The Cannabis Cup 2007

DAY ONE

“Amsterdam? Lemme tell you, friend, this may be a city of hookers, but it’s also a city of systems. The Dutch fuckin’ drive you crazy with all their rules and regulations. Sure there’s sex and there’s drugs, but once you’re bored with that – and lemme tell you, I been here for 20 years, yeah, and you do get bored with it – there’s not much else to this place. Just business. With the Dutch, it’s always business. You’ve heard of ‘going Dutch’, yeah?”

The cabdriver was a middle-aged, falsely friendly and highly verbose Egyptian. Actually, he hadn’t stopped rabbiting on since he’d picked me up.
Over the previous 48 hours, I’d drunkenly ping-ponged across Europe – from a debauched stag weekend in Munich, back to Galway and on to this cold and wet Tuesday afternoon in Amsterdam. Mentally, physically and morally sapped, I wasn’t much in the mood for small-talking.
“So the Cannabis Cup, yeah?” he continued. “Hey, I’ve been taking some very fuckin’ strange people out there last couple days.”
“Are you sure you’re taking me to the right place?” I asked. I was getting anxious. The meter had already passed the e20 mark. Having driven at breakneck speed through a blurry labyrinth of narrow canal streets, we now appeared to be heading out of the city.
“My friend – do I look like I’d rip you off?” he protested, putting his hand on his heart and sounding offended. Of course he did, but there was nothing to be gained by telling him.
“Just that we seem to be heading the wrong direction,” I muttered, as he pulled the old Mercedes onto a motorway. “Last time I went to the Cup, it was held in the city centre.”
“When was that?” he asked. It was in 1997. He laughed heartily and slapped the wheel: “Ha! 10 years ago, my friend! Anyway, they change the venue. Each year, somewhere new. This year they’re far from the city centre. Dunno why.”
Fuck! I should’ve researched this in advance, but life had been too damn busy recently. I changed the subject: “What do you mean by ‘strange’ people?”
“Just some very stoned guys,” he said. “Americans. I get a lot of stoned tourists in this cab, but some of these guys were really out there. Wasted! Last night one of them asked me to take him to the East Village. I tell him, ‘Friend, that would be one serious fuckin’ fare!’”

***********************

The venue for the 20th Cannabis Cup was called The PowerZone. I’d presumed it would be a nightclub or a live venue but, several minutes of motorway later, he turned the Merc into an industrial estate.
There was a small McDonalds drive-through at the entrance and a couple of massive warehouse-style carpet and furniture stores. It wasn’t a promising vista.
We drove down a narrow laneway between the warehouses and then stopped beside a couple of metal barriers. It was still drizzling from depressingly dark skies. There was nobody in sight. Suddenly I felt nervous. On my last trip to the Dam I’d been mugged at knifepoint. Maybe it was about to happen again.
“Here we are, my friend,” the cab driver announced. “Cannabis Cup.”
I rolled the window down to take a closer look. Even before I spotted the big ‘WELCOME TO THE POWERZONE’ banner, I knew I was at the right place. There was a good 10 metre walk from the barriers to the entrance, but the cloying stench of marijuana smoke was already overpowering.
I paid the driver and walked up to the entrance. Blame the weather, but I had a deep sense of foreboding. The red carpet was soggy and squelched beneath my feet. It had seen better days.
Then again, I’d seen better days myself. When I last attended this event, I was 26-years-young, newly single, and had just stood as a cannabis legalisation candidate in the Irish general election. Now I was a decade older, possibly wiser, and the father of a one-year-old son.
Why the hell was I going back? It had seemed like a good idea when I proposed it to hotpress several months ago. They’d made the arrangements – but since the trip had been looming on the horizon, I’d increasingly been viewing it like a wedding you don’t really want to go to.
But anyway, here I was... squelch... squelch... squelch... .
The judges’ registration desk was right inside the main door. It was being wo-manned by a couple of overweight black girls wearing T-shirts emblazoned with High Times magazine covers. Traditionally, all Americans standing behind counters are full of false bonhomie and cheer, but this pair didn’t seem bothered. They were like graduates from the RyanAir School of Charm.
“Yeah? Help you, sir?” said one, without taking her eyes off her laptop screen. I explained who I was, but they gave me sceptical looks. It appeared I wasn’t on the guest list and I’d stupidly left copies of the email correspondence with the High Times office back in my hotel.
After a couple of minutes haggling, Steve Hager, the denim-clad editor-in-chief of High Times (and original founder of the Cannabis Cup) was summoned. A tall, thin and troubled-looking man in his mid-fifties, with straggly shoulder length hair barely contained under a lopsided baseball cap, he looked more like a pessimistic car mechanic than the editor of one of America’s most notorious publications.
It transpired that Hager hadn’t heard of me either, but he instructed them to give me a pass anyway.
Deciding to get straight to business, I wondered if he could spare a few minutes for a quick interview.
“I’m too busy,” he shrugged, unapologetically. “If you email me your questions, I’ll try and get back to you. Otherwise, everything you wanna know is probably all in here.”
He handed me a copy of the official Cup brochure and then wandered off, mumbling into a walkie-talkie. Oh well. I could always try later. And at least I had my laminate.
I thanked the girl, who grunted in reply.

