Shelton Hull
Words by Shelton Hull
That cursed election is now over, and that means we don’t have to waste time and energy talking about politics (or politicians) for pretty much an entire year. I’m sure things will come up, here and there, but all us progressives here in Florida, and around the nation, are basically stuck in the wilderness until at least 2026-2027, when all our local and state elected offices are back up for grabs. So we’ll stick to what really matters, which is cannabis itself, and the vast array of products used to consume it. With the holidays just days ahead, let’s talk about some of the gimmicks to cross my desk in recent weeks, all of which you can probably order online and have delivered in time for your “winter” holiday of choice.
We’ll start with Dab Day Productions, whose Halloween festival went down on Oct. 26. The event was held at Myrtle Avenue Brewing and the adjacent Glass Factory, a 16,000 square foot warehouse that was thoroughly hotboxed within an hour or two of opening. Credit for that can largely be given to Dr. Dabber, based in Las Vegas. They set up a table in the center of the space to display their wares, offering free dab hits to anyone in attendance. (I had about 10, and that was more than plenty.) Their implements of choice were the Dr. Dabber Switch vape ($420) and the Dr. Dabber Boost Evo ($299). They sent me home with one of the latter rigs, and it’s easily the smoothest and easiest to clean of any such item I’ve dealt with. Granted, it goes through concentrate like the Space Shuttle burns gas, but that’s a fair trade for the ease of use. It comes in 3 parts, which basically connect magnetically, making it easy to assemble and take apart. Dabs can be confounding to the “noob-oisie,” but this is perfect for anyone. It’s so simple, even a child can use it — but DON’T! We’ll definitely be hearing more from them.
The other items I collected from vendors at Dab Day were mostly beverage samples. Viva Zen makes a variety of drinks using various combinations of kava and kratom. Both are increasingly popular here in Northeast Florida with the beautiful Kava & Company in San Marco being a personal favorite of mine — and probably yours. Places like that are the ideal setting for your initial forays into this realm, but Viva Zen works in a pinch. It also has a lot of other ingredients, like boswellia serrata resin, California poppy, corydalis yanhusuo rhizome, mitragyna speciosa leaf, panax ginseng, passion flower, valerian root, willow bark, yohimbe bark. (The kava+kratom blend also includes eleutherococcus senticosus root, lion’s mane, L-theanine, magnesium citrate, ocimum tenuiflorum leaf, rhodiola rosea root, schisandra chinensis berry and somnifera root, all of which do something, but damned if I know what.) Everyone has their own particular formula and optimum dosage, and the only way to figure that out is through experimenting.
I also got a bottle of Legal Leaf made by Legal Lean LLC, which is basically just 40 mg of kratom, and it’ll put you to sleep faster than the Jaguars offense. Now, on the exact opposite end of the spectrum is Aimbot, an energy drink concentrate I picked up from the New Leaf Vapor Co. table. It’s marketed to gamers, whose love for energy drinks is probably second to none, hence the name. No sugar, no calories and a “nootropic stack” of ingredients with dubious benefits like like Alcar (“turn fat into energy”), Alpha GPC (“critical thinking and memory”), L-citrulline (“body’s blood flow”), L-theanine (“focus and multitasking”), taurine (“mental and athletic performance”) and 5-HTP (“serotonin production”). It also tastes really good, which is usually not the case with such things. I woke up the following Monday with a full slate of bullshit on my schedule, so I grabbed a bottle of the blue raspberry flavor and chugged it, and only THEN did I read the label, at which point I made two disturbing discoveries: 1) That 20-milliliter tube was meant to be mixed with 16 ounces of water; 2) that tube has 300 milligrams of caffeine. That was a month ago, and I’m still awake. No crash, though!
Speaking of beverages, let’s turn to another one of those relationships that was fostered by my social media algorithms. Based in Birmingham, Mystic Beverages is based on a natural spring that they built a very unnatural warehouse around. These cans come in a variety of flavors, with between 5 milligrams and 15 milligrams of Delta-9 THC per can. I’m not a big sparkling water fan, mainly because it tastes like water, and I am of a generation that still bitterly resents having to pay for drinking water. But it’s basically zero calories and sugar-free with no alcohol and a flavor profile similar to your favorite hard seltzer, which makes it a perfect cocktail mixer.
(We’ll be doing a lot more of these, so feel free to send any ideas or suggestions to me at sheltonhull@gmail.com or team@folioweekly.com.)
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