Cannabis purveyors are starting to rival wine drinkers for hyperbolic descriptions of minor aesthetic variations in recreational drug formulations. 
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Iām all for supporting independent ventures, except for the fact that if a cop sees me carrying a bag of weed out of the legal shop, about the worst thing that will happen to me is a smile and a wave.
Carrying the same stuff out of my āhomieāsā house, especially if there was a financial transaction involved, would likely result in a one-way trip to the hoosgow.
Right or wrong, Iām at a point in my life when such endeavors need to be partaken within the reasonable legal framework that has been put in placeā¦
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this brings back strong memories of a head shop in my homestate of Maine actually called āThe Dancing Bearā branded with the dancing teddy bears. It was right across the street from a diner where I used to eat when āparticularly hungryā and I never real did feel the urge to cross that streetā¦
At the medical marijuana dispensaries in Northern CA, at least, most of the retail clerks are young people who are trying to find a balance between acting cool like a wine sommelier describing their product and just not giggling because theyāre getting away with this. (Whether they are also, umm, medicated at the time is a separate question, though for me the secondhand effects of the product evaporating are strong enough that Iād probably find it too distracting to actually work at that kind of job for very long.)
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I suppose itās not that surprising that the head shop and weed shop businesses are not combining.
Liquor stores donāt tend to carry much in the way of glassware, most vases are probably not bought at florists, grocery stores donāt generally do a big business in cookware and cutlery, etc.
āWe got number 420. Yes, that really happened.ā
In the post-legalization utopia, all the tickets are number 420.
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is pot still cool?
I donāt know, ask this beer.
I like the marijuana place next to the Girl Scouts on Broadway in Denver. They are careful to warn you not to park in the Girl Scoutsā parking lot after they ask if youāre there for medical or recreational.
The bright colors on the left is the Girl Scoutsā entrance:
Theyāve got quite a few locations (9?), but Iāve only been to the LivWell on Broadway.
Very professional, friendly and informative staff. Seemed like all female staff that I could see, mostly young (20ās), but a few that were older as well, I think. Modern, but relaxed atmosphere that has the feel of an art gallery with a clean, minimalist dĆ©cor. Theyāve got macro photography of righteous buds showing their thick, white trichomes glistening in the light on the walls.
The clientele was of all walks of life.
A bearded, young, newcomer guy came in with a tie-dye shirt asking if he could park in the Girl Scoutsā parking lot. āNo, please do not. Thereās parking on the south side.ā
A seasoned partaker that dressed and looked like a 30ās-ish woman youād see behind the jewelry counter of Macyās at Cherry Creek mall was walking out with a friend. They seemed pretty upbeat.
A sheepish, attractive 20-something woman slinks out to her car with sunglasses on trying not to make eye contact with anyone outside of the building.
A demure, stoned woman in her late 30ās relaxes on the clean, stylish couch and sizes people up while a young, well-kempt, somewhat hipster-ish, skinny-jeaner guy floats around looking like heās got a purpose beyond just looking for something heās probably lost.
Total opposite experience of going to many bars where they serve alcohol. No rowdy yelling or bravado. Everyone seemed quite alert for the most part. Polite and intelligent.
Even if you donāt partake in marijuana, I suggest you pay them a visit and ask for a little tour. Tell them youāre curious about it, etc. and check it out. I think you may be pleasantly surprised how nice it is.
When weed is no longer illegal, does it cease to be part of the counterculture? When the counterculture becomes mainstream, what is it?
The counterculture isnāt becoming mainstream, the mainstream is becoming counterculture.
Weāve been working on this for decades. Unlike flash in the pan attempts to influence culture, our efforts have slowly and steadily kept pounding on what (at first) seemed like an almost impenetrable fortress of corporate attitudes and rampant conformity (see the 80ās).
This isnāt an overnight sensation and the legalization of marijuana is only one small piece of the bigger, counterculture picture thatās shaping the American experience from within.
