The Travel Agency Lets You Book A Trip To A Transportive Cannabis-Buying Experience

In the heart of SoHo, The Travel Agency’s newest store redefines what a cannabis retail space can be. Designed in collaboration with Leong Leong Architecture and Big Heavy Studios, the space blurs the line between gallery, lounge, and retail environment. Rather than presenting cannabis as a commodity, the store frames it as part of a larger cultural and aesthetic conversation—one rooted in art, design, and community.

Upon entry, visitors are welcomed into sculptural interiors that emphasize materiality and form. Curved walls, reflective surfaces, and fluid architectural gestures create a sense of movement, encouraging exploration and discovery. This atmosphere is further amplified by a kinetic installation from BREAKFAST, the New York-based studio known for merging technology, art, and motion. Their piece transforms the space into something alive—responsive, shifting, and dynamic—reminding guests that retail can also be experiential.

At the core of the store’s concept is the launch of the world’s first international Bong Gallery, a curated collection of glassworks that treat smoking devices as objects of artistry. From experimental designs to collectible pieces, the gallery challenges stigmas and elevates functional objects into the realm of fine art. This nod to craft and creativity underscores The Travel Agency’s mission: to foster a new cultural language around cannabis that goes beyond consumption and engages with design, history, and innovation.

By merging high design with interactive art and curatorial vision, The Travel Agency’s SoHo store sets a new precedent for cannabis retail. It is less a shop and more an immersive cultural destination—an environment where cannabis is positioned alongside architecture, technology, and global artistry. Here, purchasing becomes secondary to experiencing, and the future of cannabis culture is rendered not only visible, but tangible.

Mel Frank's "When We Were Criminals" Documents a World of Guerrila Growers @ M+B Photo

If you have consumed marijuana anywhere in the developed world over the past thirty years, you can most likely trace the variety you are consuming back to the work of Mel Frank and a handful of his California colleagues. Mel Frank, quite literally, wrote the textbook on marijuana. His 1978 tome, Marijuana Grower’s Guide Deluxe, was the first serious manual on how to grow cannabis. Combining research with practical experience, the book broke the seal on the often-secretive world of growers.

Frank was unique amongst his contemporaries in his love for documenting the process of marijuana cultivation as much as the product it yielded. His photographs were used as a means to chronicle and promote cannabis botany, illustrating numerous books and articles over his forty-year career.  The images also served as the artist’s personal record of guerrilla growers and breeders who collectively helped create the seminal varieties that have come to define today’s marijuana. The photos are an intentional and descriptive record of what growing looked like at a particular time—before cultural acceptance, giant indoor grows and legalization. While representing long-ago criminality, they also represent innocence and optimism; many of the photos have a giddiness about them, an awe, maybe an aspect of braggadocio—look what we hid, see what we grew... When We Were Criminals is on view through June 9 at M+B Photo 1050 North Cahuenga Boulevard, Hollywood. photographs by Oliver Kupper