This past weekend the 2013 Seattle Cannabis Cup was held in Fremont, a tight little neighborhood just a few miles from my house.

Presented by High Times, the Cannabis Cup is an opportunity for cannabis growers and medical dispensaries to present their products to the public to sample and vote for. This year was unique in the fact that it was the first cup since voters in Washington approved I-502, which allows marijuana use for people age 21 and over.

When I first arrived I was a little unsure of how to conduct myself because I had never seen weed being displayed and handled so openly. There were tons of booths representing a wide array of growers, dispensaries, and other people involved in the cannabis business.

After receiving the over 21 wristband that would allow me into the smoking areas, I wandered around to a booth that was giving out free dab hits. A dab is basically vaporizing marijuana oil out of a bong using a heated element. With the first hit of the day behind me, I was ready to do the Seattle Cannabis Cup in the right state of mind.

Dabs, dabs, and more dabs

More than anything else, dabs were central to the Seattle Cannabis Cup 2013. Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard of dabs until Diablo Dabs himself introduced me to his dabatorium.

At the Cup, literally every other booth had dab stations set up for sampling.

If I looked left: dabs, if I looked right: double dabs, if I looked up, dab smoke was clouding over me!

I saw a guy take a sick dab over at the booth of the Cali Connection, who incidentally won first place for best booth. They were broadcasting live for their podcast, so they always had some cool shit going down. A crowd was forming around their station as I came around.

This guy was wearing big black shades and a beanie. The guy hosting the podcast and him were bantering back and forth until the guy said, “shut up and give me a dab.”

The host laughed and produced a fat slab of oil that looked the size of a silver dollar and was just as thick. The host grabbed the microphone and said, “You wanted a dab motherfucker, you got a dab.” With everyone watching, he took like four huge hits and on the fifth he coughed into the bong and caused some of the oil to spill all over his fingers. Everyone around was like “Ohh shyyytt,” and the host gave him a bunch of free shit for champing the hits as well as he did.

Samples of this; samples of that

The various booths had every kind of marijuana in every form you could think of. It was like a candy store; and there were tons of free samples. As I mentioned before, you could get dab samples at almost every booth, but there were also bong samples, tincture samples, and edible samples. I wanted to sample everything but I was also trying to not fall asleep on the sidewalk.

I sampled a fair bit, though, especially when 4:20 came around. The California Finest booth was tossing out free individually wrapped joints, brownies, and random apparel into the crowd.

I caught one of the joints with my index finger and thumb which was awesome because one, I was stoked that I caught one and two, that’s how you hold a joint. I promptly opened it and lit up, as did many others who had caught the flying joints. Within a few minutes there had to be like 10 or more joints being passed around the small crowd, which I thought was hilarious.

The free gear giveaways included shirts, lanyards, posters, buttons, containers of all shapes and sizes, rolling papers, hempwicks, and more. Just by walking around taking what random people were handing out, my pockets were stuffed.

A variety of Weedists

Much like Hempfest, there was a wide variety of people at the Cannabis Cup. The Seattle area itself is pretty diverse, and this really shows at marijuana gatherings.

Around 3 o’clock I was chilling on some steps and cooling off a bit. Two guys came and sat down next to me and asked if I had something to scrape oil with, so I smoothly pulled out a Weedist pin and handed it to them. They invited me to smoke out of their little hand held vaporizer with them. One of the guys was part of the High Times staff and we talked about what it’s like working with our respective companies.

I also had the privilege of meeting Mr. Keith Stroup, founder of NORML, the marijuana advocacy group. It was very cool to hear in-person his thoughts on the cannabis culture and movement. We spoke mainly about the economic factors surrounding the legalization of marijuana, including the money that stems to be made by both the state and business entrepreneurs. Interestingly, he said that he was less interested in the economics of it than the fact that so much progress has been made recently; he was more interested in what will happen next.

At one point I thought I was meeting Steve DeAngelo, a big-time marijuana advocate, but it just turned out to be some guy who looked like him. I was a little embarrassed, but it was pretty funny. In my defense, I was really high, and he looked and sounded just like Mr. DeAngelo.

After about six hours I was ready to head out. There are many more stories I could tell because there were so many little things that happened that were either hilarious or surprising.

The Cannabis Cup was a new experience for me and I had an amazing time. I don’t remember how many times I smoked but I know it was at least more than ten, which is pretty high for me.

Last and certainly not least, the winners for each category were eventually decided. Below are the 1st Place Winners, and for the complete list (2nd and 3rd Place) check out High Times.