Medical Marijuana

Weed Wars

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Weed Wars

HERBWISE “I always knew that doing this show would be a risk,” says Harborside Health Center founder Steve DeAngelo in a phone interview with the Guardian. A medical marijuana dispensary could probably always be considered controversial fodder for a nighttime reality TV program, but DeAngelo’s enterprise rose above standard controversy when it became the target of the IRS, the federal agency ruling that it could no longer write off common business expenses. It now owes $2 million — an amount that left the rest of the industry quaking with concerns over its future.

The perfect time for an on-air debut, right? DeAngelo thinks so.

“If the American people see how we use this medicine, how we distribute it, they’re going to support it,” he says. “They’ve only gotten a chance to see the government’s side, the propaganda side.”

Especially nowadays. In the past few weeks, the feds have launched a multi-lateral attack on medical cannabis dispensaries (see the Oct. 12 Herbwise column, entitled “Feds crack down”). The Treasury Department convinced banks to close dispensaries’ accounts. The Department of Justice has sent out numerous cease-and-desist letters to dispensaries. The notifications insist that the trafficking illegal substances is occurring, and that it must be stopped — a turnaround from the Obama administration’s earlier pledge that it would not stand in the way of a patient’s access to medicine.

DeAngelo claims that Harborside is among the top 10 highest tax payers to the city of Oakland. The dispensary has gone through disputes over taxes paid before, but this latest persecution has meant a diminished sense of security for the dispensary’s 120-person staff at its San Jose and Oakland locations — not to mention among patients.

“They’re terrorized,” says DeAngelo. “I have 60, 70, 80-year old patients who are terrified.”

It’s high drama stuff. Ironically, filming for Weed Wars — save a few remaining pickup shots — had already concluded by the time of the ruling. Surely Discovery Channel executives are smacking their foreheads, having shot the relatively boring chunk of 2011 at Harborside.

“It does seem like the cameras got turned off at just the wrong time,” says DeAngelo.

The dispensary founder says that his people thoroughly vetted Braverman Productions prior to signing any deals — it wasn’t the only offer they got to be the subject of such a show. He’s confident the company will shy from the “unreal setups” so prevalent on other reality TV series. And he hopes that despite the current drama (which might make its way into the final episode of the program’s season), producers will portray the dispensary in a way that’s respectful and shows an accurate image of what day-to-day operations look like.

But whether or not that will be the case remains to be seen. An article written by a staff member in the September 2011 edition of the Harborside newsletter questioned the use of “weed” in the show’s title (a faux pas in the medical marijuana industry). In such a volatile political environment, the temptation to sensationalize cannabis dispensaries might run pretty hot. Or on the contrary, maybe Weed Wars will make the sale of state-legal marijuana seem as normal as being a Coloradan bounty hunter or a Kardashian.

Regardless of what happens, DeAngelo’s not ruing the day he decided to go into medical marijuana.

“We decided when we opened our doors that it was worth the risk. I still think it was worth that risk.” *

Weed Wars premieres November 27 at 10 p.m. PST on the Discovery Channel

 

Medical marijuana protesters gather at City Hall in wake of federal raids

Andrew Lam
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9

Protesters met in front of the San Francisco Federal Building this afternoon to challenge the recent federal crackdown on California’s medical marijuana industry. The rally formed on the heels of yesterday (October 13)’s raid by federal agents on Northstone Organics, a Ukiah medical marijuana cooperative.  

“Our state, our medicine,” protesters chanted. Among those present — about 30 individuals, per Guardian estimates — were medical marijuana patients, patient advocates, dispensary employees, and a representative of the Medical Cannabis Association. 

“When you’re a part of the medical cannabis movement, you feel personally affected by these raids,” said Shantanae Todd, an advocate and patient herself. Todd suffers from seizures and says she has found relief through her medical cannabis presciption for two years.

“What’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans? I’m not seeing much of a difference here,” cried Shona Gochenaur, executive director of low income medicinal cannabis center Axis of Love and member of the city’s Medical Cannabis Task Force. Gochenaur urged Kamala Harris, California’s Attorney General — who has resisted taking a stand on the federal government’s persecution of medicinal cannabis producers — to lend more vocal support. 

“We need to give everyone a clear message today that patients are not willing to go underground,” said Gochenaur. The protesters plan to meet and rally at noon the day after each and any future large-scale federal raids on California marijuana producers.

Why are Harris, Newsom, and other pols silent on the federal pot crackdown?

Sasha Cuttler
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24
Why are Harris, Newsom, and other pols silent on the federal pot crackdown?

UPDATED BELOW As I worked on this week’s story about the federal crackdown on California’s marijuana industry, I tried to get a statement from California Attorney General Kamala Harris. After all, it’s her job to defend California’s medical marijuana laws, which she was fairly supportive of as our district attorney. And she was an early Barack Obama backer who could probably get him or U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on the phone to say, “What the hell are you guys doing? Please, for your own sake and California’s, just back off.”

After all, as I reported, this multi-agency federal crackdown could destroy a thriving industry that is pumping billions of dollars into California’s economy and employing tens of thousands of people – at a cost of many millions of dollars in enforcement costs to simply destroy the state’s top cash crop, ruin the lives of people working in the industry, and strain our already overtaxed court and prison systems.

“It’s a policy with no upsides and all downsides,” Steve DeAngelo of Harborside Health Center correctly told me.

But when I finally got Harris’ Press Secretary Lynda Gledhill on the phone, she said Harris had nothing to say on the issue. “Nothing?” I asked, “Really?” What about off-the-record, I asked, how does she feel about it and might she make some statement in the future. Again, nothing to say, no comment.

So I tried Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, another San Franciscan who as mayor helped oversee the creation of the city’s widely lauded system for regulating the dispensaries, which by all accounts has made it a legitimate and thriving member of the business community. Given Newsom’s current obession with job creation and how hungry he’s been for attention, surely he’d have something to say in defense of the good jobs that this sustainable industry has created in California. Again, nothing. I haven’t even gotten a call back yet from his press secretary, Francisco Castillo.

Also, no public statements have been issued by Mayor Ed Lee, David Chiu, or most other mayoral candidates who have put “jobs” at the center of their agendas – or from the SF Chamber of Commerce or other business groups that regularly deride bad government actions as “job killers – despite this move by the Obama Administration to destroy an important industry in California.

The only major politician from San Francisco (SEE UPDATE BELOW) to come out strongly against the federal crackdown was Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, author of measures to legalize and tax marijuana, who put out the following statement: “I am bitterly disappointed in the Obama Administration for this unwarranted and destructive attack on medical marijuana and patients’ rights to medicine.  Today’s announcement by the Department of Justice means that Obama’s medical marijuana policies are worse than Bush and Clinton.  It’s a tragic return to failed policies that will cost the state millions in tax revenue and harm countless lives. 16 states along with the District of Columbia have passed medical marijuana laws – whatever happened to the promises he made on the campaign trail to not prosecute medical marijuana or the 2009 DOJ memo saying that states with medical marijuana laws would not be prosecuted?  Change we can believe in?  Instead we get more of the same.”

But from most of the politicians who claim to support both jobs and the right of patients to access medical marijuana, we also get more of the same. They pander to people’s economic insecurities in order to give corporations and wealthy what they want – tax cuts, deregulation, union-busting, corporate welfare — but aren’t willing to risk any political capital defending the rest of us.

UPDATE (11/13): San Francisco’s other two representatives in the Legislature have also criticized the crackdown.

 

Sen. Leland Yee put out a statement saying: “Medical marijuana dispensaries are helping our economy, creating jobs, and most importantly, providing a necessary service for suffering patients. There are real issues and real problems that the US Attorney’s Office should be focused on rather than using their limited resources to prosecute legitimate businesses or newspapers. Like S-Comm, our law enforcement agencies – both state and local – should not assist in this unnecessary action. Shutting down state-authorized dispensaries will cost California billions of dollars and unfairly harm thousands of lives.”

Sen. Mark Leno, another medical marijuana support, also criticized the move. He told the Los Angeles Times, “”The concern here is that the intimidation factor will directly impact safe and affordable access for patients.” And he told Associated Press, “”I don’t understand the politics of it, and certainly if we haven’t learned anything over the past century, it’s that Prohibition does not work.”

One last cannabis fest? Despite IRS ruling, medical community soldiers on

Andrew Lam
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1

Last week, the IRS’ two year audit of Harborside Health Center ended poorly for the medical marijuana industry. The federal government agency decided that the dispensary (Oakland’s largest, as the Bay Citizen reported in its coverage of the craziness — check out our story in today’s paper about the additional threats that have been made) couldn’t deduct standard business expenses, a move that left Harborside in the hole for $2 million and the rest of its industry in need of a joint. 

Such was the setting for the West Coast Cannabis and Music Festival this weekend (Fri/7-Sun/9). Things got a little weird. Which is not to say that things weren’t also good. The 215 legal smoking area was ample proof that medical cannabis is alive and thriving, especially in the here and now. How else to explain the booths hawking aphrodisiac cannabis drinks and medicated vanilla chai truffles? Outside, the fresh-faced and strongly-quadricepped carried forth at the Rock the Bike music stage, its live and DJ offerings projected into the Cow Palace parking lot by a woefully shallow pool of volunteers. The muscle mass we pay for music… 

Even the charming gentlemen at the Harborside booth were all kinds of upbeat, eager to talk about their new Discovery Channel reality TV show. They were handing out copies of their dispensary’s newsletter, the Harborside Illuminator. In it, general manager Andrew DeAngelo’s column, which contained a transcript of a conversation he had with the show’s producer, Chuck Braverman:

DeAngelo: Chuck, I really liked the name Cannabis Confidential — why did they go with Weed Wars?

Braverman: Bigger tent

DeAngelo: What do you mean bigger tent?

Braverman: The title Weed Wars will get more people into the tent to watch the show.

DeAngelo: But we don’t call it ‘weed’ and there is no war.

Of course, some would say there is a war on now. It certainly felt like I was being drafted by Sunday afternoon, when California state senator John Vasconsellos’ time to occupy the speaker’s stage was approaching. A barker alternatively sang and cajoled into the microphone, eventually resorting to bribes. “Anyone who sits down over here will receive a free joint. People, you need to hear this!” Ever obliging, we sat and listened to the woman who introduced the senator. She informed us she was filming the talk, although the final destination of the video was unclear to those of us who had just made her acquaintance. 

“Senator,” she trilled. “Look at all these people here who love you!” You and free marijuana, doll. 

