Healing San Francisco Through Cannabis and Care with Mirage Medicinal
Mirage Medicinal, one of Balay Kreative’s artists in residence, knows that it takes a village to raise a business. Especially one that houses the dreams of its three passionate Filipinx entrepreneurs: Malcolm Joshua Weitz, Jon Heredia, and Sarah Meier. As a cannabinoid and culture company, Mirage Medicinal’s product and design spark a steady balance of street aesthetic and grounded family values. A branding translated from the personality and life story of Weitz, who as a born and raised San Franciscan, not only saw the healing effects marijuana had on his family members, but also experienced the unjust reality of possessing the drug as a Filipino-Jewish man.
Three years in, the company is operating from a place of “cannabis as medicine” and spreading their reach to elevate everybody through art collaborations, retail spaces, and community events. This endeavor to uplift and heal the community might be a road less traveled, but powered by the bayanihan spirit, Mirage Medicinal knows it’s one worth taking.
In an interview with Jada Montez, Sarah Meier, Mirage Medicinal’s Head of Communications and Community, doesn’t fret away from the challenges of being Filipinx and running a cannabis company in an emerging industry. Yet her belief for the future of Mirage and the SOMA Pilipinas community looms large. It’s an energy that paints a picture of what it looks like to build a dream from the ground up. The end result? A family portrait of possibility - one that we’re proud to hang up in Balay Kreative for all to see.
Profile by Chloe Samillano.
“[Balay Kreative] has always felt like a place that you could come to; that felt familiar but was always evolving, always a place of ideation, and triggering new thought and new movement. The people who come through here are always offering and lending bits and pieces of their journey, and parts of themselves, to the larger narrative.”
Can you tell us a little more about your brand/business?
My name is Sarah Meier, I am one-third of Mirage Medicinal, which is a cannabinoid company, and a culture and lifestyle company. We’re doing several things simultaneously; we have Mirage branded cannabis products, but we’re also opening retail stores in San Francisco, and hopefully becoming a good and positive force in culture and community on a wider scale.
Mirage Medicinal was born through the vision, experience, and journey of our partner, Malcolm [Weitz], who’s a San Francisco native. He had always imagined having a cannabis business in San Francisco, and so he went on an “exhilarating journey” [Laughs] to come up with the funds to open a legal business in this city. He was operating in the black market and got busted twice - for transporting hundreds of pounds of weed from California to New York. The second time he got arrested, he got put into Rikers Island for a year. Through the efforts of Malcolm and my husband, Jon [Heredia], who’s the other third of Mirage, and Malcolm’s sister Nina Parks, they were able to lobby and create allowances in the language of the legislation in San Francisco to allow him, a formerly incarcerated individual with non-violent cannabis crimes, to actually own a business in the cannabis industry.
So the City of San Francisco has its Office of Cannabis, and the Office of Cannabis has the social equity program. This is how they’re trying to make things right and balance out the access to opportunity in this industry, and that’s how we have an opportunity to even be in business.
The trio behind Mirage Medicinal. (from left: Jon Heredia, Malcolm Joshua Weitz, and Sarah Meier)
What is the purpose/values behind your brand?
In terms of core values, something that has remained throughout all the shifts and stages of the brand story, has been the idea of Mirage Family Values. When [Mirage] was a San Francisco medical cannabis delivery business back in the day was at the forefront. [Malcolm and Nina] were serving patients that really needed weed, folks who were navigating side effects of things like chemotherapy, or needed support with pain, eating, or sleeping.
For Malcolm, Mirage Family Values means thinking about how your vision or actions can positively impact people other than yourself, just like being in a family. As a business this extends to our team, customers and community. But at the very foundation, for today’s core team, all of us are here because cannabis has helped with health and wellness in our own immediate families.
So that, and also the story of the different people in Malcolm’s family who supported the business while Malcolm was incarcerated, or while his father was incarcerated, and kept the business going. It’s just a testament to how, at the end of the day, family’s got your back and you stick up for each other in times of trouble. That sense of family has extended to myself and Jon coming into the picture, it has extended to the village that surrounds and supports us, including everybody here at Balay.
