 Welcome to Breeder Syndicate 2.0, where we explore the history of a clandestine scene. Researching everything from cannabis strain history, old smuggling tales from the first person perspective, to breeding science and news on current subculture. I'm your host, Matthew, and I'll occasionally be joined by my homey, not so dog, Breeder and Grower from Mendocino, to speak on these subjects and sometimes interview other participants. Our goal is to document this history before it's written by corporations and others who just weren't there. Let's start writing some wrongs. Welcome to the underground. Welcome, Breeder Syndicate. I'm Matt. This is not so dog. I'm just going to jump in here. Not so dog has an intro for this one. It's a very, very special, special episode, and we hope you enjoy it. So here, not so. Go ahead. So I just wanted to give an intro into what we're going to be talking about for a bit. I'm pretty excited about this one because it's got one of my oldest friends on it. I've been trying to keep his name and his visage secret for a while to protect him or whatever, but he has decided that he is willing to come on and chat in person. And so the guy that I call Staten Island is my very, very old friend, Gabby. He's the reason why I got the dog. He's the reason why I got the super skunk. He's the guy that brought them west. You're going to hear a bunch of stuff of him talking, which some of it will probably be pretty new. But he was buddies with Klopp, which a lot of people call Weasel. He played a pretty important role in my opinion about keeping the chem dog alive and around. The guys on the West Coast, skunk TA, IC Collective, myself, all of us really owe it to him for the reason why we got the chem dog and our little crew kept it together for a long time. And he's done a variety of things in cannabis during his life. He's not very well known, but he played some pretty important roles. So in addition to being my really old friend, I'm super glad that he's going to finally show his face and start talking a bit. He might be a little bit embarrassed about it or discount what he did. But in my opinion, he's pretty darn important in the scene. And he really did a lot to push cannabis forward, not just from a genetics perspective, but from teaching people how to grow weed and opening up stores when it was pretty risque. And so I'm just really stoked to be able to bring a super old friend on and chat, and I hope you all like it. And this will be a multi-part episode. So I guess kick back and we'll insert this on each one of the episodes so that there is some kind of clarity for each one. One other point is that because he is the way that he is, you're going to hear a lot of people's real names. Maybe not so much their internet handles or their forum names or whatever, because he might not know those. So a lot of people, when he talks about Klopp, for instance, Klopp is Weasel, who is one of the critical people early on in the sourdiesel tale. You know, Ben is IC Collective, Jason is Skunk Fah, or Skunk VA is the case maybe, I suppose. And so he drops names so often there's no way for Matt and I to really edit it out. So that's what it is. Here you go. That's who we are. Oh, also one more thing. The audio is kind of all over the place. As far as the clarity, there's some feedback from... It's just redoing these interviews and it was so important to get this. It's one of the main reasons that this clone made it to guys like me, CSI, and the rest of the country for what it is. And it was so important to get it done that we felt that audio quality was less important than audio content. So we hope you'll excuse that, too. And enjoy. I almost brought it up, but I didn't want to bring it up when we were recording because I was like, maybe he'll hate me and want me to cut it out. But do you remember when we were the people that were taking all that BHO down to all the clubs and none of them had ever seen it and we had to teach them how to use it and spot them stuff because they had no BHO. They'd never seen it before. They didn't even believe that it was... Honestly, this is one of my favorite stories to tell. Let's tell it. I'm telling that story. I don't think I'm incriminating myself 30 years later. No. It was more like 20-ish, but still. Yeah. It was in 2000. What I told Francis before we start was I was doing BHO in 2006 and I thought I was a fucking pioneer. So hearing this, go ahead. Tell your story. Okay. So did you hit record yet? Yeah. Because I don't see it recording. It's recording. I do. Oh, weird. So this was in... Well, I opened up the Garden Spout in 2002. And so I think I got fired from Hydro Depot. And that's another story about... Fired from Hydro Depot. It must have been either 2000 or 2001. I think it was 2000. And it was that time in between. Right. Exactly. Because the only reason why I was doing it was trying to figure out how to make money in between doing that. Once I opened up the Garden Spout, I wasn't fucking around like that. But I got shown how to make BHO. Unfortunately, at the time, the way we knew how to do it was in a PVC pipe. Yes. That's how we got to do it. Luckily, even though I was open blasting, I lived on top of a hill. And I wasn't just doing it indoors. I was doing it where there was outdoor ventilation happening. Sure. And put a coffee filter on the bottom of a PVC pipe. A silk screen, too. Remember we had all that silk screen? We only made it to coffee filters in 2006. Yeah. And then on the other end, there would just be a cap with a hole in it that you could just... That you could fit the fitting on. Yeah. It fit the fitting perfectly. This is just for my dab rig, okay? I'm not like open blasting him. But so like, I made the first BHO I had ever seen or heard of. And I wish I could remember where I learned about it. Who taught you? Yeah, who taught you? Like, who was teaching you that earlier? I was trying to think the other day of who taught you. But Gabby had this property in the hills above where I live now. And he had like, I don't know, it was like 28 acres or something like that. And so we never had any of the many stories of explosions or terror that went on. Because we literally went out on top of a hill in the middle of a field. And away from all electronics. So you were not doing this in San Diego garages? No, we did it literally on a mountain. On a hilltop. I can't claim the same. A hilltop with wind. You know, we had to get like, there wasn't any machines yet. It was literally, like he said, it was skinny PVC tubes that we cut and made ourselves. Disclaimer, do not do this. No, don't do this. First way to do this. Don't even use an ISO too. Don't do any of it. You know, there was no, we didn't know anything about purging. The only way that we purged was by stirring it, you know, a little bit. The reason to do is I would have a glass dish with all the solvent, you know, extracted stuff, but it was still bubbling. Yeah. And in order to make it happen faster, we would put that dish in another dish where we would pour boiling water. Boiling water, yeah. The boiling water that we had already, you know, had it collected there, water boiling right there. And we would do that. And then we would do it again until it stopped being active. It still bubbles wet. I mean, it obviously still had plenty of butane in it, you know. Yeah. We didn't know. I would put it in a jar and we would bring it to the cannabis clubs in Oakland and in San Francisco and in Berkeley. And they had never seen anything like it. And it, you know, for the time, the shit was amazing. Yeah. This was prior to, you know, the modern Dabrig. Sure. Oh, there was none of those accoutrements. Like we would smear it on top of weed. Then we figured out that like there was those old, like, like disc huck looking charcoals and we would like light the charcoal and drop it on top and drop it on top and then smoke. Yeah. And then Gabby and I would go down to the bay and like the store owners, it was such a foreign substance to them that like we would have to spot it to them, to like the owners and like leave it with them and wait for feed back. So far to the store. You sure go. Yeah, go. We used to smoke it out of crack pipes. Yeah. That was like, or, you know, you know, well, not like a straight two, but just like a bowl with a bowl. Yeah. A meth pipe. A meth pipe. I've never smoked crack or meth. Thank God. Yeah, I did. I did. And that's what they are. Yeah, but, you know, like the bottom and then with a lighter, we would heat it up and it would start boiling and we would smoke it like that. And so I brought it to some clubs in San Francisco and Oakland and Berkeley and they were like, God, I don't know. This is just it's too crack like they love the product. Right. You know, they loved it. And so at the time I was offering it to them for $50 a gram. Okay. And, you know, they enjoyed smoking it with me, but they were just like, you know, this is a medicinal club and this looks too much like crack and it doesn't give us the right. You have to use tools that are weird with it. Yeah. So what we did was, you know, one day I'm like thinking, what the fuck am I going to do with this shit? Nobody wants it. I made it. I didn't know what to do with it. And so I had some trim. And I got some of this goopy extract and I started just pressing the trim into the extract until it would accept no more. And so it was basically like at least 75% trim being held together by a little bit of extract moon rock and I brought, I brought this to the clubs. And you could just rip a little piece off, stick it in a pipe and smoke it and they freaked out. Can you tell me your first experience smoking that stuff? The first time you ever went from smoking flour to smoking something that strong. So I actually had been smoking oils way prior to that because I knew people who were bringing oil back from Jamaica and this is like in the 80s. Oh, we want to hear this. They would bring back green honey oil and clear honey oil in like, what is it called? Shampoo bottles. Yeah. You know, with like bags inside and you know, this stuff made it. And we used to just get joints and just coat the outside of them and just fucking make it super disgusting. But that was my first experience in smoking concentrates. And I don't know how the Jamaican honey oil was made. I'm certain it wasn't from BHO. I think they were using things like the ISO2 extractor, if you remember that. It looked like a spaceship, like ed tiers. Oh, yeah. What is that called? ISO2. Isomerizer too. