What are your must-have items before a sesh? Good Grades and Leafly asked your favorite smokers what they need before sparking up.
Every week, Leafly and Good Grades Dispensary in Queens, New York ask a cannabis lover to name the three essential items that they can’t smoke without. Check back each week to see how our favorite New York stoners do their thing.
162-03 Jamaica Ave, Queens, NY — recreational
4.6(10)
Good Grades dispensary is Queens, New York’s first woman-owned dispensary. Follow Good Grades on Leafly for more products and reviews.
Dab mother Queenee from House of Queenee told Good Grades the 3 things she needs before dabbing up:
“The first thing I can’t dab without is high quality terps. Keep it at the right temperature, and make sure there’s a great terp in their for my pain management.”
“The second thing I can’t dab without is good glass, or my PuffCo. And I’m gonna add the hot knife, because who wants to lose their terps to a metal dab tool. Having good quality glass ensures that your sesh is gonna go off without a hitch.”
“And the third thing that I cannot dab without is iso and q-tips. Always make sure you clean the mouthpiece of your glass before you use it or share. Always make sure you have q-tips to take take off your residual dab, and always make sure you have something to monitor the temperature of your dabs before you take it.”
Cora from NOWAVE: 3 things I can’t smoke without [September 5, 2024]
Cora from NOWAVE Extracts told Good Grades the 3 things she needs before lighting up:
The first thing I can’t smoke without is gonna be my PuffCo. I’m definitely a concentrate girl, I love my hashes. Live rosin, live resin, I love it all. The water also adds another level of smoothness. And as everybody knows, concentrates are gonna be the cleanest way to consume.
The second thing I can’t smoke without is gonna be my cannagar for sure. If you know me, I like to smoke the best flower in the room at all times. These are custom, hand-rolled. This is from my boy Bad Services. He can even put your name in the spliff. It’s super dope, and I love a creative smoke.
“Last but not least, I’m gonna need my kief at all times. I don’t use any grabba or anything with my spliffs, so this is a great way to add some extra trichomes and terpenes to the great flower that you’re already smoking. I usually grab this in the zip (ounce), and I’ll dose it out in little gram jars to make it easier to travel around with.
Baby Osama: 3 things I can’t smoke without [August 26, 2024]
New York musician Baby Osama told Good Grades the 3 things she needs before lighting up:
“The first thing I cannot smoke without is grabba. It’s gotta be the hot grabba, too. I don’t even care if it’s fake or real. It’s just gotta be grabba. I cannot smoke without this.”
“Second thing is my papers, bro. I need my Bob Marley’s bro.”
“Third thing is my Za, bro. This is Third Eye Organics. Straight pain, I need that.”
Shiest Bubz: 3 things I can’t smoke without [August 2, 2024]
New York cannabis pioneer Shiest Bubz (founder of Legacy Adventures) told Good Grades the 3 things he needs before lighting up:
“First, I need that good ole pack. I need it to be in a glass jar. No mylar. And I need my buds looking like that (points to Venom Runtz by Doobie Labs).”
“Second thing I’m going to need is some unflavored tobacco wraps.”
“A lighter’s a given, so the third thing I’m going to need is water. Gotta stay hyrdrated. And not only that, but no plastic, only glass.”
This coalition of legacy operators is united and ready to thrive in New York’s legal market.
It’s been almost four years since cannabis was legalized for all adults in New York—and two years since the state’s first adult-use store opened. But many of New York’s first licensed dispensary owners are still fighting for a fair shake on the legal market.
To balance the odds, Flower City Dispensary owners Britni and Jayson Tantalo unified the New York Retail Cannabis Association (NYCRA). The NYCRA comprises hundreds of dispensary owners determined to make the most of New York’s historic licensing program. In 2021, the state’s MRTA law put those most impacted by cannabis prohibition first in line for dispensary licenses. But the road to opening has been full of unforeseen challenges.
NYCRA co-founder and president Britni Tantalo told Leafly that “stringent marketing and packaging regulations, limited indoor cultivation and canopy capacity, and the early entry of large out of state companies to the market put a burden on local operators.” NYCRA leaders believe the current regulations are stopping locally-owned dispensaries from growing into sustainable businesses.
This year, NYCRA and Leafly partnered to help New York dispensaries navigate the many challenges facing the new legal market. Keep reading to see how we’re helping New York dispensaries bounce back, and reach out to NYCRA to learn more about joining their community of cannabis operators.