***********************

Inside, the air was hot, thick and smoky, like a herbal sauna (that had just caught fire). My eyes stung slightly and my throat was parched.
There was a long kidney-shaped bar directly in front of me. I decided to have a drink and get my bearings from there, but the pretty bargirl withdrew my Heineken when I tried to hand her a e10 note. “Sorry, but you need a token,” she explained.
I found a stall where I purchased a small stack of tokens – black poker chips worth e2.50 each (the price of a beer). Itchy & Scratchy money. Probably a licensing requirement. Having retrieved my drink, I stood at the bar, surveying the room.
There were maybe 200 people on the premises, mostly gathered around the main stage, where a grey-bearded stoner with a high-pitched voice was making some kind of speech.
It took me a few moments to realise that I was witnessing the ‘Freedom Fighter of the Year’ induction speech of Canadian actor Tommy Chong (best known for the classic series of stoner Cheech & Chong movies, and more recently as Leo on That 70’s Show).
Four years ago, Chong was busted by the US Justice Department for his part in financing and promoting Chong Glass/Nice Dreams – a company that manufactured and distributed glass bongs. Apparently bowing to threats to his family’s liberty, he pleaded guilty – and was duly sentenced to nine months in jail and fined $103,000.
“I went to jail for nine months because of an unjust, unworkable, immoral law. Marijuana shouldn’t be illegal,” he declared. He was obviously preaching to the converted, but the audience gave him a massive cheer anyway. Chong soon disappeared offstage and was immediately replaced by veteran legalisation campaigner Jack Herer.
Resembling an older and more wizened Michael Moore, 68-year-old Herer is a former Goldwater Republican and the author of classic legalisation bible The Emperor Wears No Clothes. He ran for US President twice – in 1988 (1,949 votes) and in 1992 (3,875 votes). Seven years ago, he suffered a seriously debilitating stroke, and credits medicinal marijuana for helping his recovery.
Sounding permanently winded and short of breath, Herer wasn’t easy to understand, but the message sounded familiar: marijuana good, prohibition bad.
I inadvertently tuned out, only coming to when the crowd applauded. Jesus! Where was I? Oh yeah...
I realised that I was half asleep, and probably already a little passively stoned. People were smoking massive joints all over the place and there was a definite haze in the air.
I pulled myself together, drained my beer, and took off on a proper tour of the venue. The exhibits seemed much the same as the ones I remembered from a decade ago. There were 35 booths in total, selling everything from growing lights, odour controllers and cannabis seeds (all with quasi spiritual/scientific names like DNA, Big Buddha, Soma, Nirvana, etc.) to novelty rolling papers, hemp clothing and elaborately designed bongs.
While the Cup is essentially a trade show to those in the business, it’s also a competition. Judges – basically everybody who attends (though so-called ‘celebrity judges’ get the final say) – vote for their favourite strains of weed and hash, as well as for the best coffee-shops.
I spotted a few coffee-shop employees circulating the floor with vaporizers – five feet long tubes, like condoms or sausage skins, filled with smoke. They were giving out free samples to anybody who wanted one. A guy from Barney’s approached me and asked if I wanted a toke of G13. “Maybe later,” I told him.
Not everybody was coming to sample the weed. An announcement came over the speakers. “Please be aware that there are thieves about. Anyone can buy a day pass and come in here. We’ve had reports of people getting so stoned they fall asleep. Don’t wake up without your camera. Watch your asses, guys!”
I couldn’t find a chill-out room anywhere, but there was an outside area – wooden decking overlooking a long canal. I wandered in that direction, but was stopped at the Nirvana stall by a young and dreadlocked Dutch stoner: “Hey man, check this out!”
He was standing over a microscope. I covered one eye and took a peek. I couldn’t see a damn thing. Oops! I pushed my shades up and tried again. The fist-sized bud under examination looked as though it had been crystallised by Willy Wonka himself. Without a doubt, this was quality weed.
“Wanna try?” he asked, handing me a loaded bong.
I hadn’t planned on getting stoned early, but this looked too good to pass up. He applied a mini flametorch as I took a long, deep hit of Nirvana – and almost immediately regretted it. It was a smooth smoke, but inhaling was hellishly ticklish. It felt as though the ghost of Kurt Cobain was slam-dancing around my lungs, wielding a dirty feather duster. I immediately started to cough and wheeze.
I thanked the guy with a wave of my hand and staggered towards the decking, still coughing. Even with the fresh air, it took me a few minutes to recover. By the time I managed to stop coughing, I realised that I was seriously stoned. So stoned, in fact, that when Tommy Chong and Jack Herer came out and sat beside me, I was far too light-headed to get it together to approach them.
Instead I sat and read Hager’s account of how he founded the Cup. It all started back in ‘87 when he made his first-ever visit to Holland for a High Times interview with the Australian founder of the first Dutch cannabis-seed mail-order company. Called Nevil, the Aussie lived in a mansion full of grow-rooms dubbed the ‘Cannabis Castle’.
While Hager was working on his article, he met the founders of Cultivator’s Choice, an almost defunct American seed cannabis-company. Their memories of the spectacular California harvest festivals of the 70’s inspired him to hold a cannabis harvest festival in Amsterdam. The first few Cannabis Cups were small affairs, but by the third, the DEA were sufficiently concerned to attempt to extradite Nevil. He’s since gone underground.
The Cannabis Cup, meanwhile, has gone from strength to strength to... well, that was what I was here to find out.