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. That makes sense. But yeah, so that was the first time I ever smoked concentrate was in the 80s. That type of stuff. But so when I brought this, my favorite part of the story is, I brought them the pure oil, like the best quality concentrate they had ever seen to that point. And they, they were just like, I don't know how to deal with this. I brought them stuff that I put trash in. You know, I literally just put as much trim on it as it would possible. Like I knew it was done when the trim would just fall off and not stick to it anymore. And I brought it to them and they were buying it for me, 50 bucks a gram, selling it for 100 bucks a gram. And we made like, you know, like I said, at first we got to spot it to them because, you know, but after a while they were buying the shit. And I was the only one making like nobody knew how to make this shit. Yeah. It was funny because we would now, now it's like extracts and concentrates are such a big part of the market. And I remember being in clubs with Gabby, like trying to convince the owners and the buyers, like what it was, that it worked, you know, getting like, and then the other part is Gabby, do you remember, I can't remember what the name of it was, but Gabby found this, this container place in Santa Rosa that like sold all kinds of different weird sizes of little plastic containers of all shapes and stuff. Huh? Tap plastics. Tap plastics. He, because we were at the first we were like, what do we even put this stuff in? Yeah. Like we didn't even know what he would put it on. Containers that, you know, you could scrape it off and stuff like that. Yeah. So he found this company. Classic glass crack jar. Yeah. You can get a head shop. Yep. So we, he went and he bought all these different like styles of like rectangles and cylinders and different little things. And we experimented with like, which one was accessible and which one we could actually get it into and play with because it was like, we didn't have any packaging. We didn't know what to do with it. I remember, and we used to sit there like, you know, and it's like in the open blast there or whatever you have cases of butane and then you're like, got these PVC tubes. And I remember being on Gabby's porch because it took, you know, it took hours sometimes just to get prepped and pack all the tubes with all the, you know, the smalls and the trim and the whatnot. And then, you know, you start off with like these smooth PVC tubes. And after you've used them for a while, you stick your finger in there and you rub it around and you realize that it's like not smooth anymore. And we were like, oh, oh no. Shit. Years later. Oh no. It's like, maybe that wasn't the best idea. No. You know. Give me a second. Yeah. But it was, I'll talk, it was funny in the sense that like as we were talking earlier on, you know, earlier recording about how when we were making seeds, there wasn't really the industry or the like all the stuff set up around to sell seed. Yeah. It was very much like that with BHO. Oh yeah. Like the only thing that people had in shops back then was like a few kinds of water hash. Yeah. I remember that very well. And there wasn't even that era. There wasn't nails. There wasn't heating elements. There wasn't bangers. There wasn't like specific rigs to smoke hash out of. Some of the rigs, you know, like we're, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if you remember. I won't say his full name, but you remember Gabby E had that had that water, that bong that like opened up, you know, so you could like, it was like, it like had like a, like a lampshade looking thing on the bottom of it. And you could put it over when he lived in the Sebastopol house and you could put it over the burning coil and you could drop dabs on it. You know, I have a question for both of you because this is before my time, but it's something I watched as a kid and I never understood it. And I've never really asked my dad to what the hell it was. Yeah. And since you worked at a head shop and you know all this stuff, he had a bamboo bong, I think it was, and he would take my Play-Doh and stick it on the motherfucker all around it. And I would get so mad. I didn't know, looking back, I can't figure out why he stole my Play-Doh for his bamboo bong because the bong wouldn't have gotten hot. Well, as a kid, I figured, oh, it must be getting hot. He's Jamaicans. Jamaicans had these bamboo style pipes that they would use. Yeah. You know, I forget their technical name. And then I can't remember the name either, but on Dead Shows and stuff, there was all this art. What was that clay art, Gaby? Do you remember what it was called? But they would form it into little Jerry heads or different types of things. And it would harden over time. It was probably something an artist could easily turn it into a pipe in a piece of art at the same time. It was something that you do while you're driving home without a lot of equipment. You can't have a glass studio while you're driving to the next show. Maybe people would be funny to hear this, but definitely the first time I did, and it's probably the first time Gaby did, it was probably the first time that you ever saw glass was Bob's Nodgrass blowing and having his van and selling it at shows. He did it right on the table deadlock. Because everybody smoked out of stone or clay or metal or wood or plastic or whatever. And so, you know, I remember Gaby joking later on that like, you know, Bob's stuff looked like it was made by a kid kind of in certain ways. But like at the time, like it was the only, you know, he had like, Gaby had like a couple cases of just Bob work. You know, the classic skull with a top hat, pipe, you know. I just put it away, but I have a chem dog piece and I got him to blow the only piece that doesn't look like a Bob's Nodgrass hippie piece with hippie milliflory and he put in punk rock milliflory for me in this little 20. There used to be like, Gaby had like the height of what was the coolest thing for hippies to have back then, which was he had this big steam roller that Bob did with a full dragon inside the tube. And like as the bowl, as you smoked it, it would pull the smoke down through the dragon head and blow it out the dragon's mouth. And then you would suck it through the steam roller. It wouldn't fill the pipe with smoke. It would make like a straight line from your mouth to yours. And so it was like a clear steam roller, but then it had this worked dragon's head with all like these flares and colors and stuff. And this is made by someone in our group. So I'll plug it while we're doing this. But it was just, it was, it was literally like that was the only place in the beginning where we knew how to get glass. And then, and then it expanded to like apprentices and friends of Bob, you know, that learned and there was like a group and Eugene and stuff like that that was doing it. But yeah, but people didn't, we didn't, when we were making the hash and the other thing that was funny is like we were making the hash out of like, you know, trim and smalls from the dog and like our super dog experiments and the super skunk and stuff. And so there was definitely a few experiences where we weren't used to the THC content and it was a little bit of panic at the disco. You know, because you're like, you smoke weed with your friends and you didn't realize how little you needed to get lit up. And we would smoke a little bit too much and get nervous. Yeah, the first time I smoked Moonrocks. Yeah, it's fine. I didn't know if you wanted me to bring it up or whatever but literally that was 2000 or 2001 because as soon as he opened the shop, he quit. But we did a lot of it in 2000, 2001 and at least amongst our friend group and at least amongst going to the stores and stuff like that, like none of the owners, never seen it. They had no idea what it was. They had no idea how to use it. They had no idea how to market it. It was like they were concerned. It was almost like they had to get some of it and give some to customers and get good feedback and then they got excited about it. So I don't know. And there wasn't that many stores really. There was a few in Oakland like Gabby was saying. There was the third floor. There was a place that our buddy owned who I'll remain nameless at the moment. There was a place in Berkeley on Shattuck Avenue and they were pretty cool because they were punk rock. It was like where the anarchists met to plan like social resistance. And so they didn't make any money off of there. They were like full medical. They didn't make any money. They had a 15% markup to pay for costs and employee salaries and stuff. So like if you gave them a screaming deal you could go up and see it on the board and it would literally be 15% more expensive than what you gave it to them for. Where everybody else was like doubling or tripling their money or whatever on it. It was definitely semi-profit based. They were literally like just the overhead to run the place. Do you remember that spot on Shattuck Gabby that we would go to? They were so different than the rest of them because they literally were like, you know... There we go. No, they were punk rock. They were very punk rock about it. Yeah, games hard. You can see the way. I don't know how big you guys can see that. What is it? What do we have? This is the orangutan titties. I don't know what it is. It sounds like the best name in cannabis. The worst slash best names in cannabis? Orangutan is super boof. Yep, that is different. I'm not familiar with orangutan titties. Yeah no that's a new one to me. It's grease monkeys time skittles. do you know Parker Francis yeah you do know Parker mm-hmm I mean well I know a few Parkers which one Moselle PZ oh no if you won the ammo cup last year in the personal use category with this genetic and this is one of the ones that I got at the nursery but a rolling some up I'm not driving today as you guys can tell yeah no I'm able to invite a little bit more but we so at the time too that we were making it we were concerned about Mike you know fire or whatever but like we took such extreme precautions like because we were out literally in the middle of a field and like we would heat the water far away and then bring it you know and and do the thing like we didn't do like what people did later with electrical or try to do it in garages or try to do it in a shed or anywhere it could build up you know so we never had any of like the horror stories of like you know accidents I mean we could have like we we didn't yeah I mean again don't attempt this at home bad you know stupid things that young people do when you know better but you know it was like at the time it was like I don't even we'd never even heard the term BH out it was basically just like a situation where like whoever taught Gabby remember his name what I don't remember what we called it I don't remember what we called it either but but we it was like he was like dude it's like you can pack this tube full of smalls and like small nugs and trim and it'll melt all the THC right off it and then collect it in this thing and you'll turn all this stuff that you just sit around anyway and gold and you know it was the first time we'd ever seen it yeah Gabby definitely Gabby taught it to me and then we ended up doing it together and that's gonna be clipped right there that that statement that last time that you guys ended up doing it together we were just talking about not so getting clipped like saying awkward out of context let me see what is it I can't see it I'm blind there are King palms no yes this is a product that I really like they make it's like a it's like a cone okay no I have seen those it's made out of a palm leaf yeah and so I don't smoke blunts there was somebody on the discord talking about how you know they're gonna smoke blunts till they die because I don't smoke tobacco yeah and I think it really just like you have a beautiful flower and then you put you know roll it with tobacco it's kind of fucked up yeah I was skeptical about these I bought these for my lady as an alternative to blunts and they're really thick you think that they're gonna burn like really hot and like but man these things actually burn better than papers you know like where the just the pink Ross I like this better I try because I fucking harsh they burn so fast to these they have this little thing you don't have to use it you can just fill it by hand drop the joint in there and then you give it a little coke with the supplied poker put a little bit more in there and I can't actually roll a joint but like I cannot I can I can roll a joint I mean I used to use rolling machines just to like do a better job and make it faster because like we said in yesterday I would do like 10 you know the morning before I left for work yeah but this thing what you get is such an elegant product and you really can taste the weed really good in it you'll see that so maybe this is a good segue I just thought about it while you were chatting where when when Gabby and I became friends like a lot of hippies we were club paper you know exclusives various sizes of clubs modianos or whatever yeah all kinds of different sizes depends on what you're rolling whether you're rolling a thumb-sized joint or a pinner or whatever but I didn't have a palette to do it but Gabby could straight up taste glue there we go right and nobody would believe