“Malcolm’s Story,” a short film directed by Cedric Crisologo about Malcolm Joshua Weitz’s journey to becoming a legal cannabis business owner.
How would you describe Balay Kreative?
I would describe Balay Kreative as, my gosh, it’s really like a gem in the middle of this city. Just from a personal point of view, I moved here from the Philippines not too long ago, just shortly before the pandemic started, so this became like a beacon of hope in many ways. It felt like a place you could call home, but that was not home in the sense of ‘it’s always gonna stay the same’. It always felt like it was a place that you could come to that felt familiar but was always evolving, always a place of ideation and triggering new thought and new movement.
The people who come through here are always offering and lending bits and pieces of their journey and parts of themselves to the larger narrative - be that through their art, through conversations that we have in this space. So it’s both a safe space but also a place for daring, a place for pushing forward what possibilities could be as a culture, as folks in San Francisco, as people from the Philippines, as artists, as business owners, and as individuals.
The Mirage Medicinal flag outside Balay Kreative. (Photo courtesy of Mirage Medicinal)
How has Balay helped you grow as a brand?
We have a store that has been at the mercy of the pandemic, that has been under construction legit for almost three years - on the corner of 6th and Folsom, right here in the SOMA neighborhood. We used to be up there before they started breaking everything down and renovating, so once they started building out we were kind of homeless. And so [Balay Kreative] has been our HQ, a place to still be in the neighborhood, to feel like we are part of the community here.
To have our flag flying outside of this spot on such a marquee street and such an iconic location has been nothing short of inspiring to us and it’s a reminder that we have a place in SOMA, and that we have a community to build and things to do in this neighborhood. So it’s been inspiring, and it’s been stability in many ways.
“To have our flag flying outside of this spot in such a marquee street and such an iconic location has been nothing short of inspiring to us and it’s a reminder that we have a place in SOMA.”
The Mirage team in front of their “Elevate Everybody” art installation made by @titty_boy at Balay Kreative.
Can you talk about how the Mirage installation at Balay came to be?
This installation is a representation of underground black market trap life, that both Malcolm and Jon grew up in and are familiar with, and the transition to a more mainstream era of the cannabis business. And of our mission to just elevate everybody through everything that we do.
[Our installation] has given us the opportunity to engage with our folks. Titty_boy is a Filipino artist reppin’ the Excelsior, and he was somebody that we wanted to collaborate with and we weren’t sure how, but then when this space came about and we had the two booths, we thought it’d be cool to have him come in and deck them out. It was for a specific event but now that it’s lived here for a little bit, he’s been able to create a sense of what Mirage and the artist community can do together and so we’re thinking about how to keep the installation changing perhaps. We’ve also iterated our relationship with Titty and he’s doing illustrations for our zine now, so it’s a starting point for us. [Balay] has always been a place of birth for longer and deeper relationships.
What projects/events have you hosted in SOMA Pilipinas?
We did a pre-pre-pre-launch party, a sort of friends and family community event at Kapwa Gardens. Even before that, when we still had access to the spot at 6th and Folsom we participated in Sunday Streets and we had a pop-up selling cannabis-adjacent merch and art called “Paraphernalia” in our actual building.
Both events were pivotal for us in the sense that we were able to see faces and break bread with folks that are living, working, gravitating towards South of Market for whatever it is they’re coming here for. Be it culture, be it the museums that are in the area, be it seeking for representation in some way shape or form, so it was awesome. It’s been awesome all throughout. Our goal really was to be able to pull in our network and our market and introduce them to SOMA. Because a lot of them are from Oakland, or Vallejo, or you know whatever distance that they’re traveling from, and to let them know that they have a reason to be here has been cool.
Gallery photos in courtesy of @supremethang and Mirage Medicinal. Check out their blog for more stills and stories behind their event Loud and Very Relaxed.
What does the SOMA Pilipinas community mean to you?