***********************

Once I’d come down sufficiently, I went back inside. A trio of rappers called Les Marijuanos were onstage, singing their own version of ‘Mr. Sandman’: “Mr. Weedman/Can’t you seeeee/I got the habit/so bring me some weed marijuana and meeeee Mr. Weedman bring me some weed/...Mr. Weedman/Pass me some papers/I’ll fire it up so you can catch my vapours!”
When their set ended, a silver-haired Steve Martin lookalike came on to explain the judging process. “Well guys, there’s about 25 strains of quality weed for you to sample. You cast your vote for your favourite strain at the voting booth near the exit. Remember your vote counts so use it wisely. On Thursday the celebrity judges will…”
A voice hollered out from the edge of the crowd, “Who are the celebrity judges?”
Steve Martin obviously didn’t like being interrupted, but the voice called out again. Louder, this time. “Who are the celebrities?”
He faltered slightly on the stage but then answered, “Well, there’s me – Dan Skye from High Times – and there’s Tommy Chong... the great Jack Herer and... Steve Hager and, um, various other High Times editors.”
“Celebrities me bollix!”
I thought I’d recognised the accents, but that clinched it. I wandered over and introduced myself to two skinny young Dubs loitering at the back of the crowd.
One of them, a heavily tattooed 28-year-old named Graham Clark was happy to talk to hotpress. His stoned friend, meanwhile, looked like he was too busy conversing with God.
“Don’t mind him,” Graham laughed. “He’s been smoking the Blue Cheese all day. It’s bleedin’ deadly stuff.”
Graham told me that he regularly travels to the Dam. Smoking hash and weed since he was 14, he was an avowed weed enthusiast.
“This is my first-ever Cannabis Cup, but I come over here because the laws in Ireland don’t allow you to smoke weed. The flights are cheap so I don’t break the law in my own country.”
“What?” I laughed. “You’re saying you don’t smoke weed in Dublin?”
He smiled and shrugged. “Lookit – the weed at home is tainted with food supplements, glass beads, you name it. Anything that can add weight to it. They get five kilos of weed, they’ll put a kilo of sugar into that. That’s an extra seven or eight thousand euros they’ll get for that. You buy a hundred bag of weed, you never know what you’re getting. Some of it has definitely been doused. Over here, at least I know what I’m getting.”
I asked Graham did want me to disguise his identity.
“Couldn’t give a fuck, man. I’m not breaking any laws here.”