The challenges of opening New York’s first adult-use dispensaries
Of the 463 licenses granted in the first round so far, only 227 are open for business. Another 1,400 or so license applicants are waiting for the state’s approval to open—but it could take until 2026 for all of them to be reviewed.
Many applicants had to secure and pay for their store’s property before receiving their license. That means some have been paying rent on commercial spaces for months without any assurances on when they’d be approved to open, if at all.
The Tantalos waited two years for approval to open Flower City before getting the green light. To make matters worse, they watched unlicensed shops spread like wildfire while they paid rent for a legal shop they couldn’t operate.
“We had to borrow against our homes, borrow from family and friends and/or downsize operations [just] to open a location. It placed everyone in a position of financial constraint and therefore mental and emotional instability.”
Britni Tantalo, Flower City Dispensary
To weather the storm, members of the New York Cannabis Retail Association embrace a philosophy of collaboration over competition.
NYCRA Vice President Jayson Tantalo explains, “We share valuable resources such as business plans, SOPs, along with just emotional support, which have proven essential for licensed operators who may not know where to start.”
Here’s why hundreds of NY dispensary openings have been delayed
In the Bronx, the House of Hibernica endured multiple delays before finally being cleared to open this April. “It was a whole year from when we applied for the license, to opening,” said Hibernica co-owner Bojan Trpcevski. “We had to have a store so we could apply. Then the injunction happened in 2022. So we were paying rent for a year,” Trpcevski said.
In November 2022, a judge blocked hundreds of stores from opening for six months as part of a controversial injunction. The lawsuit that caused the injunction was filed by an out of state resident who said the program’s social equity requirements violated the US constitution.
Just as the first applicants were being approved to open in 2022, multipleinjunctions placed the rollout in jeopardy. Dispensary owners were on the hook for real estate, operations costs, and private investments. Delays compounded as the state’s resources and attention went to the court case. When the first injunctions finally began to lift in May 2023, the plaintiff in one case received a license as part of a settlement agreement. By then, many owners were already 6 months behind their business projections.
Then, this October, a group of unlicensed dispensaries that were shut down for allegedly selling cannabis without a license also took the state to court, and won. They claimed they were put out of business without receiving due process as part of Mayor Eric Adams’ Operation Padlock, which has reportedly padlocked over 1,000 unlicensed shops since kicking off this spring. Last month, a judge ruled that the operation “stands against the cornerstone of American democracy and procedural due process.” The ruling could encourage unlicensed shops to re-open, adding uncertainty for operators as newly-approved stores open almost daily.
Operators like Budega’s Alex Norman have had no time to place their dreams on hold. “I started my brand three years ago in anticipation of an opportunity like this,” Norman told Leafly days after the injunction came down. “But I’m not gonna say it’s gonna stop me.” Over a year after the injunction and still not open, Norman remains dedicated to seeing things through with Budega after decades in the legacy market.
House of Hibernica’s team said they had no idea it would be this difficult when they started the process of applying. “We thought it would be similar to the restaurant business,” Trpcevski said, “because we opened a few before. We didn’t expect that we were going to wait so long, and that every small thing is going to stop the whole process.”
How much is a New York dispensary license worth?
The unforeseen delays have some license holders thinking about selling equity, or their entire license to the highest bidder. “The valuation is running from $600,000 to $800,000,” according to Daron Hudson, owner of Brooklyn Legends Dispensary, which is licensed and waiting to open. “If you have a location secured, it’s going up to $2,000,000,” Hudson told Leafly this fall.
Hudson is also a board member at Housing Works, New York’s first retail dispensary, which opened in December 2022. But opening his own store has proven much more difficult than getting the well-known nonprofit off the ground.
To help with start-up costs, the state originally promised owners a private equity fund to support store build outs. But the fund failed to launch.
“The access to capital and other resources that were promised to all of us CAURD applicants was simply not there. When you are promised a turnkey dispensary with low interest rates and access to grants from your state regulators, you don’t plan to obtain these things for yourself. When we realized that the promises were not going to be fulfilled anytime soon, if at all, we had no choice but to pivot. Most of us could not find investors because investor confidence was low due to the failed rollout.”
Britni Tantalo, Flower City Dispensary
Now, a new loan fund may provide some relief. But Hudson and other owners have already begun vetting investors who can help them get opened. And they’re finding that these new potential partners have far more leverage than the state’s regulations intended.
