In Denver, you can now sign up for a class that will teach you how to roll both sushi and joints.
One course, two skills — and the class is almost full, less than a week after it was first announced.
“When you can roll a joint by hand and it looks perfect, it’s a nice skill to have,” said Brett Davis, CEO of Denver co-working space Green Labs, which is offering Sushi and Joint Rolling for the first time in late-February. “And rolling sushi is just fun.”
Green Labs owner Mike Looney first came up with the idea of a class on rolling, two ways. Now that the Feb. 20 class is almost full, Green Labs is preparing to add more classes to the mix — including individual courses that would teach students how to pair marijuana strains with coffee and wine.
Update: Green Labs added two more classes because of demand — at 3 p.m. March 7 and 5 p.m. March 15.
“It’s catchy and cute,” Davis said of the sushi- and joint-rolling course. “The two have nothing to do with each other, but they’re the two most popular kinds of rolling in Colorado, so I can see how they go hand in hand.”
Sure enough, joint-rolling has become more of an in-demand skill in Colorado since legal recreational sales began Jan. 1, 2014. Not only do most pot shops hire people to roll joints to be sold in their storefronts, but dinner parties all over the state often play host to conversations (and sometimes competitions) on who rolls the best joint. The Denver County Fair in 2014 even held a legitimate, timed competition to see who rolled the fastest joint.
“You can always smoke out of a bowl,” said Davis, “but then you have to carry it around. It’s so much easier to pre-roll a joint and stick it in your cigarettes or have some flower and papers and roll it wherever you are.”
The Green Labs class costs $65, and it includes everything but the cannabis. Students can bring their own and enjoy it onsite. The space will provide rolling papers — as well as all of the sushi makings. Davis said the $65 price for the two-hour class is comparable and competitive to the sushi-only offerings around town — and Green Labs’ class offers the added bonus of joint-rolling instructions.
Is Davis teaching the class? He is not — though he’s somewhat familiar with one technique and very familiar with the other.
“I’m not very good at rolling sushi,” he said. “I’m excellent at rolling a joint. I’ve had many years of experience. I was one of those young pot smokers, for sure. I learned from friends. In high school it was almost a competition to roll joints. I lived in France for a year, my junior year of high school, and over there they smoke a lot of hash, so they’d roll these big, massive joints of hash and tobacco.”
The class’ teachers will involve two restaurant industry professionals who work in local sushi joints — Davis wasn’t ready to publicize their names — and a dispensary employee from a partner pot shop.
