The New York Times Magazine 55a neighborhood wine shop or a boutique that
sells locally sourced goods. One brick wall was
painted white, with a couple of wooden shelves
displaying CBD dog treats, paintings, tinctures.
(Their CBD oils were going for anywhere from
$45 to $220, depending on strength and ingredi-
ents. ) Another wall was reserved for community
art: framed drawings, a mural, porcelain faces
that serve as planters for cascading vines. All
the money from the art sales goes directly to
the artist, S. told me. She pointed out T-shirts,
hemp clothing, paintings, weavings, grow lights
and, fi nally, the elaborate communal rig, a glass
apparatus that traps smoke from a THC con-
centrate called dab. Members, she explained,
can stop by anytime for a hit from the rig. They
get one free hit a day; membership is also free,
through an email sign-up. The store has almost
1,600 members.
‘‘Did you just burn through the last of the
Papaya?’’ she asked an employee working the
counter, referring to a cannabis strain for sale.
Its sweet aroma was wafting through the store.
The employee nodded. ‘‘Dang, I was supposed
to save it for — ’’ She mumbled the customer’s
name, aware of my presence and the legal gray
area they were still operating in.
One evening, about a month later, I met C.
in Midtown at a residential four-fl oor walk-up
built in 1910. There was a free-standing A.T.M.
out front and a banner for a members-only can-
nabis club. The building itself is home to two
cannabis businesses — the club on the ground
fl oor, run by a legacy operator who has been sell-
ing cannabis illegally for 15 years, and a ‘‘grow
house’’ upstairs. The grow house is where C.
gets their cannabis. ‘‘My main goal is to have
nothing but the New York product,’’ he said; he
wants to support the local industry, from seed
to smoke, with cultivators, pickers and rollers
from the city, in part because he doesn’t think
that users elsewhere around the country appre-
ciate the history of black-market grows in New
York. The Sour Diesel strain, for example, is
thought to have originated in New York. When
it reached Miami, when C. was a teenager, it was
the only kind of cannabis he smoked. ‘‘I have
huge respect for New York growers and huge
respect for the game out here. And it’s really
an honor to be a part of all this.’’ Though he
wasn’t sure how many places like the Midtown
grow house existed in the city, he guessed the
number could be in the hundreds. ‘‘Just in Chi-
natown alone, that’s where most of the country
gets the old-school Bubba,’’ he said. ‘‘The black
market and the underground stretches beyond
anybody’s imagination.’’
This particular grow house occupied the liv-
ing rooms of two one-bedroom apartments.
Danny (who goes by Danny Lyfe) set up the
operation two years ago. He showed me the
26 plants in the back apartment, which he
expected to produce 12 pounds of cannabis
every 10 weeks. Each plant, about three feet
tall, had its own pot, with a masking-tape label
that identifi ed its strain — Cherry Lime Runt or
Joker’s Candy, for instance — and phenotype.
Danny was reluctant to show me the plants in
the front apartment because they weren’t doing
that well: The employee who had been tend-
ing them mistakenly pruned them back too far.
While C. and Danny shared a pre-roll, they were
deep in conversation about the benefi ts of each
strain and the preferred temperature (75 to 80
degrees), relative humidity (high 50s, low 60s,
in the fl owering stage) and light for the plants,
the last two variables of which Danny controls
remotely on his phone.
The grow house is only one part of Danny’s
business. He owns a farm in Oregon, where he
is licensed to grow medicinal cannabis, and a
streetwear shop in Staten Island, where he lives.
When I asked Danny and C. how they met, they
both laughed. They couldn’t remember at fi rst
but then traced their connection back to a can-
nabis connoisseur who posted about Danny’s
events on Instagram.
Danny told me his latest goal is to address a
countrywide void: quality pre-rolls. ‘‘Pre-rolls
are tainted in the nationwide market because
most people use their garbage material — their
endings, their trim,’’ he said. He wanted to pro-
duce 1,400 pre-rolls a day to sell wholesale for
$5 each. He had just spent an entire shift that
day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., working with his employ-
ees to, as he put it, ‘‘roll cannolis.’’ The plants,
all female, would eventually be trimmed and
harvested in July.
As Danny locked up the apartment, he whis-
pered to the plants, ‘‘See you later, love you
girls.’’ Because he is deeply invested in weed —
he is 33 but has spent 18 years in the industry
so far — he is eager for everything to be offi cial-
ly legal. ‘‘I can’t wait for my outpost to open,
that’s going to be lit,’’ he said. Danny doesn’t
mind talking about his business publicly. He
is already involved in several groups applying
for licenses to grow and sell cannabis, and he
is confi dent about his prospects. One project
will be headquartered in a former bank in White
Plains, a nearby suburb. At one point he found
himself with the White Plains mayor. ‘‘I’m Puer-
to Rican from New York City sitting at the may-
or’s offi ce, and I’m pushing weed,’’ Danny told
me, describing their meeting. The mayor asked
Danny what his role was in the company. Danny
said he told him about his industry expertise
and added, ‘‘I’m the one who checks off every
box as far as social equity.’’
S. and C. hope to get their own license next
year, but the process has been slow (and will
probably be expensive, they worry). ‘‘We’retrying to build a membership and really just
go about it the best way we can without step-
ping on anybody’s toes,’’ C. says. It’s a delicate
balance, he notes, trying to respect the work
of the activists who helped pass New York’s
cannabis legislation while also taking advan-
tage of the market it is creating. The issue of
equity matters to them. ‘‘Cannabis has a deep,
dark history,’’ he says, referring to the racial
disparities in arrests for possession of cannabis
in urban areas. He has seen it fi rsthand. ‘‘I come
from Miami, so I get it. I want to make sure we
do this a certain way.’’
After Danny left, C. told me that he and
S. were just getting by with what they were
making from their New York venture. All the
giveaways, the events, the rent, the employees,
taxes — it adds up. Gross sales were high, but
so were the costs of expanding their business.
While their 4/20 party was a celebratory occa-
sion, they had also just paid an extraordinary
amount to the government. Their business may
be operating in a legal gray area, but they are
still subject to state and federal taxes, and they
can’t claim any write-off s.
C. was hoping that in two years, maybe fi ve,
whenever that license comes through, things
might change. Then they would be able to
make money in Tampa and in New York. With
a license, they could expand their off erings,
open more stores; S. could be the chef serving
prix fi xe tasting menus. If they made enough, C.
thinks, maybe he will share some of what he’s
learned about the cannabis industry with his
relatives who still live in Ecuador and Colom-
bia. And maybe his role will become more man-
agerial and less hands-on. At the moment, it
feels like he and S. ‘‘wear all the hats,’’ he says.
‘‘Once we get a license, and we’re able to really
do what we want without any limitations, then
things will be diff erent. We’re just waiting for
that moment.’’§Cannabis