nobody would believe that he could actually taste the difference so I don't know how many times it happened but it happened numerous times where like we would literally blindfold Gabby and people would roll joints of the exact same weed and one would have glue and one wouldn't and he'd take a couple puffs and and he'd be like glue glue not glue and he was a hundred percent right every single time and people be like there's no way you can tell the difference dude I don't believe it's like I think they would have been able to tell the difference like when you have like quality herb like like the cam dog that has such a good taste and then just smoking glue like I think you gonna be able to say that one's better yeah people would not believe that he could do it and I honestly my palette I couldn't taste it but Gabby learned what the flavor of the glue was and he got it right a hundred percent of the time he could he could taste glue and so we never smoked papers with glue because he felt like it ruined the J so we always smoked rice glueless rice papers that you had to rip and lick in order to get them to stick which was mostly club before club kind of went out of business or whatever but it was all clubs that was the that was the heady hippie paper that was the acceptable paper for heady joints I'm gonna grab an extract was uh was the clubs yeah that's what I was just showing those things are so hard to use without the gum to thing like I don't get how you're supposed to get the papers to like intertwine it was the only kind of joints that he would roll you know that's all our friends in our group or whatever like you basically you have to rip it so that the fibers you know it's pretty rough and then you have to apply it you know but yeah John tried to show me oops he tried to show me how to do that and I'm like I'm watching it right there in front of me and I'm like what the hell could you do yeah no glue was glue was subpar in our crew glue was glue you know you didn't use glue glue was cheating since Francis talks a lot and as a dick I'll go ahead and do this again and plug our friend Gabby have you heard of C2 glass before they're pretty good they're pretty fine I'm pretty sure I can get him to send you something cool I'm sure he'd be down to send you something cool he's in our group go ahead I'll show you what I'm smoking out of let's see this is called flow scientific glass and very scientific has no color in it at all it's mostly just about function and like the water will come up to here and like do like a circle like a recycler yes there is a recycler and I've had this long since nice evening of me dabbing many years ago luckily this one this one made it Wow that's a beautiful one I just brought home my ski mask glass piece it's a clockwork orange one that I left it my mother's for like a long time never been used though so people are gonna want us to cover sour and clop more thoroughly like that's a great era of your life and I don't think we cover the answer you know discuss this and stuff but I've been thinking about this a lot sure I just want to get this out out there into the open and with all due respect to the people that are obsessing about this topic including you like because people are like well people are gonna get pissed off you're gonna get angry text messages and I'm like I don't think so but the fact that anyone is getting that worked up about something that is we can't even prove it and it's just silly I mean we should enjoy the conversation you know everybody should be enjoying the conversation and like you know debating if necessary but like for anyone to get up tight or threatened or you know feel wronged if I say something that's completely false because you know happened 30 years ago and you know my brain has any of them are welcome to come on and correct it you know what I mean like it doesn't even have to be like that you know like they don't have to correct they don't have to want to correct themselves and you know like this is what one stoned aging hippie is saying it doesn't mean that much right let's just consider it good stories that we can all enjoy and laugh about and try to like pull from you know because you know I don't remember who said it and no but you know somebody said that you know Greg has changed his story a few times and so like he's not really the best source of or reliable let's just give him the benefit of the doubt that he smokes a lot of weed and he's just and he never remembered the story that good because he's you know but like he was a kid it's not a liar you know like bring that lying you know and and if we all remember it a little bit differently I think that's what we call perspective and and not only perspective but just flawed memory you know I just wanted to start by saying that like nobody should be getting all worked up about anything that we say I hope people enjoy the conversation you know one thing that you said to me yesterday Matt is that you know you like the way Francis and I talk you know I mean Francis has been my friend for over 20 years and talking to him like for instance if I was just talking to you it might not be exactly the same just because you know I mean like yeah not that I wouldn't be open with you or anything but there's no way you guys brother you know something else that I wanted to say is that you know nothing like terrible like but like some awkward shit happened with me and Francis okay I'm just gonna get it out of the open my ex fired him okay like and he was like one of the most valuable people that ever worked for me you know like I told people that you know he I felt like I could really help people and Francis was actually able to help people even more you know and so today you know I'm pretty sure I did in the past I'll say it again I'm sorry that that happened it was a total mistake and bad business wasn't my decision you know my business was slowing down like when we hired Francis our business was blooming and we were able to pay people what Francis needed to make and then as business got not as good you know got harder to do that but the point is like me and Francis didn't talk for a while for that and maybe some other petty shit and me and VA skunk didn't talk for a few years over again shit that like it shouldn't keep people that are as connected as we are to not talk you know and I had this epiphany like I don't know if he's right word but this thought like when I recently connected with VA again I was like you know I really don't give a shit about any of the stuff that happened in our past like any of the times that we argued and because you know I said to him I said I love you you're an important part of my life a part of part of my history and I don't want to let that shit go and so I want to say it's exactly the same for me and Francis like I love this guy you know I always will you know and as you get older you know you just start to realize that like these are the things that are important not like what the exact cross of sour and you know chem made you know it's like yeah that shit is just like stuff that we should definitely discuss I'm not saying it's not worth a discussion and like let's think about it I mean like that's what me and Francis used to do all the time anyway you talk about me right but I don't like it anyone to get upset and feel threatened about like this topic that involves shit that like I don't I don't and won't understand it so going into this topic about the sour which I have even less exact information about sure like we're just speculating you know like maybe maybe I'll interject too and say you know Gabby and I were we're chatting I think it was last night or something and like we were going over some stuff that we won't be chatting about but you know it's just it's hard in life there's so many twists and turns and there's so many like Gabby was like you know life's a carnival and you know you have this situation where people get you know like I try to tell history and I and you know he mentioned that I tried to be as accurate as possible but I also admit things because you have these situations where you have friends that have been friends for 20 or 30 years and they have ins and outs with each other and their lives have complications and it's like that's not really pertinent to the story so much and it's like it's not really people's business and like I wasn't going to go into like obviously you know I see collective skunk VA Gabby myself we've all known each other for like a really long time you know like really at this point a really long time and so there's ins and outs and ups and downs and and fall outs and fall ins to all that kind of stuff that you know and and and argue you know and just how that's how life works right and so you know people always want to latch on to the salacious part of it to some degree you're the part that creates conflict and you know it's funny too because people would attack me for being like oh you don't really know that and really it's like I would be like dude all my stories come honestly from like my one friend and I don't know how to prove to you how good a friends we were but like we were really good friends and he won't really really really call me and Francis with good fucking friends and and like stories he told seem to be fairly accurate like nothing that I could argue with and you know like yeah we sat the amount of times we sat on a couch together and smoked joints and talked to it about weed or like made BHO or bread or traded cut like I mean it was just like people don't realize what a different era it was you know and so people want to jump on little points you know in that regard but you know between the four or five of us or whatever and you go back 20 25 years like like homie said you're gonna have some different memories and on top of that it's not like when the chem dog story was getting written or the sour story was getting written or any of this stuff was happening any of us knew any of this was going to be important later on you had a bunch of partying hippies who like to see shows and like to go out and like to stay up late and like to smoke weed and all that doing stuff and then later on people are like oh man that was kind of important we want to know specifics yeah like play by play and so you try to give you the most accurate play by play and then if two people have a different play by play it doesn't mean that someone's lying it just means that their memory map is a little different maybe or what's stuck in their head is a bit different you know I think sometimes also like because I believe the story the way I do and you believe the story that the way you do when we talk we can like we're not trying to convince any it's like this is actually what we believe right so like we're not lying I'm not wording it properly but the whole point is it's just this is the story as we remember it like I'd be happy for someone to like help me remember it better because I want to know the truth too you know like and you know like it took me a minute to remember the like breeding stuff that we did together Francis you know and I was like oh yeah of course I mean like where did I get all that shit from you know like I got a lot of genetics from you you know like the Maui you had gotten that from Jason King right no we got that from like that was that was some of the first weed I ever grew Sean and I grew that in Chicago oh that's right what was the weed that we got from Jason King didn't we get a strain from him the mothership the mothership right mothership yeah like I heard a pineapple mothership that remember that story I told you about the weed that got mailed to us the plants and we thought they were gonna send us cuttings and the chick sent us like plants and yeah that's how we got the mothership and it was actually at one of Eddie left house that it got sent to that he had not not his main property where he grew but like Jason was renting a house from him in Lake County and they