***********************

A couple of hours later, I was feeling despondent. The last Cannabis Cup I’d attended had been like one big friendly, celebrity-studded party. This was more like one big anonymous trade show. Then again, I was still pretty wrecked. I’d arrived exhausted and all the beers and free samples had hardly helped. I decided to vamoose, get some rest, and come back tomorrow in a better state of mind.
When I left the building there was a small crowd waiting for the shuttle bus. It had just left and it wouldn’t be back for at least another 40 minutes. “Fuckin’ bullshit, man,” one disgruntled stoner muttered.
A Moroccan guy in a blue minivan called out, “Anyone want a ride? Room here for one more!”
I hopped into the front passenger seat. There was a group of seven young Americans in the van. From what I caught of their conversation, they were close relations of Beavis and Butthead.
The driver turned out to be one of the owners of a coffeeshop called Katsu – which was also our destination. “It’s not too far,” he assured me, handing me a lit spliff.
“This venue is kind of out of the way, isn’t it?” I said. “Yeah, man,” he said. “PowerZone is probably the only fuckin’ place they could get!”
Katsu was a typical Dutch coffeeshop, small, cheaply furnished and compact. Once we were inside, the Americans commandeered a couple of tables. There was no room for me to join and nobody was inviting me anyway.
Instead, I stood at the counter and ordered a beer. No deal. Katsu wasn’t licensed to sell alcohol – and nor was any other Amsterdam coffeeshop. “The authorities have been coming down real heavy on us recently,” the Moroccan told me. “We haven’t been allowed sell booze since before the summer.”
Ye Gods! No booze in Dutch coffeeshops! What was the world coming to? I slipped quietly out the door and disappeared off into the night.

