Innovations in functional glass date back decades. Long ago smokers discovered that glass didn’t get as hot as metal and didn’t burn their fingers when a flame was applied. The double chamber tube bong, arguably the first “percolator,” arrived at the scene in 1979. During the ’80s, colored glass techniques and spoon pipes started gaining popularity. Glass development continued to grow in the ’90s with ice catchers and the beginnings of water filtration and diffusion, usually with the goal to cool down the temperature of smoke and vapor.
Black Market Glass was founded in 2011 in Portland, Oregon the same time when big innovations in dabbing started to appear on the scene, which eventually led to modern dab rigs. The owner of Black Market Glass, Paul, is a full-time glass blower.
“I have spent years building up this business, with help as well from other badass employees and collaborators,” Paul said.
As time goes on, people’s tastes in cannabis change. Today more people than ever are dabbing concentrates, which can be vaporized using a torch to heat a nail. This means nails require a medium—quartz—which has a much higher melting point than glass.
“My goal initially was just to innovate with glass mediums,” Paul said. “We started in the glass/bong side of the industry in 2011 [with] mostly bongs and transitioned to quartz in 2017. By 2020, we moved over to exclusively quartz products. We are inspired the most by pushing the medium of quartz, and concentrate-related items.”
Photo by Marvin Lee, @surface_area999
Black Market Glass Emerges
In 2011, with experience in the field making pipes and running distribution in the Pacific Northwest, Paul uprooted from eastern Washington and moved to Portland, Oregon to pursue lathe work for a company that eventually moved into the bong market. It was around that time that glassmakers came up with a unique idea that had the potential to explode with popularity: the Rooster Apparatus. The Rooster Apparatus included a fritted disc (also called a frit disc), which is a glass element designed to diffuse a hit though a number of different holes. A frit disc is outfitted with more holes than honeycombs (a glass disc filled with holes arranged in a honeycomb pattern).
“Doing this contract production work taught me to master the medium, [gain] a different way of viewing the market, and the recipe or formula to plant my flag,” Paul said.
In addition to diffusing vapor, the porous glass in a frit disc also filters out solid particles, similar to filter paper.
“Instead of modifying existing diffusers or percolators, the Rooster introduced a totally different way of scrubbing and cooling glasses with a modified frit disc from the laboratory scene,” Paul said. “So we went with the same ideology but with quartz. While many spent their time reinventing the wheel by adding additional bells and whistles to already existing utilities, we decided to offer a different form of transportation to the quartz world.”
After a little trial-and-error, Paul said he realized his team was on to something.
“Stumbling through this exploration required throwing dozens of idea darts before we got some to land on the target, as well as some evolution in the customer, expanding the value of what could be created,” Paul said. “Remember this all started with $50 quartz nails, with a borosilicate dome that went on a male joint rig, a little over a decade ago. So as the customers’ budget for new quartz innovations grew, the more elaborate the designs became.”
Photo by Marvin Lee, @surface_area999
Black Market Glass Innovations
The shape of glass and quartz pieces affects how the terps transition into vapor. The thickness of the piece will affect the retention of the heat, but technique and understanding of each model’s operation, as well as the quality of dabs in perfect harmony, will deliver the best terps.
“Quartz is used because of its incredible ability to withstand extreme temperature fluctuations as well as hold heat in a unique way, making it ideal for vapor technology,” Paul said. “Our job and field of study is defining the parameters to use quartz in utilitarian ways in variation—invention, with style. Part of our goal is to provide variation in how your terps are vaporized, the timing, the size, longevity.”
Between 2011-2015 Black Market Glass redesigned the nail and dome system by offering its domeless nail—a tube with four cuts. This meant that customers no longer had to set a dome to dab. For the quartz honeycomb (which became available in 2017), Black Market Glass released a multi-capillary nail, made using multiple tubes of glass stacked together in a barrel formation, which the company applied to the tip of a nectar collector.
The brand’s UV quartz in blue, yellow, and red (2019) was also something new.
“Wanting to add a little bit of pizazz to our mundanely clear medium, we reacted to the science industry for other types of quartz,” Paul said. “And found that not only did we achieve some cool aesthetics but also a function attribute of faster heat ups, through increased conductivity.”
Photo by Marvin Lee, @surface_area999
The Blender (2020) and the Terpnado (2022) are the first of their kind, Paul explained. They feature spiral sandblasted intakes that put a spin on incoming air, and deliver a significant amount of rotational airflow to the concentrates, which promotes even distribution of heat and vaporization, he explained.
The Globstopper (2021) is the first of Black Market Glass’s quartz products to feature centripetal force.
“Unlike centrifugal force, centripetal force brings everything to the center during rotation,” Paul explained. “Suppressors, on the other hand, combine the technology of our Globstopper Series, centripetal, with our Blender/Slurper Series, centrifugal. We created an additional row of micro jets, placed directly below the arm, giving the rising oil a little push back down, minimizing the amount of oil that will make it down the joint and into your piece.”
All of Black Market Glass quartz products are 100% handmade by a small and dedicated crew in Portland.
“Every model is American-made down to the joint,” Paul said. “All accessories are handmade by us, or are collaborations with other artists we work with. Each design we carefully detail to make sure they are flawless.”
Paul estimates that 90% of the products on the Black Market Glass website are made in-house, and the only exceptions are typically torches, temp readers, and other parts. Black Market Glass has recently done some quartz and borosilicate accessory collaborations with Blossom Glass Art. They collaborate with various borosilicate artists on accessories often and are always looking to create new things with fellow quartz makers.
