So I’ve been writing a cannabis column for about two years now, focusing primarily on the dispensaries in Washtenaw County. My mission: to find the cleanest smoke in the Great Lakes State. Lately, I’ve been getting closer to the holy grail, but I haven’t done it all or smoked it all. When I lived in Philadelphia we used to use a gas mask, we called it the Stan Ipkiss. It got you fried for a whole day and you definitely fell out of the time-space continuum. It dawned on me that a Cali-based cannabis company called Stone Road sent me a sample of their powdery concentrate last year ahead of 7/10, known among stoners as “Dab Day,” or a celebration of cannabis oils and concentrates. I did some bong rips of it and it definitely got me way too high but Dabney Coleman (RIP), I’ve just never been that guy. It just so happened it was finally time to do an actual bloody dab ahead of all this year’s Dab Day festivities. DaBella, step right up. There was probably no need to ever do another. One dab to rule them all.
Not sure what sorts of things dabbers get into on their holiday, I have a strong suspicion it involves dabbing their ever-loving brains out. Invariably, every dispensary in the area will have some sort of special. High Profile looks like it has some good deals and the artwork is cool and accurate. House Of Dank has a whole gang of activities, too, including some Dab Day giveaways.
A dab is mostly a fear and loathing high for an old-head doper like me. Don’t get me wrong: I prefer to smoke a mini-bong, a high-powered cartridge, or flower that is minimum 20% THC, but the dab is simply not for everyone — THC content tends to be around a minimum of 80% for dabs. I’m glad I finally did one but a record heatwave descended with a brimstone summer storm just prior to my dab debut. It was a lot to contend with around my mild anxiety. I met with accomplished Detroit-area bartender, Andy Garris — a purveyor of high-end experiences, in terms of his attention to detail in the fading art of hospitality. Garris has been doing dabs for years so I sought him out as the ganjalier for this endeavor. He welcomed me into his Ann Arbor home while he was doing delicate knife work on produce for dinner.
The preferred live rosin for the evening was from Information Entropy in Ann Arbor. Andy and I discussed our smoking habits and rituals before he got to torching up his dab rig for a quick demo. I generally don’t do edibles; Andy does it all. He had two kinds of live rosin on offer: Organic Mechanic was preferred for the novice over the nameless top-shelf IE jar adorned only with artwork from The Boondocks. Treading on new ground can be both exhilarating and frightening, but I felt a kindred comfort with Andy who has been serving me royally at his establishments over the years. Tailored drinks and a ticket to ride every time.
From the outset of this “assignment,” my feeling was don’t let this interrupt your preferred consumption methods, but surely it is finally time to be intrepid enough to embrace a phenomenon (albeit over a decade late). The first I’d heard of dabbing was in 2010 when early adopters warned of its lethal punch. I heard things like, “Dude, I hit a dab and landed on the floor immediately,” or, “Yeah, it felt like the room was collapsing and I was just free-falling in a one-toke-over-the-line echo chamber.” These reports were reason enough to swerve the business altogether and I really didn’t travel in a circle that sponsored extreme marijuana thresholds. At the same time, I duly noted Action Bronson regularly firing up dabs on his impactful show, Fuck, That’s Delicious (VICE Network, unfortunately).
Andy ignited his custom black flamethrower and thoroughly warmed the marble glass rosin housing; the rig itself was intricately bong-shaped, with several colors of pyrex and hand-blown glass. As instructed, I took a small portion of the yellow flake Organic Mechanic rosin on the tip of a scalpel-like implement. I swabbed the silver metal instrument into the bowl in a circular fashion and took a pretty long pull while the glass filled with a milky cumulus cloud. I was ambitious but I surely didn’t have the green lungs to clear all the billowing contents in one take. It took two hits. Lift off.
The origins of international Dab Day are murky and elusive, which is pretty apropos. It doesn’t seem like the dab community can really articulate its history but at this point it doesn’t really matter. Apparently the Grateful Dead lived at 710 Ashbury in the late ’60s and a rapper from the online cannabis community named TaskRok is credited with flipping the word “OIL” over in a dab chat room in the early 2010s. A lot of the lore seems to be speculative but it’s all part of the collective cannabis consciousness now, and it is truly an egalitarian affair. Essentially, all are welcome to get epically zooted.