DAY TWO

Having slept for almost 10 hours straight, I arrived refreshed at The PowerZone around 2pm, determined to make up for yesterday’s fiasco. My first port of call was the High Times desk, where I was hoping to get to speak to Hager or one of their other editors.
A moon-faced, heavily bearded and even more heavily disinterested High Timer half-listened to my request with a barely disguised smile of contempt. “Uh-huh?” he said, unctuously. “Who did you say you were again?”
When somebody called him from behind a screen, he immediately walked away. What the hell was wrong with these people? Was my name on some kind of blacklist from my last visit? Or was it that they just didn’t want some strange journalist around?
It occurred to me that I was wearing a black suit under a long black leather jacket. Most of the attendees looked like Grateful Dead roadies or wannabe rappers. Maybe I looked like an indiscreet Interpol agent.
As I was standing there, a tall, leather-clad Ramones-type wearing shades and a shiny black beret approached, and asked if I was the person who’d been looking to buy a gold pin cannabis cup replica. “It’s a totally limited edition, man. Only e40 – plated in 24 carat gold.” “Very nice,” I said, admiringly. “You wanna buy it?” “No thanks.”
We got talking anyway. His name was Robin “The Hammer” Ludwig – musician, goldsmith and designer of the Cannabis Cups since the early Nineties.
When I explained that I was covering the event for hotpress, he was enthusiastic. “A music magazine, yeah? Hey, I was Billy Idol’s goldsmith from 1987 to about ’93. I did all the jewellery for the Charmed Life tour.”
We walked over to the High Times ‘VIP Lounge’. There wasn’t much to it. A large plasma screen TV was broadcasting what was happening up on the stage (nothing). There was a table of nuts, fruits and mineral water in one corner. There was another table of nuts and fruits in the far one, but they were quietly smoking amongst themselves.
“I used to smoke a lot, but I partake less and less – but hey, I’m still as high as ever,” Robin laughed.
But was he as paranoid? When I suggested that agencies like the DEA might be monitoring the event, he shrugged it off.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re not violent. In fact, we’re closer to the conscience of America. If we’re a threat it’s because we’re the conscience. We’re not a threat because we’re gonna get out there on the streets. We certainly don’t have any economic clout. We’re not highly organised. We’re an enormous segment of the population which is unrepresented and unacknowledged – but we exist. And that alone has a protective value.”
Why not get properly organised?
“Some people do. Sometimes they’re even successful. They get a hell of a lot of flak, though. You have to be prepared to take the assault of the obese-minded, the immature, the greedy and the evil. But what can you do? The most important thing is to outlive ‘em – both in time and in quality.”
This was Robin’s first Cannabis Cup in a couple of years. He was enjoying himself.
“The Cup is what you make it, you know? The Cup can just be a trip to Amsterdam. Or the Cup can be a lost week in a dark room, or the Cup can be a trip to the fantasyland of your dreams – if you have the energy. It’s all very individual.”
Robin introduced me to his wife, Sweetbryar, a very pleasant woman who was doing a special Cannabis Cup tarot in the corner of the room.
“Because it’s the 20th anniversary, a lot of the strains are named after the tarot,” she explained, laying cards out in front of me. “So I am giving faith to the strains and also using a lot of the High Times high-erarchy – high-erarchy - and placing them in positions of great power - which I hope they don’t misuse.”
Sweetbryar maintained that there was definitely something mystical in the air. And it wasn’t just the dope smoke.
“Sometimes I’ll be doing somebody’s card and they’ll suddenly appear in front of me,” she said. “It’s very odd.”

***********************

Up on the main stage, celebrity grower Jorge Cerventes was giving a master growing seminar and plugging his new Ultimate Grow 2 DVD (sequel to Ultimate Grow). Back in 1997, Ed Rosenthal – of ‘Ask Ed’ fame – was the master grower. But apparently Rosenthal has had serious legal problems since.
Dressed entirely in black, replete with shades and beret, the bearded Cerventes looked like an ETA member. He’d filmed his new DVD on a Majorcan cannabis farm and there were numerous tracking shots of him walking through fields of massive cannabis plants. The audience oohed, aahhed and laughed.
Once you ignored the fact that it was marijuana he was talking about, though, the whole thing was about as interesting as watching grass grow.
I spotted Dan Skye standing by the bar and walked over and introduced myself.
Skye has been a senior editor at High Times since 1992. I asked how they managed to get away with publishing a magazine that’s basically pornography for pot lovers (their centrefolds are of lovingly shot marijuana plants).
“Well, it’s not that we’re doing anything illegal in the office, but there is such a thing as freedom of the press,” he explained. “We’re certainly allowed to talk about things that are illegal – though that should be legal. And as far as taking photos of the marijuana... we kind of keep that whole process to ourselves. But they can’t shut down a magazine just for publishing the truth about something.”
Would he not consider running the event in the States?
“Unfortunately, you can’t – unless it’s really undercover. Even here in Amsterdam, the mistake that Americans make is that marijuana isn’t legal here, it’s just tolerated to a certain degree. And a number of political officials look down on this event. They’d really prefer to see it not happen – they call it narco-tourism. But the fact is that all of the people gathered here are bringing about a million euros into the Dutch economy, so who should complain? And as you can see it’s a very peaceful crowd.”
“Well, it’s a very stoned crowd,” I countered. “How can you trust their judgement as to what’s the best weed?”
“That’s a good question,” he laughed. “People ask how can you judge so many strains? You narrow it down. And there’s consensus. The judges get together and they network with each other and they talk about what strain is best and what they like about it. We come to a fairly legitimate winner each year, I think.”
And Dan’s own personal favourite for 2007?
“I don’t really pay any attention. I’m not a marijuana connoisseur. All I know is if it’s good, I’ll smoke it.”