“Part of our business has a shared vision and goal of supporting artists with art. Black Market has helped me create a storefront for raw glass material for boro[silicate] artists in the Portland area, Boro Glass Supply,” Paul said. “We are a small business with inspiration, and we want to lift other small businesses with the love of art and innovation.”
This article was originally published in the July 2023 issue of High Times Magazine.
Each of the eight participants in the first 2024 Republican primary debates went to Milwaukee knowing they had to make an impact. It’s likely that they imagined this would be easier given the absence of Donald Trump, the attention-grabbing frontrunner currently crushing his opponents with ease despite his frankly impressive list of state and federal indictments covering a variety of crimes. Unfortunately for them, his absence only reminded viewers why he easily coasted to victory the last time he had to compete against Republicans.
No one really questions Trump’s decision to skip the debate. The math makes sense: he’s polling miles ahead of Florida Governor Ron Desantis, his closest rival and the only other candidate polling in double digits, so why bother sharing space with his lessers while fielding uncomfortable questions about his several alleged crimes from moderator Bret Baier, with whom he is already nursing a grudge? Why not just stay home and watch on TV as Chris Christie, his (ahem) biggest critic, takes shots at his closest competitor instead? Plus, by scheduling his surrender and booking at the Fulton county jail for the day after the debate, he can ensure that in the aftermath the press will again be focused almost entirely on himself instead of anyone’s performance at the debate.
Truth be told, he needn’t have gone to all that trouble. The Republican Party without Trump is exactly as boring, disconnected, and soul-crushing to watch as they were before Trump’s arrival. Nobody made an impact, nobody knew who half the participants were, and nobody will remember this debate.
WHAT WE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN: Everyone attacks Ron Desantis, Desantis has mental breakdown
It’s hard to imagine someone fumbling the bag harder than Ron Desantis. He began the year in an amazingly strong position and was seen by many as a sincere danger to Donald Trump, but it didn’t take long for him to reveal himself as a freak of the highest order and a shockingly terrible politician. Month after month he would helplessly watch as his lead in the polls steadily shrank while the politicians he counted on for endorsements would immediately spurn him and endorse Trump. His campaign would face multiple staffing shakeups over the summer, leading to potential funding problems that could end his run before 2024 even rolls around.
But even with these problems he’s still twice as popular as his closest competitor, which, when you look at the numbers, is still some damning-ly faint praise. He was expected to be a target at the debate, and sufficient firepower might have cracked his extremely fragile “I’m normal” disguise wide open and caused an incident on stage. His sweaty, shakey smile moments before the debate began seemed to presage this breakdown.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Everyone attacked Vivek Ramaswamy instead
Vivek Ramaswamy has the energy of someone from Corporate who looks you in the eye for too long and laughs too much when he talks to you, and then lays off your entire division. A lot of pundits recently became convinced that Vivek Ramaswamy had charisma, but he was probably just standing next to Mike Pence. On Thursday night he unexpectedly and repeatedly became the target of several of his competitors and, once, after he claimed that man-made climate change was a hoax, the audience as well. The booing was unexpected and seemed to catch him off guard. Chris Christie had the best insult of the night when he remarked that Vivek talks like a Chat GPT response, but Vivek was able to laugh off most of the attacks until Nikki Haley went for his throat in the last half-hour and we finally saw him get flustered.
WHAT WE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN: Mike Pence is booed, possibly attacked by audience
Former Vice President Mike Pence, once referred to as a “Sun-faded Department Store Mannequin” and “Fat Slenderman” by local wits, has been polling at roughly 4% nationally and is not expected to do well in this primary, or possibly anywhere in Republican politics ever again. Fans of the extremely popular former President have, on multiple occasions, expressed an earnest desire to hang him, and the president he served seemed to think that was an appropriate opinion to have about Mike Pence. He’s not very popular outside of the more evangelical part of the Republican Party, and even there he’s significantly less popular than Donald Trump. He was getting repeatedly booed even before he finally started criticizing the guy who supported the idea of him being lynched, and was expected to get just as chilly a reception at the debate.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Mike Pence was only booed a little bit
Shockingly, when Mike Pence spoke about his refusal to acquiesce to Trump’s demands on January 6th, the audience was largely supportive. During his clashes with Chris Christie and Nikki Haley the crowd was often on his side as well. He did get some boos during an exchange with Vivek Ramaswamy, though they were pretty mild.
WHAT WE EXPECTED TO HAPPEN: Chris Christie attacks Trump a lot, is booed a lot
His unabashed criticism of Donald Trump has earned Chris Christie a lot of negative coverage in Republican circles. Even in a field of losers his numbers are hovering near the bottom. So far this hasn’t stopped him from being one of the most vocal and insistent critics of the former president.
WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED: Chris Christie attacked Trump a little, was booed a lot
Though he did get applause for some boilerplate lines about the economy or Joe Biden, his small but overt digs at Trump resulted in extended booing and shouting that Christie attempted to wait out. But the audience, seemingly emboldened by the effect they were having on the proceedings and Christie himself, kept going until Bret Baier threatened to turn this car around and head right back to Winnipeg. I expect this to keep happening at every debate Chris Christie attends.
I used to wake up in the middle of the night, every night, with a nightmare. In it, my body was frozen, and trigger warning: In the nightmare, I was fading in and out of unconscious, but someone was raping me. They were textbook PTSD nightmares, and I had no idea what to do about them.
I was raised in the Caribbean, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, surrounded by ganja culture. While millennial “statesiders” my age I’d meet later when I moved to the South for school and then New York for my forever home, I realized that my childhood was different. Far from the “Just Say No” and D.A.R.E rhetoric my contemporaries experienced, many of my friend’s parents were Rastafarians. I grew up understanding that cannabis was a sacrament. So I spent high school, during the Bush era, on the debate team arguing for its legalization, and college majoring in journalism, reporting on cannabis. I’ve always been vehemently pro-legalization. But the reason cannabis didn’t become a big part of my personal life until a decade ago, in 2013, was because I was a total boozehound.
