Jim Marty attended the Phish concerts in Denver. He recaps the three nights and shares his thoughts about each night. Larry Mishkin joins the conversation to talk more about the prairie dogs setback and the clever way Phish and their fans rebounded. Larry and Jim explore the impact of cities electing not to participate when their state passes adult-use laws. Produced by PodCONX https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin https://podconx.com/guests/jim-marty https://podconx.com/guests/rob-hunt
Jim Marty attended the Phish concerts in Denver. He recaps the three nights and shares his thoughts about each night. Larry Mishkin joins the conversation to talk more about the prairie dogs setback and the clever way Phish and their fans rebounded. Larry and Jim explore the impact of cities electing not to participate when their state passes adult-use laws.
https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkin
https://podconx.com/guests/jim-marty
https://podconx.com/guests/rob-hunt
Jim Marty: [00:00:33] Hey, everybody, welcome to the Deadhead Cannabis show. Jim Marty from my barn once again, I've got my co-host and good friend Larry Mishkin.
Larry Mishkin: [00:00:45] how are you doing today?
Jim Marty: [00:00:47] Very good. Very good. Yet we're recovering from our fish weekend. It was wonderful.
Larry Mishkin: [00:00:55] Yeah. This shows look absolutely tremendous. And, you know, there's lots to talk about there, both in terms of I know you're anxious to start talking about the level of music and the quality that they're cranking out these days. And the rest of the world wants to hear about the prairie dogs. But let's get to the music first. Tell me about it.
Jim Marty: [00:01:17] Oh, just absolutely wonderful. It's 46 days. And I just heard this morning that they changed the lyrics around.
Larry Mishkin: [00:01:26] What did they say, Larry, in 46 days? They said something about The plague is coming. What was the exact quote? It was of peace. The cure for the plague is drawing near. So, yeah, they're pretty timely with that stuff. I get a kick out of that.
Jim Marty: [00:01:43] Yeah, they've been telling us a few jokes. First night they played Pure Prairie League on the way out after the show. But yeah, it's early. The parking lot scene was shoulder to shoulder yesterday afternoon and a lot of the stickers are relevant to the prairie dogs. And it is true they have large swaths of land around the stadium, not only roped off, but signs that say stay out. The plague is near a yes. And then I got my plague slides because that's too much.
Larry Mishkin: [00:02:18] That's funny
Jim Marty: [00:02:18] I couldn't I couldn't bring myself to eat the prairie dog burrito.
Larry Mishkin: [00:02:23] Well, you right. You can only do so much. Besides, you have to make sure it's plate free.
Jim Marty: [00:02:28] Yeah. Yeah. One of the guys cooking in the parking lot was selling prairie dog burritos.
Larry Mishkin: [00:02:34] Was it worth the risk to go out there? And it was. Was the music good enough? Was well worth it?
Jim Marty: [00:02:38] Well they actually they did. They did a really good job. They only let you park on the paved parking lots. So nobody was on the fields with them. It's like a prairie dog village out there, just prairie dogs everywhere. And this is in the middle of Commerce City. So maybe next year, though, the humane way to get rid of prairie dogs is to trap them and relocate them. So maybe the city of Commerce City will get their act together and get that done for next year, as I said yesterday. This might be getting too small.
Jim Marty: [00:03:10] My son won't even tell me what he paid for his Sunday ticket. We were going through shakedown and so many people looking for tickets. He just got on his phone and paid what he had to pay to get a Sunday ticket. But musically, just off the charts, off the hook. Now, the 46 days was great. So the jam out of goes. Some people are saying it's one of the best they've ever seen and heard a lot of musicians from the rock and roll musicians from all around Denver at the shows, and they just can't believe how well Fisher's playing. And if anything, the sound keeps getting better. Night tonight. It's hard to believe after the first night the sound could be any better, but I think it's actually getting a little better. It's just absolutely amazing. And when you listen to the they brought down the second set Saturday night with a slave to the traffic light for the ages. I mean, it was like Mozart was bringing together bringing down a six hour symphony, which is what they were doing. They were ended over the two nights they had played for six hours. And it was like Trey brought it down, like he was bringing down the symphony. It was just incredible.
Larry Mishkin: [00:04:20] So, you know, like a well oiled machine right now, you know, they're really clicking on all cylinders. And it's it's amazing to see that at this stage of their career, you know, when a lot of other bands are kind of coasting or resting on their laurels, baby, these guys are in the midst of an upward trajectory that would be the envy of any band. He would just starting out. I mean, it seems like gone night after night to people to see the shows that the hyper boy gets bigger and bigger. And and I'm tending to believe most of it.