***********************

Twenty years later, Jorge was still onstage giving his lecture, talking about soils and temperatures. Upstairs, somebody was demonstrating a contraption called ‘The Amazing AutoFlowerer’ – basically a small white growing-tent that automatically opened and closed. It looked like a hungry set of shark dentures.
“The sides are translucent – thereby blocking eyesight while allowing optimal use of sunlight – and the top is a high-grade transparent film which enables UV rays in to give maximum resin production,” the salesman explained. “It’s also odour-protected and has a special polyshield for IR camera detection prevention.”
I briefly considered purchasing an Amazing AutoFlowerer and a load of seeds, retiring from journalism, and going into the weed-growing business. But then I heard Jorge’s voice over the speakers (“Now, guys, if the temp gets too high and the soil you’re using ain’t the right stuff, you’re gonna have serious problems”) and realised it just wasn’t the career for me.
Soon afterwards, I found myself chatting to Marco Renda – the Canadian editor of Treating Yourself magazine. Small, thin and bespectacled, Marco was celebrating both his 40th birthday and the magazine’s second anniversary.
“The magazine was launched at the Cannabis Cup,” he told me. “It was just 26 pages, so it was more like a pamphlet. Now we’re at issue 9 – which we’re promoting here – and it’s 164 pages.”
It’s a nicely produced publication. One of the main features was ‘Willie Nelson and his Biodiesel Bus’. However, as its title suggests, it’s main theme is the benefits of medicinal marijuana.
“Our website has been around for five years and we’ve over 11,000 members. We get about four million hits a month. So it’s very active. You’ll find our magazine in doctor’s offices, in schools and in libraries.”
Marco showed me a card from the Canadian Health Board. “I’m a med patient,” he explained. “I’m licensed by Health Canada to grow 78 plants indoors. I’m allowed to grow and use my own. I’ve seen people get a life because they have access to medical marijuana, rather than being bedridden as I used to be. Okay, there’s all sorts of publications for recreational users or social users, but nothing for med patients.”
Marco was enjoying the Cup. “It’s a lot better than last year’s. Better venue, but about the same number of people.”
I told him I’d been there in 1997. “Hey, the 10th Cup!” he laughed. “I heard that was the best one ever!”
It would explain a lot. Ten years on, I definitely wasn’t having as good a time.
Standing outside on the decking a little later, I noticed a small camera crew. In 1997, there were news and camera crews from all over the world. Now, there only seemed to be High Times TV.
Listening in on the interview, it transpired they were talking to Dominic and Doc, the New York growers of the ‘Ooky Kabuki’ strain. Dominic was a handsome and bearded thirtysomething, who’d made absolutely no attempt to conceal his identity. Doc was wearing shades and a black woollen hat.
“Come on in, man. Don’t be shy! Join the party,” Doc said, reaching into his jacket pocket and handing me a large bud of Ookie Kabuki. “It’s our maiden voyage to the Cannabis Cup. We’re having a great time. We’re already outta seeds. I mean, we could only bring over so many.”
I couldn’t understand why they’d consent to being filmed, given the illegality of their trade. Surely they could face serious legal problems back home?
Dominic smiled: “I think the answer to that question is yes! We’d be going to jail for a long time. But we believe in what we do. And we’ll take our chances.”
I actually quite admired them. They grew their weed somewhere in New York State and were obviously proud of their product. Even so, being filmed seemed to be a foolish move...
I rolled an Ookie Kabuki spliff. It was serious gear... OOOOOOOKKKKKKKKIIIIIEEEEE KAAAABBBBUUUUKKKIIII!!!!!
I sat down for a while. I had to.