But alcohol made my PTSD stemming from my assault worse. Sometimes, back in the day, to be perfectly honest, it made me downright nasty or even suicidal. So my ambition kicked in, having seen what alcoholism can do to others (it runs in my family), and I quit. I haven’t had a drink in 10 years. I’ve been Cali Sober since before the term existed, baby.
So, a few years into sobriety, when a stoner close to my heart told me that people used cannabis to treat anxiety, PTSD and that THC could even suppress nightmares, at first, I was skeptical. Sure, it should be legal, just like alcohol, and the government is full of shit, but would it affect me like liquor did? Personally, 12-Step programs did more harm than good. I’m a big believer that a one-size-fits-all model is not suitable for recovery, something society finally seems ready to talk about.
Especially in the first few years after my assault, I needed to be shaken and reminded of my power — which had been robbed from me — instead of admitting I was powerless, which is, in so many words, the first step of AA. I’m glad the program works for many, including people I love, and I won’t even get into the fact that its founder, Bill W., fully embraced psychedelics at the end of his life, adamant that they could treat alcoholism. Because this story is about why recreational use and medical use have more overlap than the establishment makes them out to.
When I first quit drinking shortly after my assault, I was a shell of my former self. I’d accept invitations to parties only to turn around at the door, back to the safety of my apartment, as my social anxiety was so bad even small talk was terrifying. I should add that I was prescribed a very high level of benzodiazepines, which I’m not against on principle, they have their time and place, but as anyone who’s weaned off them knows, they also have their downfalls (quite serious, benzo withdrawal can cause seizure or even death). So after doing my research and realizing that cannabis could not only quell nightmares, help me better inhabit my body, and treat social anxiety, but had a lower side effect profile than benzos, and was less physically addicting, I decided (after talking with my psychiatrist and therapist) to give cannabis a shot. It worked. It stopped my nightmares. My dissociation got better. I could socialize again; I could even goddamn do karaoke without a sip of booze or flutter of nerves. I didn’t need all that Klonopin. I was sold, even if those I knew in recovery circles at the time were not.
So when New York legalized medical marijuana for PTSD in 2017, even though I was already using it under doctor supervision, I jumped at the opportunity and got a medical card, hitting up a dispensary right away. I was a little bummed to learn that they sold lower-dose products for much more than my dealer (I prefer the term “florist”) could offer, so like so many others in this economy, I returned to the black market and honestly eventually just let my medical card expire.
But something else had happened by 2017. I healed. Sure, I still had anxiety, some trust issues, and enough reasons to have a therapist, but I no longer woke up every night with flashbacks. I was my outgoing, extroverted, optimistic self again. Cannabis still helped me be present, dial down any social anxiety, and only need a Klonopin if having one of those panic attacks that feel like a heart attack. Still, I started to wonder: Was I “bad” for continuing to use cannabis, not primarily for PTSD, but simply because it felt good and made life easier? And, no, to this day, it’s never made me blackout, it’s never made me say something nasty to a friend I don’t remember the next day, it’s never given me a hangover with a side of suicidal thoughts. My friends, doctors, and partner actually sometimes need to remind me to take it when I get a little bitchy now and then.
Then I realized something even more horrifying — I was thinking like a Reagan supporter. Is it wrong to enjoy the euphoric side effects of a substance? Taking this a step further, is it morally worse to enjoy the euphoric side effects of a substance such as cannabis that’s federally illegal instead of many FDA-approved anxiety or pain treatments that also make you feel high? What was this hypocritical bullshit? I’m a Virgin Islander, goddamnit, not some regressive conservative clinging onto the bullshit the Moral Majority spent so many years spewing.
Of course, legalization has upsides, such as fewer people in prison and more research on the plant’s benefits. But by 2017, and absolutely by the present day, I don’t just fit the bill for a medical patient; I’m a recreational (make that adult-use, a term I greatly appreciate) user. Yes, it helps my anxiety and PTSD. Yes, it plays a role in harm reduction, just like dear old Bill W. eventually supported, and it makes it easier not to drink. I never even think about alcohol. But cannabis is also just fun. Plenty of people who use cannabis recreationally also receive medical benefits as a nice side effect, such as lowered social anxiety or better sleep. Conversely, people with medical cards who use it for an ailment enjoy the pleasant side effect of euphoria. Is either team wrong? I think not. Does one need a stamp of government approval (since when do we trust them on this subject?) to use cannabis guilt-free? Dear god, I hope not.
We live in a culture that moralizes euphoria. From a government-approved recovery program POV, if it makes you feel good, it’s bad. Any substance use should involve honesty about its effects. For instance, while I used to use cannabis to help with nightmares, as I got older, THC started giving me insomnia. So now, unless I’m at a concert or late-night dance party, I don’t take any after a certain hour, sticking with a low dose during the day. But that’s just me. We’re all different, and everyone’s reaction to substances is different and will likely change throughout their lifetime. But in this beautiful life on this wicked world, filled with violent crimes, people in prison for non-violent crimes, pandemics, homophobes, hurricanes, cancer drug shortages, but also love, community, science, the spiritual experience of playing with a dog — I’ll take all the euphoria I can get as long as it continues to offer a positive impact on my life. Binary thinking is so Bush-era and so over. May the adult-use cannabis consumers also enjoy lowered anxiety or pain, and may the medical patients guilt-free pop an edible before a concert and dance up a sweat while enjoying a heightened sensory experience.
