420 All Month: Funk Mountain

Parliament Funkadelic said it best:

Oww, we want the funk, give up the funk
Oww, we need the funk, gotta have the funk

Funk Mountain is one of the single best daytime highs I’ve ever encountered. Its parent strains are Strawberry Guava and Trop Cookies. I wrote about Strawberry Guava last week, so feel free to go back and give it a look. Trop Cookies is better known as Tropicana Cookies, and its offspring include a number of mainstays and personal favorites in the daytime high category, including but not limited to: Superboof/Blockberry, Point Break, Red Hot Cookies, Tropicana Cherries and its offspring Sour Trop Cherries, and Paradise Circus. Tropicana Cookies’ own parents are Girl Scout Cookies (GSC) and Tangie. Funk Mountain is like a Hollywood power couple whose parents and grandparents were all Hollywood elite as well. Except in this case “Hollywood” is just “getting high in the afternoon.”

I like to differentiate between “mood elevation” and “mood enhancement.” A mood enhancer – within my own vernacular – tends to be a more powerful or potent mind-altering kind of high, like those big euphorias I’ve written about here and there. The downside with a lot of those is that they can enhance any mood, so they may not always be a safe bet for bringing yourself up and out of a… funk, perhaps? Mood elevators may not always be the punchiest highs necessarily, but I use the term to specify when a high has brings me up, no matter the starting point. In a shitty mood? This’ll bring you up a bit. Just feeling meh? This’ll make you feel better. Already feeling good? Let’s punch it up a notch then.

My “funk” wordplay is getting scrambled here, which is a bummer. P-Funk’s funk is good, but mood funk is bad. Anyway, Funk Mountain is less a mountain of funk in the sense of the mood, but instead is your climb up the mountain and out of a funk.

So, what about the flower itself? The buds are gorgeous, with bright and rich greens, fluffy, and covered in a mess of tendrily orange pistils. They break apart easily for not being overly cured, and while lightly sticky, it doesn’t gunk up the grinder. The aroma is bright as well, with berry and cherry tones dancing over a solid foundation of herbal undertones bringing to mind fresh oregano and sage. The smoke is easy, clean, and medium-bodied. I’d note that the most recent smoke of Funk Mountain got me a little cough on the first hit, and none after.

The high I’ve already alluded to above. This one is a mood elevator. I was home brewing with some family a couple of summers ago, and we stepped out to smoke a joint, which happened to be Funk Mountain. We were in a fantastic mood all around. I won’t stress about the details here, but another member of the family came home, dumped some baggage on us, brought everyone down a fair bit, and rolled back inside. So we smoked another Funk Mountain joint, and got ourselves righted. Not the greatest story, I know, but it imprinted this idea of mood elevation versus mood enhancement, and formally put Funk Mountain in the elevation category as a favorite.

Oh, and that other budtender that works with me whom I’ve mentioned a couple of times as my go-to for takes on flower I haven’t tried yet, especially joints, this is his favorite strain. And anyone’s favorite strain is always worth a fair shot.