sent us that it was us it was such a big box when I opened it up I almost shit my pants because it was literally like two plants that were two feet tall with bamboo stakes I thought they were gonna send like little cuttings like in Rockwell or something that happened a few times it's weird these two giant ass plants you know a little bit on that we but yeah you know the the Maui got brought out by John yeah and so then it was also the Mendocino perps yeah you know I had the chem dog and you know the superdog or you know the the skunk and you had all these other strains you know like I didn't have that diverse of a of the collection that you did no you had a couple things but they were really good thing yeah all that all those other strains that we crossed you know with the stuff that you brought in you know yeah it was from Jason or and that uh the Maui that you brought from Chicago yeah that was epic shit do you know I still have it oh my god dude it's it's 28 years old it's my longest successful female relationship yeah it might actually be in some popular things right or is that a different one that's a different that that's a different that's a different tail that's a whole different thing is it was so productive and it was white it's beautiful it was coated in tricones it's a beautiful had you have you seen it Matthew yeah oh yeah I still have it yeah you still flower it yeah yeah I'm putting this out there publicly I want Francis to give me some chem dog flower oh shit oh my god now we're gonna start shit on the discord everyone's got to like make memes and shit because I haven't had any in a really long time honestly I I told Matt you did a really good job you did a far better job than I would have you've been thinking about it a lot more than I have and you know so you know there was little details that honestly don't really matter of that much you know the core of the story was correct like one little detail that you got wrong was the only reason why I got the chem dog was because I gave Greg the skunk like you know he didn't want to give it to me till I had something that he wanted you know and so but like I said the details were so little you know that I mean you can by all means ask questions but I don't know I was thinking more like tell a couple of stories about oh yeah you know like how I got it across country oh yeah when I met Klopp you know when I met Greg I want to tell people when I met like not just met you but like the moment that we became friends for life you know because there was that moment do you remember the moment I mean I I remember so what I remember what really broke us through in terms of friendship was Shawn and I were trying to fucking figure out those water cooled lights and they kept for that it was before that well actually I don't know if it was before that but that wasn't the moment for me at least but go ahead you tell your side then well I mean the other part of it too is that people have different memories of things you know I'm like really I'm losing it but there's one is one thing on certain things I'll never forget but glad you tell you because I think I think we actually became friends when you were working at like the first time we started talking was when you were at Slavic shop yeah hydro depot mm-hmm before there when there was no shops in Mendo or anything like that we had to go south in order to get and I mean I remember going I remember going to your house in Casadero you know and yeah that's where that's where I actually I think that's where we actually did our first exchange of cuts you know remember you used to make that pasta dude with like all the veggies and the olive oil and the basal mic and all that stuff and yeah you know and you invited me down for dinner but the thing that I was gonna tell was like we we were leaving after talking to you one day and Sean was like we should leave a joint of Mendo perps on his on his windshield wipers you know I can hear him saying that right now in his voice do you know this I don't know if this this this should probably get cut out or whatever dude but I reconnected just within the last month after years of trying with his wife and daughter whose wife and daughter Sean's oh that's awesome you know his daughter is like going to college next year I mean they're pretty good you know I'll send you pics dude after this call or whatever like she got like she looks so much she looks like a much prettier version of Sean she's got like she's not bald but she's got his skin tone like the super like pale Irish how about how about attitude you know she's nicer but I mean that's the funny thing too is like Sean was so much like a bunch of my friends back home I was the nice mm-hmm you know I was the mellower one yeah you know I think you would have said that you were the soft one but I would say that about him you know yeah I mean alright so let me tell let me tell my story sure I don't want this edited out okay I want this to be live on the internet for eternity got it all right so Francis and Sean were customers at my hydro store okay he's called hydro depot at the point and you know we were just being casually friendly I was just trying to provide good service and be cool and stuff like that and I had given you my phone number and I don't know if this was this is definitely before we started training clones you know but I gave you my phone number for some reason and you called me one night and you said Gabby do you have a part for an airflow oh yeah like it's like a part that like sticks out on the bottom of the airflow like to drain it and somehow you broke yours and for those of you that don't know the airflow is an aeroponic system that if that thing's not getting water and what is now pumping through it constantly your plants are in big trouble fast there's no medium right so the roots are just dangling in this too by itself so Francis calls me up he's like hey Gabby I know it's late but we got an emergency our airflow the drain broke off it's not holding water you know we're gonna lose everything and I was like oh well I have an airflow at my store you can come and get it so I drove over there met these guys over there and they you know we open up the box get out the part for the airflow and then you decide well you know since we're here is a couple more things that I need and I'm like sure no problem at this point like I've already made the trip might as well sell you some more shit right so you're like grabbing things I want this I want this but you're just holding it in your hand and before we know it you drop the airflow part it's like this PVC manifold you know like two inch PVC or one and a half inch PVC that's all these things on it and my floor is cement and it was so heavy because of all the stuff that was attached to it when it hit the ground that just shattered oh my god and it was just like oh my god like at that point like your crop was fucked I don't remember actually what happened but it was like this is bad you know I think like the next day I think the next day you went to like Friedman Brothers or something like that and just got like PVC in a cap and stuck it in but like your plants were like not happy with you no definitely not happiness definitely not and and even though it was that moment of sorrow that was the moment that I always felt like we connected and became friends forever at that moment yeah I mean it was it was funny the part you didn't know that Sean was walking and he tripped and he felt like you're blaming Sean well he's fucking dead bro he's dead and he broke he broke he broke it and then we had that we had to we had to make it happen yeah I mean we came like we came from Hydro World because coming from where we came from like soil working with soil wasn't really like apartment style you know to get out of the apartment and throwing it away that was hard man I have funny stories has nothing to do with the chem dog let's do it let me let me tell you about the first time I ever grew weed please right so my parents they helped me get this apartment and it was in Green Point in Brooklyn which is like a really at the time was like an extremely Polish neighborhood like now it's like super hip they ran all the old people out now it's like young students and stuff like that it's two stops on the L train from Manhattan so you're in Brooklyn but you can be in Manhattan in less than five minutes taking you know so it's like it's an awesome spot and so I got this apartment it was on the third story of this brownstone and on every story there was two apartments on the bottom story there was like a card room it's like a private card room yeah old Polish guys would play cards then on the second story there was a gay couple and then like a Polish couple that spoke zero English right and then on the top story it was me and my girlfriend at the time and that lived next to us that were young right so I was growing in this apartment and just like you said getting rid of soil and stuff and you know anything like that it was super because you had to put all your trash out on the street you know and if the cops thought you were growing looking at your trash like they don't even need a warrant to do that like it's out on the street they can just go through it so my toilet I'm on the third story and there was so much suction on this toilet like literally you would not sit on it when you flush that toilet okay cuz fucking your balls dangerous up down the pipe yeah yeah exactly right so but I thought I'd take advantage of this and like I used to literally I used to flush everything the trim the soil everything went down the fucking toilet this is some 90s story right here yeah we should start with this so like I mean I was growing in like two or three gallon box and at the end of the cop crop I would cut the stem I don't remember how we got the stems down the toilet but I I know everything went down the toilet we must have like grind it up or something and I would just have this five gallon bucket of soil and I turn it over into the toilet and then like with a stick I'd fucking just like break it up and like one flush you just go straight down right and I mean I did like two or three crops there before I moved to California and so one day you know the inevitable day comes where I stick I stick this five gallon bucket into the toilet and floods the place oh shit doesn't go down and at that moment I'm like oh my god like I gotta call a plumber and there's gonna be two crops worth of soil jammed in these pipes like yep you know I'm like I'm so busted I'm like thinking like I gotta cut down all my shit yeah like this is this is bad like you know and the place had one bathroom oh no it was cool it's like a railroad apartment right one room to the next room to the next room and then there was a kitchen with a shower right next to it the bathroom now is it I used to live in one of those okay and so this is this is a bad situation so I run to the hardware store and I buy a plunger which I never had because the fucking thing yeah you know you just so I buy a plunger oh flush it and it just fucking goes right down who I'm like oh my god and I think I continue to flush it down the toilet because what else the fuck was I gonna do literally yeah there's nothing to do I'm in New York City like there's only so many other people's like dumpsters that you could dump you know that's shady too like trying to put your shit in somebody else's dumpster or something like that that's what yeah when I lived in here I flushed everything everything down the toilet that is fucking hilarious I used to live in a big apartment complex like that in San Diego and slowly but surely as people would move out I'd rent the next apartment and thought I was being all sneaky you know but they had the same kind of toilets I never thought to have the ingenuity to flush this oh it was the dumbest idea ever I just it was kind of it was kind of like you know the stupid shit that we did on dead tour that we could