Como en Boyhood, aquella maravillosa y sentimental película de Richard Linklater, seguir el underground del freestyle fue, también, acompañar los pequeños grandes pasos de Gabriel Espino, alias G5. Verlo estirar, crecer, madurar, evolucionar como un Pokémon de carne y hueso y volverse, digamos, un hombrecito.
Fue, como tantos pibitos que arrancaron desde temprano, “El Guachín”. Hoy, para qué mentir, es de lo mejor que leudó la escena de Buenos Aires. Y así pasaron los días, fueron sucediéndose las compes. G5 arrancó a rapear de nene, en el 2016, y ahora, ya, en este preciso instante del 2023, tiene 18 años. Sí, obvio, sigue siendo un purrete, pero hagan las cuentas ustedes con qué edad empezó a tirar rimas.
Gabriel, de rostro bueno y carácter afable, nació en el Hospital Italiano, en la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires y desde chico se interesó por la música, la poesía y la capoeira. A los 7 años se cebó con el rap: Porta, Violadores del Verso, Eminem y Kase.O fue su combo formativo, el rat pack rapero que ungió a varias generaciones.
Los primeros pasos de G5
“Mi primer recuerdo con el freestyle es de 2014, la primera vez que fui a El Quinto Escalón”, cuenta G5 a El Planteo. “No, miento”, se frena, “mi primer recuerdo con el freestyle es de antes, de 2011 o 2012, cuando fui a la Aramburu Freestyle, en la Plaza Aramburu, la plaza de mi barrio en la que yo iba a jugar a la pelota todos los días”.
En algún momento, G5 se topó con una ronda de freestyle en la que estaban pesos pesados como Duki, MKS, Wolf y Midel, raperos que para ese momento ya estaban pegándose y su cabeza, literalmente, explotó.
Así, tiempo después, arrancó a competir en el año 2016 cuando se anotó en la 55 Freestyle, en un 2 vs. 2 junto a su mejor amigo del barrio. “Competimos contra dos pibes del norte que rapeaban una banda y, obviamente, nos comimos una paliza”, recuerda.
¿Su última batalla? “El domingo pasado, en Cultura Rap, en el Centro Cultural Recoleta, contra Nasir Catriel”.
Un punto de vista
Poco a poco, a fuerza de presentarse en todas las plazas del país, G5 fue forjando un estilo personal, reflexivo, picante pero también muy pero muy mental.
Rápidamente, al escucharlo, se advierte una formación que se eleva por encima del berretín callejero, de las estructuras básicas y de cierto randomnismo normie: ahí, en su verba, hay libros, hay cine, hay política, hay un vocabulario ancho y hay, fundamentalmente, una mirada de las cosas. Un punto de vista.
Ganó Halabalusa, se llevó tres fechas de la DEM, coronó en el torneo anual de la DEM Battles, arrasó en la Titanes de la Costa. “Me cuesta recordar más”, dice G5 sin falsa humildad.
“No soy el mejor en esto ni tampoco tengo un torneo así como súper picante en el que haya salido campeón”.
Asimismo, participó de la Chiclayo Rapea Internacional de Equipos junto al Lobo Estepario, en esa recordada final contra Cacha y Zaina. Después estuvo en la The Fucking King Internacional de 2021 y viajó hasta España para medirse contra Fabiuki en una batalla de exhibición para la FMS Internacional.
Lo mejor y lo peor del freestyle
Suma kilómetros, se presenta, compite y, en su raid desenfrenado, fue juntando un tendal de puntos que lo puso en una situación vertiginosa: tuvo la chance de ascender a la FMS Argentina, una de las ligas de improvisación más importantes del mundo. Sin embargo, allí, en un mano a mano, cayó contra el miramarense Jesse Pungaz y, lamentablemente, el ascenso quedó para otro momento.
“Quiero seguir compitiendo y manteniéndome activo en el circuito underground y profesional. Quiero seguir mejorando y evolucionando para ser cada día un poco más completo y un poco mejor”, asegura.
Lo que más disfruta G5 del freestyle es, justamente, enfrentarse a otras mentes, discutir, debatir. Ese Street Fighter mental que convierte a la disciplina en un imán de pibes y pibas.
“Me tomo a las batallas de freestyle como una discusión rimada. Entonces, no sólo tenés que ganar una discusión, sino que aparte la tenés que ganar rimando, que tiene como otra complejidad. Es como un debate pero con un valor agregado”, revuelve el joven.
¿Hay algo que no le guste de las batallas? “Sí, que es como una constante lucha por la supervivencia en la que, si perdés, quedás afuera de la batalla. Como que morís. Y, si ganás, pasás de ronda y seguís en la cancha. Como que seguís vivo. Así, hasta que queda el último contendiente, que es el que gana. Uno se sobrecarga progresivamente de tanto hacerlo”.
Cannabis y rimas
En el cosmos del freestyle, el cannabis pulula desde antes de antes. Y en el caso de G5, fueron sus amigos quienes fueron integrándolo en el churro. De hecho, hace muy poco, G5 empezó a cultivar y día a día se esfuerza en convertirse en un conocedor en la materia.
Pero su compromiso cannábico no sólo termina quemando uno y cultivando para los suyos, sino que profundizó su activismo y organiza la CanaFree, una competencia de freestyle de espíritu 420.
“Estamos proyectando que pueda volver para agosto o septiembre. Va a volver a pasos agigantados, con una mayor producción y mayor calidad para que todos los presentes la pasen bárbaro y se lleven una hermosa experiencia”, desliza.