Which is a really snarky thing to say, because we had little to say against the senator’s speech, which was 45 minutes of a call to arms to save patients’ right to access their medicine. And truly, we had to agree with the woman who had repurposed an electric green sleep sack as a dress, but not before cutting out the tits, donning a black mesh garment underneath, affixing a fake weed plant to the crotch area, and boldly Sharpie-ing across the front of it all “Obama can you replace our tax revenue?”

She giggled and posed in front of a strangely perfect WCCMF logo-ed wall when asked by (more than one) photographer if they could digi-capture her. Probably because she knew we all agreed with her, which come to think of it is a big part of these festivals: meeting other stoners that share your concerns. 

Like, does that aphrodisiac stuff really work or what?

Feds crack down

Andrew Lam
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8

steve@sfbg.com

HERBWISE Reversing its previous pledge to abide people’s rights to legally obtain medical marijuana in California and the 14 other states that have legalized it, the Obama Administration has launched a crackdown on the industry using several different federal agencies.

During an Oct. 7 press conference in Sacramento, California’s four U.S. attorneys announced their intention to go after the industry with raids on large-scale growing operations and big dispensaries and civil lawsuits targeting the assets of people involved in the cannabis business.

“We want to put to rest the notion that large marijuana businesses can shelter themselves under state law,” Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for Northern California, based here in San Francisco, said at the press conference.

That pronouncement is just the latest in a series of federal actions against those involved with the production and distribution of California’s top cash crop, an industry that the California Board of Equalization estimates to be worth about $1.3 billion in tax revenue annually. Sources in the medical marijuana business say the crackdown began quietly this summer.

Hundreds of dispensaries and other medical marijuana operations had their bank accounts shut down after the Treasury Department contacted their banks and warned them of sanctions for doing business with an industry that remains illegal under federal law. The Internal Revenue Service last month also notified many large dispensaries — including Harborside Health Center in Oakland, the largest in Northern California — that they cannot write off normal business expenses and must pay a 35 percent levy on those claims going back for three years.

Harborside’s Steve DeAngelo told us that would put Harborside — or any company with high overhead costs — out of business. “This is not an effort to tax us, it’s an effort to tax us out of existence,” he said, noting that Harborside paid the city of Oakland $1.1 million in taxes this year. In addition, the Department of Justice recently began sending 45-day cease-and-desist letters to hundreds of dispensaries around the state, including at least two in San Francisco, warning the clubs and their landlords that the operations violate federal law and could be subject to federal laws on the seizure of assets from the drug trade.

“It’s a multi-agency federal attack on patients’ access to this medication,” DeAngelo said. “It’s going to drive sick and dying patients back out onto the street to get their medicine.”

Haag claimed the state’s medical marijuana laws, which California voters approved back in 1996, have been “hijacked by profiteers.” Yet both local officials and people in the industry say that characterization is ridiculous, and that the federal government’s new stance will destroy an important industry — one that is very professional and well-regulated in San Francisco — and send legitimate patients back into the black market.

“I think it’s a step in the wrong direction and counter-intuitive to the Obama Administration’s contention that he would respect state’s rights,” said Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who authored groundbreaking legislation regulating San Francisco’s two dozen dispensaries, a system that he said “is working well…But now the federal government is pulling the rug out from under us.”

Shortly after taking office in 2009, the Obama Administration released the “Ogden memo,” written by Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, stating the federal government would respect the rights of states to legalize and regulate medical marijuana. It was seen by cannabis activists as a sign that Obama was de-escalating the war on drugs, at least as it applied to marijuana.

But in June of this year, the DOJ release the “Cole memo,” by Deputy Attorney General James Cole, which it said “clarifies” the Ogden memo. In fact, it reversed the position, stating unequivocally that federal marijuana prohibition prevails and “state laws or local ordinances are not a defense to civil or criminal enforcement of federal law with respect to such conduct.”

“They’re bringing the hammer down,” said David Goldman, who works for Americans for Safe Access and sits on San Francisco’s medical marijuana task force. “This is not U.S. attorneys doing this on their own, this is coming from the top levels of the DOJ.”

Actually, Goldman and others suspect it goes even higher than that, right to Obama and his political team, who appear to be making a calculation that cracking down on medical marijuana is a good move before an uncertain reelection campaign.

“It’s political. It’s all about Obama appealing to the middle to win reelection,” Goldman said.

“I don’t think there’s any rational basis for what’s going on. It was clearly a political calculation,” DeAngelo said. “Why do they think it’s better for patients to buy their medicine from the black market?”

He said the crackdown will bolster the Mexican drug cartels, destroy a thriving industry that provides jobs and pays taxes, hinder efforts at better quality control and growing conditions (see “Green buds,” Aug. 16), and waste law enforcement resources to seize and destroy a valuable commodity.

“It’s a policy with all downsides and no upsides,” DeAngelo said.

Mirkarimi said that this crackdown could finally force cannabis activists to take on the federal prohibition of marijuana directly: “Bottom line, marijuana is the United States needs to be reformed so it’s not a Schedule 1 drug,” referring the federal government’s conclusion that marijuana is a dangerous drug with no medical applications.

But for now, DeAngelo said the industry will fight back: “We will fight it in the legal system, we will fight it in the court of public opinion, and we will appeal to Congress.”

The Hangover: Oct. 7-9

Andrew Lam
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0

Jounce with us, if you will, through the Guardian staff’s frenzied weekend. Here’s our live reviews, hot raging, random sightings.

***Blow Up is reputed to be the best party in the city. I’ll say it’s almost certainly the best regular event for the 18+ crowd. But rule number one of going to a 18+ club event: don’t wear your nice shoes, even if the code does say “dress to impress.” It was only thanks to sheer luck and repeat viewings of The Matrix that I managed to avoid a geyser of projectile vomit in The Factory’s overcrowded men’s room Saturday night at Blow Up Forever II. “You go here.” I said, guiding the poor kid to the urinal I was about to use. “I’ll wait for the stall.” Click here for full story. (Ryan Prendiville) 

***Stationary bikes snuggled into the corners of Public Works’ sweaty cavern of a first floor, but the realness of the Bikes and Beats party on Friday was onstage. The event was billed as J Boogie’s album release party and the DJ spent the night doing what he does best: orchestrating sick collaborations. At one point he had Jazz Mafia (including emcee Aima the Dreamer) and Duece Eclipse sharing the stage with him simultaneously. That’s a lot of local live luminaries to look at. (Caitlin Donohue)

***Overt-sweetness ran emboldened through Twin Sister’s set opening for Pains of Being Pure at Heart on Friday at Slim’s, leaving a trail of cotton candy kisses in its wake. Lead singer Andrea Estella, hugging herself tightly, laid out tender and girlish vocals over the band’s funked out disco’d-Cardigans tone. The Long Island band, spread across stage in a perfect line at the front, pulled through decorated versions of “Bad Street” and other tunes off its highly enjoyable, recently released album, In Heaven. The only misstep, in my mind, is the oddly nasally pop tune “Saturday Sunday.” It’s too cutesy, the call and response of weekend days is at times cloying. By contrast, Pains of Being Pure at Heart kept it moody, with songs like “Heart in Your Heartbreak” recalling the darkened club scenes from Nic Cage classic, Valley Girl, when the Plimsouls’ thrust into “A Million Miles Away.” Quick tip: Slim’s has a pretty decent hummus plate. (Emily Savage)

***Completely inappropriate for a blog feature called the Hangover, but nonetheless we must give props to the Life Is Living Festival on Saturday in West Oakland’s De Femery Park for being the Bay’s feel-good event of the year. Was it the way the breakdancing children spun blithely on their heads? Maybe the youth parkour obstacle course, spoken word stage, or arts and crafts tables? Probs an amalgamation of it all. Plus, Los Rakas and ?uestlove made for a slammin’ live block party soundtrack. Click here for full story. (Donohue)

***(See accompanying photo) Someone had to make a statement at this weekend’s West Coast Cannabis and Music Festival — the medical marijuana industry is in absolute turmoil after last week’s forboding ruling by the IRS about Harborside Health Center’s tax status. Speaker Senator John Vasconsellos spoke to a multitudinous crowd at one stage (perhaps the free joints that promoters promised to anyone willing to take a seat upped number a little), and outside in the sunshine Rock the Bike bravely endeavored to keep the music stage pedal-powered, despite a location off the festival’s beaten track and corresponding dearth of volunteers.  

***Emotions ran high for the second consecutive sold-out Girls show at the Great American Music Hall last night. Chris Owens, JR White, and their talented ensemble were perfectly in sync as they treated us to a lengthy set highlighted by a trio of charismatic female vocalists. A powerful solo from one of the ladies made for an especially moving rendition of “Vomit.” Girls played nearly every song from Father Son Holy Ghost as well as old favorites like “Heartbreaker,” “Hellhole Ratrace,” and “Lust For Life.” The high point for me was the tender encore of “Jamie Marie,” which began with just Owens and his guitar on the flower ornamented stage before the rest of the band stepped out to resounding applause. The rapport between band members was palpable and I couldn’t help feeling a little bummed to be witnessing the closing chapter of their national tour. (Frances Capell)

***”This is the only mayoral candidate that’s doing drag events!” The woman at the door was, of course, wrong — just last week Lil Miss Hot Mess coupled with Queers for John Avalos to through the high school-themed Homo Homecoming at the Verdi Club. But last night’s Bevan Dufty’s “Politics is a Drag” campaign fundraiser was staged by the mayoral race’s only gay candidate, which was good enough reason to attract a Florence and the Machine-themed number from La Monistat and a return to the Sarah Palin costume that Anna Conda donned for a Work More! event — a reprise of a number she choreographed with the help of Guardian Managing Editor Marke B. (Caitlin Donohue)

***The Stevie Nicks show at The Fillmore on Sunday night was like a time warp to an early 1980s high school. Although most of the women in the audience were in their 40s and 50s, they were competing for “Best Dressed” like girls more than half their age. They paid tribute to their Queen Stevie in dark velvet, shimmering shawls, and long skirts. If I didn’t know better, I would say they’d kept those clothes in their closets for 20 years just for this occasion. But shopping with my mom has taught me that they sell it all at Chico’s. Click here for full story. (Ann Edwards) 

Refusing to be hotboxed

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Refusing to be hotboxed

HERBWISE Karen Cue, CEO of this weekend’s International Cannabis and Hemp Expo is taking me to school. “It’s insulting to switch up those terms,” she tells me.

The terms I switched up? I just asked her why it was important to have legal-for-cannabis-consumption “215 areas” at her upcoming event, which will draw a projected 30,000 marijuana patients and cannabis-curious folk, turning a full mile’s worth of streets into an exhibition area in middle of downtown Oakland.