I think many people who are disappointed that things havenāt changed more dramatically and quicker donāt necessarily realize how wickedly and solidly ingrained corporate culture has indoctrinated many others. Itās a herculean task to inject things that run counter to corporatism when the corporatists own the keys to the mass media and can throw pesky things like ethics to the side whenever it suits the suits.
Counterculture started the internet.
Counterculture is the only reason we donāt have an outright ground war following airstrikes in Syria right now.
Counterculture is why this moronic drug war is being slowly dismantled despite the incredibly powerful corporatists who would continue to keep it profitably in place indefinitely.
Counterculture has little to do with whether pot is still ācoolā after itās legalized. In my opinion, what makes counterculture ācoolā is that despite enormous, crushing, corporatist power that manufactures consent and oppresses all of usā¦ the counterculture still manages to subvert them by outsmarting them, outthinking them and out-loving a pretty hate machine.
I know itās hip and pseudo-cool to focus on all the downsides of the Internet, the countercultureās apparent absorption by the mainstream, etc. - but I think many arenāt looking at the bigger picture.
Hipsters freak out and askā¦ what happens when a subculture becomes assimilated by the mainstream?
What happens? More kids get exposed to alternative music with messages about thinking for themselves. Maybe get exposed to some punk bands that expose kids to political ideologies theyād never heard of before nor get from their parents, their friends, their church, their conservative communityā¦ their schools and sure as hell not from their news.
Some hate punk fashion being āabsorbedā by the mainstreamā¦
If the appeal of the punk fashion lifestyle somehow leads to one more American picking up a book on Banksy at Urban Outfitters in their midwest suburban mall, great. If that later leads to a book on Chomsky then more power to those that try to exploit punk. Itās called blowback.
If someone gets into punk through vapid marketers because it looks hip and ārebelliousā but it leads them down a path of thinking more for themselves and looking into alternative news media, then more power to the āwordā punk.
If one beer company or some mall shops can kill āpunkā, then punk wasnāt ever very strong in the first place. Iām secure in the underground influence that still reverberates today in various forms. When it infiltrates the mainstream, Iāve got no problem with it. The underground is strong enough to not only survive it, but also subvert the mainstream in the process.
Maybe whatās really happening when you see an Urban Outfitters or Hot Topic in a suburban mall is a process where a subculture is subverting the mainstream?
Embrace it and work on your own subculture shit so when the kids reach deep into the rabbit hole you can offer them something worthwhile when they get to your ātrueā counterculture.
If kids get inspired and reach into the counterculture only to be told they arenāt worthy because their path was through the only things they were exposed to like Hot Topic, etc. - Then youāre the elitist in the equation here. Youāre the problem. Not Hot Topic. Not Urban Outfitters. You are.
I should note that this rant wasnāt directed at Maggie! And, no, Iām not stoned while writing this.
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Long term, I see pot being sold in the same manner as Marlboro or bud light or Kendal Jackson.
Speaking of beer, home brewers are able to attain a level of individualism in a world dominated by big corporations. In the same way, perhaps home growers will be the ānewā counter culture as the old 420 crowd declines.
I see it becoming no different than alcohol is now. There will be folks who use it as a party thing, a rebellious thing, who have favorite styles and methods of consumption that are signature parts of their social identities. Like how alcohol isnāt particular cool or taboo or edgy now, but a rock star swigging Jack Daniels or frat boys pounding Jagermeister and tapping kegs or rappers drinking 40s or cougars drinking white wine is still a cultural thing in their set. But there will be other folks who use it in an occasional way that has little significance to their identity and doesnāt come with much in the way of cool, edgy, wild, trappings and rituals. There will always be the weed guys with the Marley posters and the three foot tall psychedelic colored bongs. But there will also be the dads who just happen to a couple of times in the summer take a couple of tokes while they work the grill at the cook out instead of drinking a beer and the middle aged ladies smoke a joint in the bubble bath tub after a hard day. There will be the folks who are really into the connoisseur experience, who want to be educated experts about all the different products, who pride themselves on their refined pallets, who seek out new and rare and exotic strains, the type of folks who are that way about wine or craft beer nowdays.
