Duke and His First Class Paranoia: First Class Gas Review
Low to the Ground: A Wavy by Baba Ku Review
Duke or The Man Who Slept Too Much: Northern Dreams Strain Review
The Chinatown Vibe Check
The city was steaming. Not hot. Not boiling. Steaming. The kind of heat that clung to your back like an HR rep and filled your socks with sweaty broth. Duke hadn’t even reached the Manhattan Bridge before he started hallucinating air-conditioners floating up from sewer grates. He trudged through Chinatown, squinting through fogged-up lenses, a…
Duke and the Bocce Ball Blues
The late sun painted the sky in streaks of pink and gold across the expanse of Ocean Beach, San Diego. Duke squatted low, weighing his next shot, green bocce ball burning in his palm. His fiancée stood at the far end of the court, arms crossed, sporting a grin sharp and sinister enough to cut…
Duke and the Spectrum Heist
San Diego nights have a way of painting themselves. Neon dripping off wet sidewalks, gaslamps flickering like old film reels, the whole city vibrating with a low, crackling hum. Duke leaned against a brick wall, Louie snoring at his feet, the Prizm jar from Maven Genetics in his hand. Packaging slick enough to pass for…
Duke and His West Coast Fantasy
As far back as Duke could remember, he’d always wanted to be a ’90s rapper. Not a modern trap star. Not an algorithm draped in Balenciaga. He wanted to be West Coast—lowrider royalty, swaddled in silk, making driveway music videos with a camcorder and a bucket of chronic. Today, that fantasy felt a little closer….
Duke and the Heat Wave
San Diego in the heart of summer does not fuck around. The sun’s an unrelenting bully, hammering the streets with a fury like it has a personal grudge against anyone who dares exist beneath it. Asphalt ripples like a bad Instagram filter, and the air hangs heavy—thick enough to choke on. After hours of lumbering…
Duke and the Neon Soup
Duke’s hand was wet. Not soaking, but damp in the way that means something had either spilled recently… or someone had cried. Duke didn’t remember crying, but with him, you never know. The little Lhasa Apso named Niles was staring up at him, his old tail wagging like a half-charged metronome. Louie was passed out,…
Duke and the Bomb
Duke was halfway through a movie he’d seen ten times before and somehow just now realized, for the tenth time—the lizard was talking. Not metaphorically. Literally. He paused the screen. Rewound. Watched it again. Still a lizard. Still talking. Or is that an eel? That’s when he knew: this weed was different. The jar of…