The Critics speak on Dank

“Ever wonder how new Cannabis strains are created? Famous Bud Breeder Subcool reveals the secrets of his success in his first book on the subject. Summing up over 20 years of experience growing and crossing pot varieties. Dank: The Quest for the Very Best Marijuana features loving descriptions of Subcools favorite strains, accompanied by incredibly vivid photos—Close-ups so detailed that the pages practically stick together. Over 35 varieties-including High Times Top 10 Strain winners Jack the Ripper, Vortex, and Jillybean- are detailed in striking, full page photos featuring lush colors and trichomes galore. Complete with flowering times, aromas, yield and strain specific growing advise. Dank is perfect for the grow room or the coffee table. The breathtaking images and revealing text combine for a scintillating journey into the marijuana mindset of one the worlds best breeders, as he explains how and why he chooses certain plants to cross into blue-ribbon contest winners. The proud creator of sensi strains for the new millennium, Subcool is famous for producing buds with exceptional flavor, aroma and potency-plus the soothing traits that medicinal users rely upon to relieve pain and improve life. Danny Danko
Dopey Taylor

Weedbay

From time to time you’ll hear on the cannabis forums that someone is writing a book. Normally you’ll wait and wait and see if there is anything to the forum rumors. You see there’s a bit of turmoil still with books of this nature. Not only is cannabis considered illegal but also other breeders and seed banks offer competitive products, so there’s always a bit of shilling and self promotion from within, and the police wanting to intervene from without. So when a definitive voice in the scene releases all he knows about the strains he’s created it fills a huge void. I wish more breeders would do it. Subcool from TGA is a breeder, photographer, writer and grower and his professionalism for the plants he’s featuring shows off his strains and crosses well. It’s the type of book where you’ll read the information as fast as you can, so you can turn the page and see what’s on the other side.

The book “Dank” covers a breeder’s quest for the ultimate marijuana plant. From your own coffee table you will step behind the scenes of gourmet marijuana growing and discover the in depth information that has been cannabis board forum fodder for years. Potheads, growers, tokers, dealers, pinheads, they all like to discuss (and fight about) the parentage and growing tips of their favorite cannabis strains. But seldom are we treated to real-deal information straight from the breeder himself. It’s worth noting these are American strains, based on the strains we can get right here in California, where the voters have demanded that marijuana is made available for medical use statewide and made a lowest priority for law enforcement in many municipalities. There are a dozen other medical marijuana states and more considering medical marijuana in November, so it’s becoming a matter of taking care of our own now.


What do I get when I buy this book?

When you purchase the book you’re getting an 11” X 9” coffee table piece with a double gatefold cover with spot UV coating and embossed type. It really is quite impressive without even opening the book. Once inside prepare for the in depth description and photo essay of 37 highly detailed marijuana strains. You learn all about the strains, what traits to expect and what to avoid. At 144 pages and with multiple photos on some pages it’s a large body of work you could only expect from a grower of 2 decades.

A big part of the book is documentation of a breeders work and although photos don’t document the strains Subcool was working with, there is a substantial amount of information he shares about these ‘other’ strains. There are 20 others strains mentioned in the book



It’s a great book and I can easily recommend this to anyone interested in Dank sticky bud. Medical marijuana patients and growers can get information straight from the breeder. With grow tips and photo documentation on strains available in the Nor-Cal area it should be interesting to weedbay locals. I can also testify that the photos in the book are worth the price just as a conversation piece in their own merit and are in a class of their own. At 144 pages it’s a definitive guide and available at fine bookstores everywhere October 1st 2008. Retails at $29.95.
If you want a signed copy of this book they are limited to the first 100 copies but we thought it would be cool to set that up. The site is DANK GEAR ONLINE - The worlds premier place for Marijuana based Gear and Accesories.
Dopey T

You also got a fantastic review off-site. He says he can hardly take in the words for the photography.