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Iām sure nobodyās correlating use of that ATM withā¦ well, any other data anywhereā¦
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Are there no HSBC branches in CO? Or do they only deal with the cartels?
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The devil, as always, is in the details. In California, local municipalities often put into place onerous restrictions, including ā1000 feet from any residential areas, schools, churches, daycare centers, etc.ā Thatās a 1000-foot radius, which means if thereās a school on the other side of the train tracks and it would take a 3 mile walk or drive to get there, you still canāt have a dispensary. That explains why so many dispensaries are stuck in hard-to-reach business districts.
Dispensaries are not causally related to any increase in crime so thereās no reason they should be treated any differently than other businesses. Iām sure dispensaries would LOVE to be centrally located in downtown areas easily accessible to patients, many of whom are low-income and/or disabled. Sadly, anti-cannabis bigotry (and cowardice) remains the order of the day at City Councils statewide and they generally work against the interests of their sick and suffering constituents.
I personally, if I were to purchase marijuana, would really appreciate the helpful staff. I smoked pot frequently when I was college aged,but it was always fairly well just whatever was around. I couldnāt tell you with any sort of certainty what strain I liked best or what would be best for what I had in mind that evening. And I have a pretty specific set of things that I think I could remotely possibly see buying it for again, but I would have no idea on my own what kind to buy. Iād be like the guy coming in to the liquor store and just asking for ābeerā or āred wineā.
How did the culture around alcohol change after Prohibition? Thatās likely how marijuana culture will change as legalization becomes more common. Of course, thereās a home-grown snob jump start already in high gear for marijuana and I would suspect that would always be the leading/bleeding edge.
Thereās been branding, of a sort, for a long, long time. Maui Wowie, Acapulco Gold, though one could never be certain the baggiesā contents really came from Maui or Acapulco.
I remember that one friend of mine had a notoriously strong batch that came to be labeled āThe Dread Immobilizerā. Never tried the Immobilizer ā I sampled generic stuff a few times, but my primary memory is my mouth tasting like the smell of burning horsecrap, and never became a regular user ā but from otherās testimony, the name was apt.
(If āglenblankā commenting uptopic is the same Glen I used to know, he may remember some of those days in Phoenix. Is that you, Glen?)
THIS IS A THING?
OK, Iām out for the day, got some research to do. Thanks glenblank!
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Marijuana is legal nowhere in the USA. Either the President or Congress could legalize it where there is no state law against it but both of them have declined to act.
Yep. I use Doc Greenās Therapeutic Healing Cream on my neuropathy and arthritis both. I also use Dixie Botanicals Hemp Oil Salvation Balm on anything that gets inflamed - pulled muscles and the like.
Doc Greenās is a medical marijuana product only available to California MMJ patients. The Dixie balm is CBD-only, and can be ordered online by anyone (in the US, anyway, dunno about elsewhere) Itās even available on Amazon - as are a number of other CBD-only meds: search for ācannabidiolā.
Dixie also made MMJ products for Colorado medical market under the āDixie Elixirsā brand, so I expect you can get their THC+CBD version of the Hemp Oil Balm there.
There are many other such products - these are just two I can recommend enthusiastically from personal experience.
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Itās not what you partakeā¦
ā¦but what you do with it that matters.
Since the enactment of Colorado Amendment 64, adults aged 21 or older can grow up to six cannabis plants (with no more than half being mature flowering plants), privately in a locked space, legally possess all cannabis from the plants they grow (as long as it stays where it was grown),[1] legally possess up to one ounce of cannabis while traveling,[2] and give as a gift up to one ounce to other citizens 21 years of age or older.
Donāt be a fucking sucker people. These shops might be a good way to try a bunch of different weed, but once youāve found your fave just grow it yourself. Itās not hard.
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