Search Results: rikess (98)

~ alapoet ~
Toke of the Town editor Steve Elliott celebrating three years of high points and big hits

Three years ago today — actually, three years ago tonight, at 7:08 p.m. Pacific time — my THC-stained fingers hit the “Post” button for the first-ever story on Toke of the Town.

“The good thing about a free marketplace of ideas is,” I wrote, in the first sentence ever to appear on this site, “despite the best efforts of prohibitionists and their fear-mongering propaganda, the truth eventually prevails.”
More than 3,600 stories later — and with hundreds of joints, medibles, and bongloads littering my path — I’m still loving this gig, and judging by pageviews, so are close to half a million of you every month.

Alfie420_2006/Photobucket

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

I think it’s essential at Thanksgiving that we remember what’s important and yes, what we are thankful for, as we lay out our fat pants in anticipation for a day of complete stuffage. Before we begin the mental preparation needed for enduring the forced march that is Uncle Bill and the onslaught of his incredibly misguided and alcohol-scented opinions, before it gets crazy, this is what I’m thankful for. 
I’m thankful that every day, marijuana becomes more accepted.
I’m thankful for the people who celebrate 4/20 as a holiday. It is a flame for the rest of the world to smell.

ACLU

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
I am such a downer. Since Election Day, many friends, colleagues, and even my in-laws and family members who don’t fancy one of theirs being a pot writer, called or wrote wanting to know what I thought of Washington and Colorado passing what they’re calling “the legalization of marijuana.”
I should be ecstatic, as many of the well-wishers have commented. I tell them that it is a win. I tell them that it is progress. What I can’t tell them… is what’s going to happen next.
What we’re dealing with here are cultural norms. 
The question to me is, what is society going to do? How as a nation are we going to look at marijuana? What kind of resistance is there going to be?

San Francisco Medical Cannabis Competition/Facebook

Judges’ Packs are available for the sixth annual Patient’s Choice Medical Cannabis Competition in San Francisco, an event which provides Bay Area medical marijuana patients a sampling of the strains they are likely to find available at local dispensaries following the 2012 outdoor harvest season. The competition also provides cultivators, collectives and co-ops with a chance to show off their best weed to patient/judges with highly refined tastes.

Each Judges’ Pack (which costs $300 and is limited to California medical marijuana patients 18 and older) will include two tickets to the awards ceremony, one ballot, and cannabis totaling more than an ounce, made up of small samples of flowers, concentrates, and edibles.
Last year, Judges’ Packs came with 34 one-gram samples of medical cannabis, 10 quarter-gram concentrate entries, and 10 types of medibles, reports David Downs at SF Gate. Humboldt Royal Kush, an outdoor-grown indica from EarthGreenCali farms in Humboldt County, took first place, as reported here last year by Toke of the Town Northern California Correspondent Jack Rikess. It was grown in full sun with no added nutrients; the grower told attendees the plant got all its food from a “secret soil mix,” pH-balanced water, and molasses.

Weedist

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
I had the privilege and honor of attending a conference this past week in San Francisco titled, “Cannabis In Medicine.” The symposium brought together all levels of health care workers: Doctors, nurses, researchers and other medical professionals, mostly unfamiliar with marijuana as a medical treatment, gathered in one room to receive straight, sober information. We were treated to the results of data, case studies and clinical trials conducted using cannabis therapy.

Mario Piperni dot Com
What I learned from watching the Republican Convention was that nowadays you can basically lie about anything as long as the market can tolerate the bullshit

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
Boy Howdy… Are we fucked
What I learned from watching the Republican Convention was that nowadays you can basically lie about anything as long as the market can tolerate the bullshit. In the past, the market stood for facts, common sense and what we could logically bear as a society. Now the market is based on how much bullshit you can get the American people to accept before their heads overload and explode.
Take American Idol. It was almost a new religion when it premiered in 2002. Now it’s like an elderly third cousin who needs a place to crash for a night or a year. When the American people have had enough of something they let you go quick the way the Church of Scientology jettisons a fanatic parishioner who talks to the press. 
And don’t expect any apology.
See, I don’t care about the lies told at the RNC. They’re on the record but it doesn’t matter. You could tell the American people that cannabis cures cancer but they won’t believe it until they heard from someone they trust like Dr. Oz or Matt Lauer. 
What I do care about are the innocent people who get hurt in the process? I care about my friends, the growers of Northern California.
Did I mention we’re fucked?
Sorry for the crassness but I’m beyond angry. I’m motivated.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat
Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman: “We are, of course, supportive of legitimate medical marijuana here.”
 