still be in jail for and we're not like you know like holy shit why did I do such stupid shit like I'd never do that again you know and I would never recommend anyone flush anything you know like that down the toilet it's just I just got lucky you moved out yeah okay so let me tell you about you know I lived there for like nine months before I moved to California and did like a few cycles and it's literally my last crop I'm like I'm cutting my crop and hanging it and I get a knock on the door and I'm like holy shit someone's knocking on my door I've lived here for nine months no one has ever knocked on my door because you got to get rung in from downstairs and the only people that look you know like is the people in the building and everyone was super private yeah you know like nobody ever you like nobody ever said anything to me even though once you got up to the second story you could totally smell yeah just reeks it probably right down the street yeah so I'm like holy shit I'm like who is it and so knock on the door I like walk up the door I'm like hello and it's like the neighbor's girlfriend you know the girl that lives next door and she's like could I have a joint please I'm like what I open the door and I literally grab her and pull her in to my place and I like the way it was is once you're in my place you're basically in the girl yeah right yeah and she was like oh my god she's like we knew you were growing but we had no idea like this right and like they were really cool like you know if I wasn't growing and paranoid I would have been friends with them like the whole time we would have great neighbors so it's so cool and I was literally only meeting them days before leaving like we were harvesting getting the fuck out yeah and so yeah she's like yeah obviously we've been smelling it for nine months I just couldn't take it anymore I had to ask and I'm like alright it's cool and she's like hey so do you want to see mine I'm like what she's like yeah she's like it's nothing like this yeah but you know I got some plants over at my place too I'm like oh my god I can't believe it so I'm like all right I'll go and see it so I go over there they have no lights they just have plants in the window to the street and like when you're at the bottom of the street there's like two windows on every story yeah and like they had pot plants growing in their window I had no idea and like when you go up the stairs it like zigzags across right so like if the cops saw the plants in their window oh and they come up the stairs like they would immediately know it's coming from my door yeah you know I'm saying so I was like you got to get rid of this shit right first of all it was like not gonna happen you know they weren't gonna get anything from it you know it was like I forget what time of year it was but I think we were approaching winter actually and you know they had these pathetic plants that were starting to bloom but like I was like look I will give you weed and I will give you I'll teach you guys how to grow before I leave but you have to get rid of that shit right now that shit has to come out of your window right now and so they you know I gave them some weed and they killed it like really this isn't gonna work it's like no not just in your window wasn't like a south-facing good window it was wintertime bad no lights but when they left I left them my gear you know I didn't know you know I didn't want to drive across country with it my plan was to get right now I left them my lights I left them plants oh you know when I first started going let me just finish this once I used I grew from bag seed right like getting clones you know there wasn't riot seed co at the time yeah so like you know just like everything else that we had at the time it came from bag seed and I named every one of my plants a girl's name and the one that made it out west the one that I saved was called Francine I've heard of that one oh really my Francis oh yeah well you had that you had that pipe from Bob yeah that you never smoked anything but the Francine out of but it was in the color yeah yeah my whole collection burned in the fires and melted the fire at my house was so hot that the glass melted whoo so I found like a I found a plate of glass that had like my used to be my pipes again through he had this case that had a bunch a bunch of different pipe than it from dead toward one of them was this piece that like was the Francine piece and he only smoked Francine out of it and so when he retired that cut because it rotted he basically retired smoking out of that pipe I think I don't think we ever smoke that yeah it was a bubbler the Francine bubbler the Francine bubbler passion and devotion I dig it I dig that yeah the Francine definitely had it so you had a question after I just wanted to finish saying about Francine you had a question Francis great friend no I was actually just gonna say dude that I similarly when I was the last place I was in when I was growing in Chicago I was always super militant about like walking my dogs and I would try to see if it smelled anywhere and it never did and I thought it was so clever and then this guy knocked on my door and he was my neighbor and he was like would you mind coming into my room coming in my apartment talking to me and I was like sure you know he's like I just don't want to talk to you in the courtyard and so I walked into his house and it smelled like someone was actively harvesting in there and like all the smell that I thought I was so slick on he's like dude he's like for about two weeks every couple months my entire apartment smells like me and my girlfriend and I weren't convinced it's you you know I thought I was so slick you know and I was and it didn't smell outside my door it didn't smell outside the windows I coughed everything I was like so careful and it's straight reeked right next door reeked dude reeked in his house like worse than my house like I couldn't yeah I had no idea but apparently it smelled like someone was harvesting fresh weed in his house I walked in and I was like oh my god he's like no it's not a problem it's not a problem at all we think I just need some I know and I was like so panicked because yeah it's like you I don't think people understand today the panic of having a small scene but not even most of your friends knowing and like you not like it just was so sketch it just felt so sketch you know it was a life with that was from there was that was that the trip that you basically got to California and your car caught on fire and you had to move back and now no that was the time that I actually made it that was the time you made it because the first time you tried right like your VW bus with opinions or whatever like it caught on fire you caught you caught all your shit on fire like basically right as you were getting to California actually had I actually had forgot about that for a while thanks for reminding me no he had the story of like how he was driving out like hippie style in this VW bus and you had to stop every so often and like adjust well that happened so I had to adjust the points that was when I was driving east so me and my girlfriend at the time we bought this Volkswagen bus on the west coast and we drove it out east and when we drove it out east we had to stop like all the time to adjust the points but her dad was a mechanic and like he didn't want us to go but he's like all right if you're gonna go I'm gonna like fix this thing up a little bit so you're not like stranded in the middle of nowhere and so he fixed it up and the whole way across country we never had to adjust the points and we were 137 miles from the California border and it's stalled and I was like oh I was I actually wasn't even that stressed about it because I was like you know the last time when we're driving east we had to stop every 200 miles and adjust the points yeah you know we just we just drove almost 3000 miles I was 137 miles from the California border and so I tried to turn the ignition and it makes like one little sound like trying to turn over and then just stops and I'm like huh look out the mirrors and it was breathing fire oh no out the out events there was fire coming out of there and so like me and my girlfriend and I think we had a cat at the time that like we had it like cat was like we had a bed in there and the cat was underneath and we had to like try to get the cat out oh the cat when the cat got out the cat was like under the burning van scared didn't want to fucking come out we're like trying to like you know so that time we had to like go with our heads between our heads you know tails and like call our parents to fly us back home yeah we didn't make it but regarding that story something that you don't know Francis I don't know how interesting this is to the viewers last like two months ago my insurance provider calls me up and they say hey your license has been revoked I'm like what are you talking about I was like I haven't even had a ticket in five years that you more like they're like yeah something happened in Arizona in 1990 and your license has been revoked and so what happened was when my van caught fire it like literally took an hour for a police department a police car to show up and then like another hour for the fire department to show up by the time they showed up it wasn't even on fire it was just hot yeah right and so like after losing everything we had and our dreams of making it out you know out West yeah so I hear you guys fine so I after losing everything we owned and our dreams of going out West to see Jerry he writes me a ticket for driving with no insurance and this had actually caught up like I never paid a ticket you know fucking yeah 18 you know 19 year old deadhead fucking making bad decisions driving across country with no insurance that's a bad decision any of our young viewers out there you know like the flushing it down the toilet driving cross-country these are not recommended you know think you know don't do what I did how does one fix a ticket like this that is that old and just so what happened was this is already like 10 years ago or more I couldn't renew my license when I tried to renew it they told me about the ticket and I paid it I actually now I paid it 10 years late you know like it took a while for them to track me down right but so I paid this fucking ticket and so now I realize I've been driving around for six months with no insurance and I had no idea yeah DMV they didn't contact me that they you know revoked my license so I would have gotten to a car accident you know I'm gonna lose everything I have no insurance and all because of some decision as a kid right so I called up Arizona DMV and I asked them what was up I was like I paid the ticket yeah and they're like yeah but there's an eight dollar late fee oh stop when I paid the ticket they gave me my license back but there was this eight dollar late fee and I'm like so you need to tell me you guys revoked my driver's license for a ticket that I paid because of an eight dollar late fee that I did they're like yeah you know we're sorry does it I was like well I was like how much you guys want like how you know I'm thinking like this eight dollar late fee is like $2,000 now oh yeah compounding interest and all this shit like eight dollars and I'm like I was actually almost more offended yeah right you over $8 that you know I would have paid you know and I went to DMV they're like yeah it's not our responsibility to tell you that your license has been revoked you know and I was like so what are you telling me that I need to check the DMV website every morning when I wake up so that's that's the finale of that Volkswagen story and that's a good story though see my memories fucked up but there's certain things that I remember clearly yeah I mean I may not have the entire chem dog history down as much as Francis does but you know I haven't lost it all yet I still got something I mean I've said I've said this before on