Sonoma County Fairgrounds takes new tack on marijuana festivals

Sonoma County Fairgrounds officials have scaled back the marijuana trade show events to be held at the Santa Rosa event center in 2015, bringing back an event with North Coast origins but passing over the Cannabis Cup run by international event powerhouse High Times magazine.

The homegrown Emerald Cup will return to the fairgrounds event center in December for its third run in Santa Rosa as a fair celebrating organic marijuana grown outdoors. Organizers are expecting bigger crowds but are also restricting it to adults for the first time.

Fairgrounds officials, however, said they will not be welcoming back the High Times’ Cannabis Cup, after last year’s event was a headache for staff from unloading to cleanup. The High Times trade show drew thousands to its first Santa Rosa event on a weekend last June.

“They left our facility really messy - debris, stickering, couches - more so than any other event we’ve had,” Katie Fonsen Young, interim fair manager, said. “It took us about a week to clean up after the event. The normal event that’s just in one building will just take a few hours.”

Young said that the decision had nothing to do with the fact that the event involved marijuana but rather the High Times’ show was a significant drain on staff, who were already taxed with preparing for the Sonoma County Fair. The 17-day fair that typically begins in late July is the fairgrounds’ biggest project of the year.

Dan Skye, High Times editorial director, said earlier this month that his organization had wanted to return to Santa Rosa and had thought last year’s event was a success. On Tuesday, he said festival organizers were aware the event would not come back to Santa Rosa. He said they had moved on and were hoping to announce a new Northern California location as soon as this week. He dismissed the idea that cleanup was a problem.

“We pay for the cleaning service once we leave,” Skye said. “It’s a big event. You have how many thousands show up. They leave a mess, there’s no doubt.”

Emerald Cup founder Tim Blake, who runs the events center Area 101 on his rural property in far northern Mendocino County, said he had to make certain changes to the Emerald Cup’s event plan before reaching an agreement for this year’s event. The changes include altering the event from all ages to 18 and older, bringing more security to prevent smoking outside the designated “medicating” areas and planning to strictly prevent vendors from handing out samples of marijuana-infused edibles.

“The reason we’re bringing back the Emerald Cup is because we have a track record of working with them and they’ve been very open to meeting anything we require,” Young said. “That kind of organization and pre-planning didn’t occur with High Times.”

High Times rolled out its first issue more than four decades ago, and was a pioneer in championing pot culture with full-color centerfolds of pot leaves at a time when even images of marijuana were provocative. The magazine’s pages unearthed an underground economy from pipes to detox teas and has beaten the drums against the so-called War on Drugs.

The magazine held its first Cannabis Cup awards program in Amsterdam in 1988. In the 27 years since, the contest has evolved into speaker-thumping events with bikini-clad women and is held in cities across the country.

In April, an estimated 10,000 people attended the group’s U.S. Cannabis Cup in Denver. The group is planning upcoming international trade shows in Amsterdam and Negril, Jamaica, as well as in American cities including Portland, Ore.; Clio, Mich.; Washington, D.C.; and Fresno.

In contrast, the Emerald Cup started in 2004 as a secretive word-of-mouth gathering of pot farmers at Blake’s Area 101 near the Mendocino-Humboldt county line.

The close-knit event grew into an all-night party over the years and, in 2012, moved from an arrangement of hay bales and tents at Blake’s property to the Mateel Community Center in Redway. It was nearly canceled in 2011 when major law enforcement actions - including the raid of Mendocino’s poster-child collective Northstone Organics - made people afraid of the attention it would bring to the pot-growing community.

But Blake said that they held the event anyway and started including a speaker program to address topics from medical marijuana laws and the implications of legalization to growing practices.

Organizers brought the Emerald Cup to Sonoma County in 2013.

This year, they will have the entire fairgrounds to spread out, and Blake expects about 18,000 attendees, up from an estimated 13,000 in 2014. They are doubling the number of food trucks to 20 and shelling out an additional $100,000 to attract top notch musical acts.

Blake said they are anticipating a lot of discussion about the potential that a referendum to legalize marijuana may go before voters in 2016, and they are inviting lawmakers, including Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, to attend the event.

“With 2016 around the corner, we ought to bring everyone to the table,” Blake said.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.