Tell me what company you keep and I’ll tell you what you are.
   ~ Miguel de Cervantes, “Don Quixote de la Mancha Part II” (1615)
By Jack Rikess

Toke of the Town

Northern California Correspondent
Conventional wisdom for anyone living north of Santa Rosa is that marijuana is an integral component of California’s economy. In the beginning, growers were tolerated by the locals as misfits of society who had migrated north to avoid the world of straight jobs and or had fled to Mendo with the ‘back to the county’ movement to grow their organic beans and fruit.
Venerable local institutions such as the timber and fishing industries were leery of the young freaks with their torn jeans and rusting VW vans. Their fears were soon justified when that first generation found that there were endless acres of hidden land stashed in them there hills.
If a guy could find a secluded patch in the hills that was close to water and had sun, he had the makings of his first clandestine start-up. The Timber giants viewed the encroaching growers as threats to their land, their water, and to the political dominance that they held in NorCal since the mid-19th century. 
By the 1980s, the marijuana industry was entrenched and blooming, much to the chagrin of local law enforcement and community leaders. These former lazy rejects were driving new trucks, sending their kids to school, and buying their veggies at Safeway just like everyone else.  
Thirty years later it is estimated that cannabis industry generates around 13 billion dollars in annual sales. And that’s what is available to count. The timber industry is now a hollow trunk of its former self. The salmon and other fish populations have been so drastically depleted in the last few decades that fishermen can’t rely on their yield from season to season. Many fishing boats on the coast have gone belly up.

Worldwide Hippies

Commentary By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
About a month ago, in California, Assembly member Tom Ammiano removed a pro-cannabis bill he authored (AB2312) from proceeding in the State Senate after determining that he wouldn’t be able to gather enough support from his colleagues.
The pulling of Ammiano’s bill, and the Feds’ continued attacks on legitimate marijuana businesses, kick-started a very heated online debate among pot activists and other political cannabis factions. The issue: “Is marijuana strictly only medicinal?” and, I’m paraphrasing, “By calling it a recreational drug, does it undermine the purpose and objectives that the medical marijuana movement has been trying to achieve for these 20 years?”

All photos by Jack Rikess


By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center

Oakland, California: Starting at noon a few hundred cannabis supporters and activists gathered on the steps of Oakland’s City Hall to show support for Harborside Health Center and to protest President Obama’s early evening fundraiser at the picturesque Fox Theater. 
On July 11, Harborside Health Center in Oakland and San Jose was served an official Complaint for Forfeiture of Property. The complaint is signed by U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, Assistant U.S. Attorney Arvan Perteet, and DEA Agent David White, filed on July 6 in the District Court, San Francisco Division and received by the court on Sunday, July 9. The complaint seeks forfeiture of real estate and improvements on the grounds that cannabis is being distributed on the premises, in violation of federal law.
Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside, Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Judge Jim Gray, and others spoke under the hot East Bay sun to the cheers and applause of the cannabis crowd that assembled in the commons of City Hall. 

Redheaded Blackbelt/Celebitchy
Steve DeAngelo, left, and Donald Trump

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent
On Monday, July 9, this office filed civil forfeiture actions against 1840 Embarcadero, Oakland, California, and 2106 Ringwood Avenue, San Jose, where Harborside, a marijuana dispensary claiming over 108,000 customers, operates.

This office has used its limited resources to address those marijuana dispensaries that operate close to schools, parks and playgrounds. As I have said in the past, this is a non-exclusive list of factors relevant to whether we should commence civil forfeiture actions against marijuana properties, and circumstances may require us to address other situations.

I now find the need to consider actions regarding marijuana superstores such as Harborside. The larger the operation, the greater the likelihood that there will be abuse of the state’s medical marijuana laws, and marijuana in the hands of individuals who do not have a demonstrated medical need. 

The filing of the civil forfeiture complaints against the two Harborside properties is part of our measured effort to address the proliferation of illegal marijuana businesses in the Northern District of California.

U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag in San Francisco
America loves Donald Trump. He’s has a big show, property all around the world, and for some, they wished he’d be our next commander-in-combover. Does America listen to what The Donald has to say because he’s sexy, smart, and for the world of ideas he brings to better us all. No. We listen to The Donald because he’s rich.
America loves a winner. And they love losers too. 
In the middle of staggering unemployment, we loved to hear the phrase, “You’re fired!” To see someone leave the boardroom angry and utterly humiliated on national TV keeps the Atlantic City hotels full and the Trump good name fresh in the hearts of many Americans.
Steve DeAngelo is big too. He’s big in the cannabis world. How big? He’s the kind of big that lands you on the Feds’ radar for being too just too damn big.  
Steve Angelo, like Donald Trump, had his own reality show. Some would say that wasn’t the first instance of Steve DeAngelo reaching for fame. That he’s been catering to the limelight since the early 2000’s when he arrived on the California cannabis scene. Prior to that, as an activist and entrepreneur, his resume was pretty solid. 
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