ENCINITAS — Local cannabis shop co-owner Bertin Porcayo first heard house music in the early ’90s at a long-gone San Diego dance club called The Guff.
“I had just turned 18 years old, and I went to some nightclub my friends invited me to,” Porcayo told The Coast News, reflecting on a night that launched a series of events leading up to the opening of Siesta Life, the city’s newest cannabis storefront.
“I heard this DJ play, [Doc Martin], who is now like one of my best friends, a big brother now,” he said. “But it was that night, after that night, I knew I wanted to be involved with this music.”
After working as a promoter for clubs in the burgeoning West Coast house music scene, Porcayo decided it was time to start his record label, Siesta Records, establishing the foundation of what would become one of the preeminent house record labels in the country.
“It was like ‘96 when it started taking off,” Porcayo said. “Then by around 1998 to 2000, it was everywhere, we were selling records, touring in Europe, it was huge.”
Meanwhile, across the country, Siesta Life co-owner Randall Sims was studying biology at the University of Pennsylvania, preparing for the possibility of medical school. A DJ since high school, Sims was working simultaneously to understand the science behind CBD and THC, the primary compounds found in cannabis.
“I majored in the biological basis of behavior at UPenn, and I graduated in ‘97,” Sims told The Coast News. “At the time, impacts of CBD and THC were kind of completely unknown, and I was trying to understand what the basis of behavior was for cannabis and how these compounds affect us, you know, things that everyone was just beginning to understand.”
After graduation, deciding medical school wasn’t for him, Sims said he moved to New York and immersed himself in the house music scene. Shortly thereafter, he became acquainted with Porcayo and the Siesta crew.
“It was a massive label, worldwide, everybody knew about it,” Sims said, referring to Siesta. “And I became friends with one of the artists from the label, called Halo Varga. He released a huge track called ‘The Future,’ and every DJ all over the world was playing it, it was massive. I played a gig with him, and through that gig, we became friends and everything went from there.”
Sims eventually moved to California to explore the burgeoning cannabis industry, meeting Porcayo through mutual friends. Through their shared interest in music and a desire to break into the cannabis industry, the two launched a medical delivery service in Encinitas.
“In 2013, I think it was, I did a tour of China, like 30 dates over there doing music for this big show,” Sims said. “And when I came back, I had a lump sum of money, and Bert and I just sat down and asked ourselves, ‘How can we take this money and start a delivery service?’”
For both men, the transition from music to cannabis felt natural.
“Cannabis goes hand-in-hand with music,” Sims said, noting the deep connection between the two cultures.
But as for a continued career in the house music scene, Porcayo said once the switch was made to a digital format from the traditionally vinyl-based genre they grew up with, music took a backseat. In 2015, he began to focus all his attention on establishing himself in the cannabis industry.
“I put the label aside for a bit,” Porcayo said. “The whole digital change came in, and I wasn’t into it, so I didn’t really focus on music for a time. But then I was really able to focus on cannabis.”
Sims, reminiscing on the days the two spent creating and playing music, said
“I’ll just say this, we were lucky enough to be in an amazing period, an amazing time, it’s like we saw the golden period for club culture,” he said.
In 2022, Sims and Porcayo entered a lottery to hopefully become one of four cannabis retailers in Encinitas following the passage of Proposition 64, statewide legislation allowing municipalities to vote on legal retail cannabis shops. In Encinitas, voters approved Measure H, allowing for the regulated sale and cultivation of recreational cannabis.
The selection process for cannabis retailers in Encinitas involved a lottery that gave preference to businesses with significant experience in the cannabis or pharmaceutical industries.
All four winning businesses, including Siesta Life, were selected from a pool of 171 applicants who met these criteria.
Now that their shop is up and running, Porcayo and Sims remain true to their roots in house music and vinyl records, a testament to their appreciation for music’s tactile and authentic experiences. Working in the shop, Porcayo said it reminds him of the early 2000s, of the days he spent working in his once renowned record shop in San Diego.
“Now, working in our retail shop and just ordering products, finding products, it’s the same thing, it’s the same feeling,” Porcayo said. “And then watching people, listening to their reaction to the product that they got, well, you know, it’s great.”
