CHALICE 2017
- eyeswidelove
- Sep 4, 2017
- 5 min read
Chalice California is a Music, Glass, Art, and Hash festival held in the desert of California. The organization is put on and sponsored mainly by Hitman Glass, and is closing out it's 4th year.
My first "green" event was quite an experience. I was privileged enough to attend with the rising genetic multi-force Pioneer Farms. I spent a good majority of the weekend, back and forth between the booth, and wandering the fairgrounds. As a long time marijuana connoisseur, but first time green-event-goer, there were a lot of things that I enjoyed, and some things I was quite disappointed by. Aside from the blistering heat, there wasn't much quality product. Some of the stuff that was fire, was taxed heavily, and not really what I was expecting from this type of event. I feel like It may now just be a money making scheme, instead of a celebration of all that is good.
First off, let me say, it is an insane feeling to walk around in public with thousands of other people, smoking joints, blunts, and taking dabs at every booth they past. It was like what Woodstock would've been if it was over commercialized. Above you will see a glass display case, lined with turkey bags containing nugs of different types of weed. Most booths had flashy jars, with their labels spread across them, and cute girls half dressed serving the flavors. But these people, they didn't feel the need for the flashiness, and maybe they should've because their case was looking just as thick at the end of the event.
Of course there was hash, and rosin shown, smelt, and smoked, all throughout the event. We were lucky enough to get our hands on some Bear Rosin flavors and some fire from the infamous Grape God. Both were tasty, but the only rosin you need to know about these days, is Rosin Rangers.
I have to say, I was impressed by the amount of physical, non-smokable, products they had available, like BathWorx LA bath products. I had to get one of their bath bombs, THC and CBD infused, and boy did it do wonders. The aroma was glorious and the fizzles gentle and calming. They had many other products like bath salts, and natural essential oils. I will definitely be placing an order with them ASAP!
Chalice also had great variety of CBD and THC lotions, tinctures, and topicals at every booth. I am still using free CBD lotions samples nearly 2 months later. But the real highlight of the freebies, had to be the free edible samples! Boy, oh boy, was there a lot to choose from. Nearly every edible booth had Muddy Buddies, but I'd be lying if I said I liked ANY edibles more than The Medicated Confectionary.
These little jars you see pictured below were packed with THC-filled-cake-pieces-of-heaven. More delicious, and more stoned with every bite, I couldn't help but swing by this booth at the end of the event and grab all I could to sneak home with me. The Medicated Confectionary team had a crazy showdown with an event goer, that we also got to witness. A man came up to the main chef, who was a seemingly small and defenseless young girl, and tried to distract her so he could steal some of her product. Luckily, she realized what he was doing, just as security was passing by and they, but mainly she, threw him out of the event. His wristband was cut, and his weekend was over. Never underestimate a lady and her baked goods.
As artist supporters, we were a little bit disappointed by the lack of variety in artists, for what was also supposed to be an art festival. It was a bit obvious to me that the person curating the art, was only so familiar, and a lot of the art looked the same, or ran together. Some artists even had multiple booths around the fairgrounds, which led me to believe they had trouble filling the spaces. I am talking about glass, too. While the visual art and live art was mediocre, the glass booths, even more so. Most of it looked like shipped in from china garbage, and what wasn't was just, not that great. For every 10 meh artists, was 1 good one. Only sad because we know how much talent there is out there. Brings us to question, what the heck is going on there?!
There was, however, a few lovely and talented gems that stuck out in the hot summer sun. One of those being, the beautiful Brittney Monster. Brittney's focus is custom paintings for the glass art collector. She is inspired by the glass blowing scene, and all things dark and funky. Don't let her super cute smile fool you, there is monster talent underneath!
We also, happily, ran into our friend, and exceptionally talented glass artist, Sherbet, whom had a lovely booth set up. We've seen Sherb at few shows, all over the country, but his amazing glass work never ceases to surprise us. Working with other talents from all across the globe, Sherbet is able to manipulate anyone's style into a dope ass pencil. For that, and so much more, we salute him. A genuinely nice guy, but an ingenious creative - imagine giving your teacher one of these on the first day of school? Nice addition to the desk, don't you think?
Dabbing that Pioneer Farms Terpsauce on a Sherbet Slap with the Sherbet Pencil.
Some of you might be wondering what the boys were doing? Well, I caught a few playing in some bubbles (not pictured, stupidly, I was enjoying it with my own eyes instead), but mostly they were not really anywhere to be found. I guess that's a good thing, whatever scummy things were going down were taken care of without much notice, and the rest of us left to smoke in peace.
Overall the event felt very touristy to me, a lot of hype and high dolla signs, when I was expecting more of an industry-family sort of vibe. While it appeared to be a tradeshow style event, it was actually a street value push scene.
Coming from the business background that I have, I am always forced to believe things fall back on poor management. In an event of this size, taking in this much income, there should be a little bit more budget in coordination, organization, and quality all around - not just in the music scene. Let's just say, I didn't stick around for Ice Cube. And I heard he was a few hours late.
Best of luck to Chalice, next time, don't know if they'll see me again!