Jim Marty: [00:04:51] Right. Well, you know, they were all born either in 1964 or. Right. Thereabouts. And so they're well into their 50s. And they just really did pure, absolute masters of their craft right now. Very strong character. Zero Saturday night on core. And somebody took it upon themselves. I don't know if the band paid for it or what, but from the upper parts of Dixon Soccer Arena, they must have thrown out, I don't know, 10000 glow sticks. They're just there was like a shower of. Six that went on and on and of course, everyone picked them up. We had a very, very good glow stick war.
Larry Mishkin: [00:05:29] That's fun and wild. I know that they have those every dollar that I have to confess that, you know, my knowledge of the official inner circle is not quite enough to know exactly which are their favorite glow sticks signs. But I know whenever I'm there, there always seems to be a lot of glow sticks in the crowd. Yeah.
Jim Marty: [00:05:48] Yeah. There was there was a guy who was a full electric, multicolored cape on. And he every night he dances the whole three hours and it's like he's live. He looks like like a Mayan Indian priest, you know. And I'm saying. Yep, and just see him with that electric dude on dancing for three hours. The stuff you see. Well, to quote one of my other favorite dancer things you've never seen seem familiar.
Larry Mishkin: [00:06:22] They just yeah, I you know, I traded United, watched part of it on the on the livestream. I've got to like the one on here, so I don't always have a chance to sit down and catch it all but a little bit that I did see and everything else. It's just really a lot of fun. They're having a great time. You know, they're enjoying it.
Jim Marty: [00:06:42] You know, they're taking it to a whole nother level. One day, traders at Larkin playing, you know, covering Layla with Tedeschi trucks. And the next day he's back with his van, you know, taking him through another historic site run at Dick's. And boy, what else do they have in store that they could do? I don't even know. It's pretty incredible.
Jim Marty: [00:07:01] Yep. And they streamed Sunday night show on serious. So that's that's out there.
Jim Marty: [00:07:09] Excellent cell phone available. This unbelievable.
Jim Marty: [00:07:15] Yeah. We've already been listening to last night's show this morning because you get a free download with your ticket. And luckily, my millennials really know how to do that.
Larry Mishkin: [00:07:24] So I was just going to say, you have to have somebody with you knows how to do it. I'm sure no one but, you know, I agree with that have been, you know, always.
Larry Mishkin: [00:07:33] But if you buy tickets to a dead show, you'd even have to take because the next day you could just go away, download the whole thing and just Jalbert sit right there. Ready to rock and roll. And as long as I'm mentioning that and I do not work for the Grateful Dead and employed by rate or records or anything like that, that he did just drop a few bucks. That's a matter of. You heard about it.
Larry Mishkin: [00:07:52] They have shows you remarked that it changed stadium, including 79 in 91. They're all tremendous, tremendous shows. They have tapes of some of them.
Larry Mishkin: [00:08:03] But my collection already anyway. But this will be fantastic to hear these shows. I'm seeing some of them are just what they're all of these things.
Jim Marty: [00:08:11] Added another great video.
Larry Mishkin: [00:08:16] Yes. You know, it comes with a video of one of the shows. I think just that the last debate, I think just the June 17th of 90, why did they have a video of that shots? But why? I think this is so timely. Here we are talking about, you know, fish having to expand the size of its venues in order to accommodate the crowd and meet, keep the ticket still affordable for everyone. And really, that means football stadiums. And that's really the next size up from where there are 30000 to 60000. And, you know, people always wonder whether a chimp out like that, you know, can maintain its style. And that was always one of the things about the Grateful Dead that really comes through well in this video is the way that they could walk into a place with 70000 people. And Jerry could still make it feel like you were in a club with 200 people.
Jim Marty: [00:09:06] Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. Because, you know, Dicks is just such a great venue, even though it's a 30000 foot soccer arena, it's soccer stadium outdoors, of course, it still feels intimate. There's no big screens. The Late Show is still amazing. And you really just feel like you're right there with them and real. It's all general admission, which I love because I hate that, hey, you're in my seats thing after the show starts. So, yeah, we soon as we get through security, we bolt and get try to get really good seats down on Page's side.
Larry Mishkin: [00:09:47] Well, I'll tell you what that that gives me just sitting there. Right. That are a great idea for a future show. And maybe if any of our listeners want to join in, that would be great, too. But one day each year, we have to sit down and talk about our favorite venues. Lord knows how many wonderful places I saw the Grateful Dead at, including Red Rock that after, you know, a touch of gray made it big time for them.
[00:10:09] Those places were no longer a place. Even Alpine Valley got too small for them. And they you know, they handle players Soldier Field with 65000 people right up until the very last show there.