Y sigue, a propósito de la relación entre las rimas y la marihuana: “El freestyle y el cannabis se llevan de lujo. Siempre estuvieron unidos y lo están desde hace muchísimo tiempo. Por suerte, en Argentina es un fenómeno social ya bastante integrado, con bastante aceptación social. Al menos desde mi experiencia, siempre fueron dos cosas que vi muy implícitamente en el mismo lugar”.
Paso a paso
Por estos días, G5 sueña con vivir de la música, pero antes tiene un objetivo entre ceja y ceja: ganar la Nacional de la Red Bull: Batalla de los Gallos, la madre de todas las batallas.
¿Y el ascenso a la FMS? “No tengo pensado seguir peleando el ascenso. O sea, en realidad nunca estuve como en la lucha del ascenso, pero sí en el intento de ascender”.
Lo que viene, entonces, lo tendrá al joven pateando plazas, presentándose a compes, formando parte activamente del circuito. “Quiero seguir destacando entre los pibes pero, por ahora, pelear el ascenso todo el año no es una prioridad”, cierra.
It was a space-cake honeymoon destined to come down. Because sulfur’s almost always a downer, isn’t it?
Sure, sulfur tastes good in kala namak sulfur salt — the stuff that can make a convincing vegan egg. But anywhere else? Sulfur sucks.
Instinctively, we avoid it because it is horribly toxic for the human body. Until 10 years ago. That’s when we started gobbling down sulfur like happy little piggies.
So why? How could it be that in just 14 years – scarcely an eye-blink of mammalian evolution – did we suddenly, unwittingly, start ingesting it without paying attention?
One answer, with a lot of names:
Dabs.
BHO.
Shatter.
Diamonds.
Live Resin.
Cannabis concentrates. That’s where sulfur found its Trojan horse. If you use any of these products, you’re probably sucking down sulfur like a rube every day.
It’s not the pot. It’s not even the extracts and concentrates themselves. It’s all the “un-pure” butane we soak the cannabis in to extract the good stuff.
Butane is an amazing solvent. It’s cheap. It’s efficient. In its purest form (i.e., actual, molecular n-butane) it’s among the cleanest solvents chemistry has ever devised. That’s why people use butane to create all the amazing concentrate products that have emerged over the past decade.
But it’s never been more important to keep your eye on ingredients lists. Because butane isn’t just butane. It’s butane plus (you guessed it) residual sulfurs.
Look, you’re cool. You probably already know how cannabis concentrates work: you take a column full of bud and flood it with liquid butane to extract the good stuff. Then the butane evaporates, leaving behind a potent, golden nectar: butane hash oil (BHO), and all the products we love.
When you use a cannabis concentrate, you have no idea how much sulfur was involved in the extraction process. But it matters. Because by the time the extraction is complete, sulfur concentrations have gone exponential.
While butane evaporates, all those sulfur compounds are left behind. As a result, sulfur quantities climb to dizzying heights: up to 500 ppm (parts per million). That’s 500-800x higher than sulfur concentrations in the original butane solvent.
So, while all these gleaming gold concentrates might look diamond-pure, a closer inspection reveals something different. After all, it takes a jeweler to call a cubic zirconia.
This isn’t breaking news. People know about the sulfur problem in butane. But the differences in quantities and concentrations have largely gone overlooked – by the cannabis industry, by regulatory bodies, and by consumers, who are too often the last to know.
Adam Hopkins, founder and CEO of Puretane, aims to change all that. He has a connoisseur’s eye for the important details — and it’s fixed squarely on butane.
“Any health risks of high sulfur content undermines the benefits of cannabis,” Hopkins says. “And removing them elevates the entire cannabis experience.”
Clean flavors and natural aromas are essential for enthusiasts, who want to savor every attribute the growers take such pains to cultivate. It stands to reason that sulfur would run roughshod over those delicate terps and buds. Especially when sulfur concentrations run up to 17 times higher than necessary. Because it’s possible to get those pesky sulfurs out of the butane! But most people don’t bother.
Hopkins’s butane product, Puretane, reports 99.9998% pure butane. To achieve those uncharted levels of pure butane gas (and 70/30), he credits his state of the art molecular sieve. Five 8 foot columns each with different impregnated zeolites which filter the butane 24 hours per day, 7 straight days per 18,000 gallon batch at the Puretane lab in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. The resulting products butane canisters have the lowest sulfur levels in the industry, and Hopkins has the certificates of analysis to back it up.
“We partner with AMRI Labs in Casper, WY – the most highly regarded testing laboratory in the U.S. – to quantify how pure our product really is. Impurities come in at just .03 ppm. The rest is nothing but butane. And we have the COA’s to prove it.”
Hopkins isn’t the only one sold on the importance of clean butane. His customers are some of the best BHO producers in the business. We spoke with the lab director from Vancouver based Mama G’s, where they insist on highly pure butane for their concentrates.
He’s unequivocal. “The differences are huge,” he says. “With other butanes, I had to run the gas through my filter, clean it, then run a dryer to remove the water. I often had to run tons of dry ice to make everything flow properly”
“With Puretane, we can process right from their tanks. There’s no need to clean or distill it, or dry it out before we can run. Zero dry ice. The outcome is sick. The craziest pure crystalline THC we’ve ever produced. We get better yields, purged out at lower temps so as to not drain terpenes into the atmosphere, and zero sulfur in end products.”
So if sulfur is such a problem in the BHO industry, where are the regulators? There are laws regulating the use of pesticides in growing cannabis, which is great. But so far, legislators have ignored the only other input in the system: the butane.
Quite simply, Puretane is the best butane for extraction, and Hopkins is ahead of the curve. “A tremendous amount of the butane used for extraction comes from China and Korea,” he says. “And now a growing amount from Turkey and Poland…Why? because it’s cheap.”
