San Francisco is a city that has brought the world a heady combination of both cannabis culture and cannabis flowers. Long before California enacted the world’s first medical marijuana laws in 1996, outlaws (later called activists) in the City by the Bay were growing weed. A longtime bastion of rulebreakers and eccentrics of all kinds, San Francisco is where a young Joe Rutherford first learned to grow weed through a skylight in the pantry of his family’s Bernal Heights home. Today, he’s better known as Champelli, named for the strain he grew and popularized in the ’90s. The smoke circle is small, the hash is potent, and we’re in San Francisco when Champelli explains how he’s back in town after an almost decade-long hiatus spent evading the law abroad. He’s rebuilding his brand and, along with Neil Dellacava of Chronic Culture, hosting a dinner the next day that includes the most decadent trend in weed smoking: 2 grams of flower and .5 grams of rosin burning all at once, hash holes.
“Weed’s always kind of been making something out of nothing,” Champelli says. “We grow a plant and now, all of a sudden, you could be getting some money for the plant or helping some people out with their condition. It’s just kind of this gift in a way.”
Whether it’s in language, style, design, technology, or activism, many of the world’s-most impactful creations (and types of cannabis) were born in garages in the San Francisco Bay Area. Champelli’s brand includes his history producing music with Bay Area legends like Mac Dre who included him in a shout-out in his 2004 track “She Neva Seen.”
She only sees me, with European keysShe only sees me, with woodgrain SpreesShe only sees me, with Champelli …
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Author: Ellen Holland / High Times
