“Enjoy yourself, man. Don’t get too high,” a security guard told me after he patted me down in the parking lot by a Weedmaps tent that displayed inflatable joints that were probably made in the same factory as a kid’s Spiderman toy. Ahead lay a grassy mall with dozens of vendors in brightly colored tents and the “warm smell of colitas rising up through the air” from over 200 different cannabis products for sale on site. on the grounds. But this wasn’t California, it was New York, and in November.
Autumn leaves decorated the scene as thousands flocked to Minard’s Family Farm on November 4 for the New York Cannabis Awards Music Festival and Big Apple Growers’ Showcase, a vision into the future of what the New York cannabis space might look like down the line. “Feel free to bring your blunt to the stage if you want me to smoke it,” says rapper and actor Redman, the host of the event. The festival/showcase, the hybrid concept that it was, was a way to aid the crisis of the sluggish New York cannabis rollout, while also managing to celebrate the collective efforts of a burgeoning industry.
The music stage, which was converted from an old gooseneck trailer, comprised the festival area of the event, while the mall of pop-up tents comprised the showcase. Attendees were prohibited from smoking in the showcase area (though I noted some exceptions to this rule from both attendees and vendors), but were encouraged to smoke in the festival area. The event was a symbiotic, two-headed organism of sorts, and benefited greatly from its staging at Minard’s Farm just outside New Paltz, a venue already equipped for agritourism—which is really what the double event was. Attendees could walk a corn maze, fire an apple cannon, take their picture behind a weed leaf cutout, or even take a hayride on a converted school bus—fitted with a Weedmaps banner of course.
Jason Minard, owner of Minard’s Family Farms and co-presenter of the event, worked with law enforcement agencies prior to the event to ensure its success. “The State Police, Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, Town of Lloyd Police Department, Town of New Paltz Police Department and Rescue Squad , and Town of Plattekill Police Department were true professionals,” says Minard. “I met with them personally a number of times and they assisted, guided, and did their homework. It opened their eyes to the destigmatization of the plant. Minard described some minor backlash leading up to the event, especially when Redman was announced as the host. The rapper represents the partying element in the mythos of marijuana that its users might enjoy and its detractors might lament—and in this case they did. But paramedics and state troopers were standing by, and the day went off without a hitch. “The promoter says every year they get complaints when they’re throwing these cannabis awards shows, but there were no complaints at ours,” says Minard. “I think we showed the state that this kind of thing is possible, and that was my intention from day one.” Minard feels he can take some credit for helping to reeducate people about marijuana in some of the more conservative communities in the area. “It’s here to stay. It’s safer than alcohol,” says Minard.
Putting the showcase/festival in context, there are currently 44 growers’ showcases in New York, compared to 27 dispensaries. Many of these dispensaries are delivery-only, meaning there’s no store you can walk into nor budtenders that you can consult with about the product you’re buying. Growers’ showcases are just as much a social and educational event as a transaction—the reps are happy to talk to customers without any promise of a sale. In this sense, a showcase is a trade-show and a dispensary all in one, and the Big Apple Growers’ Showcase is the king of them all. There is no line to wait in to see the budtenders like there is in a dispensary where there’s pressure to finish your transaction so the next customer can have their turn. In a growers’ showcase, there’s a free roaming area where customers and cannabis employees mingle openly with the hours of the showcase as the only time constraint. And in the case of the Big Apple Growers’ Showcase, the customers gathered in a beautiful open pasture before making their purchases and returning to the show, as opposed to queuing in a parking lot like at other showcases.
“Our products are everywhere but it’s still not enough,” says Katie Reiter, director of compliance for Walden-based FlowerHouse, one of the vendors at the Big Apple Growers’ Showcase. For FlowerHouse, the showcase presented an opportunity to interact with their customers and foster community. But part of the reason for the event—the lack of legal retail outlets for farmers glutted with cannabis to sell to—loomed over the proceedings, even if the atmosphere was joyous. Vendors like Curaleaf, and Tical, rapper Method Man’s cannabis company will be around a year from now, but will every vendor? Maybe not.
“The showcases have been great but they are a drop in the bucket for what we need to help the farmers,” said State Senator Michelle Hinchey at a Senate Subcommittee on Cannabis hearing on October 30. “We’ve been begging for support to effectively very little response.” Hinchey even brought up the possibility of establishing a recovery fund for the farmers. The issue of numerous illegal dispensaries operating around the state and distracting from legal business was also addressed at the hearing. State Senator James Skoufis criticized the fact that only 16 illegal operations were fined, “Given the fact that we all recognize there are thousands of these illegal shops around the state and the enforcement powers have been in place since June.”
“Whoever’s right, whoever’s wrong, I think it all needs to be set aside to begin work toward a solution that opens this market before major players take hits that they can’t survive then the Budweisers of the industry come in when federal cannabis opens up and just take over the industry. That wouldn’t be right,” says Minard. “The reality I live in is that no one wins if the industry doesn’t open.”