Larry Mishkin: [00:10:20] But we should do that. Talk about some of those favorite values that some still play out and they just care to anyone, but they'll be stopped for another day.
Dan Humiston: [00:10:30] I want to take a quick break. Thank you for listening to today's show and to invite you to check out all of our other Cannabis podcasts. As the industry's number one Cannabis podcast network. We are constantly adding new shows MJBulls.com to see our new shows and to become part of the Cannabis podcast network to the business side of things.
Larry Mishkin: [00:10:53] Yeah, I know that we were talking last week about this idea that at least in the adult U.S. markets, in some states they allow certain cities to opt out and not be part of the program. And you know, Jim and I were going to talk about that, focusing on at least a little bit on Illinois, again, which is a state where there's a lot of things happening. Of course, I'm representing people in Illinois. Jim works with people in Illinois. And it's a state that's going to be coming on strong. And, you know, it's interesting, Jim, is that with multiple cities were not given an opt out option with adult use. They were. And some cities in Illinois that have medical dispensaries located within their city limits are now saying no to adult use dispensaries by opting out of that program.
Jim Marty: [00:11:42] Yes, that's very interesting. And the question I would have is, if the city of South, do they share in the tax revenues that statewide tax revenue even if they opt out?
Larry Mishkin: [00:11:55] Well, it's a good question. And although I don't know the answer for sure, you know, of course, straight off hoping that the answer to that is no, because, you know, the whole idea is, you know, you support the market and the market supports you.
Larry Mishkin: [00:12:09] And what's really funny here, it's not even so funny, it's kind of sad is that all of these cities say the exact same thing. Well, we don't want to be in the first wave. We want to take a step back. We want to see how the program unfolds. We want to see if there any problems. And I'm sorry if I sound, you know, a little put out by when I say this. Lord knows it's I'm sure, not an easy task to run a city, but for God's sake, there's a drug use happening all over this country. It's not like we don't already have many, many good examples of Colorado and Washington.
Larry Mishkin: [00:12:46] They were the front runners. They were the ones who took the risk with adult programs. Now, based on the results that they have that are being a similar results in other states that have had to have gone to adult use. We now know that adult use doesn't lead to an increase in crime. We now know that adult use doesn't lead to an increase in teenage smoking. We now know that it doesn't lead to an increase in drunken driving. Are DUI is related to marijuana? We don't raise that. But for cities, that is and there is still insist, well, we don't want to be in the first wave. Is this a little disingenuous, I think?
Jim Marty: [00:13:24] Right. Well, we may not know the exact answer in Illinois. The way a lot of states operate is if they opt out, they'll still share in the statewide general sales tax revenue. But, of course, they're passing up any local taxes. Colorado's a home rule, states. So cities and counties can pass their own taxes on top of the state tax. So there's in Illinois that they'll definitely miss out on that. But a quick comment about how nice it is to live in a state where marijuana is legal. You know, going through security at the office shows they had those sliders, you know, use on the side of the scanner so you can slide your phone and keys through. And people like this put in their pens and their weed on this on the slide through security and they pick up their stuff on the other side with the police right there and say, thank you very much. It's just such a relief of state of mind to live in a state with legal marijuana. But back to Illinois. My comment has been made on the last I'll split it a little bit more. Today is the real estate. Real estate is very, very important in the marijuana industry because you need real estate to cultivate. You need real estate for your extraction lab. And course, you need retail. So what we do is we line up the real estate or help our clients line up the real estate in a separate entity and you can do it even pre licensing. So here's a temporary Illinois as people should be lining up the real estate right now, locking up leases and contracts on land that's properly zoned in cities that don't opt out because that's going to be the big bash. Yes. Once you run out of properly zoned real estate, there's no. What is it they say about real estate? You can't they're not making anymore rent.
Larry Mishkin: [00:15:11] Well, that's you know, Jim, that's so true. And that's what makes what's going on here in Illinois so absolutely disappointing to the town of Naperville, which is and I don't have the statistics in front of me, but the third or fourth largest metropolitan area in the entire state, a population says, no, we don't want it. Well, there's medical marijuana in Dena. billion nearby. We Wheaton is the county seat for DuPage County, which is the first county immediately to the west of Polk County, very heavily populated. And there is medical dispensaries out there. They say, though, they're opting out, too. And now, most recently, Highland Park, which is a community on the North Shore right on Lake Michigan. It's a well known community. I think Tom Cruise in risky business or ordinary people, and those are all tied at Highland Park. But but it's it's it's a community that I've always thought of as being, you know, at least has a good mix of liberalism, militant and openness. They have certainly have a medical dispensary there, although I suppose tellingly, their medical dispensary is on the outskirts of town, that it would be such a natural for Highland Park and it would be so good for them and so many of these communities. And when you read the comments over and over about, well, we don't we don't want to introduce another drug to our community and we don't want to be the first ones to do it. And we think it says. Wrong message and to me when I hear that. That's just simply a product of the government propaganda machine that we've all been inundated with basically since we've all been alive for those of us who reported in the late 50s and early 60s. That's always been the story for us. No, no, no. It's bad, bad, bad. It's not. And we know that we do. And it's not just that you and I know that the world knows that.
