Monthly Archives: February 2019

Tee Shirts from the Collection: The Tees of Mystery

Lemon Tree 1

Not long ago I found myself in a t-shirt shop that calls itself a men’s clothing company.

Here in Santa Cruz, that’s not reaching.  Hoodies and tees imprinted with bold designs are big with the teen-through-twenties crowd.  We’ve no shortage of old surfer dudes and Peter Pans who are still “twenties” in their mind, either.

This particular store prints its own tees and hoodies, with designs and messages aimed at locals and their interests.   Mostly, I get the messages, or just understand that skulls and tentacles and fangs are “in” this year

What I didn’t understand:  a whole  wall of t-shirts printed with cartoons of leering, humanoid lemons.  And the worlds “Lemon Tree,” or “Lemon Life.”

Lemon Life

I stared at them for a few minutes.  Enlightenment didn’t come.

I’m a card-carrying introvert, so I didn’t even think of asking the clerk.  I went home and hit the Internet instead.  But it didn’t help.

I found a website or two for “Lemon Tree” and the “ever-more-popular Lemon Lifestyle.” There’d been an outdoor Lemon Lifestyle Concert.  Lemon Life tees were being pushed. There were boasts that the Lemon Lifestyle was taking America by storm.

They just didn’t say what “Lemon Tree” or the “Lemon Lifestyle” actually was.

Defeated, I returned to the store. The clerk said one word

“Marijuana.”

Recreational marijuana is lately legal to all in California. All sorts of new companies now breed and sell one strain of cannabis or another: as herb, in candy bars, in  cookies, in any form that you want.  Just head to your local dispensary.  No prescription required, but bring your ID.

Lemon Tree 2

For the fastidious pothead, cannabis strains are now reviewed in much the same way as wine, right down to the jargon. From an industry website:

“Lemon Tree cannabis strain is an award-winning evenly balanced hybrid with a THC level that can reach a whopping 25 percent. It is known for its sharp diesel scent and similarly sour flavor, accented by subtle notes of lemon and citrus.”

More bluntly: Lemon Tree makes you pucker while it puts you under the table.  That’s just what consumers of haute cannabis want to know.  Along with exactly where under the table you’ll end up, and how you’ll feel when you land there.

The clerk explained that “Lemon Life” is just a clothing line that the Lemon Tree’s developers launched along with their cannabis products.  (I found out later that the clothing store prints the tees for them.)

He also said that tie-in businesses are pretty common in the cannabis trade.  One entrepreneur even uses his cannabis business to promote his career as a rapper.

It made sense. If people will buy a t-shirt with the name of their favorite beer, why shouldn’t they buy one bearing the name of their favorite cannabis strain?  With suitable cool illustration? It’s what Americans do.

Since then, I’ve learned to identify cannabis tees, though they’re more difficult to ID than, say, wacky craft beer tees.

Craft beer tees always display the word “brewery” or “beer” or “ale,” even if the beer in question is Icthyosaurus Pale Ale (“Gimme an Icky!”) or Moose Drool.

Cannabis tees rarely display the word “cannabis” or even “marijuana.” What you get is a funky cannabis strain name that nobody but a user would understand. And a funny graphic.  It’s a lot like a death metal tee, except that the name is always something vaguely edible.  For example, Golden State Banana:

Golden State Banana

Say the experts: “Golden State Banana is a fruity indica cross of Ghost OG and Banana Kush. This semi-sedative strain fills the consumer’s mind with euphoria while wrapping the limbs in a warm, relaxing sensation. The aroma is a mixture of Ghost OG’s pungent, citrus terpenes and Banana Kush’s tropical scents, creating a rich bouquet with bright floral sweetness.”

A refined statement, though a stark counterpoint to the implied YEE HAW from the t-shirt’s banana-waving, dancing ape.  Oh well, everybody’s got pretensions.

Both Lemon Life and Golden State Banana tees are the work of Jimbo Phillips, the Santa Cruz commercial artist whose work I admire. Both companies are local: probably.  Cannabis entrepreneurs don’t put their contact information on the web, and frankly I wouldn’t either.

My favorite cannabis tee, however, features a three-eyed cow in a bowler hat. And it has a story.

Korova 3 Eyed Cow Marijuana Tee

Korovoa Edibles is a long-time player in cannabis-laced candies and baked goods for the California market: first for the state’s medical marijuana dispensaries. And now for the completely legalized California cannabis industry.