It definately sounds like a good read, plus I just love pics of Mary. She's the only girl, that can be short, fat, tall, skinny, dripping wet, smelling of a skunk and still be SEXY...
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Congradulations Subcool..... I'm going to get a copy and read it twice.... and I won't even smoke before, or during.....just after......
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Keep it Real.....Dank...

congrats, i will always be a student

i just got home from working out of state and my signed copy of dank was waiting for me...fantastic photos and descriptions...a book to be proud of...i have read every thread you have started here and other sites trying to learn as much as i can...i would like to make a suggestion...compile all of your how to threads and make an organic soil grow guide...although i have read them online i would still purchase the book if it was printed...you have the pics and info already so half the battle would be done...thanks again for a great book

Dank: Subcool's Quest For The Pinnacle of Pot
by Jeremiah Vandermeer
Cannabis Culture Magazine
In his decades-long search for the perfect cannabis plant, master breeder Subcool has produced and nurtured some of the most sought after strains on the planet. In his electric new book, Dank: The Quest for the Very Best Marijuana, the distinguished grower takes readers on a vivid voyage through the genesis and development of over 35 premium varieties.
Recently dubbed "one of the world's best breeders" by High Times, Subcool offers us a glimpse into his private growrooms, and shows us, with vibrant, full-page bud shots, that he is also a contender for the title of "one of the world's best marijuana photographers."
"I'm just a normal guy," Subcool told Cannabis Culture in a recent interview about his new book, "but I guess if you beat your head up against the wall for 35 years doing one thing, you get good at it."
Many of Subcool's renowned strains, including Jack's Cleaner, Vortex, Sputnik, and Querkle, are featured in mouth-watering detail, with meticulous and engaging descriptions of the many steps of the breeding and growing process. Subcool breaks down the science of breeding as he sees it, and offers a unique personal window into the mind of a cultivator.
"After thirty years of being a pothead and a grower," Subcool told CC, "I'm now in a position where I can say, here is a clone that I know is going to taste like pineapple, I know that it will provide a healing or sedative or painkilling effect. If you're depressed, I know this shit makes you giggle. It really is that simple. Cannabis is really that simple."
Originally from the state of Georgia, Subcool bounced around the US and Canada for a few years, often finding himself in hot water with authorities.
"I got in a lot of trouble on the East Coast, growing marijuana," he said as he recounted what became the motivating force for his future passion. "The cops should have just left me alone in Florida, growing weed, stoned on Oxycodones, with no mission in life, and that's what I would still be doing. I got clean in jail, and when I got out I came to the West Coast and I found The Movement, which is people like myself that take the passion and love and pour it into the medical community, legally, and do some good."
He is now a registered medical grower in the PNW, along with his wife, MzJill, who is also an accomplished breeder.
"We found what we think is a piece of heaven," he says of the PNW’s medical community, which, due to state laws, functions on a non-profit basis. "Unlike California, we cannot sell our marijuana to our patients. We get to grow with their card, we get to help them out, but we do not charge money, and it has kept the DEA out of our system. I came west, and I found this paradise where people are just willing to help each other out. Yesterday we ran a little low, and a friend of mine just brought me a camera case full of bubble. It doesn't happen on the East Coast and it doesn't happen in the normal world. It rubs off on you, and when someone does something nice for you, you pass it back. So all that is pounded into this whole weed thing, and now what used to get me in trouble has surrounded me with love and care."
Many breeders see the creation of dank, which Subcool explains as "simply extremely high quality cannabis grown to perfection" as an act of craftsmanship, estheticism, and passion.
"Dank is an art form," he said. "Anyone can learn to create dank. People ask me all the time, 'how do you do it?' There is a lot of hard work involved, that's for sure, but it's not magic. It really isn't that complicated. If you take your best strain and bring it to me and I cross it with my best strain, it would be very improbable for us not to create something that will blow people away – and every one of the strains in that book will knock a normal person the fuck out."
As is the nature of any art form, it is important to have a viewing pubic to appreciate, analyze, and criticize the fruits of an artist's creative labors.
"I've always just talked about what we do, to share the passion. When you have some good buds in your pocket, what do you want to do? You want to go show somebody, right? But you can't. You can't just go down to the store and say, 'check out this blueberry I grew, dude!' No, you can't do that. So I found the internet, and I could finally say, 'look what I did! Look what God created. And look what it looks like through a macro lens.'"
