“We opened this store April 9 of last year and were fortunate enough to get one of 20 licenses in Aurora,” Matthew explains. “24,” Meg clarifies, “but they only awarded 23.” “And they’re geographically dispersed throughout the city. This used to be a Blockbuster, and we found this out after the fact, but it turns out that this was the busiest Blockbuster in the state of Colorado,” he laughs. “So it’s a good location.”
PHOTO // PAUL WEDLAKE
A tall, dark-haired man with chiseled features and five-o’clock shadow, Matthew has a relaxed, confident demeanor cut by occasional glimpses of a competitive streak. “My core competency is growing marijuana,” he often claims, and that’s undeniable, as an owner of a business that cultivates over 60 strains of marijuana and employs 80+ people.
As we sit down to talk, I catch a glimpse of a photo on Matthew’s phone screen before he clicks it black. I ask who it was. “That’s my father,” he says, showing the two of them smiling only slightly in pale shirts. “That’s from his 60th birthday, and he died a month later.” Without his father’s influence, Matthew may have never entered the cannabis industry.
Founded in 2010, Good Chemistry has an edge on some of the other start-ups in Colorado, because Matthew brought 10 years of industry experience from California. This is partly why the lobby is so welcoming and also why Good Chemistry strains are sold at a flat, affordable rate — “$30 per 1/8th every strain, every day” — and why each strain is labeled through Good Chemistry’s four-category system: amplify, relax, relieve, and sleep.
Growing up in a gay household in San Francisco, blocks off of Castro Street, Matthew’s childhood was the exact opposite of many queer men. “My dad would have these dinner parties, and he would lament, ‘My son is straight — I don’t know what we did wrong.’”
“Our dispensary is an extension of the nursery,” Matthew says as he shows me a wooden cabinet of hand-tagged varieties, hung to dry. “We believe we grow the finest cannabis in Colorado, so we wanted to give customers a peek of our nursery.”
Drag shows and a wide circle of uncles and “aunts” were part of Matthew’s life that he accepted as normal. “For a OUTFRONTONLINE.COM 35