How NYCRA and Leafly are helping New York dispensaries thrive
Leafly is proud to help bring New York dispensary owners new legal customers from across the state. Jayson Tantalo said dispensaries need help creating “brand recognition and demonstrating what legal cannabis looks like here in New York.” That’s why we’re leaning into content and activations that represent the very best of New York cannabis.
Our content partnerships with stores like Good Grades and Trends use the power of Leafly’s strain and product database to help keep shoppers informed about what they’re buying. In-person activations around the state are also helping first-time legal shoppers discover the top dispensaries and cultivators in their area. With the both the state, and federal laws, limiting the ways dispensaries and cannabis brands can advertise, every new customers counts.
“Partnering with Leafly brings tremendous value to our organization. Advertising and marketing are extremely difficult to navigate and complex to understand. By providing this platform to our members. With almost 20 years of experience in search engine optimization, I understand the challenges involved in effectively advertising. The terms being offered by Leafly to our members are particularly valuable because they make customers more accessible.”
Jayson Tantalo, Vice President of NYCRA and co-owner of Flower City Dispensary
Leafly and NYCRA also work closely with store operators to analyze data that improves their performance. We’re going the extra mile to make the cannabis industry accessible for all – including those negatively impacted by the failed war on drugs.
“I had Leafly before the legal industry even started,” said Hudson. “It was for the strains. Back in the legacy era, if somebody was selling me cannabis and said this is purple something, I’d go see what purple is on Leafly.”
Since 2010, Leafly has provided cannabis patients, users, growers, advocates, and researchers with groundbreaking data that’s helped normalize the plant in 38 legal states and over 40 counties. With New York City consuming more cannabis than any other city in the world, the state’s new legal market presents an enormous opportunity for residents and visitors to safely and responsibly support local growers and sellers.
Now let’s get to work!
Click here to find your closest New York legal dispensaries on Leafly.
Pushing Pluto by the brand To The Moon—sold at Cookies‘ Culture House NYC—is an outrageously special strain. This strain is tricky in a very good way, and that’s what makes it wonderful. This Pushing Pluto strain is the best-smelling strain I’ve got this year! My first time opening the package, the most beautiful scent of berries, grapes, and cream filled the air and the room. The scent was so beautiful, it was like listening to Lucie in the band Poise sing magically. Heavenly.
The crystallization on this strain is next level, it’ll be all over your fingers! The resin on Pushing Pluto should be in the Guinness Book.
Now the fun, tricky part. On my first hit a powerful, skunky, zesty favor reveals itself, then it’s very floral with hints of berries and a sweet, candy aftertaste. The scent when you first smoke it is very different, but it’s still beautiful to enjoy.
Pushing Pluto delivers a head high that has a balanced, very unique, clear, focused feel. It’s holiday weed for music and socializing. The body high is very good. Not too strong, but the soothing relaxation it brings is very enjoyable! This is a prefect strain for a fun day or night! You can’t go wrong with this.—Lord Figo
90-94 Outstanding: a cannabis product of superior character and style
85-89 Very good: a weed with special qualities
80-84 Good: a solid, well-made weed
75-79 Mediocre: a smokeable weed that may have minor flaws
50-74 Not recommended
How we rate
Dried, cured, packaged, and sold buds, reviewed from bag in tastings, are given a single score. We focus on aroma, taste, effect, look, pedigree, cultivation method, and more. Special Designations Our editors focus on excellent, widely available ganja at a reasonable price. Special qualities include:
Top-shelf: It ain’t cheap, or necessarily plentiful, but it’s really good. Welcome to the top shelf. Smart Buys: Fine, affordable, broadly available pot.
Leafly News cannabis ratings and ethics
Leafly News aims to retain and expand its expertise, authority, and trust.
Expertise is built through years of reviews, interviews with growers, visits to weed regions, and accumulated knowledge about cannabis horticulture, flavors, history, and culture. Leafly News’ editors and freelancers have a combined 50 years of experience with cannabis. We aim to be accurate and independent, with policies including:
Actual tastings—If we didn’t smoke it, we’re not reviewing it. At Leafly Ratings, all ratings come from multiple tastings.
Independence—Leafly expert reviewers are paid by Leafly and are independent. We accept review samples with no promise of coverage. Leafly rating staff cannot accept bribes. We generally pay our own expenses and report on what the readers want to see.