It took more than three years after the passage of New York State’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act for Ulster County’s first licensed dispensary for recreational cannabis, Big Gas in New Paltz, to open for business in April 2024. The road to pot-shop paradise in the mid-Hudson Valley was a rocky one. His eye on the region as a promising place to set up a cannabis business, the owner of a Michigan-based company called Variscite NY One, Inc. filed a lawsuit challenging the provisions in the new law that favored New York State-based entrepreneurs. Resolving the legal challenge ended up taking a couple of years. Several regions in the state – Brooklyn, the Finger Lakes, central and western New York, in addition to the Hudson Valley – had to wait longer than others for licenses to be awarded, because Variscite had targeted them.
Some eager applicants in our area, such as Honey’s Cannabis CBD in Gardiner, fell by the wayside, financially unable to wait out the legal drama. But the license approvals are finally beginning to flow, and Ulster County’s second recreational cannabis dispensary opened its doors to an enthusiastic stream of customers over Labor Day weekend. Royal Blend Dispensary is now up and running at 2223 New York Route 32. The mailing address says Kingston, but the actual location at the corner of Kallop Road is in the Bloomington hamlet of the Town of Rosendale.
The building, owned by Ed Parker, was originally an Esso station. The exterior still has that mid-20th-century gas station look, and there’s a vintage Pontiac grille imbedded in the north wall of the lobby area. But the fancy marble floors attest to its more recent history as a showroom for a business selling stone pavers, countertops and tiles.
At the door, you have to sign in, show a photo ID and wait alongside a security officer until a sales rep is available to show you around. That comes with the territory of this tightly regulated business, where the merchandise is highly valuable and most transactions are conducted in cash. Contrary to some non-users’ mental image of a pot shop as a seedy joint where lowlife characters sidle surreptitiously in and out, a modern cannabis dispensary is as sanitary, thickly walled, heavily guarded and elaborately wired with cameras and alarms as a bank. It’s therefore the job of the sales staff — known as budtenders — to create an atmosphere of warmth that makes the customer feel welcomed and comfortable.
This reporter’s guide to shopping at Royal Blend Dispensary was store manager Marco Bevilacqua. Like the rest of the regular sales staff, he’s young, affable and thoroughly familiar with all the product on offer, including the nuances of how different formulations are likely to affect the user. The THC content, along with the ratio of THC to CBD — or CBN, if you’re looking for “hibernated sleep” for pain regulation — is predictive of how strong the high will be. Indica strains are described as giving a “whole-body high,” while sativa strains produce more of a “mind high.” Hybrids balance the two effects. The presence of particular terpenes will determine whether a particular product will be better for an active day out hiking or a relaxed evening cocooning at home. Tell these folks how you want to feel and what you’ll likely be doing, and they can steer you to the perfect mix.
“Customers come in and say, ‘I want something strong,’ and I ask them, ‘What type of strong would you like to be?’” says Bevilacqua. “Some people just want to get high; some people just want to get normal.” While he cautions that this is not a medical dispensary and the staff members aren’t trained to diagnose or treat illnesses, they have a practiced sense of what cannabis strains will be more or less beneficial for, say, a person with ADHD. “I have marijuana that will get you focused,” he promises.
Sounds too good to be true, to someone whose initiation to recreational cannabis happened back in the days when you took whatever you could get from whatever illegal dealer you trusted most, and results were to be discovered by trial-and-error. If you were lucky, your weed was never sprayed with herbicides or cut with something nasty to boost its psychoactive effects.
Your intrepid reporter stopped smoking pot decades ago while planning for a pregnancy, and never went back, because adult responsibilities got in the way. “Marijuana that will get you focused” was a literal pipe dream back then. So, the legally sanctioned, well-regulated modern dispensary seems like a whole new world, with offerings tailored to the needs, wants and tastes of the individual consumer. At Royal Blend, there’s no judgment of the ignorance of the novice or rusty user. The budtenders are happy to hear what you want from your cannabis, and knowledgeable about your options.
Aside from the fact that the pot available legally these days tends to be much stronger (and correspondingly more expensive) than the ounces or nickel bags of yesteryear, the contemporary market also brings with it the need to parse among many “delivery methods.” Some of these didn’t even exist back in our hippie youth, such as vaping and gummies.
Royal Blend can supply you with loose flowerbuds in quantities of 3.5 grams and up, if you’re old-school and want to roll your own or pack a bowl, although Bevilacqua notes, “We can’t put live product on display.” At least as popular these days, apparently, are prerolls, which are packaged singly – making it easy to sample different formulations and decide what you like best – as well as in packs of five, six or seven joints. Prices range from $7.50 to $20 for a single to $40 for seven.
If that sounds pricey compared to the “old days,” be advised that you can probably get more than one session off a single joint, unless your THC tolerance is quite high. At least, that’s what this returning prodigal daughter discovered from a sample of Orange Dream hybrid preroll from the Back Home Cannabis Company of High Falls. Call me a wimp, but I wouldn’t have wanted to try to be productive in that first hour or two after I smoked half a jay.