***********************

Later that night High Times columnist Bobby Black was onstage in the Milky Way (another venue, closer to the city) presenting a High Times fashion show. Long-haired, neatly-bearded and sporting a pair of Ray Bans, Black resembled a particularly well-groomed Hells Angel. He interviewed the current Miss High Times – an absolutely stunning brunette. She was there to help judge a competition.
“All right we have some Miss High Times potentials in the audience so I’d like to make a call out for any girls who wanna enter,” Black announced. “We’re looking for girls for the 2008 pageant who can possibly win a free trip to Negril. Come up to the stage right now and we’ll do a little interview with you.”
Unfortunately, there were only two takers. The first girl – Stacey from South Florida – was a 25-year-old army veteran, recently returned from Iraq.
“Hey, it’s good to see that we’ve got some army folk here – especially women,” Black said. “So Stacey, you follow the magazine? You’re definitely a hard core stoner, right? What are your hobbies?”
“Uh... I just like to hang out on the beach with my bong,” Stacey replied. It was the most interesting thing she said throughout a torturously awful five minute interview.
I didn’t catch the second girl’s name, but she was prettier and also from Florida – a dance choreographer in the university.
“Why would you be a good Miss High Times?” Black enquired.
“Well, I love to smoke weed and I love the magazine,” she cooed. “And I think it’s important for girls to know that you can be beautiful and still be stoned...”
It suddenly occurred to me that not only was the crowd here about 90% American, it was also about 95% male.
Several hours later, I found myself wandering aimlessly around the red light district, chuckling at the fact that every single windowed prostitute seemed to have a mobile phone. Now it was the punters freaking out saying, “No photos!”
I didn’t have any spliff (sadly, I’d run out of Ookie Kabuki), so I wandered into the Paradise Coffee Shop, and ordered a cappuccino and an eighth of their finest hashish.
The Dutch guys behind the counter told me that they weren’t actually participating in the Cup. Apparently you have to pay a fee (or at least take out an advertisement in the official brochure). Even so, the proprietors were happy enough that the event happens. It brings in business, after all, and apparently trade hasn’t been so good for coffeeshops since the new restrictions came in.
They weren’t surprised that things were tightening up. “It was just getting really messy. All these fucked-up tourists getting drunk and stoned and falling around the street. Lightweights, really. But there was too much trouble.”
Talk turned back to the Cup. They were somewhat sceptical about the idea of there being a ‘Best Weed’: “You know, it’s really impossible to judge what’s the best weed anyway. It differs from plant to plant within the same crop.”
As for the idea of a group of Americans doing the judging...
“How would you feel about a bunch of foreigners coming over to Dublin to judge the best pint of Guinness?”

DAY THREE

I spent Thursday morning wandering around the Van Gogh Museum. The awards ceremony was being held that night, and I’d absolutely no desire to spend another full day pacing the wooden, spliff-scarred floors of The PowerZone.
After the museum, I went to an internet café to check my emails. Hager hadn’t gotten back to me. No surprise there. I logged onto the hotpress website and pulled my 1997 Cannabis Cup piece out of the archive. I deliberately hadn’t read it in advance, but now I wanted to see if my memory had been fooling me.
It hadn’t. More memories came flooding back. The 1997 Cannabis Cup had been a wild event. There’d been at least 1,000 people there – many of whom had been young, pretty and female. I’d met and mingled with Spearhead’s Michael Franti, Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein, writer and activist Paul Krassner, Bob Marley’s widow Rita, and many others besides. I’d gotten seriously stoned with the legendary Mountain Girl (ex-wife of Hells Angel Sonny Barger). I’d taken magic mushrooms with BP Fallon and gone on a wild adventure. Truly, it had been a blast.
Okay, I’m 10 years older now, but I still recognise a good party when I see one. And this wasn’t.
I walked in towards Dam Square. Sitting in a bar, I bumped into somebody I recognised from the last couple of days. He turned out to be Irish – 37-year-old Patrick Grant, co-owner of three Irish headshops (Nirvana on Capel Street, Euphoria in Derry, and Tír na nÓg in Galway). Although he personally stopped smoking weed a few years ago, he was attending the Cup on business.
“I’m here basically to source the best seeds I can find,” he explained. “We only want quality, and I’m sure there are many collectors of seeds around the country who want the best quality too.”
“Is that not legally problematic?” I asked. “Bringing cannabis seeds to Ireland?”
“We’re never gonna break the law. We’re always gonna support the collection of botanical samples.”
Patrick explained that he no longer smoked marijuana himself, but a three-year flirtation with the drug had cured him of a propensity towards violence. “I used to be a mad fucker, but smoking really calmed me down. It’s a weed that turns into a flower in your mind.”
He was an affable sort of chap. We had a couple of drinks and a good chat. I realised that I hadn’t really had a decent conversation with anybody since I’d arrived.
“Amsterdam nowadays has become a sort of holiday haven for drug users,” Patrick said. “It still has the essence of old Amsterdam, but it used to have something really special about it. But because weed is banned in other countries, people come here to indulge – and sometimes overindulge. It gets messy.
“So obviously the only thing to do is to legalise the stuff everywhere.”