“Sulfur is horrible for the human body. This is a public health issue that is being grossly overlooked, mostly because consumers are simply unaware of the dangers, but we are working with regulators in several states to make sure the solvents are regulated just like pesticides and heavy metals are.”
The study, published in this month’s issue of Neuropsychopharmacology, looked at the effects of 5-MeO-DMT, a psychedelic “which has been associated with improvement in depression and anxiety symptoms in early phase clinical studies,” the authors said.
5-MeO-DMT is “short for 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine,” and “is a psychedelic substance found naturally in certain species of toads, plants, and seeds,” according to PsyPost.
“It has been used for centuries in traditional shamanic and spiritual practices by indigenous cultures in parts of South America and other regions. When consumed, inhaled, or smoked, 5-MeO-DMT induces intense and often short-lived psychedelic experiences, characterized by profound changes in perception, ego dissolution, and altered sensory perceptions. Users commonly report feelings of unity with the universe and intense spiritual insights,” the outlet explained.
“Neural plasticity” is “defined as the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections after injuries, such as a stroke or traumatic brain injury (TBI),” according to the National Library of Medicine.
The authors of the study noted that “serotonergic psychedelics are gaining increasing interest as potential therapeutics for a range of mental illnesses,” and that compounds “with short-lived subjective effects may be clinically useful because dosing time would be reduced, which may improve patient access.”
But they said that “relatively little is known about the behavioral and neural mechanisms of 5-MeO-DMT, particularly the durability of its long-term effects.”
To that end, the researchers set out to characterize “the effects of 5-MeO-DMT on innate behaviors and dendritic architecture in mice.”
“We showed that 5-MeO-DMT induces a dose-dependent increase in head-twitch response that is shorter in duration than that induced by psilocybin at all doses tested. 5-MeO-DMT also substantially suppresses social ultrasonic vocalizations produced during mating behavior. 5-MeO-DMT produces long-lasting increases in dendritic spine density in the mouse medial frontal cortex that are driven by an elevated rate of spine formation,” the researchers wrote.
But, in contrast to psilocybin, the researchers observed that “5-MeO-DMT did not affect the size of dendritic spines.”
“These data provide insights into the behavioral and neural consequences underlying the action of 5-MeO-DMT and highlight similarities and differences with those of psilocybin,” they wrote.
The research community has only scratched the surface of the potential for psychedelics to treat mental health conditions, but some insights have already been profound.
A book published earlier this year called I Feel Love, written by Rachel Nuwer, highlighted the extraordinary example of a white supremacist who said that his experience with MDMA drove him away from his bigoted ideology.
The white supremacist, identified only as Brendan, described his experience as part of a double-blind trial at the University of Chicago.
“Strangely, at the very bottom of the form, Brendan had written in bold letters: ‘This experience has helped me sort out a debilitating personal issue. Google my name. I now know what I need to do,’” Nuwer wrote in the book.
“MDMA does not seem to be able to magically rid people of prejudice, bigotry, or hate on its own. But some researchers have begun to wonder if it could be an effective tool for pushing people who are already somehow primed to reconsider their ideology toward a new way of seeing things. While MDMA cannot fix societal-level drivers of prejudice and disconnection, on an individual basis it can make a difference. In certain cases, the drug may even be able to help people see through the fog of discrimination and fear that divides so many of us,” Nuwer continued.
Since the beginning of time, man has been interested in dissections. From those fascinated with uncovering how our bodies work, to school biology lessons forcing the squeamish to understand, the idea of unpacking the complicated blood and bone machines we occupy has long tickled both the science and art worlds. While countless artists have utilized the art of dissection, from KAWS to Jason Freeny, few have reached the specific and accurate renditions Nychos weaves with paint.
Born in the Austrian countryside two hours south of the country’s capital city Vienna, Nychos is the persona of the artist known only as Nicholas, or Nick Nychos, which in his own words sounds like a character in a novel’s name. Having been born into a family of woodsmen and builders, Nychos was exposed to the more brutal sides of life from a very young age. Working with his father while he would strip and clean the new trophy animals he’d hunted, it was like Nychos subconsciously knew where life would take him. Instead of getting grossed out by the flayed bodies, he began to understand the mechanics behind these creatures.
“I was watching my dad dissecting animals from early on, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy,’” he says, adding that some part of him already knew the type of art he would later create. “I was observing, and he was explaining a lot of things, you know, like what everything is… I’m not sure if I could really say it was a traumatic experience. It was more like, ‘Oh, this is how animals work.’ And I already knew that we work the same way. ‘This is how it looks inside. Oh, interesting.’ And then later in school, you know, when you had these plastic figures for the lungs, and you can take everything out and stuff, and look at everything. And then you can open it also. I was like, ‘I know all this stuff already.’”
High Times Magazine, September 2022
Painting: Nychos, “The Healer”, acrylics on canvas, 60X60 inch, 2021
While painting wasn’t exactly a valid career choice according to his parents’ generation, his mother worked as an architect, so his creativity was fostered from a young age. Although he wasn’t sure the path life would take him, Nychos was acutely aware he would be an artist one day. He was always drawing and watching cartoons—which in the ’90s in Austria wasn’t the easiest to find considering this was before the internet.
“It’s just a weird spot for an artist in general… I was like, ‘Oh, at some point, I’m gonna work for Disney one day or something like that,’ because I started to learn to draw cartoons like Disney stuff or the Saturday cartoons,” he says. “Eventually, I started to read Spawn, and I feel like that was one of the ones where I was first like, ‘Yeah, this is a sick style, sick story.’ And that was already when I was 17. Around the same time, I started to get into graffiti as well.”