After uploading thousands of pictures to websites and forums, developing his craft further, and establishing TGA seeds with fellow growers MzJill, Sunycheba and Badboy; Subcool began sharpening his pencils and his writing skills. He has since been a regular contributor to High Times, Skunk and Heads, and publishes his material online at several websites including [find out which email addresses he would like to highlight].
When his friend and distributor Pistils submitted some of his photos of a juicy pink hybrid called Sputnik to Ed Rosenthal's Quick American Publishing to be featured in the Big Book of Buds 3, Ed put Subcool's shots on the cover.
The cover really put him on the map, and he continued to submit photos to Rosenthal until, one day, he received a letter.
"'Dear Subcool', the letter said. 'Ed Rosenthal and Quick American would like to publish your book. We would like to put the full weight of our publishing company behind it and make it a main release,'" Subcool told CC. "You don't get much higher than that, man."
Rosenthal, the executive editor of Dank, worked closely with the author to refine his thousands of photos and pages of writing into a gorgeously published coffee-table book with over 200 immaculately detailed pictures that seem to jump right off of the glossy, 11" x 9" pages.
"He took the red pen to it that your mom used to take to your book report," Subcool said, "and we spent three days batting ideas back and forth at each other; the end product was a wonderful collaboration between two people. He really treated me like a king."
The large stunning photos in the book outweigh the text; something that Subcool said was a very conscious decision.
"I started to notice that people don't ever read the words on my threads. You could literally write the information about growing in the middle of the pictures and at the end of the thread, people would ask you the same questions. So it dawned on me that most of us just like to look at pretty colors and pretty pictures. Instead of just telling someone something, I like to show them."
Some of the photos in Dank look so unusually colorful; a reader might think digital touch-up work has been done post-production, but Subcool stresses that the photos are straight from the lens, untouched.
"I do not cheat, and what I mean is, a lot of professional photographers take their pictures and they load them into Adobe and do all kinds of freaky stuff to them. A, I don't know how and don't have time to go to school and learn, and B, I've always believed that if you don't get the shot you want, you load your tripod back up and take the picture again."
Dank contains not only wonderful visuals, but detailed descriptions of plant size, phenotypes, parentage, aroma, yield, and type of high, and also includes pages of useful growing tips and compelling personal tales.
As important as breeding and growing is for its esthetic values, Subcool sees another meaningful reason for detailing the lineage and character-traits of his creations.
"We've been able to locate about 20 or 30 medical strains bred to do certain things," he said, " and some of them really, really make a difference for people suffering with pain. I think that someone needs to fight for them. And someone needs to fight for them genetically, not just in the courts. I'm not trying to say I'm some great geneticist, I'm just saying there has to be someone who stands up for the cannabis plant and says 'this is special, we need to preserve this, and provide it to people.'"
Subcool, who has been a medical user himself for more than four years after he fell from a two-story roof and shattered his knee, uses marijuana and THC tinctures to relieve pain.
"I refuse to take the things they prescribe to me, Vioxx, opiates, Vicodin; they hand them out like jelly beans. I won't even take Tylenol. If I have pain I take tincture. I get around just fine now. I take one teaspoon of tinc and it goes away."
Despite years of scientific evidence showing the benefits of cannabis, Subcool thinks many people still have misconceptions about marijuana's wide-ranging healing properties.
"At many of the events I go to, there are people in wheelchairs and even on gurneys," he said. "The people we are helping are not faking it, and we need the public to know that."
Subcool, himself a victim of overzealous drug enforcement policies, now sees himself as a warrior for the anti-prohibitionist cause, and writes in Dank, "Nature would not create something so beautiful or so useful if it was not intended for us to benefit from it." The author sees the drug war as a waste of time, money, and effort.
"It is fairly obvious, even from a layman’s point of view that cannabis does not hurt people," he said. "So what we have is, 40-60 million people who use cannabis in America. 70% of the people in America will tell you, 'quit arresting marijuana users', but the politicians are ignoring the population. If you ask almost anyone, even the most hardcore right-wingers will finally now say, 'well maybe there are more important things to concern ourselves with.' I'm not afraid of them any more. The laws are either going to change in this country, or they're going to put more of us in jail. I can only focus on what's around me and help as many people as I can.
Subcool's Dank: The Quest for the Very Best Marijuana can be purchased at your favorite bookstore, or online at www.dankgearonline.com

again the grass hoper learns from the teacher......

Nice to see people still writing books

growtech needs to stop posting non sense in the forums,,Zzzzzz

i look through my copy of Dank whenever im smoking TGA stuff and get more and more inspired to try new things. lol. strains that is. great read.

Very nice book and well deserved review.