The name “Korova” means “cow” in Russian.  In the movie “A Clockwork Orange,” the droogs visit the Korova Milk Bar to quaff milk packed with powerful drugs. In the movie, Malcom McDowell wears a black bowler hat.  As for the third eye, you’re on your own.  But you get the general idea.

Back when marijuana could only be sold by medical prescription, Korova’s motto was “unrivaled potency.”  They used to make something called the Black Bar, a candy bar loaded with 1000 milligrams of THC, and another called the 5150 with “only” 500 milligrams.

That much THC in one sitting is basically unthinkable. Massive overkill. A Black Bar was meant to be eaten a little bit at a time, and labelled as such. But not everybody reads labels.  “It’s just a candy bar — right?”

If you were a newbie, and didn’t pay attention, a Korova bar wouldn’t just put you under the table; it’d dig a ten-foot hole under that table and drop you down it.

When Colorado legalized marijuana, Korova-strength bars went on the market there. And they seriously screwed up some naive new users.  So when California legalized,  the THC in one discrete edible was limited to 100 milligrams.  That was the end of the Black Bar, and “unrivaled potency.” Korova’s motto is now merely “Unrivaled.”

But Korova will still sell you a bag of ten cannabis laced cookies — each with 100 milligrams of THC.  And it’s legal!

Just don’t get the munchies.

To close, I just want to say that marijuana is fast becoming part of mainstream above-ground America, and I’ve got the t-shirts to prove it.  From tees for the local dispensaries, to tees for marijuana-themed clothing lines, and even tourism tees.

It’s here, it’s everywhere, it’ll never go away. Smear a little marijuana butter on your toast, and lax out.

And check out some more marijuana-related tees.

Roswell NM Alien with Marijuana Tee

Roswell NM Tourist Tee with Pothead Alien

Seedles Clothing Marijuana Tee

Seedless is a California-based clothing company that sells marijuana-themed tees and provides marketing services to marijuana-based events and projects.

 

Emerald Goddess Marijuana Hydroponics Tee

Emerald Goddess, and other Emerald Harvest products, don’t on the face of it claim to be anything but general-purpose plant foods and fertilizers. But their website emphasizes marijuana cultivation. The tee’s illustration hardly seems aimed at the backyard gardener. Unless that gardener is growing his or her allowed six marijuana plants under California law.

Greenway Santa Cruz Marijuana Dispensary 1

Santa Cruz Greenway was a first-generation marijuana dispensary, from the time when marijuana was available only for medical reasons and by prescription. The dispensary has changed hands and is now known as Kindpeoples. Even after legalization, dispensaries cultivate a public image of responsibility. Local control of licensing laws means that dispensaries must maintain good relationships with the community if they want to stay in business.

 

Tee Shirts from the Collection: Roller Derby, Joan Weston, and the Babes of Wrath

Babes of Wrath Monterey Roller Derby Tee

My t-shirt collection is not without a few women’s roller derby tees.  I like them. They’re colorful, bombastic, and fun.

From these tees I’ve learned that women’s roller derby teams usually take tough-girl names — Harbor Hellcats, Boardwalk Bombshells, Cannery Rollers, Dames of Destruction, and so on.

One t-shirt in particular is my favorite:  it depicts a hard blonde with skates in her hand, gazing up at a dry California hillside. Her face is hidden. The league name is given as “Monterey Bay Derby Dames.”  The team name? “The Babes of Wrath.”

That name brings a smile to this old John Steinbeck fan. Monterey Bay here in Central California is Steinbeck territory, along with nearby Salinas where Steinbeck grew up.

I grew up in the same state, a little later and a ways distant. Still, the people who raised me were of the sort that Steinbeck described: cleaned-up and better-paid and working factories now instead of the fields. But in their youth they’d picked the same crops and drunk the same wine and fought the same fights.  Steinbeck celebrated them. To read his books was to read about where I came from.

So he was one of my early heroes.  One of the others?  We’ll get there.

Like Steinbeck, Roller Derby was big in the mid-20th century: Leagues, tours, television: the game was everywhere. By the early ‘70s it had lost popularity and faded: only to be resurrected by women who wanted to have what the old roller derby queens seemed to have.

Here’s the popular version of old-time women’s Roller Derby: all those wheeled woman warriors from the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s were tough, gum-snapping working girls from rough blue-collar neighborhoods.  They joined the Derby for adventure, and because they were looking for something better than 50 hours a week on the bottling line at Blotz Beer while fending off the grabby foreman. They wanted to see the world, and they were ready for anything.