While he went to art school, his passion for animation didn’t seem possible for a European artist. But that is where he realized he could have a real career as an artist, which was what he wanted to do, not what was expected of him. He explains that in the beginning, his drawing style was more cartoony.
“With that, you start reducing automatically; not everything fits,” he says. “I painted a lot of skeletons and other cartoon characters, and at some point, I was like, ‘What’s the next level?’ And it organically developed into the things where I started to peel off skin, you know, to play with zombies just losing their skin, and stuff where like, it’s also so fun to paint, especially on walls. When you start peeling the skin off, suddenly you’re breaking bones, and things are flying around.”
Nychos works hard to depict accuracy in his art.
“When you draw something, you need to understand the mechanism,” he explains. “It’s like if you look at the Terminator skeleton, you know, it’s a metal skeleton, and it needs to fucking work, somehow the hydraulics need to work, other cables need to make sense. So same with anatomy; it’s the same thing. Like, I need to know how the mechanism works, and what every organ does and what it’s good for, and where it’s placed. And why is it placed there and everything.”
Eventually, his anatomy studies for his art opened his mind.
“At the time when I started, I didn’t even realize how much this study was actually going to affect everything, everything creative, everything I do, how much I will actually learn about life or this perfect machine the universe has created for our soul to sit in,” he says.
Nychos, “Bufo Alvarius”, acrylics on canvas, 72X48 inch, 2020
Discovering the Artist
In 2004, Nychos moved to Vienna and began to double down on his graffiti career. It was there that he started his project the Rabbit Eye Movement. His business and team remain there to this day, despite now largely working around the world. He recalls that during this time, he received his first check for painting and how proud his father was of him, despite not fully understanding what he was doing. But he hadn’t made it yet. In fact, he hadn’t even made it to a place where he could afford paint.
“The danger of running out [of paint] was present always, so I don’t know how many unfinished or fucked up pieces I painted it before it started to make sense,” he says. “I was, I don’t know, 17 back then, and I decided to completely skip alcohol because it was at some point just fucking retarded to me… I remember I looked at this bottle of vodka. And I’m like, ‘I could have bought like five spray cans, and I’m not even drunk, and I killed this whole bottle. This is stupid.’”
With the focus always squarely on his art, he says he “clearly also started to smoke weed.” Then he realized he could buy more paint cans if he sold weed. Bags for Cans, if you will. From there, he moved to Australia—almost the complete opposite side of the world—to really dive into a more hardcore graffiti scene.
“It was good times, crazy times, really high times,” he jokes.
An out-of-body experience directed him towards a focus on painting graffiti.
“I feel like whatever path you’re going [on], like, some of it you’re supposed to go, and the universe is just waiting until you get there,” he says. “Literally the day after [I stopped drinking], I was like, ‘Fuck this, I want to paint graffiti. I want to do this, and I want to build that.’ I didn’t know what that even meant at this point. But I had a pretty clear idea. And I didn’t know if that would ever work.”
The next day he had a blackout.
“Suddenly, I faded into absolute blackness,” he says. “And I woke up a few hours later in the hospital. My girlfriend from back then was there, my parents [were there] and everyone was shocked. And I was like, ‘What the fuck is happening here? What are you guys doing here?’ And that was a little trippy. Because they told me I had a seizure at this point, too. I didn’t really understand what that was about.”
That year, he had seven more seizures.
“I went through a bunch of brain tests, and nobody could find anything,” he says. “And it only happened while I was driving. So I had like, seven out-of-body experiences. I had five car accidents and never even had a scratch.”
Although having totaled a few cars by now, doctors couldn’t put a reason to the rhyme.
“They never figured out what happened… everything was fine. People couldn’t explain what the hell was going on.”
Nychos, “Love Life and Death”, Vienna 2021
The Dark
Nychos explains that he didn’t know what was happening with his body and began having intense dreams.
“I didn’t even smoke weed, didn’t drink alcohol,” he says. “At this point, I was just so depressed, and I felt like I was a danger to other people. Like ‘What the fuck is happening?’ You know, You’re just kind of like through puberty, and now you’re [once] again completely fucking lost in the world. Like [when] I was 19, I had a dream of this half-rotten, white rabbit. He was literally telling me what I’m here to do. He told me that I’m supposed to do exactly what I was trying to do, that I’m here to be an artist, and that I’m here to paint. That this is my sole purpose.”
While confused about the dream’s origins, he understood it as a message.
“I only knew that something was communicating with me, and I think maybe my perception of reality was already coming more from a spiritual side than I even understood,” he says. “I never said, ‘Oh, I’m super spiritual.’ Like, you really didn’t give a shit. The only religion was graffiti.”
After this experience, his work began to get much darker. He had just had a bad breakup that rekindled his love of hardcore and metal music, and things were seeming to spiral a bit for him.
“I was thriving and bathing in this rage,” Nychos says. “And using that energy, I completely transformed into a research nerd. A world of my own existence, and also, just like freeing myself of everything I thought graffiti was supposed to be in the first place, completely. I got loose, you know, I didn’t give a shit about anything anymore… I learned a lot about how graffiti was supposed to work. And I was like, ‘Alright, I learned those rules. Now fuck it… I paint how I want to paint.’”
His art evolved, and he really started using color.
“Before, I was just experimenting, thinking I have to, to paint the best piece. And then, at some point, I didn’t give a shit about it anymore. And that is when I freed myself, that’s when pieces became really, really sick. You know? Because all that bullshit we like we fall into, especially in a place like the graffiti scene, you have to look the same as the other one because they are the real deal. But if you look the same as the other one, you are a biter or a copycat. It’s this hypocritical bullshit.”