I’m standing by the validity of the question — but apparently I shouldn’t have phrased it “why is it important for people to be able to smoke weed?”

“That’s the terminology for recreational use,” Cue says. The expo is not, she says, about getting blazed and blunted. Medical marijuana users pay $20 million a year to the California state government in what are called taxable donations. That should buy them some civil rights — and many advocates see having places to legally consume cannabis as a big deal. “95 percent” of the people that her expo is marketed to, Cue says, are medical marijuana patients.

The event has been growing larger every year. This is the first year it will be held in downtown Oakland, having outgrown 2010 and 2009’s site, Candlestick Park. Cue calls the expo’s old digs “kind of old, kind of rustic — it’s got its good qualities about it, but we’re looking at advancement.” An Oakland local herself, she saw the possibility of holding the expo in a more accessible location — an outdoors area with a shady park, no less — a way to improve everyone’s enjoyment of the weekend.

And after years of dealing with Candlestick (a state-owned facility), holding the event in the heart of Oaksterdam was a breeze. City government had rejected two cannabis expo event applications in the past, but Cue says the reputation of her group coupled with positive media reviews it has earned made the city’s process relatively easy to work through.

“They did not ask anything of us out of the norm. But it definitely did raise the attention of the Oakland police” — a security concern that she hopes will be unfounded.

But this is no simple smoke-out (which I say in the most medicine-respecting way possible). Cue says the exhibition is also meant as an important learning opportunity about the parts of the marijuana plant you consume — and the parts you wear.

Hemp, as any good stoner should know, was once used by the US military to make uniforms, ropes, and parachutes. The government even released a short movie entitled Hemp For Victory during World War II promoting the material’s importance to the American war machine. Drafts of the Declaration of Independence was written on the stuff, for chrissakes. It’s more durable than cotton, hemp oil is a prime source of essential fatty acids — the list of reasons for its full legalization goes on.

For a crash course in hemp’s utilitarian glory, Cue recommends checking out David (“Doctor”) Bronner’s talk at the expo. Bronner is a member of Canada’s International Hemp Association, a hemp advocacy group that has no equivalent here in the United States. Learnin’ will also be on tap at the expo’s three stages of speakers, at vendor booths, and at Grow Op’s portable marijuana-growing trailer.

Have fun, learn stuff — and don’t call it weed. 

INTERNATIONAL CANNABIS AND HEMP EXPO

Sat/3-Sun/4 noon- 8 p.m., $18-300

Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakl.

www.intcheevents.com

WEST COAST CANNABIS AND MUSIC FESTIVAL

For even more cannabis celebration, check out next month’s tune-and-toke fest — three days of live music powered by Rock The Bike’s generator bicycles.

Oct. 7-9. Fri., 3-9 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-9 p.m.; Sun., 11 a.m.-7 p.m., $18 one day pass/$45 three day pass

Cow Palace

Daly City

www.westcoastcannabisexpo.com

 

Green buds

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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56
Green buds

steve@sfbg.com

CANNABIS Most marijuana sold in Bay Area dispensaries is grown indoors, where the ability to precisely control conditions creates the kind of buds — strong, dense, crystal-covered, fragrant, beautiful — that consumers have come to expect. But that perfection comes at a high price, both financially and environmentally.

So some local leaders in the medical marijuana movement have begun to nudge the industry to return to its roots, to the days before prohibition and the helicopter raids of the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting chased the pot growers indoors. They say it’s time for California to start growing more of its cannabis outdoors again, in the soil and sunlight, just like the rest of the state’s crops.

Growers have long known how inefficient it is to grow indoors. All they need to do is look at their huge monthly energy bills. Between the powerful grow lights, constantly running air conditioners, elaborate ventilation systems, pumps and water purifiers, and heaters used for drying and curing, this is an energy-intensive endeavor.

But a widely circulated study released in April — “Energy Up in Smoke: The Carbon Footprint of Indoor Cannabis Production” by Evan Mills, a researcher with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — revealed just what a huge cumulative toll the practice was taking on California and the planet.

It found that indoor pot production accounts for about 8 percent of California household energy use, costing about $3 billion annually and producing about 4 millions tons of greenhouse gases each year, the equivalent of 1 million automobiles. Producing one joint was the equivalent of driving 15 miles in a 44 mpg car.

“The emergent industry of indoor Cannabis production results in prodigious energy use, costs, and greenhouse-gas pollution. Large-scale industrialized and highly energy-intensive indoor cultivation of cannabis is driven by criminalization, pursuit of security, and the desire for greater process control and yields,” Mills wrote in the report’s summary.

Yet while opponents of marijuana seized on the report to condemn the industry, proponents say there’s a very simple solution to the problem: grow it outdoors. And with the artisanship and quality in the fields and greenhouses now rivaling that of indoor buds, the biggest barriers to moving most marijuana production outdoors are federal laws and the biases of pot consumers.

“There’s a misconception out there that indoor is better marijuana than outdoor, but we don’t think that’s true,” Erich Pearson, who runs the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC) dispensary and sits on the city’s Medical Cannabis Task Force. “Marijuana is a plant that came from the earth and that’s where we should grow it, just like our food.”

 

INDOOR VS. OUTDOOR

There are definitely some benefits to growing indoors, beyond just the ability to hide it from the prying eyes of law enforcement. The grow cycles are shorter, allowing for multiple harvests around the year. The generally small operations and precise control over growing conditions also tend to produce the best-looking buds, which command the highest prices and win the top prizes in competitions.

Kevin Reed, who runs Green Cross — a venerable medical marijuana delivery service that works closely with an established group of growers — told us there are several reasons why indoor buds have dominated the marketplace.

“The most important factor is local laws and regulations and the enforcement of those various laws. A second factor is space and climate — obviously outdoor cultivation will flourish is some places better than other. And, a final factor is sustainability of the market; indoor cultivators can produce crops on a year-round basis, providing some stability in the market over the long-term, especially in the event of crop failure or other unforeseen and unexpected disasters,” Reed told us.

Yet he also said, “If cultivated correctly and with care, there should be no difference between the same strain grown in- or outdoors.” And he said that from an environmental standpoint, outdoor is clearly superior: “So far as environmental factors are concerned, there is little doubt in my mind that outdoor cultivation is kinder to Mother Earth.”

Wilson Linker, with Steep Hill Laboratories, Northern California’s largest tester of medical marijuana, said that outdoor plants generally have more vegetative growth because of the longer light cycles, meaning that “indoor tests generally higher in cannabanoids, with THC [marijuana’s main psychoactive compound] in particular.”

But he and other marijuana experts also say that the quality of the buds ultimately depends on a wide variety of factors, from the strain used to the expertise of the cultivators to the time and care taken by the trimmers.

“I’ve seen outdoor that can compete with the best indoor strains,” said David Goldman, who runs San Francisco’s Americans for Safe Access (ASA) chapter, sits on the city’s Medical Marijuana Task Force, and is active in rating the various dispensaries and pot strains in terms of quality, using magnifying glasses to investigate the trichomes and other characteristics. “I would match the best outdoor I know up with anybody’s indoor, any day.”

Even when indoor buds look better, Pearson said, that doesn’t means they are better. Looks can be deceiving, he said, noting how local consumers now accept that those perfect-looking, genetically modified apples and tomatoes in the store aren’t as tasty or good for you as their ugly, organic counterparts.

“It’s not all about appearance,” he said, noting that marijuana grown in the sunshine is more robust and complex than its indoor cousins.

“We’re starting to find [outdoor] strains that were scoring just as high as indoor,” says Rick Pfrommer, the purchasing manager for Oakland’s Harborside Health Center.

And that’s especially true when the cannabis is grown in greenhouses, where it gets natural sunlight but growing conditions can be controlled better than in the fields.

“Greenhouses can attain a level of cosmetic attractiveness that is right up there with indoor,” Pfrommer said.

“There are a lot of products coming out of greenhouses that even trained eyes can’t tell the difference with [compared to indoors],” Linker said. “Greenhouses are the future.”

Or at least they might be the future if there is a change in the federal laws, which still view any marijuana cultivation as a crime — which is why indoor grows flourished in the first place.

 

LINGERING PROHIBITION

Rising demand for medical marijuana has created some regulatory pushback, even in pot-friendly San Francisco, where the Department of Public Health announced earlier this year that it wanted to create a registry of growers that work with the dispensaries in order to weed out the illegal growing operations.

“In the last few years, there’s been a proliferation of both illegal and legal cultivators,” Dr. Rajiv Bhatia, San Francisco’s environmental health director, told us earlier this summer. “We’re asking for this information to try to steer them back toward legal cultivation.”

Reed, Goldman, and other industry representatives strongly condemned the move, mostly on the grounds that creating lists of growers could subject them to federal prosecution, so the idea was shelved for now. But Bhatia said the problem remains, and in San Francisco, it’s a problem created largely by the demand for cannabis grown indoors.

But allowing for a more widespread conversion to sustainably grown marijuana will require a relaxation of the federal enforcement to allow for more land cultivation and the development of high-tech greenhouses.

“A lot of that rests in the hands of law enforcement,” Pearson said.

But it isn’t just the cops. Consumers are also supporting indoor grows.

 

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Pfrommer said there are many factors that influence whether customers choose indoor or outdoor, or what he calls the “bag appeal” that causes customers to zero in on one strain among the 40 or so that can be offered at one time.

Generally, indoor grows are smaller operations, allowing greater care in the tending and processing of the buds, whereas outdoor grows usually produce large crops harvested all at once, “so frequently people won’t manicure it as well,” Pfrommer said.

Smell is another big factor, Pfrommer said, and that’s one area where he thinks outdoor actually has an advantage. “Outdoor generally has a more pungent smell,” he said. “Cannabis is very sensitive to the environment, so it can pick up elements from the soil, the wind, and the surroundings. It picks up different qualities.”

For that reason, he also said, “I personally find outdoor to taste better when it’s grown well,” comparing it to the subtle qualities that various appellations can give to fine wines.

The final factor is price, and that’s one area where outdoor has a distinct advantage. SPARC is currently selling quarter-ounces of greenhouse-grown Big Buddha Cheese with a THC content of more than 17 percent for just $70. And when the buds from open outdoor fields arrive this fall, they’ll be as low as $50.

“This,” Pearson said, holding up a beautiful bud of greenhouse-grown Green Dragon, “was grown at a fraction of the cost of indoor and it’s outstanding.”

“That’s why indoor sells for so much more,” Goldman said, ” because it costs so much more to grow.”

