Marcus BC Bubbleman’s inspiration behind Legends was to bring together the best heads in hash — a nod to the hashmaking process which isolates “just the heads” from everything else.
Early on at Hashtek, we committed to sponsoring grassroots events that support the hashish community and we knew we had to be a part of this one. So when Legends II marked the first year sponsors and cameras were allowed inside the event, we jumped on the opportunity which was limited to an invite-only group of companies that shared the same values.
We had such a great time we knew we’d have to come back…so team Hashtek recently returned to Legends of Hashish III with our California-based distributor RosinTech!
We had the whole crew pull up this time — our founder Aleks, Director of Manufacturing Kelly, Pete our (sometimes not so) sly camera guy, Neil who helps with Hashtek R&D and runs the @maple_budder brand, and myself, our Hashtek writer Kat.
After experiencing the event, I chatted with BC Bubbleman to hear his story on the origins of Legends, how he brought it stateside with the help of Addison DeMoura, and how it will continue to evolve in the future (plus what he’s smoking on, of course)…
From The Founder: Talking Legends With Marcus BC Bubbleman
Tell me about the first Legends — what was the origin story of this whole event?
20 plus years ago, we were at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. It was me sitting around with Skunkman Sam, my mentor, and Rob Clarke, the author of the book Hashish, who would have probably been involved in maybe not the first conversation but certainly the second or third.
Sam lives in Amsterdam, he’s lived there for almost 40 years, and the Cannabis Cup was this one opportunity where people – his people – came to town. And so he went to every single one and just loved it. But we both kind of were like, man, wouldn’t it be nice, and I used the metaphor of the bubble bags when I said, “What if we could take all the people who were at the Cannabis Cup, run them through a set of bubble bags, and just keep the 90-micron heads?”
The joke was that could we really curate an event of special people who just want to love hashish? Who were willing to take a break from the endless shameless promotion of themselves and their company? Because at the original Legends, there were no promotions. There were no cameras allowed. There was no handing out your business cards or talking about your product. It was legitimately a night for people to celebrate hashish, plain and simple.
Sam had a friend named Simone who owned a Lebanese restaurant called Artist and he was willing to rent it out to us. So we had this beautiful Lebanese food at this beautiful Lebanese spot. Sometimes we would hire a belly dancer or have authentic music. We were just trying to pay homage to the true history of hashish, which not too many people really cared about or had an interest in keeping alive.
We also had Rob’s neighbor Sid, whose pipes are in the center photos of the book Hashish. You can see these beautiful, hubbly bubbly pipes from Afghanistan and adorned bowls that he’s had for 50 years and some of them are over 100 years old. He thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we brought one or two down to Legends for everyone to smoke out of?” That became a big part of the original event that people would never forget. Sam dumping his pure dry sift into the hubbly bubbly and everyone just enjoying it.
That was the OG Legends. It was Skunkman Sam, Rob Clarke, and another friend of ours that we called The Fat Man, whose name was Michael Rich. He would invite a lot of different people and was a supporter on all levels. Those were the HortaPharm guys and they were the ones that did the breeding for GW Pharmaceuticals. They were the old school dudes and I was the young school dude, and it was us coming together.
I basically sold all the original tickets. It was all done out of my pocket. I never took a sponsorship dollar. I gave away every penny that I ever made in profit. If it was here in Vancouver, I’d give the money to the BC Compassion Club. If it was in Amsterdam, I’d give the money to The Hemp College. So it was really just special and I truly loved it.
I think another part of the reason it was so special was because you couldn’t take your camera in there. No one got a picture of what it looked like. There were only stories, but people were pretty quiet even about that because they didn’t have the pictures to flex on social media. So it was infamous.
And how did that evolve into the stateside Legends of Hashish?
Well fast forward 20 years and I hadn’t done a Legends in probably a couple years. I think my last one I did was in 2018 in Barcelona which was great. That Legends was so successful that it really helped to inspire all these other events – you’ve got The Ego Clash, you’ve got Dab-A-Doo, you’ve got The Masters of Rosin and lots of others now.
So Addison reached out to me about three and a half years ago. He had come to a Legends in Amsterdam, I think DNA brought him a few years back so he got to taste the original aspect of it. He was like, “What’s going on with Legends? What about bringing it to California, to Los Angeles?” So I said tell me more, and he put a proposal together and got a team together. I made a fair partnership with him and gave him the chance.