It was a shift.
“That’s when I started to paint and not just render pieces,” he says. “In 2010, I got sponsored by Montana [Colors].”
In 2013, after sorting out his paint needs and following a strong desire to reach the next level, Nychos moved to San Francisco.
“It’s been years of just fucking graffiti madness every day, like murals,” he says. “Pieces every day, every night. I had those years where I don’t think I did anything else than that, doesn’t matter if it’s like another dissection piece or a fucking blockbuster (a graffiti style featuring large murals of letters) on the truck side. It’s just like, go, go, go! But if you do not address exactly what’s already brewing, on the surface, it doesn’t matter how much you paint.”
In 2015, he premiered a documentary The Deepest Depths of the Burrow to huge success in Vienna, Austria. But the very next day after the premiere, he was in a bicycle accident that injured his shoulder and neck. Although he thought he had rapidly healed from this accident thanks to an injection and went back on the road, it quickly became clear that things weren’t alright.
“I used to paint any inner pain away, but graffiti didn’t really help anymore,” he says. “So in 2018, I was ready to die. I did 5-MeO-DMT. [I thought] ‘Seems like I’m gonna die, what am I afraid of?’ I had already started to go to a shrink. I thought maybe I have some mental issue. She helped me a lot with distress, but eventually, I got this message from a shaman, and I was like, ‘I have nothing to lose, man. I’m gonna die.’ 5-MeO-DMT was explained to me as a death/rebirth experience, and I’m reminded of the out-of-body experiences I had when I was 19.”
Two hits in, he was feeling amazing, but on the third, he truly blasted off.
“I was like, ‘I want to heal.’ I didn’t even know what that was asking for at this point,” he says. “I meant, like physically heal. All of a sudden, I’m on the journey as a blood vessel, like floating through your whole being. I already saw my whole anatomy, and I was like, I see how the muscles are like connecting things, little traumas in my muscles system was like, letting go, and I was like, ‘This is wild’… I was gone. I was out. First, I was in my brain, and all the neurons connected, and then all lit up. I was just this tiny creature floating in there. And then it all disappeared, and the neurons became stars, so suddenly, I was in outer space and kind of floated through that. And then everything started to turn, and the white of the stars, and the blackness from the dark matter, became the most intense, psychedelic kaleidoscope vision I’ve ever seen or experienced. There was an interconnectedness of shapes that you cannot copy…
“My soul was sucked out of my eyeballs and my mouth. Just like it was dragging me there. And I’m like, ‘Alright, I guess this is how I die,’ and you could feel how it comes up from your tummy and then the next moment like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, I’m going to die.’ Then the nice control system of the ego comes in. Fear, right? And the fear of losing control and you start screaming like a motherfucker for your life. Until you realize there’s no point in resisting. That was the ultimate last thing I remember, like, ‘This is fucking it. No goodbye.’ You literally have to make the decision to let go of your body to break through the matrix. As soon as my ego left, my true self was on the other side of the matrix, in the void in complete blackness. I realized, ‘Wait a second, this is more than dying.’”
Nychos, “Binary”, acrylics on canvas, 72X60 inch, 2020
Nychos says his belly cracked open, and he could feel energy emerging.
“The light was hitting me, and then I realize, no, no, no, I am the light. I am the fucking universe. Just feeling the superpower of the universe rising inside me, having an understanding that this is our core life energy in us.”
Then he hit a dimension filled with Hindu and Buddhist entities.
“They were like, ‘You were chosen. Now you know what you were chosen for! You finally fucking made it. This kind of happiness or feeling of being free is what the universe is made out of. I think a lot of people [play these types of] experiences down because they get back into their fear and their control system, and their mind starts lying to them again because that’s what ego does. I felt like I went home for 10,000 years, and I came back 25 minutes later.”
Next, he saw his existence as a book, and pages inside him began to be ripped out.
“It started to be that everything important was ripped out, and it started to be more painful and magical,” he says. “And it’s crazy how when you reach the point of complete happiness, how painful it is to be fully, fully happy. And that is something I will definitely not forget.”
Experiencing the trauma he had in life and reaching the dissolution of his ego sent him further on the artistic path.
“Creating art is not only your therapy, it’s also a message for others; you’re doing it for others,” he says. “You’re triggering, subconsciously, their trauma so they can heal. It’s what music has always done for me. I started to understand that there is a thing called imagination. I have understood that reincarnation is a real thing. It is a part of life and death, and consciousness. It is what we are doing. We’re going in a circle. Life is not linear. It’s also not a circle. It’s a fucking spiral. With more awareness and self-awareness, you get it’s like, damn, imagination. It’s nothing. That’s our explanation for something which does not exist. But I understood that it is just a memory from the past. So what a creative person does, who really paints from his soul, is he paints his trauma and the experiences he has had, which are still deeply rooted in his genetics.”
This collective experience was captured in one of Nychos’s recent shows in Downtown Los Angeles, which ran between February and May. Called The Awakening, it was an expansive show that walked the user through this transcendent experience. The show was built to illustrate the journey from the physical world to the matrix. You saw his more anatomical work before journeying into the darker, deeper elements of self—it was a must-see for fans of any era of his art.
“I’m here to do this to heal myself. And I can also only heal when I heal others,” Nychos explains. “The goal is to open the throat chakra to speak my truth, my primal truth or whatever, even more to know who I am. And also, I can actually create from a pure place of love. And I feel like this is the place where people are really going to vibrate toward because they are already vibrating to this because it’s their trauma. If it comes from love, that is the place you want to be. Well, the work of it. This show is an introduction.”
Nychos, “Primal Truth”, acrylics on canvas, 70X60 inch, 2021