***********************

Around 5pm, I caught a cab out to The PowerZone. There was a long queue at the voting booth, but otherwise the place was quiet.
Although I’d only sampled a few strains, I decided to cast a vote anyway. Unfortunately, when I went to get a voting form I was informed by a girl I’d never seen before that, as a journalist, I wasn’t entitled to vote. Ten minutes later, for the same reason, I was refused entry to the VIP Lounge.
“But you’ve seen me in here for the last couple of days,” I protested.
“Sorry, buddy,” the bouncer said. “I know you’re press, but you’re not with High Times. I’ve been told not to let you in.” Steve Hager and Dan Skye walked past. I said “hello,” but they completely blanked me.
Truth be told, I didn’t give a fuck. The whole thing was depressingly tawdry. Wandering around the near empty hall, I bumped into Dominic and Doc, the Ookie Kabuki growers. They’d been disqualified from the competition. Worse again, they’d none of their sublime weed left.
Apparently, they’d been disqualified because they’d given free samples to the celebrity judges.
“We don’t think it was justified, but what we were accused of, we...uh...did in fact do,” Dominic cried, disgustedly. “We gave our marijuana to the VIP judges. We thought that was allowed – because I mean everyone’s a judge! – but we gave it to the wrong guys.”
Pulling a resigned face, Doc was more philosophical. “I guess all that really matters is that people enjoyed our marijuana.”
I gave them a consolatory hug and told them they’d be mentioned nicely in my article anyway. Mysteriously, one last bud of Ookie Kabuki materialised . . .
“OOOOOOOKKKKKKKKIIIIIEEEEE KAAAABBBBUUUUKKKIIII!!!!!”

***********************

Things got busier, much busier. More people showed up for the awards, lots of them. Even so, The PowerZone was less than half-full. A few hundred stoned Americans grooving to a godawful honky-tonk band... Yikes!
I only stayed for the first few minutes of the ceremony. A representative from Barney’s Coffeeshop held one of Robin’s 24-carat gold plated cups aloft and gave an emotional acceptance speech.
I drained my glass, stubbed my spliff, and headed for the exit. Fuck this! What did I care who won what?
I enjoy smoking marijuana and strongly believe it should be legalised, but it’s not my religion – which is what it appeared to be for many attendees.
And while I’m glad there are people willing to risk their liberty to grow the stuff, I’m not especially interested in how they go about it. Really, I came to party and have a good time, but that just wasn’t the buzz.
Americans abroad can be an insular bunch, but at a European cannabis festival in a post 9/11 world, they seemed even more paranoid and unfriendly than usual. And make no mistake, this was an American event. The obscure location had hardly helped matters. It wasn’t like you could pop out for a blast of something else when you got bored. But they hadn’t even had a proper chill-out room...
So a fairly damp spliff, then, all things told. But let’s not be too harsh. It takes a lot of balls to put on – or even attend – an event like this. Especially for Americans. In a George Shrub universe, it’s hardly surprising that money is tight, numbers are down, options are limited, and paranoia is high. Hopefully in the future things will get better, lighter, funnier.
I’m not saying I’ll never go back to another Cannabis Cup. Just that next time, I’ll probably settle for a one-day pass.