This week, we welcome Brian Applegarth, who is in town to celebrate Wo/Mans Alliance for Medical Marijuana WAMM and its place in Santa Cruz and California cultural history, adding it as a cultural landmark to the Cannabis Trail. The Cannabis Trail is a California cultural tourism initiative that preserves and shares the people, places, and stories that helped shape California cannabis history.

Brian Applegarth is the owner and founder of Applegarth Intelligence, also known as A-Intel, a destination stewardship intelligence practice helping organizations understand change and strengthen their capacity to steward places with greater awareness, responsibility, and care. His work was forged at the intersection of cannabis, hemp, travel, culture, hospitality, and place. He is the founder of The Cannabis Trail and founding chair of the Cannabis Travel Association International. For more than a decade, Brian has helped shape cannabis and hemp tourism through destination programs, museum exhibitions, cultural storytelling, place-based inquiry, and the creation and launch of the California State Fair Cannabis Awards and Exhibit. Today, his work includes preserving and interpreting cannabis history as an important part of California’s broader cultural history.

Richard Jergenson lives in the Emerald Triangle in the beloved community of Willits. Richard is a product of Berkeley, the baby boomer generation, and the 1960’s counterculture, as well as a co-founder of the Protopipe business, over 50 years ago.

Richard is a natural archivist; as a young historian from the 1960’s Richard began saving and storing the amazing posters, books and cultural icons of the times, which continues to be a lifelong passion. The Counterculture Museum and Archive is now a treasure trove of the rich cultural era of the 1960's, 70's, and 80's, and still growing as Richard's generation is letting go of treasured memorabilia.

Richard's archived history collection has been exhibited at multiple Emerald Cups, Cannafest in Eureka, created the Emerald City Popup Museum in 2020 & 2021 and was curated at the “Cannabis in Mendocino County: our Story” exhibit with panel discussions in 2023. (Mendocino County Museum)

Richard is a member of the California Cannabis Historical Society and the Counterculture History Coalition. Richard is working to create museum locations for important counterculture stories and archive collections.

Richard continues to add to the counterculture & Cannabis Archive. It includes the 100-year prohibition history as well as artifacts from the Back to the Land movement here in Northern California - the Emerald Triangle and beyond.

The time is at hand to share the incredible history of Cannabis and its meaningful contribution to the counterculture, as the Back to the Land culture is rapidly disappearing due to post cannabis legalization growing laws and boomers aging out. We look forward to sharing Canna-history knowledge with all of you.

Today on The Cannabis Connection Show, we welcome back Grant Palmer, CEO of Canna Cruz Dispensaries. Founded in 2008, Canna Cruz has grown into California's number one privately owned, vertically integrated dispensary chain, with five locations in Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Aptos, Salinas, and Seaside—plus its own cultivation, manufacturing, and distribution. Canna Cruz Salinas took home 1st place in Best Dispensary, Central California, at the 20th Anniversary Emerald Cup.
Grant has a unique and crucial perspective on listening to customers at the point of sale, and we explore deepening the understanding of what customers are looking for and how best to align as a farmer to sell your crop and contribute to mutual success for all.