Shout out to Bike
HOW A BIKE-LOVING EAST COASTER WENT FROM FACEBOOK FIGUREHEAD TO ONE OF THE COUNTRY'S BIGGEST SEED DISTRIBUTORS
Photos by Bike
"Everyone knows me as Bike, and I sell seeds."
Michael Hawley, AKA "Bike,” has been in the seed game since 2012, and founded Get Seeds Right Here three years later in 2015.
But, before that, he was just another cannabis consumer spending time on the newest social media platforms, creating memes and connecting the right people at the right time.
"He's the guy that knows the guy," says Colin Gordon.
"[Some people] know the people that are known; Bike knows the people that aren’t. He's been there to witness it. He's known so many of the people in this industry, quietly. There’s very few people that have been through this entire arc and know all the players. He had a front row seat."
Bike grew up on the East Coast in Massachusetts and was first introduced to cannabis in 1991 right after graduating high school.
"I was just at a random place at the right time with a friend whose friend had a joint," Bike says, recalling that he even took his shirt off because he didn't want to go home smelling like weed.
"I took 4-5 hits...Nothing happened. I felt like I smoked some leaves. It wasn't epic, but it was memorable because it was anticlimactic, if anything."
It wouldn't be until later that same summer, at a camp in New Hampshire that Bike would stumble upon another random joint in a random place, the first time he remembers feeling high from weed.
"That same guy's mother's friend had a joint and I got that body buzz and thought, 'This is what they are talking about.'"
But for someone so heavily involved in the genetics industry, Bike never made the leap from consumer to grower, skipping right to brokering seeds, and now clones.
"I never really did jump into cultivation.
I only got involved in growing when I took on the clone game out here, but everything is in veg," he offers.
In fact, Bike's introduction to the cannabis industry happened by chance, through a new platform (at the time), Facebook.
"I don’t even know how the hell it happened," he begins.