the podcast or whatever but like basically all the stories that I have before I came into it come from him yeah you know and him and I just sitting around like you people do like like friends and stoners shooting the shit about and the reason why I believe them over most of the other stories was just because he told them to me so long before it got famous yeah like you know like when we were growing the chem dog like nobody like I mean people the only people that like there was like a few there was like maybe four friends that had it it was you know like me him scum VA and I see collect like that was pretty much it and like you know I mean it wasn't like it wasn't famous it wasn't well-known it wasn't like any of that kind of stuff there wasn't any legend to having it so there wasn't any reason to embellish it back back when I started selling the chem dog people would buy it not because they knew what it was it was just like you took one smell of it and you know that you have never had anything like that before and you know new people would just be instantly ready to I mean if I don't wait for whatever price if I remember what you were telling me right probably the best place to get chem dog was outside of a Jerry band show at the Warfield or somewhere like that I mean I really I didn't have to go far to sell it you know the only people that were getting the chem dog were friends of mine and friends of mine would beg me to sell it all to them just so that they could sell it to their friend like you couldn't eat no one else can make money on it you know I was selling a shit for 400 actually that's not true I think skunk VA he might have made some money on but you know I was selling a shit for 400 bucks an ounce and like people like fine I'll buy a pound you know at the time I would only harvest three or four pounds and you know it's three months to the next crop so I'd be fine just selling the weed over that three to four months for the as much money as I could and so you know back then I was getting you know 400 bucks an ounce 6400 pound but you know it started off with friends just buying an ounce and then they would be like yeah you know I'll just buy the whole thing and so I told the story about how me and not so dog so I shared the story about how not so dog and I met and I wanted to share the stories what I can remember of it of how skunk VA and I met and how clop and I met yeah so start with skunk VA I moved to California you know after that apartment you know where my neighbor friends asked me for some weed just before I left yeah we successfully made it out to Cali and rented this house it was like a little cottage in the backyard where we turned one of the rooms into a grow and I think we had six six hundred watt lights total of thirty six hundred watts and you know coming from a place where you know when I left that nylon you know that was I think it was less than that you know and you know people are growing with fluorescent lights and so and you know if you get three pounds and you're getting sixty four hundred a pound that's pretty good yeah as decent you know like you know like you could you were a baller yeah you know yeah so back then it was way easier so but because I was so paranoid I never wanted to sell weed to people around like around like where I live and so I was relying heavily on Grateful Dead Jerry Garcia but when I had a crop come down and they weren't playing which you know it was rare but you know every now and again there was a month or so where it was nothing happened yeah and you know so I went to Golden Gate Park to the panhandle and I this was before I had the chem dog but I met Jason down in the panhandle I like was like hey you know I've got some time but I want to sell and you know he was living out there and you know that's how we became friends is I offered him some of my homegrown in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park like the shadiest drug dealing part of Golden Gate Park and what were you really like he started doing good I was growing like random seeds you know seed grown stuff I had some Francine but uh you know it was some good stuff but it was you know probably it was actually today I would appreciate it more you know I had some stuff that had a lot of sativa in it sure and you know but it was hard to grow particularly when you're not the best grower and these things are getting big but then when you would smoke it you would get that the sativa terps to be like holy shit you know like it was impressive you know I'm sure skunk PA would remember the strain names I don't really remember anymore what it was it was nothing it wasn't chem dog or sour super skunk anything on that I think they carried on it might have been I might have taken home some RFK yeah you know from I definitely want to talk more about that after you go over clock okay um but yeah and so I believe at the time like he's just a traveling hippie and he eventually gets a we did many transactions he helped me sell a lot of my weed and then eventually he moved up to Sonoma County and you know I taught him how to grow so I think you were telling me that that he credit someone else's being his mentor is that what you said I believe it was the the person that you got the Virginia yeah I think that was more of a like I think I remember him telling me about this guy I think it was more like a mentor on a personal level you know could be I I was the one that first introduced him to growing really I think I could be wrong I'm sure if Jason tells different he's correct because his memory is like so ridiculous but yeah you know I met Jason like that or skunk VA and he you know we became super tight and partners in a grow he grew the chem dog and then he eventually became partners with Ben in a grow and so that's how Ben or I see collective that's how they got it so but yeah like I've been friends with those guys now since grateful dead you know and so that's one thing that I wanted to say like you got a little bit of the timeline wrong I actually got so Jason it's going to be a I don't even know how he wants to be addressed it's fine yeah but he used to go see Jerry together at the Warfield it was you know the best thing ever and he had a friend that came from New York not New York from Virginia and he saw the chem dog and he really and Jason was he had some huh wasn't it the Francine he wanted a chem dog oh no nothing actually you're right because I didn't have because you didn't have the chem dog yet he wanted the Francine I didn't even have the chem dog right because right I'm trying I'm trying to remember like I'm surprised that he wanted the Francine that bad that he was able but I was able to get skunk for I don't exactly remember I do remember some trade was made I met him and picked up the skunk cut the VA skunk which is not the super skunk but it's definitely some skunky weed probably a cross of it yeah and Greg wanted this cut or chem dog so Greg would never give up chem dog till I had this and he wanted this so he was willing to trade it to me he asked that I not like really spread it around so the only people that I ever really gave it to were people that I was working with sure you know but that's the much shorter story of how I got a chem dog from Greg we traded for that skunk and the part of the story that I like to tell is I drove across country and I had it in a like Burger King cup you know it was like in a you know two inch oasis cube or something like that and it was a growing it was a growing cutting and like if there was a trucker coming by I just like put the cap on it or if I was like running into a gas station or something I just put the cap on it but I drove the chem dog across country in like two Burger King cut you know I had one probably that had like a couple of chem dog cuts another one that had the skunk cuts wow and you said in the video that I didn't want the other cut that he had I probably was just already like how the fuck am I gonna get any of these cuts on yeah probably so like with a couple of chem dogs and a couple of these skunks it was already like an ambitious thing to do and of course you know I had a smoke 10 joints every day driving fucking through Nebraska like don't do that shit yeah well these days people use the mail and stuff but homie straight up I mean he drove all the way from the west coast back east and then back again so you know it's like you can get cut in the mail using the mail wasn't an option yeah not it was a no-go yeah so it was it was it was an entire journey it was a massive journey to get there and back again you know so I'll take a step in reverse sure and tell you because I met Klopp first yes Klopp he should be called Staten Island even though he lives in Jersey now but still he's more Staten Island like than any of us and so this is another girlfriend that I had like we were like we had just come back from the grateful bed shows to Staten Island like we took a train and like home and we were just sitting on the street in front of his house and he didn't live in the neighborhood you know he lived on a really busy street right next to the train and it was like businesses and his house is like up you know like on a second story above some business or something and he's like hey what are you what are you guys doing down there smoking weed because of course we were yeah and he's like yeah so that's how I met Klopp was one day like me my girlfriend was sitting on the street smoking weed and he called us up into his place and at this point he had never grown weed but like we showed him kind bud and it was indoor and you know he was like you can grow weed like this in your house and we're like yeah that's what this is and so like I'm not gonna say I'm his mentor or anything cuz he did everything by himself but like I inspired him at that moment he like immediately went I'll never forget he had a 10 gallon fish tank and he put some dirt on the bottom of it and then he planted some seeds and they sprouted and his cat fucking dug them up I've heard that so many times oh yeah his cat his cat dug them up but he eventually like he did it again and he put some plants in a closet it's like maybe a two foot deep by six foot long closet with like shop lights and that was the first cannabis that I ever saw grown so I had gotten you know beautiful kind bud in California and you know dead shows but I had never seen it grown yeah and even even though it was under fluorescent lights he was able to harvest weed in a couple of months and that was kind of the inspiration for everything you know at that point I was like I got to do this you know and that's so and you know obviously after you know doing alright he eventually moved out of that place got another place started growing with some real lights he didn't always grow with shop lights but um and I mean we talked about the RFK a little bit privately yeah we went to some grateful dead shows I'm the story is similar to the chem dog story but didn't turn out quite as famous of course sure but um yeah so he bought some flour at the dead show found a couple of seeds planted them and he got the RFK number one two and three wow and there's three different ones yeah there was interesting interesting there were how different were they remember they were very different yeah different enough that he would keep more interesting very interesting I wonder which one's still around yeah you have to talk to him about it yeah I can't wait you know I'm a little embarrassed because you know my memory isn't as good as Francis is or skunk VA or clop you know you're doing fine they all they all have their piece of the story you know everything that I've heard has been accurate yeah you know I haven't I haven't heard you know there's some like little details that really it's more about personal stuff I mean okay there's one thing that I have no evidence to but I'd like to bring this up for discussion I don't really believe and I hate to just call people out but I'm gonna