Doug Dracup and we are station in front of a potion cupboard in his new gallery on South La Brea Avenue. We are looking during what seem to be handblown potion fruit — a large pineapple, strawberries, a garland of grapes — though that are indeed pipes.
Really, unequivocally dear pipes. For smoking cannabis concentrates such as crush or break or polish or budder or rosin, many of that did not exist until recently.
The fruit set, done by eminent Humboldt County potion artist Scott Rosinski, is not for sale, Dracup said, though if it were, it would substantially cost 6 figures.
My jaw forsaken a little, though we should not have been surprised. There is so many about a cannabis universe that is unexpected, and costly. The outfit of my girl — Zig Zag rolling papers, alligator roach clips, shoebox lids for separating root from seeds — are laughably old-fashioned now.
Today, a operation of products is astonishing, goosed along by a genocide of pot breach and a liquid of money into an attention where visions of dollar signs have transposed fear of prosecution.
Dracup, 31, owns Hitman Glass, that creates high-end potion pipes. Last month, he non-stop Hitman Coffee here in a cavernous space that used to be a carpet store. For members only, it is partial bong gallery, partial coffee emporium and partial co-work space. Memberships cost about $400 a month, or $4,000 a year, roughly in line with rents during other co-work spaces around town.
Display cases are filled with even some-more pipes-that-look-nothing-like-pipes.
Also, and presumably many enticing, Hitman has a smoking square in behind where members can pierce their possess joints, blunts, pipes and rigs and fume themselves happy. Dracup and his staff are peaceful to learn extraordinary neophytes about concentrates, that can be adult to 4 times stronger than top-shelf cannabis flowers, and how to devour them.
No cannabis will be sole on a premises; in fact, no businesses in a state can legally sell recreational cannabis until 2018, and even afterwards they will need state and internal licenses.
Dracup changed to Los Angeles from Boston in 2011. Several months before, his best crony and business partner, Erik Weissman, 31, was murdered in Waltham, Mass., with dual other immature men. Before his death, Weissman had not been means to pierce west with Dracup since he was confronting a court case associated to an detain for pot possession and vigilant to distribute.
Authorities trust that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who would turn one of a Boston Marathon bombers in 2013, might have been involved. A crony of his in Orlando, Fla., had concerned himself and Tsarnaev in a killings. In a midst of essay a confession, a crony attempted to attack an F.B.I. representative and was shot to death.
(Had a Waltham triple murder been solved, some have speculated, a Boston Marathon bombings might never have happened.)
I asked Dracup because he chose such a violent-sounding name for his company. He shook his head. “It’s not what we think. For us, it means, ‘Take a hit, man.’”
Three years ago, Dracup founded Chalice California, a San Bernardino County summer song and art festival that focuses on concentrates and potion artists. He was desirous by a cannabis fairs that High Times repository hosts opposite a country. Last year, 24,000 people attended a three-day event.
He hardly pennyless even, he said. (This year’s Chalice California festival will be hold Jul 7 to 9 in Victorville during a San Bernardino County Fairgrounds.)
“With Chalice, I’ve paid my dues, had a lot of flourishing pains,” Dracup said. “There is no poster on how to chuck a prestigious crush foe in a culture, so we are, like, essay it.”
“There’s no pamphlet” could be a sign of many new cannabis ventures.
As Dracup’s potion business has grown, he’s found out a tough approach what many other innovators have discovered: There’s a universe of competitors out there peaceful to take your designs, mass furnish them during a fragment of your cost and undercut we online.
“This is like Nike-level counterfeiting,” pronounced Dracup, holding a white, frosted potion siren done of concentric circles like an inverted marriage cake. “This is a original. This thing cost me $150 to $200 to produce.”
Counterfeiters who mass furnish in China are offered it online for $30 retail, he said, display me a website that seems to have simply dragged a print of his siren onto a site.
“I have a lawyer,” he said, “but we haven’t unequivocally had a financial means to understanding with this. Also, I’m not certain we am prepared to go into a courtroom and disagree about bongs.”
He’s also been on a other side of a heading complaint.
Last year, Starbucks filed a heading transgression lawsuit opposite Hitman Glass and siren artist Jim Landgraf, who had collaborated on a “Dabuccino” pipe, that looked accurately like a domed Frappuccino cup. Landgraf, who mislaid his box by default when he did not uncover adult in court, was systematic by a New York decider to compensate Starbucks $410,000.
Dracup is about to settle with a coffee giant.
“We felt like it was a parody,” Dracup said, “but a notation Starbucks let us know they didn’t, we had to honour that.”
The Dabuccinos, according to a lawsuit, creatively sole for $800 to $8,000, and are now deliberate collectors’ items.
Knockoffs, by a way, are being sole online for about $20. Dracup pronounced he’s anticipating Starbucks understands that he’s got zero to do with those. Once again, there’s no poster for how to understanding with that.
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robin.abcarian@latimes.com
Twitter: @AbcarianLAT
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