What the favorite pot strains of Dodgers and Giants fans say about the archrivals
The first postseason series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants is an archrivalry of epic proportions — in cannabis as well as baseball.
That’s because San Francisco is essentially the birthplace of the country’s legal weed movement because of activists fighting for access to medical marijuana for terminally ill patients during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s. And today L.A. is the forward-looking epicenter of the cannabis industry.
To celebrate the historic face-off between the baseball- and pot-powerhouses (Game 3 in the best-of-five series is Monday evening at Chavez Ravine), we checked in with a few cannabis retailers with a bead on both markets to see not only who’s smoking what in each team’s hometown, but also if there are strains or products that symbolize each city’s contributions to California’s cannabis culture.
“I think one of the oldest debates in California cannabis is which city has the best genetics,” Tyson Rossi, senior vice president of product and revenue for the Culver City-based dispensary chain MedMen, said in an email. “And that rivalry is on full display when you consider the genetics that have put each city on the map GSC [a.k.a. Girl Scout Cookies] in S.F. and OG Kush in L.A.”
If you’re looking to pay combustible homage to San Francisco, Rossi said you could hardly do better than LitHouse’s Dark Dosi, a GSC cross (with Face Off OG).
When it comes to the iconic OG Kush (“L.A. has always had the best OGs in the world and still does,” according to Rossi) to pay your respects to the boys in blue, he singles out Cali Lotus’ Blem Unruly OG.
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Overall, Rossi said L.A. consumers gravitate toward what he calls “active products” — sativa strains, portable vapes and infused pre-rolls — while San Francisco has a thing for indicas, concentrates and sleep-related products.
For anyone who buys into the if-we-won-while-doing-it-before, let’s-keep-doing-it sports superstition mindset, it’s worth reading what Rossi had to offer about consumer behavior during last year’s World Series that ended with a Dodgers win over Tampa Bay in six games.
“An interesting trend we saw last year during the World Series in L.A. was an uptick in products that were blue the week of the World Series — go Dodgers!” he said, citing Cannabiotix’s Blueberry Flower, Heavy Hitters’ Blue Dream vape cartridges and Kiva Confections’ Midnight Blueberry Camino gummies, among the top-sellers at that time.
According to L.A.-based delivery service Emjay, those same blueberry gummies have been among the top-selling products in both L.A. and San Francisco — at least over the last three months — so make of that what you will.
Emjay’s data also shows consumer behavior in both cities generally in line with what MedMen’s Rossi observed. San Francisco users prefer edibles and vapes while L.A.’s favor flower.
During last year’s series, Emjay’s number-crunchers noticed the demand for pre-rolled joints spike in the L.A. market (the service hadn’t yet expanded to San Francisco, so there’s no historical comparison) indicating perhaps that local sports fans were too focused on their TVs to spend much time focusing on the rolling tray.
Strain-wise in L.A., one of Emjay’s bestselling strains as of late is Pacific Stone’s Blue Dream. Yes, it’s totally on theme; though in fairness, the Blueberry X Haze sativa-dominant hybrid is perennially popular across the Golden State and not just in L.A.
As far as a strain that symbolically represents the home team, Emjay’s recently conducted survey of budtenders shows the fixation is firmly on blue, with the top recommendation being Cannatique’s Blueberry Cruffin, a Blue Cookie x Platinum x DJ Short Blueberry cross (which is worth pointing out is grown in Oakland).
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According to San Francisco-based Eaze, another delivery service with a foot (well, wheels) in both markets, weed heads in both cities have more in common than not; ordering behavior over the last year shows edibles as the top category in both markets, with 805 Glue as the strain topping the two markets when it comes to buying pre-rolled joints.
The biggest difference in consumer consumption came in flower sales, with Los Angeles favoring San Fernando Valley OG and San Francisco gravitating toward Tangie Cookies, a GSC Thin Mint X Tangie cross, a divide that echoes Rossi’s point about each city’s prized genetics. (With the Tangie here referring to the 1990s-era strain Tangerine Dream, there’s an appropriate nod to the orange hue in the Giants team colors.)
If you don’t end up smoking your support for the Dodgers by blazing an OG Kush (preferably one with a hint of blueberries) or expressing your fealty for the Giants by firing up a GSC-related strain (something with a citrusy profile would really hammer it home, no?), rest assured that just about any THC-containing product you consume in the Golden State today has a historical connection to one (or both) of the hometowns of the baseball teams facing off against each other.
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