The truth was that the players — men and women — were of modest background. They were not famously bold or assertive.  But life could be hard; options could be few. And they saw a chance to do better in Derby than they’d do anywhere else. They found their inner toughness along the way, it’s true, or they didn’t last.

Those old Derby girls (and guys) worked for promoters.  Today’s Derby girls very often run their own leagues as non-profits, with fund-raisers and volunteer work weekends and all that.  They don’t usually get paid, or not much.

So, why do this? Because for women who spend their days behind desks wrestling spreadsheets and doing combat at budget meetings or contract reviews, it’s a chance to let your inner tough dame out to rage.

And so women’s flat-track roller derby was born and propagated.  Today’s derby queens skate on flat courses in gyms and auditoriums; the big portable banked tracks that that old derby teams hauled around are expensive to store and move and maintain.  Once you eliminate the banked tracks, fielding your own local league becomes doable.

Strap on the skates and pads. Position your helmet. Don a derby name like Neon Nightmare or Hell Louise or Skirt Vonnagut.  Glide out onto the track with your arms raised while the announcer shouts your name and the crowd roars. The spreadsheets can wait: prepare to do damage.  And take some.

Who knows? You might be the next Joan Weston: my other childhood hero.

Joan Weston, the Blonde Bomber. Queen of all jammers and women’s captain of the San Francisco Bay Bombers out of blue-collar Oakland, Calfornia.  The Bay Bombers were the finest Derby team ever, or so my 12-year-old self thought. They had my allegiance like the Giants never did.

I watched the black-and-white broadcasts religiously from 30 miles away on the old Philco.  Hell, they might have been color, but the the Philco wasn’t. Live local games at night, recorded games on Saturday afternoon, all on KTVU Channel Two, the big independent TV station.

Joan Weston was five foot eleven of yellow-haired woman athlete from a time when that was an impressive height for a man.  She was strong, physically accomplished, and a master of any sport that she tried her hand at. That’s who the woman on the t-shirt reminds me of.

Weston played pivot: she could break away from the pack like a jammer to try for a score, or hang back with the blockers and play defense.

The point was that in this mob of medium-sized drab-haired woman skaters there was this — no other words suffice — giant blonde Viking in a black helmet, dominating the game.

There was Joan Weston, bursting out of the pack to go raiding for points. There was Joan Weston, holding the line against enemy jammers swooping up from behind.  She could knock them off their skates with a well-placed hip- or shoulder- bump, or a hard forearm. She might even send them over the rail.  And when she was out jamming and the other team’s blockers knocked her off her skates, she was up on her feet in an instant to charge back into battle.

Baseball was fine. Basketball was fine.  But watching Joanie Weston was like watching a superhero.  She even had an arch-nemesis, the almost-as-good but unforgiveably sneaky Ann Calvallo.  People still argue about how how much of Roller Derby was pre-scripted, and that rivalry probably was.  But the rest? I’m not so sure.  Those games looked real. The damage the players took certainly was.

Amidst all the sweat and flying teeth and cheesy spectacle, Joan Weston  was a modest, kindly woman who just wanted to use her talents. She was a monster in college softball, but there was no good career in that game.  In her time only the Derby offered a woman of her physical skills a way to make good money in professional sports. \So she went out there and did battle, and well. She made her money and got out in one piece — as she often said, all she’d ever really wanted.

In the ‘60s, in fact, she was America’s highest-paid woman athlete.  With the caveat that Roller Derby wasn’t a “respectable” sport.  But when today’s  women look back in time for role models, they don’t look at the woman tennis players and golfers of old.  They look for warriors.  The times call for them.  And there is Joan Weston.  And the Derby.  And once again, the Derby is everywhere.

fter the original Roller Derby folded, Joan Weston kept busy with exhibition games and even a roller derby school in the East Bay.  Long unmarried, she finally hitched up to a fellow Bomber from the men’s squad  and taught derby and played softball until she died. The New York Times ran her obit.  Not bad for the star of a sport that wasn’t “respectable.”

So that’s why I imagine Joanie Weston staring up that hill in Steinbeck country.  For Steinbeck’s people, life was a challenge.  It might break you, it might not.  But you perservered.  You tried to be what you wanted to be, and to survive.

Besides, Ann Calvallo might be up there somewhere.  Plotting.

As for the Babes of Wrath, the team no longer exists.  But the Monterey Bay Derby Dames league is still there. These days they field a team called the Beasts of Eden. Stay tuned.