To his die-hard fans, Mr. Sherbinski is a storied name in marijuana. A celebrated California cultivator, he helped create the Gelato and Sunset Sherbert strains that have been name-checked in more than 200 hip-hop songs, including "First Off" by Future and "Bosses Don't Speak" by Migos. At the Business of Fashion's Voices conference in London last year, his brand, Sherbinskis, was introduced as "the Supreme of marijuana." And when Sherbinskis released its first sneaker design last year at ComplexCon, a two-day festival of hip-hop and fashion in Long Beach, Calif., the limited-edition Nike Air Force 1 model sold out in two hours. (There is a pair currently on eBay asking more than $1,000.) [continues 609 words]
Recreational cannabis may be legal in California, but buying the actual stuff still makes Scott Campbell, a celebrity tattoo artist and fine artist, feel like a class-cutting teenage stoner. "You go in to buy weed, and it's like visiting your parole officer," said Mr. Campbell, who lives in Los Angeles. "You get buzzed through three metal gates." Inside, cannabis products are often packaged with loopy Deadhead-style graphics and goofy dorm-humor strain names like Gorilla Glue and Purple Urkle. [continues 841 words]
Picture a mood-lit Las Vegas casino, at first glance indistinguishable from any other pleasure palace on the Strip: salarymen hunch over $20 blackjack tables as waitresses with plunging necklines circle the floor. Instead of bourbon-and-sodas, however, these waitresses are carrying trays full of vaporizers and water pipes. The games themselves have names that sound more like Cypress Hill songs: "Craps and Blunts," "Roll and Roulette." High rollers, indeed. A casino doubling as a smoker's paradise may seem like a tired Cheech & Chong skit from the '70s. But this vision is one of many ambitious concepts being hatched at High Times, the scruffy monthly magazine that, for 42 years, has served as the barely legal bible of dorm room stoners and closet cannabis growers. [continues 1744 words]
A FEW days after the terror arrests in London last month, a small commuter plane with three tourists was banking off the coast of Costa Rica when a sudden sound, like a muffled explosion, shattered the calm. The rear door of the plane, improperly shut, had blown open. There was a moment of panic for two of the passengers. But Roger Knox, a graphic designer making a connecting flight before boarding a jetliner home to San Francisco, was not worried. He had just doubled his usual preflight dose of Ativan, a prescription anti-anxiety drug, in anticipation of the ride on the small plane. [continues 1709 words]