So if outdoor cannabis is cheaper, better for the environment, less risky for the industry, and just as good, why are the indoor stains still so much more popular?

“You’re looking a 20-plus years of indoor being the standard,” Pfrommer said, noting that the hardest part of creating a more substantial changeover in people’s buying habits is their expectations.

He said Harborside started offering more outdoor strains three years ago, “but the market wasn’t responding as strongly.” In other words, people still preferred indoor.

Yet things are changing, prompted partly by the Mills study. “That was what kicked off this latest round,” Pfrommer said. “There is a small but growing awareness among the regular marijuana consumers about the costs of growing indoors…The consciousness is starting to shift, but it’ll be slow, probably over the next two seasons.”

Harvests usually take place during the full moons in September and October, after which they are cured and processed for about four weeks, finally coming to market around Thanksgiving.

“It’s mostly an education process,” Pfrommer said. “We’re going to have a vigorous push around harvest time this year.”

“We’re trying to transition completely to outdoor because the environmental toll is less, the cost is less, the yield is higher, and our testing is showing that the quality is just as good,” said Nick Smilgys, who has done both marketing and purchasing at SPARC. “It just makes more sense to grow it outdoors.”

Munchies

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Munchies

HERBWISE There will be things at this weekend’s Street Food Festival that you will want to eat. Oh yes, very much so. And damn if there won’t be things that you will want to look at — and then eat.

One of these things will be Rosa Rodriguez’ Sweets Collection gelatin desserts: small, sweet cups in which three dimensional flowers bloom, taunting you to stick a spoon in them. I will take them over designer cupcakes any day.

Rodriguez, who now lives in the Mission with her two daughters, is from the Mexican state of Durango. There, large gelatin molds traditionally bloom at birthdays, baby showers, and wedding parties; red roses and yellow zinnias made of condensed milk curling prettily around the faces of happy couples and beaming little girls. When I asked her via email about her San Francisco customers’ most common reaction to her wares, she said it is uncertainty. “They ask if they can eat the flower, or if it’s plastic.”

A La Cocina street food incubator program graduate, Rodriguez will be in the heart of the Mission this Saturday, along with the rest of the sweet and savory offerings of the Street Food Festival’s 60-some vendors. She’ll be selling “fanciful jellos shots” at the festival’s bars on 23rd and Folsom streets, and her more family-friendly concoctions at a stand of her own on the same intersection.

Saturday will entail a lot of eating, and a lot of gawking at fanciful jello shots, and for these reasons alone the day will go very well if you are really, really stoned.

But ingesting marijuana before the Street Food Festival is a delicate matter. After all, the third year of the event will be the biggest yet, its girth spanning eight blocks of Folsom Street, plus parts of 23rd, 25th, the Cesar Chavez Elementary School parking lot, and the Parque de los Niños Unidos.

In past years, massive crowds have marred the day for many an avid snacker — the lines, my friend, the lines. This year La Cocina is hopeful that the vast expansion of the event will stem the tide — but nonetheless it would not do to have agoraphobia derail you just as you are reaching the front of the line at the Kasa booth.

Luckily, there are plenty of San Francisco souls that geek out tailor-making THC regimens for situations like these. I placed a call to one such place humans like this congregate: the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, winningly acronym-ed SPARC. It just received our Best of the Bay reader’s poll award for Best Cannabis Club and it’s well known for having an extensive selection of in-house strains. It seemed like a fine place to start out.

Nick Smilgys, who has served as the club’s marketing director for over a year now, had two words for me: blackberry kush. Then he had some more. The kush — which he says is traditionally cultivated in Pakistan and India, but happens to be one of SPARC’s signature strains — is a deep-green indica that’ll make you hungry as hell, ready to take on all those Indian burritos and handmade huaraches.

Smilgys says the blackberry buds create “good well being” in their ingester, and result in a nice body high. Of course, he cautions, medicines will have differing effects on different patients.

But if you’re not careful with the blackberry, it could keep you from your improbably edible jello flowers. (Smilgys employed the term “couch lock” to describe a potential blackberry kush effect.) If you’re prone to getting paranoid, he counsels medical marijuana patients to look for a sativa-indica hybrid that tilts to the indica side of things for a more tranquil, crowd-ready high.

Be brave friends, eat the flower. *

STREET FOOD FESTIVAL

Sat/20 11 a.m.-7 p.m., free

Folsom between 22nd and 26th sts. and surrounding area, SF

www.sfstreetfoodfest.com

 

Mayor’s race a tight pack, but Gascón lags in DA’s contest

Sasha Cuttler
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25
Mayor’s race a tight pack, but Gascón lags in DA’s contest

Despite the hype and spin from various mayoral campaigns and newspapers, the big story in yesterday’s release of semi-annual campaign finance reports is that there isn’t much of a story: It’s pretty much what everyone has been expecting, a tight field of qualified mayoral candidates with comparable financial resources.

It was also no surprise that Progress for All, the deceptive committee behind the effort to draft Mayor Ed Lee into breaking his word and running to keep his job, was funded mostly by a narrow group of business interests connected to longtime power brokers Rose Pak and Willie Brown, mostly with $5,000 contributions, or 10 times the contribution limit for legitimate mayoral campaigns.

The real story in yesterday’s numbers was in the district attorney’s race where the conventional wisdom that incumbent George Gascón is the clear frontrunner (“wisdom” that we’ve always questioned given his lack of local roots) was cast into doubt by his lackluster fundraising, big spending for small results, and the fact that each of his two major challengers have twice as much money in the bank.

Alameda County prosecutor Sharmin Bock led the fundraising race this year with $240,337, about $6,000 more than Gascón. And after spending $156,916 in just six months, Gascón has just $77,570 in the bank. David Onek, who has been getting progressive support and retail campaigning up a storm, raised $126,386 this year, but his early start and frugal spending leaves him with $153,474 in the bank.

In the mayor’s race, while both the Chronicle and Examiner led with David Chiu’s impressive fundraising this year, leading the pack with almost $400,000, all that really did was put him into financial contention with the top-tier candidates who have been raising money since last year: Leland Yee, Dennis Herrera, Bevan Dufty, Joanna Rees, and Michela Alioto-Pier.

As of last month, their campaigns’ cash-on-hand was Herrera at $586,294, Dufty at $493,372, Yee at $444,820, Ress at $441,168, Alioto-Pier at $406,574, and Chiu at $396,754. On the next tier down, Phil Ting appears dead in the water, raising just $67,526 and having more debt than money in the bank, although his campaign consultant Eric Jaye said public funds are just starting to come in and the campaign is on track to meet its $300,000 fundraising goal.

Two other major candidates were also well behind the pack, but both are running with an outsiders’ appeal that should keep them in the running throughout the race. Tony Hall, a conservative with a strong independent appeal, raised $102,612, has $173,368, and will likely continue nipping at the heels of the mainstream pack.

And then there’s progressive favorite John Avalos, who has been running a visible, enthusiastic campaign with lots of volunteer support, although he raised just $86,882 this period and has about $100,000 in the bank (contrary the erroneous report in today’s Chronicle that he only had $500, apparently because the reporter looked at his supervisorial campaign report instead of his mayoral – whoops).

But Avalos supporter Chris Daly said the campaign has recently raised another $32,000 and is due to soon receive about $120,000 in matching funds, bringing them up to around $250,000. “That’s what [then-mayoral candidate Tom] Ammiano had in his entirety in ’99,” Daly said, noting that progressive mayoral favorites always get outspent and usually by margins greater than what Avalos now faces. “Our people don’t have as much money or city contracts.”

By contrast, Chiu has been raking in the dough this year, with lots of $500 contributions mostly from lawyers, bankers, developers, people with Chinese surnames, and employees of Google and other tech firms, with almost half of the contributions from out of town.

“We raised almost a hundred grand more than the closest competitor,” said Chiu campaign manager Nicole Derse. “We’re in a super strong position.”

In addition to the big money sources that usually gravitate to strong moderate candidates, Chiu also had some notable financial support from some progressive constituencies, including bicyclist activists (such as Gary Fisher, Dan Nguyen-Tan, Jason Henderson, architect David Baker, and MTA member Cheryl Brinkman), progressive activists Susan King and Amy Laitenen (Matt Gonzalez’s former board aide), and medical marijuana advocate Kevin Reed from Green Cross.

Jim Stearns, who is running the Yee and Bock campaigns, said the funding picture is about what he and others predicted would be the case given public financing (and its $1.475 million spending cap) and the large field of qualified candidates. “That’s the interesting thing about this race, it’s like the World Series of Poker with everyone getting the same stake,” he said. “This is unlike every other mayor’s race where there have been huge disparities in funding.”

Many political analysts privately fear that this dynamic, with nobody really pulling away from the pack of candidates, could encourage Lee to get into the race. But Stearns notes that Lee, despite the power of incumbency, will have a hard time catching up in fundraising and a huge target on his back because of breaking his word, the sleazy “Run Ed Run” campaign tactics, and just the fact that he would become the instant frontrunner.

“In the ranked choice voting scenario, if there’s someone who looks like he’s going to come in first, you don’t lose anything by attacking him because his second place votes aren’t going anywhere,” said Stearns, who said the current mayor’s race appears to be a game of inches. “It’s an infantry game rather than an air game, where the gains are slow and people are proceeding carefully.”

 

 

Best of the Bay 2011: BEST SUBLINGUAL HIGH

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

The Bay Area’s well-developed medical marijuana industry has done much to elevate the age-old practice of smoking marijuana to new heights, with sticky, stinky new strains and a wide variety of edibles. Along with improvements of the herbal variety have come winning technological advances: the formulation of some mighty fine of cannabis tinctures and other concentrates. Our favorite? Alta California tinctures by CBD Science, formerly known as 420 Alchemy. Take a drop or two sublingually (that’s under the tongue, stoners) and you’ll attain a beautiful high that’s different from smoking, vaporizing, or eating — a clear but consuming ride that seems to emanate from your very tissues, almost ecstasy-like. Three varieties — Healing, Tranquility, and Euphoria — give fans a range of satisfaction.

(877) 737-4420, www.4altacalifornia.com

The Chron is clueless

Zelda Bronstein
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8
The Chron is clueless

The ol’ Chron commissioned its former reader representative, Dick Rogers, to do a piece on the Jose Antonio Vargas story, and he concludes that Vargas was a liar whose failure to turn himself in to immigration authorities (and thus accept deportation to a country he hardly knew) undermined his journalistic work. Rogers quotes editor Ward Bushee:


“While he deserves sympathy for his efforts to become a citizen, Vargas’ lack of forthrightness in some of his reporting cannot be defended,” Bushee said. “He practiced a pattern of deception that was not only dishonest, but disrespectful of his readers and fellow journalists at The Chronicle.”


