Baseball is back. Spring Training 2026 is underway in Tampa, Aaron Judge is captaining Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, and the Bronx Bombers open their regular season on March 25 against the San Francisco Giants. The home opener at Yankee Stadium follows on April 3. That means tens of thousands of fans from New York, across the country, and around the world are about to make their way back to 161st Street in the South Bronx.

Most of them have no idea what's waiting one block from Gate 8.

ConBud Yankee Stadium sits on Gerard Avenue, literally one street from the stadium entrance, and it is not your average pre-game stop. It is a redemption story wrapped in Bronx grit, built by people who paid a real price for the plant they now sell legally, and curated with the kind of care that only comes from decades of lived experience. While fans are mapping out their subway routes and pregame plans for the 2026 season, this is the stop worth adding to the itinerary.

The Location: Better Than Anything on the Stadium Concourse

Let's talk geography first, because it matters. ConBud Yankee Stadium is located at 4 East 161st Street in the Bronx, just one block from Gate 8 at Yankee Stadium. One block. That's a shorter walk than the trip from your upper-deck seat to the bathroom.

Spring Training games began February 20, with the full regular season schedule kicking off March 25. That means the Bronx is already building toward one of its busiest stretches of the year. Australians. Japanese visitors. First-timers from the Midwest who've always wanted to see the House That Ruth Built. All of them are now steps away from one of New York City's most compelling cannabis experiences.

Whether you're pre-gaming before the first pitch, winding down after extra innings, or exploring the neighborhood on an off day, ConBud Yankee Stadium deserves a spot on your itinerary. It's open, welcoming, and staffed by people who genuinely know what they're talking about.

The Man Behind the Counter: Mario Ramos

Mario Ramos grew up in the Bronx. He attended All Hallows High School, one block from where his dispensary now stands. He bought his first chain near Yankee Stadium. He smoked weed there for the first time as a teenager.

Decades later, he co-owns a licensed cannabis dispensary on the same block. That's not irony. That's legacy.

Ramos spent 16 years in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. He opened a graffiti supply shop on Allen Street in 1996, a place that became a second home for Lower East Side youth and, as it turns out, the first meeting ground between him and a young kid named Coss Marte, who would one day become his business partner and the founder and CEO of ConBud.

Ramos also spent years in California mastering cultivation, then came back east when New Jersey's cannabis legalization push looked promising. That's when things went sideways. Detectives raided the operation he was consulting on. He was charged with conspiracy to operate a CDS facility and lost six years of his life to incarceration.

The Last Prisoner Project championed his cause. He survived. And when he got out, Marte was waiting.

"He invited me to an intimate meeting with the Governor's office," Ramos recalled. "We hadn't seen each other in a long time, but he didn't miss a beat." Nine months after that meeting, ConBud's third location opened by Yankee Stadium.

"Follow your dreams," Ramos told the crowd at the ribbon cutting. "It's not a joke."

What ConBud Stands For (And Why It's Different)

ConBud holds a New York Cannabis Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) license and proudly calls itself the world's first dispensary owned and operated by formerly incarcerated people. That's not a marketing line. It's the backbone of everything they do.

The ownership team is made up of Hispanic social equity operators who came up through the legacy market and navigated the brutally difficult path to legal licensing. CEO Coss Marte was blunt at the ribbon cutting: "We did prison time for this. Now we can sell this legally and have fun and take care of our people the right way."

The dispensary actively stocks cannabis brands from legacy, queer, minority, and veteran-owned businesses. You'll find names like Animal House, High Garden, Ayrloom, and Camino alongside locally owned brands that don't show up in corporate chain shops. Ramos personally vets the menu. "If I say this cannabis is fire, it's fire," he said. "I'm not playing games with the selection we're curating. Not just anybody gets in."

The store also features Ramos's own graffiti art on the walls, giving it the feel of a cultural venue as much as a retail shop. A glass display case holds relics from cannabis culture history, including an old scale and books belonging to Head of Cannabis Education Danny "Danko" Vinkovetsky, the longtime former High Times cultivation editor who previously worked with Ramos on cannabis cups. That display case is essentially a museum exhibit. In a dispensary. By Yankee Stadium.

This is New York.

The Bronx as Cannabis Destination

The neighborhood around ConBud Yankee Stadium is exactly what New York City has always been: wildly diverse, loud, full of history, and not remotely interested in being quiet about it. "The diversity in the neighborhood is what New York City is iconic for," Ramos said. "Everyone from native New Yorkers, Australians, Japanese, you never know who's going to come in."

What those visitors find is a staff that prioritizes education as much as sales. The team walks customers through products, effects, and options with the kind of specificity that comes from years of knowing cannabis as more than a commodity.

For fans visiting Yankee Stadium, this is a rare chance to experience something genuinely rooted in the place you're visiting. Not a chain. Not a pop-up. A Bronx institution, built by a Bronx kid who went around the world and came back to plant a flag one block from where he grew up.

Plan Your Visit

ConBud Yankee Stadium is located at 4 East 161st Street, Bronx, NY, one block from Gate 8 at Yankee Stadium. It serves adult-use cannabis customers with no medical card required.

Explore their full menu and hours at conbud.com/locations/gerard-avenue and follow them on Instagram at @conbudyankeestadium.

The 2026 season is here. The Bronx is ready. Make the walk. The cannabis is fire. Mario said so himself.

ConBud Yankee Stadium is a CAURD-licensed adult-use cannabis retailer. Must be 21+ with valid ID to purchase. Please consume responsibly and in accordance with New York State law.