I also found out that my post-COVID lungs can’t hold the smoke in as long as they used to, so edibles are probably my best way forward to occasional recreational use. That delivery method is super-accessible now. You don’t have to rub your weed through a fine sieve before adding it to your brownie mix or cookie batter anymore. Gummies are very popular, and make it easy to regulate your dosage by count. There are also chocolates — the only edible format that isn’t vegan and gluten-free – though some of us moldy oldies would question why you would eat a time-honored “munchie” before the effects kick in, instead of after.
All of these products (including the smokables) come in flavors, it seems — unlike the old days, when herb tasted like, well, herbs. For a light dose of cannabis, perhaps to ease your way in, you might want to try the infused beverages. The cheapest item on the menu here is a single serving of lemonade containing five milligrams of THC, at $3.50. You can also get apple cider, a caffeine-free iced tea/lemonade blend, black cherry, orange creamsicle and vanilla cola.
Vaping is an utterly unfamiliar world to me, so I can’t tell you much beyond noting that the pens range in price from $35 to $99. If you want to know how many times you can get high off one cartridge, talk to your budtender. Also for sale are concentrates that can be added to other products to intensify their effects, the way some potheads would smear the outside of a joint with a streak of hash oil back in the day. These come in various forms: products from Silly Nice with names like Diamond Dust and Bubble Hash, and resins from Rythm. Tinctures for healing and topicals for muscle aches are available as well.
One thing that all of the manufacturers of the products sold at Royal Blend Dispensary have in common is sourcing within New York State. Many come from the Hudson Valley, in fact: Besides the aforementioned Back Home, from High Falls, Dank is based in Poughkeepsie, Rythm and Pax in Warwick.
While not to be found on-site on a daily basis, the owners of Royal Blend Dispensary are known in the Hudson Valley as the proprietors of a Poughkeepsie restaurant, Royal Blend Jamaican and Soul Food. Native to Kingston, Jamaica, Delaurna and Sonia Murphy got their start as entrepreneurs in their homeland: Sonia taught kindergarten while also running a successful home-based business sewing apparel and bed linens. Delaurna established a career as a folksinger, dancer and actor and founded a community-based cultural organization, and eventually came to work for Sonia’s company as it expanded. They had their first two children in Jamaica before emigrating to the US about 35 years ago.
They had to accept menial jobs at first, with Sonia working as a domestic helper and Delaurna as an office assistant. They were also street vendors, selling clothing and accessory items and, on occasion, marijuana. The latter activity led to Delaurna’s arrest and beating by police – which, decades later, qualified the pair for preferential consideration for a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary license under the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act’s provisions designed to give a leg up to people whose careers had been adversely impacted by harsh and discriminatory “war on drugs” policies.
As new immigrants, the Murphys had to struggle, but in time Delaurna found more stable work as a licensed polysomnographic technologist, working with patients with sleep disorders. Together, they launched a family-owned retail business, Royal Blend Perfume Oils & Accessories, and later added Royal Blend Foods, opening the restaurant in Poughkeepsie.
Obtaining the dispensary license put them at the mercy of predatory lenders, so they decided to seek support from law firms, management organizations and advocacy groups whose mission was consistent with restorative justice and social equity goals of the new legislation. The Bronx Cannabis Hub provided access to training on operating a retail dispensary and the pro bono division of the legal firm of Clair Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, LLP, supplied legal advice on negotiating with potential investors. At a training, they met Reginald Fluellen, PhD, a senior consultant for the Cannabis Social Equity Coalition, who helped them establish a partnership with Housing Works, the operator of the first legal dispensary in New York State, which opened in Manhattan in December 2022.
Founded in 1990 with a mission of finding housing for thousands of homeless HIV-positive New Yorkers, Housing Works is a not-for-profit organization with a successful 30-year track record of running small retail establishments such as bookstores and thrift shops to finance its advocacy work and housing, substance abuse and mental health services. Nowadays, Housing Works is sharing its expertise in running a thriving cannabis dispensary with people such as the Murphys whom the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act was specifically meant to help.
Why did the plucky entrepreneurial couple choose Rosendale as the site to open their dispensary? According to Bevilacqua, “When [Delaurna] came into this location, he just thought it had a presence.” Fair enough. Being halfway between Kingston and New Paltz, on a busy road, probably won’t hurt, either.
It was a long and twisty journey getting here, but Royal Blend Dispensary is now at your service. The shop is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Cash, pin debit cards and ACH transfers are the currently accepted means of payment; credit cards are not accepted as yet. Online orders of $50 or more are accepted for in-store pickup when prepaid by ACH via Stronghold. For more information, visit https://royalblenddispensary.com or call (646) 981-3257.
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