It was kind of taking a couple of steps forward and then a couple of steps back to figure things out, like you have to do when you put on an event like this. Particularly with sponsors, with booths, with cameras, with video crews — the whole thing was flipped upside down. We’re like, look, it’s legal now, we don’t have to hide from Johnny Law anymore, so let’s really put on an event.
That was sort of his vision and it just grew. He did it the first year, it was great. He did it the second year, it was pretty awesome. This year I can already say was the pinnacle of Los Angeles Legends, everything was amazing. They put so much work in. Super hats off to Addison and Meredith and everyone they have on their team that pulled this off. They took something that was very specialized, very niche, and really made it this incredible event accessible to more people.
Keep in mind that as many of these hash events that there are now, there’s really nothing like Legends. Where people are just gathering to celebrate hashish, where all of these incredible hash makers are meeting and gathering and smoking with all the glass and the food and the history behind it. I think every event has their own uniqueness to it, but Legends is really something special and Addison is a big part of why that is.
How do you see Legends continuing to evolve in the future?
The idea was always that we wanted to do Legends in more than just one spot. It’s an international event that we should be able to do in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Vancouver, Jamaica, California – sort of all of these cannabis hotspots.
So releasing smaller Legends events in different cities and going back to our roots, because Legends originally was done around a larger event like the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam. So all the people were already buying their tickets and traveling out there – all I had to do was throw a party within that timeline and I could access all these people.
As more and more of these popular events pop up across the US, Legends can be a fit into them – just a one night dinner with a small hash contest, more attune to what it originally was.
Everyone wants to be invited to Legends, and of course we would love to invite everyone as hash makers, but what we have to do is invite the people that are on our radar, the flavors that we’re seeing that are special, the work that we’re seeing that is special.
Having these smaller Legends means we can also use them as scouting events – invite the first and second place makers to the LA event to get them onto that larger competition stage. Then we can really see, who are some of the best hash makers in the world?
Any cities in mind yet?
We’d love to do an East Coast one with Addison being from Massachusetts. The Colorado scene is huge, Washington would be really cool – we have the whole Mothership team out there and Scott is a huge supporter and I’m sure would make one in his backyard special. Arizona is starting to pop off too.
We just want to really use Legends as an opportunity to uncover and showcase incredible hash makers from all over. These are the hash makers that are operating on a very different level and the things they discover today become the flavor trends of tomorrow.
So if you’re a big company or a small maker, whether you’re doing pre-roll joints or bags of weed or craft batches of hash, paying attention to what happens at Legends is not a bad idea. Going to Legends and meeting these hash makers, meeting these growers, gaining access to these genetics, potentially learning SOPs for producing the hash…to me that is what Legends is about now as well.
I’ve gotta ask…what’s in your personal head stash right now?
Well I’m loving the Papa Burger by Skunk, I think it’s spectacular. I’m a huge Zkittlez fan, the Guapa by Secret Society Hash is absolutely flavorful and wonderful. Golden Heads with the fresh frozen dry sift Zkittlez, once again I can’t get away from that profile.
I do love that fruity profile so I love the strawberries and the strawberry guavas and the honey bananas and the strawberry bananas. I absolutely love all those flavors but I also have an affinity for Ocimene, so the God Bud and the Poontang Pie, those are also great melts.
Tropicanna Cookies, Tropicanna Nana too, these are all things that are sort of on my desk and that I’ve been puffing in the last couple of months and quite enjoying.
Then of course, every once in a while, I’ll get something that’s not really on anyone’s radar. There’s a gentleman by the name of Mark, he goes by Trichome Farmer, and he created a cultivar a while ago and asked me if he could name it Hash Church after my podcast. He sent me some of the trim and I made hash from it and it was really beautiful. The trim was just super frosty. If you look him up on Instagram you won’t believe how frosty all of his cultivars are.
He also sent me one called Pope’s Dope, which is Hash Church x Fire & Ice, and it looked like rosin but it was actually whipped full melt. It was absolutely just awesome gas wonderfulness. I really, really, really enjoyed that one.
DNA’s Kosher Sorbet x Canuck Cookies
Hash Church x Fire & Ice
I love anything that has been grown to perfection. So when people ask me what my favorite terp profiles are, I used to say haze, but nowadays, if you bring me something that is just perfect on all levels, I’ll love it. It won’t matter what the cultivar is. I’ll have an appreciation for it if you grew it to perfection and allowed it to express itself to the fullest of its abilities. I’m all over that. That is something that I appreciate — really great grown cannabis.