Larry Mishkin: [00:17:10] And Rafael , that Israel, who is studying marijuana in CBD since the early 1960s. She knows it and all sorts of people know it.
Larry Mishkin: [00:17:21] And to hear a city say, well, we're just not going to allow it because we don't really understand it. So therefore, we're going to decide that it's dangerous and bad is is backwards. And ultimately, I think a short sighted.
Jim Marty: [00:17:39] Well, in politics, they call the NIMBYs, not in my backyard.
Larry Mishkin: [00:17:44] Right. Exactly. Exactly. And as history has shown a lot of times, the people who don't want it in their backyard ultimately later on regret taking that position. And I think we're going to find that with adult use marijuana. That's going to be the case. I think in L.A. it'll be replicated and we will see a well-run industry that the current medical providers have all done very well. We've had no problems with medical providers in this state running afoul of any of the laws back. Most of them go out of their way to, you know, to operate in a manner far above it, beyond what the law actually calls for. Maybe that's one of the advantages of having such a tightly regulated market in Illinois, is that these new opportunities arise. The state really has a chance to get its arms around the industry right out of the box and make sure that these types of things are done so nobody gets too far ahead of themselves. You know, doing things that are way that we might later come to regret.
Jim Marty: [00:18:48] Right. Yeah. Because the math in my head is with your population. SALES are going to be somewhere between 2 and 3 billion, probably closer to the 3 billion side of things. So it's going to be huge. And then back to the business side of things in the business world and raising money for businesses. They call it free money and post money. Now, what is your business worth? Before you get funding and then what is it worth after you get funding? Well, in the marijuana world, I would rephrase that a little bit and call it pre and post license, because if you add up your real estate now, free license and you have the capital to do it. If you don't get a license, you've still got real estate that's worth probably about what you paid for it. And if you do get your license, the value of that real estate, you can almost add a zero to the end of the value. If you've got one of the property zoned and host cities that wants your business, your post license money is quite a bit larger than your pre license money.
Larry Mishkin: [00:19:52] Well, I think you're right. And I think that that comes into play very much here. That's what these cities don't realize is it's not just that they are, you know, withdrawing their residents from this program, but this has an impact all over the entire state, because what winds up happening is if the real number of people were planning to go into Naperville or Wheaton or Highland Park. Well, guess what? Those neighborhoods aren't available anymore. And so now it's going to push them into other neighborhoods. And now the people who were going to be in those other neighborhoods find that they're in competition with more people than they thought they were going to be in, because now there's there's fewer areas available. It changes the prices. Right. It makes no with supply demand. If there's less there's less supply and the demand is the same or goes up, the prices of those properties is going to go up, which is good for the communities that are allowing it. But again, these other communities, I don't know that they really appreciate what they're losing out on a visa. The impact they're having overall on everything else. I just have to say, Jim, I do completely agree with you that people should be getting their property first in Illinois with the dispensary licenses. They're called conditional licenses because you can actually get a license awarded without your property. If you get the license, you then have 180 days to lock down your property. Now, I'm not a real estate expert, but my way of thinking about that is if there's people out there that know that you only have a short period of time in which you have to come up with a piece of property where you lose your license, that tilts the playing field pretty heavily in their favor.
Jim Marty: [00:21:35] Yes, you like and buy fish ticket did.
Larry Mishkin: [00:21:40] Right. Right. And, you know, people are going to have to realize that all the way around it. Otherwise, we're just going to have to go forward with those parts of Illinois that are going to allow us to do it. Well, we'll let the program flourish and succeed in those areas and perhaps somewhere down the road. By the time we go through the next round of licenses, some of these other communities will have opened their eyes and and realized that it's the 21st century. And, you know, what we know is a lot different than what we used to know.
Larry Mishkin: [00:22:13] Right. As that nobody could he a nice little boost of income.
Jim Marty: [00:22:17] I'd like to see some of the really hard pressed neighborhoods in Chicago and some of the other cities, minorities, social justice. I'd like to see those businesses thrive and help and bring dollars into some of these neighborhoods in Illinois that are are so challenged with social problems and weekend shootings and all the bad things you hear on the news.