Pardon me while I puke.


I’ve already written about Vargas and about former Chron editor Phil Bronstein’s (far more nuanced) handwringing over the situation. But the conclusions the Chron reached in the Rogers article are just bizarre and reflect a creaky, ancient attitude towards journalism that makes no sense in the modern world.


I called Rogers, who is a nice guy with a long history in journalism, and we had a long talk about the situation. I asked him what the young man should have done when he found out at 16 that his parents had sent him to the Unites States illegally. Rogers, to his credit, said he didn’t know, that it was a tricky moral and legal dilmemma. “But that’s not what I was asked to write about,” he said.


The issue for him: Vargas lied when he filled out his employment application and failed to disclose to his editors that he was in the country illegally. That damaged the Chronicle. “You can’t put yourself above your newspaper,” he told me.
Okay, once again: What should Vagas have done? What should a person who is forced by stupid and inconsistent federal laws to lie about his immigration status do if he wants to be a journalist? Well, Rogers said, that’s the dilemma: “I don’t think he should have been working in mainstream journalism.”


Of course, he’s have to lie to get a job as a lawyer, or doctor, or CPA. And all of those professions also have ethical codes that discourage lying. So perhaps he should have been a bricklayer.


To be fair, Rogers doesn’t go that far — he suggested that there were other types of journalism Vargas could have done. He could, for example, have worked for the Bay Guardian. (I wish.) After we talked for a while, Rogers said that if Vargas was going to work for the Chron, he should have recused himself from any stories involving immigration.


But let’s be real here: The Chron allowed a reporter who took money from a nativist group to keep writing about immigration. Bushee, who is so outraged about Vargas, has no problem allowing an (illegally) unregistered lobbyist who gets paid to advocate for wealthy interests in the city to write a political column without ever disclosing his clients or conflicts. (Rogers told me that was a legitimate point. “Conflicts are conflicts,” he said.)


And at the same time, the Chron fired a reporter who participated in an antiwar march and wouldn’t let a lesbian reporter cover same-sex marriage.


It’s inconsistent to the point of being silly.


Look: All of us have conflicts. As the great Larry Bensky once told me, “People who have no conflicts have no interests.” Can a person who drives a car write about transportation policy? Can a person who smokes pot write about medical marijuana (or should she tell her editor, sorry boss — I’m illegally ingesting a controlled substance at night, better fire me or report me to the cops because I can’t cover this story)? Can a person with children write about whether San Francisco is a good city to raise children? Can a person with kids in the public schools write about the school board? Can a divorced person cover a wedding? Can a person who had an affair write about a politician who’s caught fooling around? Can a person who drinks beer write about the city’s alcohol tax?


I mean, let’s not be ridiculous here.


Let me tell a perhaps hypothetical story. Suppose that, when I was working for a (socially conservative) daily newspaper in a (socially conservative) New England city in the mid-1970s, I had a colleague who was gay. And suppose she decided — correctly — that her career would be damaged (at that time, at that institution) if she was out of the closet. (For all I know, she was a criminal, too — I’m not sure when this particular state repealed its sodomy laws.) So suppose she lied — to her boss, to her coworkers, to everyone around. Did that mean she was a bad reporter? Not at all. My hypothethical friend did what she thought she had to do, at a time when the professional and political world she lived in was unwilling to accept who she was. (In fact, there were no laws back then about firing people because of their sexual orientation.) She hated it, we all hated it, and we worked to change things. But I’m not going to condemn her — or call into question the credibility of her work — because of it.


(By the way: I lied, too. I told my boss at this particular institution that I didn’t smoke marijuana. It was a job requirement. I wanted the job. I was a lawbreaker, and I still covered the cops. In fact, I wrote about pot busts. Thank god they didn’t test my pee.)


Let’s face it: Everyone at the Chron, and at every daily newspaper, has personal issues that prevents him or her from being completely objective. Jose Antonia Vargas was no different. The fact that the United States government forced him to lie is no grounds for saying he couldn’t be, and isn’t, a good, honest reporter.
 

BYO Flair: A guide to this weekend’s festival explosion

Andrew Lam
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BYO Flair: A guide to this weekend’s festival explosion

If there is one thing I know about festivals it is this: the gear you pack can leave you hydrated, hip and happy — or break you down to a sunburned, schlubby hunk of bad vibes. (It’s true – shoddy preparation for Reggae on the River 2006 left me stranded in the psych tent with disoriented girlfriend during the Ziggy and Damian Marley concert. Clearly, a hipper fedora would have solved everything.) 

This weekend plays host to a freakishly large share of summer festivals, so consider this your guide to happy cavorting in the sun. Cups, caps, frocks, and foods: here, friends, are our picks for best festie flair.  

Sierra Nevada World Music Festival

The perfect weekend campout for those that can’t handle the crushing crowds of the more commercial festivals this summer. Even the little things (children) will appreciate the open-minded approach to beautiful noise here.

Bring: Consider SNWMF a three-day immersion program in getting loose. Translation: you need costumes. If you’re heading up from San Francisco, we’ve got the perfect sartorial layover for you. Sebastopol’s Funk & Flash vintage store is far enough removed from the big city that its stock hasn’t been picked to all hell by the club kid set, so festie-bound you can benefit from its racks of flowery skirts, and tons of sparkle. Go, do you! 

Fri/17-Sun/19, $60-150

Boonville Fairgrounds

CA-128, Boonville

www.snwmf.com

 

Juneteenth Festival and Parade

The website proclaims this celebration of African American heritage to be the largest gathering of blacks in Northern California, but it remains to be seen whether you’ll fixate on the cultural signifcance while attending the event itself: with an impressive classic car show and three-on-three basketball tournament, all the historical reflection might have to wait until after the festival. 

Bring: No brainer accessory: a hat from Hats of the Fillmore, an independent business that’s been holding it down on Fillmore’s main drag for years. High quality at surprisingly low prices, you can don one of these lids to fit in perfectly with the jazzy milieu of SF’s traditionally black neighborhood. 

Sat/18 11 a.m.-7 p.m., free

Fillmore and Geary, SF

www.sfjuneteenth.org

 

Alameda Sailing Festival

Hey Muffy, take a break from hating on the impending America’s Cup to catch a day of boating buoyancy. The Encinal Sailing Foundation will be providing turns on the high seas for a “nominal” fee, and there will be seminars on “pilates for sailors,” boating to Mexico, and how to get your captain’s license. Afterwards, we know some great places to get drunk in Alameda!

Bring: This really goes for every fest on the list, but possibly the most important piece of flair is a fun, functional backpack to hold your water (flask), sunscreen, cell phone, and snacks. We love the Brooklyn Circus’ BKc satchels – but for the moment you’ve gotta special order them from New York. That’s fine, this ain’t the last weekend of the summer! The store’s preppy style (without the snooty WASP-y supply chain behind it) would be divine if you’re looking to drop some dough on a nice sailing fest outfit. 

Sat/18 10 a.m.-8 p.m., free

Encinal Yacht Club

1251 Pacific Marina, Alameda

www.summersailstice.com


Bicycle Music Festival

You read our profile on Fossil Fool, so you know all about the current trend towards bike-fueled culture fun. According to all the volunteers that have been standing near Mona Caron’s bike mural behind the Church Street Safeway for the past few days, this fest will be the perfect spot to enjoy the zeitgeist. Saddle up for awesome tunes, and community-building bike rides between concert sites. 

Bring: Hedgehog mug from Gravel and Gold so you can (chicly, adorably) reap the benefits of the fest’s pedal-powered smoothie maker. It also comes in rabbit, fyi. The calories you consume in said smoothies work doubletime — once you’re done drinking, take your turn powering the generator for the drinks or one of the music stages yourself.

Sat/18 noon-11:25 p.m., free

Various locations, SF

www.bicyclemusicfestival.com


Berry Festival

You know this sun isn’t going to last past 4th of July, so now is the perfect time to up your antioxidant intake and arm the old immune system against “summer” colds. CUESA and the Ferry Building farmers market is holding this day of loving for berry season – sample the treats available in the market stalls and let chef Daniel Clayton of Nibblers Eatery and Wine Bar show you how to whip up some healthy, hearty grub with the juicy little devils. 

Bring: a nice navy sweatshirt from Mollusk for the Bay breezes and inevitable tayberry stains. 

Sat/18 11 a.m.-1 p.m., free

Ferry Building, SF

www.cuesa.org


California Big Time Indian Gathering

The Ohlones are hosting their first gathering of Native peoples in their ancestral lands in two centuries. Come to learn more about real SF locals through dance, rituals, and craft exhibitions.

Bring: Mocs that slip off easy – you’re not gonna want a layer of separations between the well-manicured lawns of Yerba Buena and your soles. 

Sat/18 noon-11 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Gardens

Howard between Second and Third St., SF

www.worldartswest.org


North Beach Festival

Sure, the neighborhood street fests all start to look the same after awhile. But there are good parts of that same: family-friendly musical acts, artery-busting festie food, and an excuse to run amok in the streets. The North Beach incarnation has been going for 56 years, and manages to sneak a couple unique facets into the standard cruise-shop-eat formula SF has perfected. 

Bring: your kitty cat companion for the yearly St. Francis of Assisi animal blessings. Also, a flirty, locally made frock from NooWorks is totally Maria from West Side Story – perfectly for the neo-Catholic-in-the-summertime vibe you’ll be channeling. 

Sat/18-Sun/19 10 a.m.-6 p.m., free

Washington Square Park

Union and Columbus, SF

www.northbeachchamber.com

 

Northern California Pirate Festival

Never underestimate the amount of people willing to drop serious time and dime on dressing up in period costumes. You’ve seen the Renaissance fairs and the Dickens Christmas Fair – now it’s time to peep the pirates. Two very full days of pirate entertainers and replica boats (not to mention squadrons of pirate clothing vendor booths) await you if you be brave enough to cross the seas to Vallejo. 

Bring: Your 826 Valencia designer spyglass, for scurvy-watching of course. 

Sat/18-Sun/19 10 a.m.-6 p.m., free

Vallejo Waterfront

Mare Island Way (near the ferry terminal), Vallejo

www.norcalpiratefestival.com

 

Picklewater Free Circus Festival

As we mentioned in last year’s profile of our favorite free circus troupe, Circus Bella, nothing quite highlights the magic (and eccentricity) of this city quite like catching a high-flying aerial act smack dab in the heart of downtown. Picklewater is taking over Union Square for the third year in a row this weekend, and we suggest you head down — if only to catch the amazed gaze of the throngs of tourists that’ll be on hand to remind you that yes, your city is freakin’ amazing. 

