Culture · Published 2026-08-01 · By so23silkroad

On July 10th — 7/10, Oil Day, the one day a year the solventless world actually gets to celebrate itself — Silk Road NYC did something no dispensary in New York had done before. We put a live rap cypher in the same room as a full dab bar and let artists freestyle about the first dab they ever took.

Volume 11: DNA at High Functions

DNA — Diversity Never Abandoned — is a Queens institution built the hard way. Five years of shows, self-funded and self-organized, no label money, no corporate backer. Founder and producer Vic Rivera and his people have been putting artists on stage in this borough since before it was fashionable to say you were from here.

Volume 11 landed at High Functions, our event space in the back of the shop at 166-30 Jamaica Ave. Doors at 8PM. The room was packed. And when the beat dropped, the cyphers weren’t about the usual — they were about the first time. First dab. First real rosin. The face you make. What nobody warns you about. Artists who had never touched a rig walked to the dab bar, took one properly, and went straight to the mic with it.

And the room had real industry weight in it. Among the guests: The Dank Duchess — the internationally known hash maker whose name carries in solventless circles worldwide — and Dasheeda Dawson, founding Director of Cannabis NYC. When the people who built this industry choose to spend Oil Day in the back of a Jamaica Ave dispensary, that tells you where the culture actually lives.

“Nobody’s touching our rosin scene out here in Jamaica Queens. Straight facts.”

— posted July 10, 2026 on @highfunctionsevents

That has never happened in a New York dispensary. Rap, trap and solventless culture in the same room, on the same night, in Jamaica, Queens.

The receipts: Queens’ dab spot since 2024

None of this started in 2026, and you don’t have to take our word for it — it’s in the press record. On Father’s Day 2024 — June 16 — we ran “Dabs With Dad” at the shop, an afternoon built around dads and dabs, covered by stupidDOPE at the time. That was our first year open. We reposted that day’s photo this Father’s Day, two years later, because the tradition stands.

The timeline is public: licensed and open on February 23, 2024 as the 75th adult-use dispensary in New York State and the first Bangladeshi-owned in the state. Dabs With Dad that June. First New York dispensary to take Bitcoin that September. Oil Day celebrations every year since — each one bigger. The whole run is documented by third parties on our press page.

When we say Silk Road NYC is the rosin center of Queens, that’s not a tagline invented for this post. It’s two years of receipts.

Why 7/10 matters — and why we take it seriously

Flip 7-1-0 upside down and it reads OIL. That’s the whole origin — a day for concentrates the way 4/20 is a day for flower. But somewhere along the way “concentrates” got watered down to mean any cart on a shelf.

We drew a line: real rosin culture only. No resin vapes. No distillate. 100% solventless.

Solventless means exactly what it says — the oil is pressed out of the plant with ice, water, heat and pressure. No butane, no propane, no chemical wash. What you taste is the plant itself, terpenes intact, nothing stripped and nothing added back in a lab. It costs more to make and it’s harder to do well, which is precisely why most shops don’t stock it.

On 7/10 we ran the brands that do it right: Jaunty, American Hash Makers, Olio, urbanXtracts, and Mind Melters.

The only real dab bar in the borough

Here’s the part most people don’t know about Silk Road NYC: we carry the hardware, not just the oil. Walk in and you’ll find the full setup — and no other dispensary in New York has this on the shelf:

• DabRite digital e-rigs — in three styles, so you can dial in your temperature instead of guessing with a torch
• Octave terp timers — real temperature measurement, so you hit your rosin in the window where the flavor actually lives
• TerpSlurp pumps and slurper-style bangers
• Disorderly Conduction glass
• Quartz bangers, rigs, carb caps, dabbers, cold-start tools — the whole kit

This matters more than it sounds. Great rosin torched at 900°F is burnt sugar. The same rosin at the right temperature is citrus, gas, cake, whatever the plant actually gave you. Low-temp is the difference between smoking a concentrate and tasting one — and if you don’t have the tools to measure, you’re guessing with product that costs real money.

Our budtenders will walk you through it. Bring your rig, tell us what you’re working with, and we’ll match the oil to the setup.

Jamaica Ave, on the record

Silk Road NYC is at 166-30 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica, NY 11432 — a licensed New York adult-use dispensary (OCM-CAURD-24-000062), one block from the Jamaica AirTrain and a short walk from LIRR Jamaica Station. High Functions, the event space, is in the back.

We’re a CAURD shop, which means this license exists because of who we are and where we’re from, not in spite of it. That’s why a night like Volume 11 happens here and not in a showroom in Manhattan. This block gave us the story. We’re just telling it out loud.

QGTM.

Shop the live menu for solventless rosin, hash, and the full dab bar — same-day pickup and Queens delivery. Follow @silkroadnyc1.0 and @highfunctionsevents for the next one — and DNA at dnaismusic.com.