Larry Mishkin: [00:22:45] It would be a wonderful thing. And, you know, we're all very hopeful. We have a strong social equity completed in our program. I know people are talking about it a lot. We're all very excited. So we'll see. You know, and at the end of the day, you know, I do respect the sovereignty of each municipality to make the decisions that it wants to make for itself. I just wonder sometimes if those decisions aren't uninformed to the detriment of the city and the industry.
Jim Marty: [00:23:14] Yes, some of those gangbangers with their guns, we can get them onto the right side of the law and make them security guys.
Larry Mishkin: [00:23:23] Well, that that wouldn't be a bad thing. I agree with that. To say that we're not in pain.
Larry Mishkin: [00:23:29] There's there's a there's there's a couple of topics that are out there that I know you and I want to get to. But there's just so much going on. We haven't. But just so our listeners are aware, we definitely at some point want to get to the issue of industry standards. What's going on with industry standards? Will we ever have a universal set of standards for the industry to make that work and things like that? The other issue, Jim, that I know we want to get you there. This is probably one we'll get you next week because it's really very timely right now. Is this a large uptick in the number of medical cases being reported around the country that are apparently logging infections, which many in the medical community are now blaming on? VK And of course, vaping is something that's very near and dear to the heart of the Cannabis industry, as vaping probably makes up a very good percentage of all THC products sold. So I think that's something we should look at. I get it. You're talking about next week?
Jim Marty: [00:24:33] Yes. At the photos, it was like everybody had their own personal data Hemp and they saw one from California. That gives you a measured dose so you can draw on it for a bit tight enough for like one dose, so to speak, and then the pen shuts itself off.
Larry Mishkin: [00:24:53] So how are you getting rate, there's no doubt about it. So problem solved. Yeah. Well, we will see.
Larry Mishkin: [00:25:05] It would be nice. I know people in the industry. My guess is, is that they will be motivated to develop new lines of products that address whatever issues there are out there. But when we talk about it next week, we'll have a better idea.
Jim Marty: [00:25:20] Yes. I was just going to say we talk about standards. We really should talk about the quality of everybody surround sitting, smoking their own personal data. And, you know, what are the what's the quality of the product that they're doing?
Jim Marty: [00:25:36] We see extraction in manufactured products like that. They hands is a total separate skill set from cultivation and retail. It's a very different thing. And I wonder and I mentioned this, I think in a previous show, you know, all these CBD and Cannabis products. What is the quality of the oil that they're using for these products? So we'll have lots to talk about on those subjects. We'll throw in some. Yeah, we have lots of things to talk about in the future. You talked about the venues around the country that we all love. We can talk about Grateful Dead lyrics versus Phish lyrics, which is always an ongoing. I don't know if it's a controversy, but it makes for lots of late night conversations.
Larry Mishkin: [00:26:19] That's the eternal question. What would the world be like if Trey had Robert Hunter writing lyrics for it? We'll get to.
Larry Mishkin: [00:26:32] I think that Dick wrote good on this. After all that great wave music, we can all use a little bit of a rough patch. I'll look forward to talking to you again next week, sir.
Jim Marty: [00:26:42] Yes. No rest for the wicked. We have three dark star workers to shows next weekend. A Dark Star Orchestra, of course, the Grateful Dead tribute band. And believe it or not, a Grateful Dead tribute band sells out red rocks at nine thousand five hundred people.
Larry Mishkin: [00:27:00] And way night. That's that's what else does it any better than that? People will hear the different rhetoric. It doesn't matter who's playing it, right?
Jim Marty: [00:27:10] Yeah. A lot of people saw Jay Rad that night before Phish started. And I guess he did a wonderful show at Red Rocks. I have no doubt. He goes everywhere. He played Cat under the Stars.
Larry Mishkin: [00:27:24] Oh, that's very true. That's that's great, too. And they know they can do that. They've got a good working, a good knowledge of the dead librarians, the jury librarian. Yep. The very, very talented group self. That's true. I mean, just like, you know, here we are trying to say goodbye and we're talking about music for another five minutes because there's just too much good stuff out there not to.
Jim Marty: [00:27:47] It's been a great year, has been. And everyone's just talking about what a great summer was widespread out there. Jay read Fish Dad and co lock in Tedeschi trucks. Yeah, it was a wonderful, wonderful summer of 2019.
Larry Mishkin: [00:28:04] Yes. And I like to think the best is yet to come.
Jim Marty: [00:28:09] Over and out.
Larry Mishkin: [00:28:11] Very good, sir. Have a great week. Good luck to you. Thank you, everyone.
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