For a second year, the world of fine art and Cannabis came together near the shores of Miami Beach. Terp Basel, a gathering of Cannabis, community, and couture, took over a skate park near the Wynwood district for a full weekend including art, music, podcasting, fire dancing, a rolling competition, and plenty of smoke.
Since 2002, the week of Art Basel has transformed the city of Miami into one of the world’s premiere artistic gatherings and since 2022, the Cannabis community has come together to celebrate creativity and community in an event called Terp Basel. Expanding from two days into four, the organizers invited brands from home as well as places like California, New York, Colorado, providing them a chance to put on a show in the streets of the sunshine state. For its sophomore outing, the team behind Terp Basel incorporated fashion and flavor with infused pizza options and a runway show, transforming a Miami Shores skatepark into a system of separate hang out areas and smoke spots.
More than just a collection of tables and booths, you could also find live glassblowing, an airbrush t-shirt station, calisthenics, on-site embroidery, and big names like Terphogz, Fidels, Sherbinski, and Natura alongside competitors from 2023’s Legends of Hash Sugar Magnolia. We saw a lot of excitement at the Zatix booth over their OG Diesel, as well as for the Moroccan Peaches at the Mountain Man Melts table. Some of my hits included the Magic Z from Humboldt County’s Jelly Wizard, a Peyton Manning rosin that Colorado brand Bakers spent three years pheno hunting, the special on-site drop of the Truly Red Panda/Astraluxe collab, and a Rosin-infused sugar from Miami brand NWO (pro-tip, ask your local barista to make you a cafe cubano with the sugar packet).
Longer than most events we’re used to, Terp Basel stretches out in order to work in harmony with all the other happenings across the city including, MINS Basel, Dab Day, Uprising, and Art Basel itself. This year saw the addition of even more events including a Kapow Berries release with edible darlings Super Chill, who gave Floridians a non-medicated preview of the flavors in their upcoming CA recreational release. At the event, things heated up with a performance by Dead Prez, live magic, a taping of First Smoke Of The Day podcast, there was even free massages and workouts on the last day.
Terp Basel packs a lot of elements into a relatively short period of time, giving visitors all day to cruise the murals and galleries then grab a cuban coffee before hitting the venue after 6PM. It’s a bizarre thing to be smoking a joint having spent your day staring at works by Chris Dyer, Mab Graves, Yoshitomo Nara, and Ai Weiwei, then look up at a skate ramp covered by Atomik, knowing that the through line is Cannabis. To punctuate the point, the venue was also decorated with well-placed groves of hemp plants rented from a local service to give things that real garden feel.
Terp Basel offers those of us from other parts of the country, and Cannabis in general, a chance to take a place in the circle and see what comes out on the canvas. Still in its infancy, there’s a lot of potential for growth seeing as the Florida crowd seemed excited to discover new brands face-to-face. For those of us visiting, it provides a chance to check out a state whose scene we know little about, during one of its most exciting weeks. Part of the spirit of this art-centric weekend is to bring together different elements of a movement, letting them mix and mingle in the Florida heat under the watchful eye of an audience, something Terp Basel definitely accomplished this year.