know I don't believe that Greg had these seeds from the same batch five or so years later and then that's when he was germinating them yeah like those later seeds was something else and I mean like he's even said it before that like the chem dog is whatever he's growing at that moment yeah and you know I don't think just because think about it from this perspective if you just popped a couple of seeds and pulled the most most amazing chem dog ever are you gonna wait five years to plant more of them and then five years more to plant the rest it's just like you know now it's the logic with yeah with poor like knowledge on how to save the seeds like the seeds probably would have been no good five years later yeah definitely nobody and fridges right so I kind of that part of the story even you know I would question that but that wasn't even any part of the story that I had anything to do it that's fair you know so wait how did you interact with the chem D when did that come around I never had the chem D oh we never had it well so no here's he did not because let's just say I could tell this part of the story I suppose so I used to be a bit at times I used to be a bit of a bridge between skunk VA and Gabby here and there right you know they had some battles and stuff like that back and forth but he would still come to Gabby's shop to buy stuff yeah right and there was this thing where he had gotten online I think it was an oh six or something like that he had gotten online and he had started talking about the chem on the forums for the first time which is where the whole skunk VA moniker and all that started right yeah and you know at that point chem dog himself had not had the actual chem dog for some years yeah right so he wanted it back and so chem chem dog told us if you bring me the chem dog I'll give you this new chem that I had yeah so skunk VA ended up flying out to back east or something with the the the chem dog what we call the chem 91 you know giving it to giving it to dude and dude gave D and he brought it back and he gave it to I see collect yeah right and I see collective then gave it to me after they'd mobbed it up right yeah but at that point in oh six you know Gabby was doing so well with the shop and stuff like that he'd kind of taken a that was the beginning of your kind of hiatus you know from collecting cuts and having that whole thing going on the the shop was really booming then you know he was you know so the chem D came around you know kind of after after he had I guess you could say retired for a bit got you I actually I never liked the chem D nearly as much as everyone else no you know like I just you know and that's part of you know why I'm saying is your for me there's your original chem dog and then there's everything else you know dude you might you might have you might have you probably lost this stuff in the fire I did remember everything in the early in the very early 2000s you had that you had this really nice camera and we remember we did that little like mini greenhouse rip of the chem dog my back yeah my avatar on IG is I still have like 8 by 11 and a half photos you need to share with me bro that you I will that you printed out for me and my avatar is actually a picture of that stuff that you and I grew together I don't even know 2002 or something on it was forever we're talking about we're talking about the greenhouse like the bigger greenhouse of a small no the little one in your yard the little not the bigger one the little one in your yard now I mean it like you know he just cut out there for a second but what people should realize is that like with these stories and stuff you know we've acquired knowledge pretty well at this point and it's pretty easy to like get started and learn a lot but like in the early and mid 90s and throughout the 90s really knowledge was hard to come by and people had some pretty hokey setups in the beginning yeah sounds like it you know just because you're trying to get started you're trying to figure out stuff that worked there's not much there's not you know there's not grow stores there's not people there that'll help you get set up or learn or anything like that I mean it's not as easy to find grow books either like unless you have high times of risking your address I mean when I first moved to California the first little bit I was there you know it was like you know going to I had to go to Berkeley from Mendo which was a two and a half hour drive yeah and you know Gabby worked at the first store that opened up in Sonoma and so I only had to drive an hour and 10 minutes just so people know it's like the stories that I tell are like what I remember from him telling me this stuff but he was telling me all these stories you know 20 plus you know over 20 years ago yeah long long time you know and I mean I don't think chem started to become famous or like well known as far as to like the canna community until probably like oh six oh seven ish when skunk VA got online and started really telling the story to a wider audience mm-hmm so for I don't know years it was literally like at least on the West Coast group of us yeah it was Gabby and skunk VA and myself and I see collective we were pretty much like the only people that had it you know yeah I mean that's how they kept the cuts I mean he kind of talked about it how you know he was he was told to keep it close and he didn't want to be considered stingy with it per se but he wanted to keep his word you know to whoever he had got it from and yeah I mean it sounds like it was kept pretty pretty tight in those circles so it would have been hard for that to proliferate the culture at the time super hard you know I mean yeah it didn't it didn't leak really out of our tiny little group and I mean really like when it comes down to it like like dude said it was like it wasn't even like he gave it to like random people it was literally like the people that were closest to him that he was actively like growing and partnering and doing things with yeah you know so it kind of when you just when you when you have like these grow partnerships if people don't know like you're sharing your library as you're there so they have every opportunity to take cuts if they want to so you kind of go into it with the mindset that like what I'm sharing is what I'm sharing because we have this here I don't think I don't know if people know this but I'll just say it anyway is that I think when most famous people tell stories you know can of famous or whatever right certainly me not that I'm famous but like certainly me but I believe almost everyone it's like when they tell the story it's almost always a collaborative effort there's almost always some friends involved it's like a collection of homies doing stuff together you know and some of that sometimes depending on the ego of the person either gets included or left out yeah you know a lot of a lot of times people think oh you know I was in my basement I was all by myself nobody even knew no it's like just that's not really how how weed growing worked in my opinion it was like your best friends yeah they kind of had everything you had yeah you were helping each other keep things alive like I mean the the dog got lost in our crew by individuals numerous times just never all four of us at once yeah you know actually yeah you know and so it's like I try to be you know I don't want to I don't ever want to get accused of like you know writing people out or something like that but sometimes I don't mention it just because like I'm worried about their privacy sure maybe they've gone on to do something else or maybe they have a career or something like that that isn't the most conducive to like talking publicly about weed stories or something well in this case Gabby he and we talked about this off air he just he just didn't want to insert himself into the story he felt like he didn't do enough to warrant having like some big place in some story it wasn't a big ego flex for him on it the crazy thing is as far as I'm aware and this is just probably raw luck I don't think anyone would have the cut if he hadn't brought it west yeah there's no way no because what it seems to be is that and I was talking about this even with some like pretty unknown you called chem fam or whatever but people that are very close to chem dog and have been in that little circle for a long time it's like it got law the original cut got lost back east yeah and you know it it survived in this little teeny circle that we had so in that regard the only you know he can say he's not important you know but like if he hadn't brought it out to us then nobody would have it well and it would be a lead by by even further extension had had he not shown cloth that we we wouldn't have sour yeah I mean yeah there's all kinds of yeah there's all there's so it's like you can be you know I I joke or whatever about like you know like being in the forest got being forest gump and like stumbling around like an idiot while like fame like important things happen around me or whatever but at some points in time I think everyone has a little bit of that we're like no one no no one knew any of these stories how many 17 year old kids have have you know how many young kids how many young hippies have cracked seeds like Gabby was talking about and nothing ever came of it yeah and so a lot of it too is like you have differing memories from people and nobody had any idea that like everyone was gonna like parse every single statement yeah hoping little tidbits will bubble up so we were talking we were just talking Gabby about about how you were talking offline about how you didn't want to interject yourself into the story but I was kind of saying huh I'm trying to remember when what part of it we're talking about just just chem dog in general and I was I was basically saying that like I if I don't think if you hadn't brought it west I don't think anybody would know what it is because it in our little how much how much great how much credit do we give the postman for delivering our shit you know like in the end it's just like you know and while you are gone I think I think I'm part I think I'm part of the story sure you know but like you know that what I wanted to be my legacy was the not so dog yeah really well I mean I was working on it you know I was working on or Francis and I you know we were working on doing some breeding to make the next thing that was going to be you know better than the dog yeah and honestly I think we failed terribly you know and that's breeding you know yeah and you know it was first of all my fail terribly we actually made some really awesome seeds yeah they just weren't what we wanted you didn't hit the goal you were going for we were trying to get you know chem and chem crosses and to me nothing that we did was actually dog like got you you know like the sour was stronger on it and you know like we could keep crossing it back to the chem dog and it just I was never satisfied with what what we had gotten you know I think it was just like in the beginning phases of of the project you know of breeding and so what's interesting about that is that wait let me just say this real fast so the name not so dog I had strains called the nsd not so dog okay it would be like nsd 1 2 3 4 5 you know and because there were never dog like enough that's hilarious so that's why I say like you know I think I'm part of the story and I met people that you know we were all together at this time you know so I mean like you didn't really go into detail on sour like you mentioned meeting clock but what people may not know by extension is that clock is the sour guy the diesel guy you know clock clock people and honestly that's why that's why when we're talking about it when we're talking about it about the the AJ sour sure okay I thought that that was the stuff that came from clock you know and you know maybe they you know had rejuvenated it sure as we had rejuvenated but but you know made some but