Bring: Your medical marijuana card, and attending accoutrements. 

Sun/19 2-4 p.m., free

Union Square

Post and Powell, SF

www.jewelssf.org

 

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Stern Grove Festival

The 74th season of this green glade’s free concert series kicks off with a killer show from the queen of throwback soul. 

Bring: The Stern Grove scene struts more with its picnic spread than by any accessory or fly outfit. A retro basket (check Goodwill, people are always ditching picnic baskets) will be a useful score, and in terms of snack to make (they must be homemade!), peep our favorite new vegan cooking blog, The Vegan Stoner. It’s perfect, even if you had to self-medicate your hangover before you started prepping for the journey out to the Sunset.  

Feat. Ben L’Oncle Soul

Sun/19 2 p.m., free

Stern Grove

19th Ave. and Sloat, SF

www.sterngrove.org

 

Mission Street mural unveiling

But why spend all your time at the big events? Artist Aaron Lawrence is holding an al fresco event of his own – pulling the dropcloth off the work he and muralist Rocky Villanueva did on a new apartment building on Mission. He’s making a party of it, so get there early if you want to get down on the free burritos provided. 

Bring: Tapatio, tall can Tecate. Bring two cans, share them. 

Sun/19 2-5:30 p.m., free

Mission between 18th and 19th St., SF

Facebook: Sunday Mural Reveal Party

 

Where’s Gascon on Ammiano’s pot bill?

Zelda Bronstein
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4
Where’s Gascon on Ammiano’s pot bill?

Some very good news from Sacramento (and since good news from that part of the world is rare these days, let’s celebrate it). Assembly Member Tom Ammiano has a bill that would eliminate the mandatory felony charges for marijuana cultivation and allow district attorneys to charge some pot farmers with misdemeanors. And it’s cleared committee and is headed to the Assembly floor. The Bay Citizen has a decent wrapup on the politics (including the fact that the prison guards union isn’t going to like it — less customers).


It’s likely the Senate will go along with the bill, too — particularly since most of the district attorneys in Pot Country are supporting it. Mendocino DA David Eyster is the main sponsor. His colleagues in Humboldt, Del Norte and Lake Counties are all on board.


Oddly enough, the California District Attorneys Association still opposes the bill. The board of this august group seems to be dominated by the more conservative counties, but still: The DAs who have to deal with this issue regularly all want the bill passed. What’s up with that? Well, the spokesman for the group, Cory Salzillo, told me that the bill “send the wrong message with controlled substances generally” and that it would also give not only a prosecutor but a judge the ability to turn a potential felony into a misdemeanor. “We’re concerned about that judicial discretion,” he said.


Which seems, frankly, a little nuts — again, the four DAs who are most involved in charging people for cultivation of marijuana — the folks on the front lines, so to speak — want the bill to pass. So who decided the association position?


Salzillo says there’s a legislative committee, but since this one was controversial, it went to the full board. And guess what? There’s a San Francisco rep. on the board — Assistant D.A. Jerry Coleman. I called him to ask how the vote went down. Here’s our conversation:


Me: Hi, Mr. Coleman, I understand you’re on the board of the California DAs association and I wanted to talk to you about why that group is opposing the Ammiano marijuana bill, which the DAs of the north counties that deal with the issue all support.


Coleman: “I’m not the spokesman for that association.”


Me: Yes, but you’re on the board and I’m wondering if you voted in favor of opposing AB 1017.


Coleman: “I can’t give you an answer to that. I won’t discuss any vote. I don’t remember this one, but if I did I wouldn’t talk to you about it anyway.”


That was helpful.


Meanwhile, where’s Coleman’s boss, the San Francisco DA, George Gascon? This is a city that supports medical marijuana, has perhaps a few growers living in its city limits — and if I had to guess, about, maybe, 93 percent of the voters would agree that marijuana cultivation shouldn’t be an automatic felony. Why isn’t Gascon’s name on the list of supporters?


I dunno. His office hasn’t called me back. I’ll let you know when they do.

SF’s top cops differ on local control

Sasha Cuttler
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7
SF’s top cops differ on local control

The announcement by Sheriff Michael Hennessey that he won’t honor federal deportation holds for undocumented prisoners accused of low-level crimes is a great illustration of local control – which is the reason why we elect our sheriff and district attorney – but it is a concept that District Attorney George Gascon doesn’t seem to understand.

As the Guardian recently reported in a cover story by Sarah Phelan, Gascon ignored local control, civilian police oversight, and even standing police general orders as police chief by taking a highly deferential stance with the FBI and its domestic spying operations. Then, in a Chronicle op-ed on the death penalty last weekend, Gascon went even further in declaring himself to be merely a minion of higher government authorities.

While stating his opposition to capital punishment, Gascon said he wouldn’t rule out seeking the death penalty because he doesn’t think his own view or that of the vast majority of San Franciscans should determine his office’s actions. “I don’t believe district attorneys should be allowed to supplant the views of the state with those of their own,” he wrote.

That is a rather astounding statement that only an inexperienced prosecutor and an individual who has spent almost his entire career in the rigid hierarchies of police departments – rather than actually working as an attorney – would make.

“That’s where rookies make mistakes because they don’t have the experience to use their prosecutorial discretion,” said Sharmin Bock, a career prosecutor who works in the the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, and who is running against Gascon (who did not return our calls for comment). “The DA has discretion over charging decisions and when you pick a DA it is for their discretion.”

For example, Bock cited the Three Strikes You’re Out law, which allows prosecutors to seek a sentence of 25 years to life even for the most minor crimes when they are committed by two-time felons. If all prosecutors used that full authority in every case, California’s severely overcrowded prison system would be even worse, which is one reason why prosecutors in places like San Francisco, Alameda County, and Los Angeles use their discretion and only seek Three Strikes sentencing standards for violent felons.

Similarly, in San Francisco, former DA Kamala Harris upheld her campaign pledge to never seek the death penalty, just as her predecessor Terence Hallinan used his prosecutorial discretion in dealing with local medical marijuana dispensaries or refusing to throw the book at those who committed low-level drug crimes.

Otherwise, the DA is nothing more than an administrative position, and San Francisco is forced to endure the same prosecutorial standards and values that are promulgated by intolerant conservatives from rural counties who have loaded up the Penal Code with costly and unjust new crimes and sentencing enhancements.

Hennessey understands that San Franciscans don’t want the same harsh treatment of our immigrant neighbors that the intolerant residents of Fresno, Orange, or Placer counties might demand. That why San Francisco’s elected officials made this a sanctuary city, and it’s why Hennessey told the Examiner, “I’m just doing our best to enforce local law. That’s my job.” But if Gascon thinks it’s his job to simply be an agent of the state and federal governments, perhaps San Francisco voters should cast their ballots accordingly.

Beyond 420

Andrew Lam
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0
Beyond 420

steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY When the clock or the calendar hits 420 — and particularly at that magical moment of 4:20 p.m. on April 20 — the air of Northern California fills with the fragrant smell of green buds being set ablaze. But this year, some longtime cannabis advocates are trying to focus the public’s attention on images other than stoners getting high.

“I hope the house of hemp will replace the six-foot-long burning joint as the symbol of 420,” says Steve DeAngelo, executive director of Harborside Health Center, an Oakland cannabis collective, and one of the organizers of an April 23 festival in Richmond dubbed Deep Green that offers an expanded view of cannabis culture.

In addition to big musical acts, guest speakers, and vendors covering just about every aspect of the cannabis industry, the event will feature a house made almost entirely of industrial hemp. That exhibit and many others will highlight the myriad environmental and economic benefits of legalizing hemp, as California Sen. Mark Leno has been trying to do for years, with his latest effort, SB676, The California Industrial Hemp Farming Act, clearing the Senate Agriculture Committee on a 5–1 vote April 5.

Public opinion polls show overwhelming support for ending the war on drugs, particularly as it pertains to socially benign substances like industrial hemp, a strain of cannabis that doesn’t share the psychoactive qualities of its intoxicating sister plants. Yet DeAngelo said that after 40 years of advocating for legalization, he’s learned to be patient because “unfortunately, our politicians are lagging behind public opinion.”

In San Francisco and many other cities, marijuana dispensaries have become a legitimate and important part of the business community (see “Marijuana goes mainstream,” 1/27/10), spawning offshoots like the edibles industry that provide more safe and effective ways of ingesting marijuana (see “Haute pot,” 1/25/11).

But the proof that the medical marijuana is about more than just getting people high also continues to grow, from the endless touching tales of cancer, AIDS, and other patients who have been saved from suffering by this wonder weed to the lengths that the industry is going to cultivate cannabidiol (CBD), a compound found in marijuana that doesn’t get people high but offers many other benefits, including acting as an antidepressant and antiinflammatory medicine.

CBD and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, generally have an inverse relationship in cannabis plants, so the efforts by generations’ worth of pot cultivators to breed strains with higher THC content have almost completely bred the CBD out of the plants. “In the underground markets, it didn’t have any value,” DeAngelo said.

When Harborside Health Center first started laboratory-testing marijuana many years ago, DeAngelo said that of 2,000 strains tested, only nine had “appreciable quantities of CBD.” In addition to efforts by Harborside and the San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC) to work with growers on bringing back CBD-heavy strains, modern scientific techniques are allowing CBD to be extracted from the strains that do exist.

“It’s not psychoactive, but let me tell you, it is mood-altering,” says Albert Coles, founder of CBD Sciences in Stinson Beach. “A lot of people, when they smoke pot go inward, but that often isn’t good for social interactions.”

His company makes laboratory-tested cannabis tinctures called Alta California that have been increasingly popular in San Francisco, offering three different varieties: high THC/low CBD, low THC/high CBD, and a 50-50 mix. “It’s good for creative thinking because it just clears out all the noise,” Coles said of CBD.

But even when talking about THC, many in the industry dispute the criticism that most marijuana use is merely recreational drug use. Vapor Room founder Martin Olive has said most pot use isn’t strictly medical or recreational, but a third category he calls “therapeutic,” people who smoke pot to help cope with the stress of modern life.

DeAngelo agrees, although he puts it slightly differently: “The vast majority of cannabis users use it for the purpose of wellness.” 

DEEP GREEN FESTIVAL Saturday, April 23. Performances by The Coup, Heavyweight Dub Champion, and more; speakers include pot cultivation columnist Ed Rosenthal, Steve DeAngelo, and business owner David Bronner. $20 advance/$30 door ($20 for bicyclists and carpoolers, $100 VIP).