I don’t know if I can currently find the words to express it. This is gonna be one of those things where I know how I feel about it now and I know how important it is now, but I also feel like this is something that if we continue to cultivate over the next decade, will be completely instrumental in shaping how the culture of the Philippines continues to be represented and kept alive, and iterated for the community here in San Francisco.
I’ve always thought that this could be a home away from home on a larger scale like I don't know that there is… I mean there’s Chinatowns almost everywhere you go, and there are Filipinotowns to a certain degree, I know LA just launched the gateway to Historic Filipinotown, but there’s still something about the depth of our culture in the Bay Area that I think is just begging to be developed and expanded and I have nothing but really big dreams and hopes for what SOMA could be on a global scale for the Filipino community.
Balay Kreative’s mission is to accelerate the growth of Filipinx creative expression in SOMA. How do you embody Filipinx identity in your business?
It’s so part and parcel of who we are. It’s almost hard to say that anything we do isn’t embodying our culture. Every first person we reach out to collaborate with is a kababayan. Every person who’s inspired us to be entrepreneurs, any person that’s moved us through their life and the sacrifices that they’ve made is the only reason that we’re able to do what we’re doing. So it’s just part and parcel of who we are and what we want for ourselves.
Our goal is to really be able to get so stable and so strong and so dope that we can do even more to embody the culture in more literal ways, but right now it’s just the inherent bayanihan spirit I think. It’s the flava, you know? [Laughs] It’s the attitude that we bring every time we show up in a room - we’re by and large some of the only Asian, some of the only brown folks in some of these rooms, sitting at these tables. And while it’s mildly scary sometimes, it’s always still an honor to carry that.
“Every first person we reach out to collaborate with is a kababayan. So [embodying Filipinx identity] is just part and parcel of who we are and what we want for ourselves.”
What advice would you tell your younger self? Or any advice for emerging Filipinx entrepreneurs?
The grandness of your dreams is seeded very very early, so keep hold on the breadth of possibility and everything you imagined was possible for you. What form and what shape and what industry and what context that translates into as your life progresses is probably gonna look very different from what you once imagined.
I mean [Mirage Medicinal] is in an emerging industry. There was a time and place where we’d all either be flogged or in jail for selling weed, so it’s a brand new day. Things are gonna keep evolving and shifting but your truest truth, you already know. It’s the smallest smallest voice but the more you listen to it, the clearer it gets, so stay true to that and you’ll never lose your way.
Sarah Meier is Mirage Medicinal’s Head of Communications and Community.
What are y’all working on right now for the business?
We’re still waiting for our spot to open up, and so we’re busy in the meantime. We understand the sort of red tape that it takes to start a business in this city and no lie it’s been tough, but the hustler spirit and underdog hunger and fight that we have as a team has kept us innovating and looking for other options and opening new doors.
Very Relaxed x Mirage “High-Minded Elevation” tee. Buy Mirage merch here.
We’re working on a product line now to make that available in other stores. We also have a partnership with MedMen on a retail store in Cow Hollow that we’re learning from every day—this industry is so volatile but there’s so much promise and hope. We also got our love projects, so the zine that’s coming out. We’ve got an incredible creative director and designer so we’re excited to see what we can do in the lifestyle space, and like shirts and totes and all the merch stuff. Then when things become a little more favorable to in-person and live events, that’s where our love is. Like really just being with folks, being in high spirits with everybody, and being able to talk about big dreams together, you know?
Any dream collaborations or plans?
Three years into this thing, you almost have to keep it really real and go one step at a time otherwise you go crazy [Laughs]. So there’s definitely huge visions that we have, but for right now it’s just keeping one foot in front of the other and making progress no matter what that looks like, every day. And just making it, just pushing it through.
Inspired by Mirage Medicinal’s story? Check out profiles of our other artists in residence: ChiChai, Veecaps, Cristine Blanco, Cir Sayoc, Kristian Kabuay, and Ramon Abad.
Be sure to follow @balaykreative and subscribe to our newsletter to hear about Mirage Medicinal future endeavors and other artist opportunities/events! Stay tuned of our video interview with Sarah of Mirage Medicinal.