Pride Year Round: Conversations with Queer-Owned Brands at The Travel Agency

Queer-owned and operated brands are doing great work to help make our industry equitable, welcoming, and restorative to our communities. We at The Travel Agency are proud to showcase and uplift queer-owned brands creating opportunities to progress the cannabis industry — and their communities at large — in a positive direction for all of us.

Flamer, building a cannabis-centric community in New York

Flamer is a queer-owned cannabis brand that grew out of the activism world, where founders Wyatt Harms (he/him) and Matias Alvial (he/him) first met. Harms, CEO of Flamer, and Alvial, the company’s Chief Brand Officer, employed creativity in their activism to push for progress and equity for the LGBTQIA+ community and beyond.

Harms brought Flamer’s third co-founder and Chief Cannabis Officer, cultivator Khalil Acevedo (he/him), into the fold. Harms introduced Acevedo and Alvial at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, and the idea for Flamer – and its bright red prerolls – was born.

Flamer also teamed up with Patrick Weinert (he/him), a cannabis farmer at Jane’s Garden, who grows “amazing weed,” according to Harms. But Flamer is about more than just the cannabis itself — it’s about bringing people together.

“Our idea is centered on how we create more community,” Harms said. “We obviously do the packaging, the branding, and the marketing, but it’s more about how we build partnerships with queer farmers or partnerships with a trans pride music festival.”

Alvial and Harms say they sought to build a community around cannabis culture already thriving in the activism space. Flamer held their first picnic get-together on April 20th at Washington Square Park, drawing 250 people from an eclectic array of backgrounds to connect, socialize, and celebrate cannabis. In 2024, Flamer did it again, partnering with The Travel Agency for another 4/20 picnic in Prospect Park.

“It was all different kinds of people and that’s the ethos of our brand,” Harms said. “It’s like everyone is invited, you just got to be a little weird.”

Flamer is hoping to build on this progress because cannabis intersects with so many different groups and helps people find common ground. For Alvial and Harms, the New York cannabis market can be a way to create understanding and acceptance between a wide range of communities.

“Much of Flamer has been about bringing people together,” Alvial said. “There will be people from Goldman Sachs and then all these artists. There’s drag queens and there’s frat bros. That’s the beautiful thing — people don’t judge, especially in New York.”

But part of building an equitable cannabis industry means challenging the status quo and continuing to push for progress, something Alvial and Harms are very accustomed to from their work in activist circles. For Alvial, prioritizing equity for queer people and BIPOC people comes before simply growing the business.

“We were in a meeting and there were a lot of white faces — I was the only brown one,” he said. “And I said, ‘Listen, I don’t care how many people you’re hiring that are brown below you if everyone in the decision-making process is right. I don’t know if I messed up that partnership, but that’s okay. I don’t want to be part of a room that kicks me out. That inclusion, to me, is the future of cannabis.”

Harms agreed, emphasizing the importance of starting that work in the local market and connecting with others to amplify those efforts and create a platform for marginalized voices.

“It starts at the beginning. We love the New York market and we love the people we work with,” Harms said. “When you talk with The Travel Agency, there’s a lot of queer people in management. There’s a lot of queer people involved in this market and that makes our day-to-day lives so much more joyful when we’re interacting with people who understand what we’re doing.”

As the cannabis industry matures, whether or not it becomes an equitable and accepting place will depend on the strength of its community of consumers, businesses, and non-profit organizations. Harms noted that the New York market offers hope that the industry will be built from the ground up by the community that was criminalized for so many years. But to retain the culture that paved the way for legalization, in all its forms, the people who built it need to stick together.

“It’s about being in our community, hiring people from the community, doing partnerships with people from the community — and it’s not just Pride, but it’s something to do year-round,” Harms said.

Drew Martin, promoting cannabis as a healing tool

Drew Martin is a queer-owned cannabis brand focused on the therapeutic properties of plants in nature, including sun-grown cannabis. The brand brings together flavorful botanicals and premium flower to produce low-dose prerolls

Drew Martin Gosselin (he/him), co-founder of Drew Martin, had one foot in two very different worlds in New Orleans: he worked as an herbalist by day and developed cocktail programs for award-winning bars at night.

“Drew Martin was born out of my reverence for plant magic and the healing properties of plants, as well as the ritual and social beauty that plants can provide for people,” Gosselin said.

As a queer-owned business, Pride is central to Drew Martin’s philosophy, not just in June but every month. According to Gosselin, the tightly-connected history between the movement for queer liberation and cannabis legalization plays a key role in how the brand approaches the industry today.

“As queer people, I think we are especially able to see and recognize the historical implications and contributions the community made towards legalizing cannabis,” he said. “So, from Day One, we’ve always recognized that we are here today and we are able to work in this space because of the work these queer forebears made for us.”

Gosselin specifically cited Dennis Peron, the iconic advocate for medical cannabis legalization and co-founder of the San Francisco Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the U.S. Peron went on to be an instrumental figure in the passage of Prop 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which made California the first state in the U.S. to legalize medical cannabis.

“Understanding that work that our forebears have done for us, we want to continue pushing for that mission, particularly around marginalized communities because this industry was built and forged by marginalized communities,” Gosselin said.

As a celebration of Pride this year, Drew Martin has created a new product called “One Queer Preroll,” and all proceeds from this product will go to local organizations supporting queer and transgender people. In New York, that organization is G.LI.T.S., an organization focused on Black trans sex workers’ rights, helping to provide harm reduction services, housing, and education, as well as engaging in advocacy work.

For Gosselin, the road to healing through building an equitable cannabis industry is intersectional. It can’t just be about the queer community, he said, but must also be about BIPOC communities that have been deeply affected by the War on Drugs.

“This industry is inextricably tied to the fight for justice within the Black and brown communities as well,” Gosselin said. “Step one for us is recognizing that we are a white-led company in cannabis … which is something we have to sit with and recognize and find ourselves responsible for making amends every single day we’re in this industry.

“Starting from that position, we can move forward and take the privilege we currently have to make sure we’re amplifying the right voices and pushing forward on advocacy and supporting the groups that are doing the work to undo a lot of the damages and harms affecting these communities as a whole across the country.”

In that way, Goesslin said, he hopes that cannabis can be a healing tool not just for the patients that seek out products that provide them relief and help them feel better each day, but also for a society that is still reeling from the wounds caused by decades of prohibition, centuries of racism, and endemic homophobia.

“Cannabis has become an incredible healing tool for this community,” Gosselin said. “The plant is really something people can build a community around … and that enables them to heal and grow.”

Other queer-owned cannabis brands at The Travel Agency

Silly Nice’s whole motto is “puff with purpose.” This Harlem-based, Black-owned, and veteran-owned brand opened its doors to elevate the cannabis experience through artisanal craftsmanship and sustainable practices. Products you’ll find on our menu include diamond powder and infused flower.

Beautiful, iconic cloud pipes are the hallmark of Go Easy, an accessories brand focused on your journey into outer space through cannabis. Cloud pipes are available in Twilight Blue and Aurora iridescent clear, and cloud and celestial-themed cones give intergalactic travel a whole new meaning.

Proud to uplift queer-owned cannabis brands

New York’s cannabis market has launched with the intention, of connecting retail to social causes aimed at healing our communities and bringing people together. That’s why we’re so proud to work with the exceptional people at brands like Flamer, Drew Martin, Go Easy, and Silly Nice, who understand that cannabis is a tool to help heal, drive progress, unite our communities, and yes — to spark joy.