A dab has legs, perhaps tentacles that stretch in devilish directions long after the hit. For me, I was stuck on a lasting high hours after doing one. I wouldn’t recommend being too far from your comfort zone to start out with, but my dabbling safari is most likely at its end. Maybe I’d try another one if I stumble upon it again, but I’m afraid I’d never sincerely seek it out. My head space wasn’t exactly liberated at the time of this exercise but my decision is essentially final. The dab didn’t make me go dark, but it was still 90 degrees in the shade well after 8 p.m., which surely didn’t help matters as I tried to come down from the stratosphere. This didn’t feel like Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception, it just felt like something to endure, more Interzone than a step towards nirvana.
Andy and I got to talking about local dispensaries and while he’s been to many in Washtenaw County, I recommended Apothecare and Winewood Organics in Ann Arbor and Planet Jane in Ypsilanti. Dispensaries that use the caregiver model and ones with their own onsite grow are the best. The only dispensaries I’ve hit in the Detroit area are the excellent Flower Bowl on Warren Avenue and the Dispo in Hazel Park, which has great prices at all their branches. I’m still learning about dab culture and supply sourcing but for Washtenaw County I highly urge you to check out Winewood Organics: they use living soil and have an onsite grow. Apothecare has certified organic cannabis and also uses living soil. Planet Jane also has its own grow house and has the best flower in the state for me. Never tried their rosin, but I’m guessing it’s bang-for-your-buck stuff. Andy recommended Herbana for rosin in Ann Arbor.
As for flavors, there’s a bit of a consensus around the hash-based Peach Crescendo which was recently on bud menus at Quality Roots and Skymint; these are chains, so surely you can find one close to you. I’m not sure how the hash-based stuff will go over with dab connoisseurs. Hash is a tangent here and I’m a fan of the old-school chocolate Afghan, Moroccan, or Lebanese varieties. These are very hard to find now but you can get bubble hash-infused prerolls at most dispensaries. Winewood in Ann Arbor is the only dispensary I’ve found to sell bubble hash in jars.
I decided to stop into Winewood and talked briefly with owner and grower Eric Parkhurst, who said they were re-upping their rosin stock with a caregiver-driven Tropicana Cookies-based strain, but he had plenty of live resin on hand. You can get a gram of this Lemon Slushee live resin for 45 bones. Looks pretty primo.
Peachy Hash Co. has also developed a following in the rosin ranks, probably something you need to order online but their products look tasty. Superb Cannabis Co. seems to have a bit of a strong following and does have products in Detroit-area dispensaries. Metro Times readers have awarded a Best Concentrate four times in the Best of Detroit poll; the reigning holder of the title is Concentrate Kings with previous winners being Mitten Extracts, Green River Meds, and Uncle Morty’s Extracts.
I couldn’t tell you much about the actual flavor profile of the dab, it just tasted like a very strong bong hit. However, there is a very stonery aroma and aura from the dab; I think back to Stacy Keach’s cop character in Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams. It’s a rabbit hole and I’m fairly certain I don’t want to go down there again. Maybe it says something about our end-phase capitalist culture that kids want to get so fucking astronomically high to escape the terrors of the modern age. I don’t blame dabbers at all for that sentiment.
An hour into the dab hit, I felt sorely upset having not secured a proper dinner for the evening. It wasn’t a fiendish attack of the munchies but rather a notion that a good meal would have helped balance the high. Andy wondered aloud if what we were smoking was potentially detrimental to our health since neither of us could accurately pinpoint the exact ingredients of the rosin or process used to make it. At the end of the day, “It gets you super high,” was the mantra. Winewood actually has a fairly in-depth synopsis of dabbing (including preparation methods) but not being very scientific, I still don’t fully understand how concentrate is made. Maybe the dab blew out the last scientific brain cell in my aging, blunted head.
When I woke up the next day from a relatively deep sleep, I still felt groggy and some of the effects of the dab lingered. After some coffee and kombucha, I was finally exiting the dabiverse. So for me, it was a high that peaked about an hour after the dab but lasted for some 17 hours in total. It’s a bit of a commitment, shall we say. The other lasting thing I’m finding is olfactory hallucinations, like out of nowhere I get a heavy aromatic essence of the dab experience. It’s actually more pleasant than the dab was itself.
Maybe the final takeaway from this dab experiment is Andy’s notion that once you smoke something on that level, everything else you smoke doesn’t quite compare. I would tend to agree though the next day I hit my hippy stick vape pen loaded with a Sweet Tart strain from Herbal Solutions in Ypsilanti clocking 86.4% THC and it basically was a dab flashback, taking me back to that death-defying interstellar mental space.
So I can say I was a Dabbage Patch Kid for a day. I celebrate cannabis in all its forms. Party on, dab dudes and dudettes. Enjoy your day.