Craneway Pavilion, 1414 Harbour Way South, Richmond. www.deepgreenfest.com

 

Haute pot

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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9
Haute pot

steve@sfbg.com

CANNABIS Marijuana edibles have come a long way in a short time.

Just a few years ago, the norm was still brownies of uncertain dosage that tasted like eating weed, right down to the occasional stem or lump of leaf, served in a wax paper envelope. But now the foodies have gotten into the game, producing a huge variety of tasty treats that are incredibly delicious even before the munchies kick in.

San Francisco could be on the verge of a culinary revolution that would parallel those being experienced in the realms of boutique eateries, gourmet coffee, and high-end street food vendors — except for the fact that makers of cannabis edibles still reside in a legal limbo.

As long as they’re operating under the umbrella of a cannabis collective, getting marijuana from its growers and selling through its dispensaries, then the weed bakers are in compliance with state law. But they’re still illegal under federal law, and even California law doesn’t allow them to operate independently as wholesalers, making it difficult to scale up operations and do more than just break even financially.

Judging from the skittishness of some of San Francisco’s top edibles producers — who didn’t want to be identified by their real names and were wary of letting us know too much about their operations — they perform this labor of love under a cloud of understandable paranoia.

“Unfortunately, secrecy is a rule we have to live by, day in and day out,” said the founder of Auntie Dolores, who we’ll call Jay. She makes a line of popular, strong, and yummy products that include pretzels, chili lime peanuts, caramel corn, and cookies of all kinds.

Yet the legal threats haven’t stopped producers from professionalizing the edibles industry — in terms of quality control, packaging, consistency, and innovation — and drawing on foodie sensibilities and their own culinary training to develop creative new products that effectively mask or subtly incorporate that bitter cannabis taste.

“We’re all about masking the flavor of the cannabis because I really don’t like the flavor that much,” Jay said of products that are stronger than most but somehow without a hint of weed in them. “People here have a high standard. It’s their medicine and their food, and we have a lot of foodies who are really into our products.”

Choco-Potamus is an example of this new generation of edibles, combining gourmet chocolate-making with the finest strains of cannabis, using only the best buds rather than the leaves and other plant matter that have often gone into edibles. Mrs. Hippo, the pseudonym of the chief baker, has worked for a national company in the food industry for about a decade, mostly doing branding, and it shows in this eye-catching product.

“I’m kind of a foodie. We have friends who roast whole pigs and brew their own beer, that kind of thing,” she said. “Really good high-grade marijuana has some really great flavor qualities, particularly when combined with cocoa. I really want the patients to enjoy the flavor, not just the feeling.”

 

EAT YOUR MEDICINE

Steve DeAngelo, founder of Oakland’s Harborside Health Center, one of the Bay Area’s biggest dispensaries, said edibles have been increasingly popular, particularly among older users, patients with medical conditions that make smoking problematic, or those who prefer the longer body highs of eating it.

“Our sales of edibles has trended steadily upward since we opened,” DeAngelo said, noting that last year the club sold $1.2 million in edibles, about 5.5 percent of total sales, compared to $306,000 (3.2 percent) after they opened in 2006. “As an absolute amount, we’ve seen the amount of edibles quadruple in the last four and a half years. As percentage of sales, we’ve seen it double.”

He said the main difference between eating and smoking marijuana is duration and onset. Smoking it brings on the high within minutes and it usually last for less than two hours, whereas eating it takes about 45 minutes for the effects to kick in, but they can then last for six to eight hours.

“There are different forms for different symptoms,” he said, noting that edibles are perfect for someone with insomnia or other symptoms that disturb normal sleep patterns, while someone who needs marijuana in the morning can smoke or vaporize it and have the effects mostly gone by the time they go to work.

“When you eat it, it goes through your limbic system, so it hits your brain differently,” said Jay of Auntie Dolores, saying that she and many others prefer the subtle differences in the high they get from eating cannabis. Others who prefer edibles are those looking to just take the edge off without being too stoned. “A lot of the people who like the edibles are moms. They don’t want to smell like pot or be too high,” Mrs. Hippo said.

She noted that her chocolates are not as strong as many of the edibles out there, with each candy bar containing two doses. “It’s a personal preference for how I want the bars to taste,” she said, although she has been working on making a stronger version as well, which many dispensaries and their customers prefer.

But Mr. and Mrs. Hippo say they think taste is becoming as important as strength, calling it an emerging area of the market. “I have a dream that there could be just an edibles dispensary,” Mr. Hippo said, envisioning a pot club with the look and feel of a high-end bakery.

For now, demand for edibles is still driven by “potency and packaging,” says SPARC founder Erich Pearson. “I think people eat food to eat food and enjoy. They don’t eat to get high.” Yet as long as they’re getting high in this competitive marijuana marketplace, the edibles makers have been making better and better tasting products.

Jade Miller makes 12 flavors of cannabis-infused drinks under the Sweet Relief label, with spiced apple cider being her top seller. She draws other training at New York City’s Institute for Culinary Education to make some of the best-tasting drinks on the market.

“I got into it because I needed alternative pain relief when I had whooping cough and a torn shoulder muscle,” Miller told us.

She was injured while on a cooking job with Whole Foods Catering in September 2006. She hated the opiates that she was prescribed for her shoulder pain, preferring marijuana. But when she contracted whooping cough, she couldn’t smoke pot anymore without painful coughing, so she got into making edibles.

At the time, many of the pot-laced foods out there weren’t very good or professionally made. “Some edibles were inedible,” she said. “I became a one-woman campaign against brownies.”

 

QUALITY CONTROL

With a background in homeopathy and appreciation for marijuana, Jay started making edibles 10 years ago, informally helping two aunts battling cancer. But in the last couple of years she’s honed her recipes, improved her packaging, and transformed her Auntie Dolores snacks into some of the best on the market, available in several local dispensaries, such as Medithrive, SPARC, Bernal Heights Dispensary, and Shambhala.

“I just knew I could make stronger and better-tasting stuff,” she said. “The demand from the patients is really high for great products.”

Horror stories abound about users who overdosed on edibles and ended up being incapacitated all day or night, but that’s mostly been a problem of dosage, which modern technology has helped overcome. Choco-Potamus and other makers routinely send their batches to a lab for testing.

“The idea is we can be helping an edibles producer or a tincture maker quantify the cannabis in the product,” said Anna Ray Grabstein, CEO of Steep Hill Laboratory in Oakland, which tests cannabis and related products for strength and purity. “They’re able to use that information to create consistency in their recipes.”

It’s been difficult to meet the rising demand given the current legal framework.

“Yes, we would love to scale up. I’d love it if more people had access to our product. We’d love to sell it outside of California,” Jay said. “But it’s tricky because there’s so many gray areas,”

Larry Kessler is the program manager for the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Medical Cannabis Dispensary Inspection Program, which reviews the procedures of edibles makers and requires those who work with one than one dispensary to get a certified food handler license from the state.

“We just want to make sure they know what they’re doing,” Kessler told us.

San Francisco has some unique rules, banning edibles that require refrigeration or other special handling, granting exceptions on a case-by-case basis. Unlike Oakland and some other jurisdictions, San Francisco also requires edibles to be in opaque packaging. “It was to get rid of the visual appeal to children,” he explains.

All the edible makers say they can live with those local rules, and they praise San Francisco as a model county for medical marijuana regulation. The problem is that state law doesn’t allow them to be independent businesses.

“It’s against state law. There’s no wholesaling allowed, and that’s a big issue around edibles,” Kessler said. “It’s a complicated issue.”

All the edibles makers in this story say they are barely getting by financially, and all have other jobs to support themselves. Jay says she’s thought about giving up many times, but she’s been motivated by stories they’re heard from customers about the almost miraculous curative properties of their products, particularly from patients with cancer and other serious illnesses.

“I get an e-mail like this and then it’s back to the kitchen,” Jay said, referring to a letter from a customer who credits her with saving his life. “There are so many positive properties it has. There’s really no other plant like it.”

State of the weed

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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22
State of the weed

steve@sfbg.com

CANNABIS When we did our first Cannabis Issue a year ago, the Bay Area’s medical marijuana industry was booming, and there was high anticipation that California would soon legalize weed for everyone.

Proposition 19 divided even those who fully support decriminalizing cannabis — partly because the existing system was working so well in San Francisco and many other cities, so people were wary of an uncertain future — and voters rejected the measure in November.

But only the most dogmatic anti-drug warrior would take that vote as a repudiation of the wonder weed, because California’s love affair with its top crop today is stronger than ever. And the burgeoning industry that grows, processes, and delivers marijuana continues to expand rapidly amid a stagnating larger economy.

Three new high-end cannabis dispensaries have opened in San Francisco in the last six months, bringing to 25 the number of licensed clubs, and the selection and quality of indoor and outdoor buds, concentrates, and edibles has never been greater. The industry’s many opportunities are starting to attract top talent from unrelated sectors of the economy, such as Mark Williams and Nic duTemps.

Williams recently quit his job at Apple to start CloudNine, which is developing a high-quality portable vaporizer called Firefly that will be assembled here in San Francisco and released this summer. Unlike current vaporizers made of plastic that use butane heaters to release the cannabanoids from the weed without burning it, Firefly is made of metal and glass with customizable wood inlays, uses advanced batteries in its heating element, and will retail for about $300.

“I decided now is the time,” Williams, 42, said of his decision to leave the corporate cubicle world after 20 years. “The market is maturing and the users’ ability to make a discerning choice about how they’re going to take marijuana is maturing.”

DuTemps worked in public relations for many years and she also jumped ship to do something she loves a few years ago: landscaping backyard gardens. “But then the bottom fell out of the economy,” she said, and people growing marijuana were the only ones who still wanted her expertise.

Yet the supply of cannabis products had grown faster than the number of dispensaries and delivery outlets in recent years. “The clubs were becoming incredibly flooded,” duTemps said. “People have found themselves with copious amounts of product and nowhere to sell it.”

So she decided to marry her PR expertise with her cannabis connections and last month started Sweeter Made, a medical marijuana cooperative and delivery service that uses an old meter maid vehicle for deliveries. DuTemps said she loves “the secret thrill of delivering medical cannabis, hash, and edibles in something that used to give people parking tickets.”

They’re just a couple of the countless Bay Area residents involved in the pot business, an expanding and evolving sector of the economy that even cash-strapped government agencies are getting involved in.