I think I thought that that's where the stuff originally came from and I do like the story that Francis was telling about it being accidental like yeah that's that's what I think all you know I think it was all true I can't like come on the show and say Francis you were wrong you got that completely wrong most of it seemed pretty right up that's good if you did though you could you could say that I mean it does get it does get interesting when you talk to different people because one of the things that Matt and I have learned is that when you take 20 year old memories and you start comparing them what people remember and what stands out and like what there could be some some variations that they remember things a little different like you know the the NSD or whatever the whole reason why I came up with that name was because I was trying to join IG and every name I came up with they rejected I'll tell a story for a minute there was this time where because there was only like four of us that had the dog a lot of times Gabby would go and he would buy some dog off whoever had it the freshest and at the time our buddy IC Collective was living in Tahoe and Gabby went up to Tahoe and got some dog and he came back and I remember going out it was like dark and he picked me up and we were it was outside of Willets which is a little town in Mendo and he's like dude I want you to see this stuff it's wild and like so I'm in the dark and I open this bag and I stick my head in there and I'm like dude I don't know I don't know it's it doesn't remind me of the dog it's not so it's not so dog I don't I don't know it doesn't and he was like it looks so frosty it's so amazing I can't believe it and I was like I think it's a different cut and it turned out that IC had been partying a little bit and there must have been some kind of like strain mix up or label mistake or he won't screw up on some level and he filled his entire room with what he thought was the dog and it wasn't and I like remembered that it was like this random joke not so dog and so I popped it into the IG and it worked and I was like oh well I guess that's my handle you know but yeah but what we're trying so I also named our seeds I also named not so dog yeah I mean remember the labels and that's the one two three four five and six we what we were trying to do is we were trying to get like the power and the density of the dog in the same strain as like this we wanted like the frost of the skunk and like the stink and some of herps gonna get confusing frost of the skunk or the super skunk which came west Gabby well that's something that we could clear from since he seeds is the one that was white so that could that could be that seeds that she was white so that could veer us off because so I had I I think I might and maybe I'm wrong maybe I've been operating under a misconception for a really long time but when when you and in that era when we met and you gave me the dog and you gave me the skunk did you give me the va skunk or did you give me a different skunk I was pretty sure that you had given me the VA skunk because when we grew it together all those times you would tell me the story and you would never be like oh I lost that one but I have this different one now that's really good well it was the skunk and then there was the super skunk from sensei seeds we did buy some of those seeds so which one would you compare to the but the one in the catalog well that was the super skunk from sensei seeds I mean I was telling you the story that you would look at the picture you'd look at the picture and hold it up next to your buds if you'd be like yeah oh yeah we would get Gabby had original copies of Neville's catalogs there I am sorry about that Gabby had original copies of Neville's catalogs and like we would clip off when we were gardening together we would clip off side nugs off off skunk and hold it up to the picture and Gabby would be like yep that's it and it would look exactly like to the T what was on that picture so did the VA skunk look exactly like the one in the catalog that's what we're trying to figure out no I don't think boom you know like I said it was unbelievable how uniform the shit was and exactly like when you pop it was the only time ever in the history of the universe that somebody pops the seed and gets exactly what they're expecting yeah I mean it was like why would I keep all 10 of them when this one is exactly what I'm wanting sure you know so so there was the seed grown sensei stuff and then there was the VA the clone that we picked up so what I don't know picked up was far in advance of the sensei is what you know is what I got from you at your house in Sonoma I lost it when I got in trouble and I didn't have and at that time that was like the Kush sour diesel era and it was like nobody was interested in old cuts and it was really hard to get stuff backed up so I've been hunting it for a million years and I pull on strings I would still like to have the original sensei super scum I think you could put that shit next to any weed today and you know had the look had the nose it's pretty much perfect weed as close as you can get to and so one thing I disagreed with you about on the podcast was when you were talking about you know it's all about the potency and I agree that it was some of the most potent weed of its time but what made the chem dog amazing was the terp profile and that's what I wanted out of the breeding project was to get because I wanted to get some vigor and because the chem dog was such a hurting plant you know I think the way you described it was accurate Matt you said the plant would consume itself yeah before you'd finish it like it was just trying to finish and still have a green leaf on it not like you know like it's two weeks to go everything is yellow you're not done yet but like this plant is dying you know it was it was a difficult plant to grow and we didn't have the resources that we did do today you know like if I was growing the chem dog today I would definitely do leaf tissue analysis you know during the crop to see what it's taking and because that's smart back in the day we were guessing yeah we didn't have these resources and we were failing I mean the funny part you know now the chem dog grown to a point where it's gonna die was still better than all the other weed out there yeah you know so he would do this thing where he was fully organic when we met and I wasn't and uh he wouldn't call it chem dog because he's like I grow organic I'm not gonna call my weed chem you know but then there would be this funny thing where he'd look at me and he goes but it does like gh3 part and it won't eat itself quite as much if you needed that you know that's because that's what Greg was doing okay well other people were doing like when I was organic I never had done the hydro you know yeah so so I'll tell this part of the story briefly um this part of the story that I like to tell is you know Greg called it the chem dog and he specifically told me you have to grow this one chem because it's so hard to feed it you'll never get a successful crop out of it if you try to you know grow it organic and for me that was like a challenge sure I was like well I'm definitely not gonna grow it using hydro you know and man I used to do so much trying to feed my plants indoors you know with organics I not only had like guano teas but I used to make like vegetable scrap teas and all this nasty like anaerobic shit going on like smelled so bad and you know doing whatever I could trying to feed my plants organically and one day I read on the back of this flyer from a hydronutrient company it was a actually green air products they had a hydronutrient that never was successful but on the back of the whole thing and they were explaining what's the difference between organic and inorganic okay and you know so inorganic is minerals and organics are minerals mineral compounds that are held together by carbon and that they need to be broken down into their more mineral form for the plant to uptake it yeah and then it says the minerals are the building blocks of all life on the planet you know and out it was like a a moment for me when a light switch went on and I was like oh maybe I need to try this and I did you know and I don't think it was the GH3 part at first I don't even think that shit existed you know it was like a general hydroponics they had like a three-part powder yeah like a a micro and then the grow of the bloom and um yeah but the first time I fed my plants hydronutrients even in like a cocoa or peat moss type stuff you know and what I did and what I still believe to this day is the best is using mineral nutrients and adding some organics that way you know you're giving the plant everything that it needs right and then you can give it some things that it appreciates and a little humility not thinking like we know plants only need 16 elements well you know now we know when we give the plant silica they benefit from it they may not die without it but if you're trying to get the highest quality product it's helpful you know when you use properly and so um yeah that's what I try to do is use minerals add some organic additives compost tea you know when you can do that um that's how I think you get the best quality and quality and quantity I agree I that's what I have an indoor grow and the other thing that I'll say is and I'm gonna have to let you guys go in a few minutes but no worries I can finish with this part is a lot of people think they're growing organic because they have a like 100 gallon smart pot filled with ocean forest soil right and and I gave give it just some water and they think that their product is superior because they didn't use any nutrients sure like just because they made it to harvest you know I don't think if I think if you're growing in a container and you're trying to grow organically I think you're kidding yourself if you think that you're getting the best like the most nutritious food out of it yeah most nutritious medicinal product out of it yeah now to take that to the next part is I think the best medicine or food will be grown in the ground with soil that's been nurtured and loved so I didn't become an organic snob to like somebody that instantly went full on cam and you know I think you know if you nurture the land you know you can grow the most amazing product directly in ground yeah you know if you have to go we can continue it tomorrow too let's do that but I'll tell I'll tell one super quick story which is uh Gabby had gone to the organ country fair for a long time and so he used to work there and so once we became really good friends he brought me up there a number of years and I worked the crews that he was already part of right and so it's outside of Eugene or whatever and this was like the heart of organic weed growing land yeah and I would come up there with like my hydro super skunk and my hydro chem dog my hydro Mendo P and super dog that Gabby and I had made together and I was like the only one there with salt weed and they were all like salt is terrible only cheating evil bad people use salt and then they would be like but this weed is that these these guys have amazing it's pretty good yeah I don't know it's pretty good you know and so we were like teaching each other because they were like oh we would just like they were mixing all their soil and like in like cement welcome to breeder syndicate 2.0 where we explore the history of a clandestine scene researching everything from cannabis strain history old smuggling tales from the first person perspective to breeding science and news on current subculture I'm your host Matthew and I'll occasionally be joined by my homie not so dog breeder and grower from Mendocino to speak on these subjects and sometimes interview other participants our goal is to document this history before it's written by corporations and others who just weren't there let's start writing some wrongs welcome to the underground