Hashtek x Legends of Hashish III Recap
The Hash Bar
We can’t talk about Legends without mentioning the infamous hash bar. A team of “hash tenders” were posted up at the bar all weekend, pulling ice cold samples of rosin, melt, and dry sift directly out of the chest freezers. There was a different drop every hour, and it was like dab roulette to walk up to the bar and see which jars you were given.
Out of hella hash bar dabs, some of my personal standouts were the Sunset Guava Melt by Whale Oil Extracts, Zugar Cane by Swollen Heads Hash, Rambutan by Skunk, and the Burnt Rainbowz with that “brûlée tech” by Quality Squishes.
Day One
Our crew started Legends day one with hash browns and hash holes in West Hollywood. It was actually my first time in LA so it was awesome to check out the different neighborhoods and get some local tastes and terps before the event.
First stop was breakfast at local favorite Arden Cafe then we hit theWOODS, a dispensary and consumption lounge owned by Woody Harrelson. We got some Jack the Ripper from local living soil brand No Till Kings and Lava Flower from A Golden State which we rolled up with some rosin from Hashtek users 1904 Provisions. Their SFV OG is my favorite with those classic OG terps that are so hard to come by in rosin.
After fueling up we headed to the event where everyone was diving into their judge’s kit right off the bat. This year there were 5 melt entries, 4 dry sift entries, and 46 rosin entries for a total of 55 jars so talk about a marathon of smoking hash. As we started working our way through the entries, some noticeable standouts to our team were jars #12 and #51.
Some other highlights of the day were hanging by the fire pit in the Toro Lounge once the sun went down, checking out the epic lineup of headies Mothership Glass ringleader Scott Deppe brought out, and finally seshing on the new Bordeaux colorway from our friends over at Focus V.
We also had an extra-wide A-Series model on display throughout the weekend at the Focus booth which was scooped up by Planet Hash out of San Diego. Aleks had a great little road trip hand-delivering it there himself on Monday!
Dinner was an authentic Lebanese and Mediterranean spread from local family-owned restaurant OpenSesame, followed by a surprise late-night cereal bar for dessert. The evening closed out with a live performance by Netherfriends and the highly-anticipated premiere of Terp Wars 2 by WaterBoyz710. Dinner and a show? Don’t mind if we do.
Day Two
Morning munchies for day two featured a heady donut selection, gorgeous fruit boards by Bougie Boards LA, and an espresso bar (much needed) by Longshot Coffee. The cinnamon-sprinkled Glob Mops and Legends logos you could add to your drink were quite a nice touch too.
They did the big unboxing to reveal the GZ1 art installation and after some snacks and art, I got into some jars. My favorites I got to try throughout the day were Grape Stank by Sugar Magnolia Farms, Banana Belts by Sly Fox, and Sweet Tarts and Frozen Papaya from Fidel. He recommended these two to me out of the extensive lineup he had there and they did not disappoint.
I also really loved this rosin-infused apple cider from Bubba’s Brow and finally got to try the freeze-dried space ice cream melts from Astraluxe. The Strawberry Feels with @wizard_rozin and the coffee collab with @trulyredpanda were so freaking good.
A few of those sneaky space ice creams had me ready to grub and brunch by So Divine Catering was phenomenal. While the prime rib was a crowd favorite, the Shakshuka – a traditional Middle Eastern breakfast dish of eggs baked in a spicy tomato sauce – and Baklava french toast were mine.
The event culminated in the awards show where winners in rosin, melt, and dry sift were voted on by all the makers that entered. There were also special selections for Toro’s Choice, Deppe’s Choice, and Darby’s Choice that got some sick custom awards.
Legends of Hashish III Winners
Previous winners of Legends of Hashish include our very own consultant and Hashtek 65t user Ben McCabe and a whole lineup of incredible makers from coast to coast.
We’d like to give a special shoutout to our friend Collin over at Vessel Life Science for his third-place rosin win this year!
Rosin
1st Place: Skunk #49 – Papa Burger
2nd Place: Skunk #50 – Rambutan
3rd Place: Vessel Life Science #57 – Sour Diesel x Sour Dubb x Gas Masque
Melt
1st Place: Secret Society Hash Co. #47 – Guapa
2nd Place: Quality Squishes #34 – BurntRainbowz
3rd Place: Cold Craft Hash Co. #12 – Z x Starburst 36 #2
Dry Sift
1st Place: Golden Heads #19 – Zkittlez
2nd Place: Golden Heads #20 – Neonz
3rd Place: Wolverine Dabs #62 – Dubba Dosi
Until the next Legends – any maybe it will be in your city this time – you stay hashy!
Written by Kat Wolf @katadellic for Hashtek
