in almost every culture for rope, fabric, medicine, and spiritual practice. And besides, it was hard to argue with an impassioned former paratrooper dressed in leather body armor.

  “This plant has been taken away and now people want it back. So being dank, living dank, this is a way that allows you to get back to the plant.”

  Franco stopped and burst out laughing. “Or maybe it allows the plant to get back to you.”

  “Living dank? What does that mean?”

  “In Europe we have a big underground movement that is very dank, for sure, people who have very little in common apart from this plant. It goes through all of Europe, it’s rich people, poor people, cultivated people, sporty people, couch lock people. That’s the funny thing about it. It’s a very powerful connector.”

  “Like a true underground.”

  Franco nodded. “Because the plant has been illegal for so long, everyone who has ever tried it knows or has had the feeling of doing something wrong. But when they try it, they don’t feel it’s so wrong. It’s natural. It’s a plant. What can be so bad using a plant? This discrepancy you get from knowing you’re illegal but feeling good about what you’re doing, that you’re not doing anything wrong—this feeling creates a bond between people.”

  I think I know what Franco’s talking about. That bond is the glue that holds the counterculture together. It’s easy to take Franco’s description and stretch it into the realm of lifestyle and politics. The discrepancy between what a government decrees as bad and what a person understands on a deep, intuitive level as good, is not restricted to our current marijuana laws. Modern society oozes with this kind of hypocrisy; it’s reflected in the way we talk about sex, the way we educate our children at school, how our politics are disconnected from the populace, and the list goes on. There is a growing gap between those with the ability to think critically and follow what their intuition tells them is the right thing to do and those people whose morality has been perverted by greed and short-term corporate gain.

  Franco knocked back his espresso and stood.

  “Time to go back to work.”

  Chapter Eight

  We Circumnavigated the Globe and All We Brought Back Was a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

  One of the things people don’t come to Holland for is the food. No matter how fresh baked and darkly grained the bread is, no matter how pure and wholesome the cheese or how savory the meat, there are only so many variations on the grilled cheese sandwich a person can eat.

  They’re called “toasties” or broodjes, and they are ubiquitous. Even the cookie Holland is justifiably famous for, the stroop-wafel, is just two thin wafers on either side of a blob of caramel that’s been flattened on a grill. It’s just a small, sweet toastie.

  As Jon Foster of Grey Area eloquently put it, “The food here is not dank.”

  I don’t get it. Honestly. At the height of their empire, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dutch ships ruled the seas. They sailed to Ceylon, Indonesia, the Spice Islands, South America, North America, Africa, and all points in between. There were more than twice the number of ships sailing under the Dutch flag than the English and French combined. They brought back coffee, tea, silk, and spices. They formed the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or Dutch East India Company—one of the first, and certainly not the last, large corporations to wage war, fix prices, and otherwise exploit and plunder at will—and Amsterdam was home to the first commodities market in the world. Even New York City was originally called New Amsterdam before the British snatched it from the Dutch.

  The Dutch ruled the world for a couple of hundred years and the best they could do is a toastie? Look at what other European countries were able to accomplish. Marco Polo goes to China, returns to Italy with some noodles, and the world gets pasta. The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés goes to Mexico and brings back the tomato. Gazpacho, marinara, and the Bloody Mary soon follow. Even the British developed a taste for a nice vindaloo.

  Aside from the grilled cheese sandwiches and the occasional nibbling of raw, pickled herring on the streets, the Dutch tend to eat things like bitterballen, a small croquettish ball of fried meat; and hotchpotch, which is essentially just like it sounds, a pile of boiled meat and sausage on top of mashed potatoes and carrots. Hearty fare for active people. And, for what it is, it’s not terrible. But would it kill them to use a little salt and pepper?

  Amsterdam is a multicultural city, and it has some good ethnic restaurants. I ate reasonably tasty Indian and Chinese food and had some interesting Surinamese dishes, including peanut soup, which tasted like molten peanut butter with some chili oil mixed in. There are, as you’d expect, a few really good restaurants, but these tend to serve Frenchified nouvelle cuisine and are too expensive for a writer on a budget.

  But I did find food that was delicious and cheap. It was at a simple burger stand called Burgermeester.

  I know you might think, “Well, of course, the American wants his burger,” but that’s not it at all. While I’m not a vegetarian, I’m not a big carnivore either. I like to mix it up. I didn’t eat the “Meester Biefburger” or the “Biefburger Royaal”—which is made majestic with the addition of truffles and pancetta. I will admit I found the duck, lamb, and salmon burgers all pretty good, but the one dish that I found absolutely delicious was the “Manchegoburger”: essentially a veggie burger with Spanish cheese, hazelnuts, and a quince compote on it.

  I don’t think the lack of flavorful food in Holland is some kind of imperialist oversight or neglect on the part of the Dutch sailors; I think the Nederlanders really like their broodjes. Broodjes pair well with beer, and at brewing beer, the Dutch have staked a serious claim as masters of the art.

  Heineken is Europe’s largest brewer and one of the most popular beers in the world. Everyone recognizes the green glass bottle with the little red star on the label. It’s like Pepsi or Coca-Cola—you see it everywhere. According to the Heineken Brewing Company’s 2009 Annual Report, their worldwide consolidated beer volume was more than 125 million hectoliters of beer a year. I don’t really know what that means, because I suck at cipherin
g and other mathematical endeavors, so I asked world-renowned mathematician Dr. Steven Wegmann to break it down for me. “The idea is very simple. For example, how many liters are in 125 million hectoliters? The units multiply in the following way: hectoliters times liters per hectoliter equals liters, so 125 million hectoliters multiplied by 100 liters per hectoliter equals 12,500 million liters. Then the next step is to convert the liters into pints using the same formalism: 12,500 million liters multiplied by 2.11 pints per liter equals 26,375 million pints. So how many pints of beer did Heineken produce? 125 million hectoliters times 100 liters per hectoliter times 2.11 pints per liter equals 26,375 million pints, or over 26 billion pints.”

  Sounds easy when he says it. I think, for the layman, it’s mathematically correct to say that Heineken makes a lot of fucking beer.

  The funny thing is, I never really liked Heineken. It tasted kind of skunky to me, and not in the good way that some cannabis tastes skunky. I didn’t hate it, but it was never my first choice. But then I came to Amsterdam and found myself in a cozy little pub that only served Heineken.

  The taste of fresh Heineken, unpasteurized, unfiltered, un-whatever-they-do-to-it-when-they-fuck-it-up-and-ship-it-to-the-United-States, was a revelation. It’s not skunky; it’s yeasty and lively. In other words, it has flavor. It is especially refreshing after a good smoke in a coffeeshop. Could a cold Heineken be an element of dankness?

  Maybe that’s what the Dutch explorers discovered. Because when you’re buzzed, a beer and grilled cheese sandwich really hits the spot.

  Chapter Nine

  A Party for the People

  I didn’t really expect the cannabis seed business to be so lucrative. Of course, now that I think about it, try telling that to Burpee or Monsanto. The trade in cannabis seeds isn’t quite as big as those kings of agribusiness, yet it is still a multimillion-dollar-a-year endeavor. Make no mistake, Green House Seeds, DNA Genetics, and the other big seed companies—Sensi Seeds, T.H. Seeds, Barney’s Farm, Kiwiseeds, and Dutch-Passion Seeds, to name a few—are all jostling for a share of a very robust market. While these companies develop their own strains, there are dozens of secondary seed brokers, like the Attitude, a “Cannabis Seed Superstore” operating out of England, the Vancouver Seed Bank in Canada, and Sweet Seeds in Spain, that act as retail outlets for seed companies.