GotBars510
I’ve always believed that the best stories in cannabis yet to be told were the ones that revealed themselves without saying too much. The plant has that essential effect and friends that I’ve made (and the ones not yet met) within this often silent craft will all say the same thing. Sometimes what you might want to say is best left unsaid in weed. It’s just how it we have survived for so long.
Our essential medicine is still illegal in many places. Cannabis is a powerful curative, but physically benign plant has been greatly misunderstood over the past seventy-five years or so.
My experience with the emotional reasonings surrounding cannabis are deep and authentic. I can picture the event as clearly as yesterday. Growing up in the western leafy suburbs of New York City, cannabis was both celebrated by my long-haired friends in prep school, trotting off to NYC to see Grateful Dead shows at Madison Square Garden and coming home really late, only to be chastised by our parents for “smelling like weed”. They never let me forget that weed was illegal. And still is in New Jersey.
This experience of being yelled at for smoking cannabis is the reason why cannabis has suffered much by stigmas over the past decades. Our parents hated cannabis because they couldn’t accept that cannabis had healing properties. All they saw was getting high or stoned or whatever they said at the time. It was mostly that smoking cannabis will prevent you from becoming successful. How we would never amount to anything. It’s refreshing to meet and eMeet young, vibrant cannabis entrepreneurs who see the benefits of the plant and the healing.
How wrong they were to assume back in the 1970’s that cannabis wouldn’t bring success. I’ll let my interviews with successful cannabis entrepreneurs speak volumes without saying a word. That is success.
Warren Bobrow=WB: Please tell me where you are from? Where now? Why cannabis instead of law or medicine, or the arts? When was the first time that you discovered the plant?
GotBars510 with some rather large joints of cannabis
GotBars510: What’s up to all my people out there. My government name is Joey but everyone in the Bay (SF Bay Area) where I’m born and raised and still reside refer to me as GotBars510. I discovered weed at the age around 11-12 yrs old while I was in middle school as a 6th grader. I always used weed to self medicate only didn’t realize it until I got more into the legalization and learned how the plant benefited me. Being as how it is legal, it has been and always will be my choice to not only medicate, but recreationally enjoy on a daily, or should I say hourly basis, ha ha ha.
WB: What are you known best for? What is the difference between medical cannabis and recreational cannabis? Why does the recreational consumer chase THC?
GotBars510: The thing I’d say I’m best known for that separates me from most other people like myself is the fact that I don’t really put anything on what I do. I’m just a real live stoner. I can’t be bought, I am not a sellout, I just promote what I like, and on social media I show what I do. No acting, no pretending. To me, that’s what weed is all about. There has always been a line everyone tried to define between medicinal cannabis and recreational weed, but for me, it’s all the same unless you really try to sit me down to explain the difference. I think people on either side of that line smoke for the same reason people wear glasses, to improve their view of the world.
WB:What are your six and twelve month goals? What obstacles do you face? Tell me about what you do for your company?
GotBars510: If you had to ask me what my goals where both short and long term, it’s pretty simple. I just want to work with as many farms and hash companies that I can to share with the masses. I have homies who own so many clubs that always ask what it is I’m smoking, that I decided to do these collaborative projects so that I could put my stamp on a package for everyone to grab and share. All my packages feature the companies I’m involved in too. We go by the BrokeBoyz which is a term we use to not forget where we came from, Terpenstein which is a hash company my very good homie and mentor I refer to as my “Street Pops” who got me in the game with, and of course my own name which is my brand GotBars510. We literally act as brokers for any products we find and love, and we also have farms running with genetics we provide for them to grow. On top of it all, we work with the best design and packaging company in the world to showcase our partner farms hard work over at Sticker Farmer in Redwood City. Without Ben at the Sticker Farm, we’d never look so good.
WB: What is your favorite food memory from childhood? What is your favorite food now? Do you cook? If so, who taught you? What does a typical breakfast look like to you?
GotBars510: If I had to have a favorite food memory, it absolutely would be Dino Bites. I think the funniest part about then and now? My favorite food is still Dino Bites only nowadays, the best ones are made from my homie who is a Michelin Star recipient over at Rasoi in Burlingame. If I knew how to cook, I’d probably have more variations of them, but Asif has figured out the perfect recipe to keep Dino Bites as my #1 favorite food to eat. Other than Dino bites, I do love to eat my breakfast and if I had to pick my favorite, it’s simple, bacon, eggs, well-done hash browns and some toast.
Ever Wonder Why He’s Smiling?
WB: What is your passion?
GotBars510: My passion is my job. It’s kinda a trip that I fell into the generation where prohibition ended and working in weed is what I live to do. My pops always told me, if you do what you love you’ll never work a day in your life, and it’s true. My passion is what I do on a daily basis and I am very grateful to be here for however long the universe sees fit.