Oakland city officials recently stepped back from their ambitious plan to permit large-scale pot farms in industrial warehouses, mostly because of legal concerns, but that city and Berkeley last year moved forward with plans to legitimize and tax the industry at a higher rate. And the big next step — full legalization of weed for even recreational users — is still lingering on the horizon.

Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee, who bankrolled placing Prop. 19 on the ballot, has announced that he’ll try again on the November 2012 ballot. He told the Guardian that he’s currently developing his battle plan, consulting his allies, and determining what the measure will look like.

“We’re still doing research on what went right and what went wrong,” Lee told us. “There were lots of people who were for legalization that didn’t like the details [of Prop. 19].”

For example, the measure allowed counties to set different legal standards, potentially creating a logistical nightmare for distributing the product. Lee said the new measure will probably include statewide standards and some degree of local control, but he’s still working with groups ranging from the Drug Policy Alliance to the NAACP to develop it. Meanwhile, CaNORML, the state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, will be gathering movement leaders together in Berkeley on Jan. 29 for a daylong conference titled “Marijuana Reform: Next Steps for California.”

While there are differing visions for where the movement is headed and over how hard and quickly to push for full legalization, it’s undeniable that the industry is thriving and here to stay.

Set the oven to blaze

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Set the oven to blaze

caitlin@sfbg.com

CANNABIS Used to be when you wanted to eat your weed, you half-listened to that “more-stoner-than-you” friend, scrawled down a couple of vague butter-to-swag ratios, and got to messing up your kitchen with a box of store-bought Duncan Hines brownie mix and quarter bags. But here’s a news flash: stop doing that. You have no excuse for dorm-room shenanigans with the new crop of wholesome marijuana cookbooks, which will teach you the proper way to add buzz to your lemon bars, chicken wings, and Thanksgiving turkey.

Such are some sample offerings from a new cookbook by the Bay’s preeminent voice on weed cooking: Sandy Moriarty. Moriarty is a graduate of Oaksterdam University who felt that the school could benefit from her 20-plus years of experience in the kush kitchen. After doffing her cap and gown, she cooked up a batch of her high-potency weed treats for Oaksterdam staffers and was rewarded with her own cooking courses on the syllabus. “They said ‘wow! This lady’s got something going on,’ ” Moriarty recalled in a phone interview with the Guardian. She now hawks her much-lauded lemon bars in the school’s Blue Sky Cafe and recently released an anthology of her best-loved bud recipes, Aunt Sandy’s Medical Marijuana Cookbook (Quick American Publishing, 96 pages, $18.95).

The secret to pot cuisine, Moriarty says, is in the lipids. “My butter-making process is superior over all,” she told us. So enthusiastic was she on the subject of medicinal marijuana cooking that she launched from one kitchen triumph to the next — the Super Bowl party when she plied guests with THC-laced hot wings and hot sauce, the Thanksgiving when she treated a houseful of happy loved ones to bud-inflected stuffing and a turkey whose skin she had lubed with that fine butter of hers.

So why, when her Oaksterdam classes are regularly packed and her snacks fly off the cafe shelves quicker than you can say “tetrahydrocannabinol,” would Moriarty want to share the secrets of her skills with a wider, cookbook-reading audience? First of all, she’s not giving up the whole goat, or shall we say, gram. When it comes to her famous lemon bars, Moriarty tweaked the recipe in the final publication — the bars in the book won’t knock you on your ass quite as hard as the specimens you’ll find at Blue Sky.

But Aunt Sandy’s has enough of the doyenne’s secrets to get you started in the kitchen. For example: grade AA butter is a must-have and titrating, or eating your weed at intervals to avoid the dreaded edible pass-out (or freak-out), is a must for the budding pot chef. Which brings us to another reason that you’ll want to check out these cookbooks: screw up the flour or salt measurements on a standard apple pie, and you may have to trash it. Screw up your marijuana-laced apple pie, and you’ll just wind up trashed.

STONERS’ DELIGHT: SPACE CAKES, POT BROWNIES, AND OTHER TASTY CANNABIS CREATION

By Spruce, 64 pages, $9.99, Spruce Books

A lovely little guide to medicinal desserts, this book promises sweet satisfaction with a minimum of the kind of jokes only a stoner could delight in.

BAKED: 35 MARIJUANA MUNCHIES TO MAKE AND BAKE

By Chris Stone, 128 pages $12.99, Ten Speed Press

A silly-yet-instructive paperback that lets you take the easy way (e.g., store-bought puff pastry) or the hard way (make the dough your own damn self) with your THC treats.

Cannabis Club Guide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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8
Cannabis Club Guide

CANNABIS CLUB GUIDE 2012 When we first created our detailed local Cannabis Club Guide two years ago — which you can find at www.sfbg.com/cannabisguide — it seemed as if the marijuana business had entered a golden age of openness and professionalism in San Francisco. But with a federal crackdown shuttering at least a half-dozen dispensaries in the Bay Area (Market Street Collective, Sanctuary, Mr. Nice Guy, Medithrive, Divinity Tree, Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana) things have changed. Luckily for needy patients and stoners alike, San Francisco has always been a resourceful city, so those meddling feds have actually done very little to disrupt the free flow of the world’s best marijuana.

Even before the cannabis industry moved above ground and into brick-and-mortar storefronts, there were always pot delivery services here. Now they’re really proliferating, so we thought it was high time to add them to our guide. And once we delved into this realm, we found that it was every bit as civilized and professional as a visit to our friendly neighborhood dispensary — and perhaps even more convenient and cost-effective.

The process seems just as secure and legally compliant as it is at the clubs, with most reputable delivery services requiring that you become a member before accessing their products. That means sending them copies of your doctor’s recommendation and California ID, which can be even done from a photo on your smart phone. After the services verify you, you’re good to go.

We’re starting the guide with just a trio of the most high-profile delivery services, as well as a couple more dispensaries, but we’ll be adding to the online guide throughout the year, so check back frequently for more updates.

DELIVERIES

THE GREEN CROSS

This is one of San Francisco’s premier cannabis clubs, setting the standard for everyone else in terms of quality, professionalism, and advocacy for the industry. My sources had long been telling me that the Green Cross carries the best weed in the city — information validated by the long string of awards it accumulates at cannabis competitions. And founder Kevin Reed has been a passionate, high-profile leader in the community for years.

But I became even more impressed once I actually used the service. Its great website features the best descriptions of its nearly two dozen strains of lab-tested marijuana, including where and how it was grown, as well as products ranging from inexpensive pipes to eye drops. I settled on a $40 eighth of Blue Deliah, a sativa-dominant hybrid that looked both cheap and good.

Within about 30 minutes, the friendly delivery guy showed up at my apartment, handed me a white paper bag full of goodies, and charged me $35 with my new customer discount. Inside the bag, there was a grinder, a cool jar, rolling papers, a lighter and other Green Cross swag, a pot cookie, non-medicated munchies, an information packet, a receipt stuck to the inside of the bag — and a baggie of beautifully trimmed buds.

www.thegreencross.org

(415) 648-4420

Opened in 2004

Price: Low to average

Selection: Huge and high-quality

Delivery time: Super fast

Sketch factor: Very low

Access: Secure but easy to use

 

MEDITHRIVE

When Medithrive opened as a dispensary in my Mission District neighborhood, it became one of my favorite clubs, so I was disappointed to see it shut down by threats from the federal government late last year. But it immediately reinvented itself as a delivery-only club, and it still retains the friendly service and large selection that first endeared me to it.

“It’s definitely been a change for us, but if patients can handle the delivery thing, it ends up being better for everyone,” said the employee who took my order: the Apocalypse Medi-Mix, a mix of high-quality small buds (better for vaporizers) for $40 for four grams. And because I was a newbie to its delivery service, they threw in a free joint.

I called at 3 p.m. and was told to expect delivery between 4:15 p.m.-4:45 p.m. — and it actually showed up at 4 p.m. It wasn’t a problem because I was working at home all afternoon, but I can imagine such a long arrival window wouldn’t be ideal for some. And frankly, the buds were pretty dry, perhaps the result of not moving as much inventory as Medithrive is used to.

But on the whole, it’s still a solid dispensary and a very friendly staff that’s still worth using.

www.medithrive.com

(415) 562-MEDI

Opened in 2010

Price: Average with good deals

Selection: Large

Delivery time: Fast but uncertain

Sketch factor: Low

Access: Secure but easy to use

 

FOGGY DAZE DELIVERY

This place pops up prominently when people Google marijuana delivery services in San Francisco, but other parts of its operation don’t seem quite as tight as its search engine savvy. Even its readily available website, I learned while trying to order, has an outdated menu of available items. For what it actually offers, customers need to visit www.weedmaps.com, where the guy said the menu would quickly appear when I typed in “foggydaze,” but it didn’t.

Finally, I just asked him to recommend a good sativa strain, and he mentioned just two that they had in stock: Headband and Cheezle. Shooting in the dark, I went with an eighth of Cheezle for $45, and he offered me a new member gift of a joint or sample of equal or lesser priced weed. I opted for the joint because it just seemed easier at that point, particularly since my initial call went to voicemail and then I had to wait 45 minutes to get my information verified. An hour later (he said it would be 45 minutes), I had my weed.

Compared to the bad old days of ordering whatever my underground drug dealer had and jumping through whatever hoops he required, Foggy Daze is much better. But in the modern marijuana scene in this highly evolved city, Foggy Daze doesn’t quite measure up as is.

www.foggydazedelivery.com

(415) 200-7451

Price: Average

Selection: Small

Delivery time: OK, but slow on verification

Sketch factor: Medium

Access: Pretty good

 

DISPENSARIES

APOTHECARIUM

It was only a matter of time before someone had the idea to really emphasize excellent personal service with high-end products in an elegant environment — but the folks at Apothecarium have done it in a way that really sets them apart from the rest of the pack. This place is an experience more than just a place to score weed, much the same way adventurous bars like Alembic aren’t just about getting tipsy but appreciating just what a cocktail can become in the right hands.

Visitors to the Apothecarium are warmly greeted and seated in front of an extensive (and well-designed) menu, which an knowledgeable staffer patiently and enticingly walks you through, focusing exclusively on you and your needs. Once you finally find what you want, a large jar of your chosen buds emerge, and the employee uses long silver tweezers to place the prettiest ones on a display tray in front of you to inspect while he weighs out your choice of small or large buds with an air of showmanship.

2095 Market, SF

(415) 500-2620

www.apothecariumsf.com

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2011

Price: High to low (“compassionately priced” strains available)

Selection: Large, extremely informative menu available

Ambiance: Looks like a fancy hair salon, hardwood floors and patterned wallpaper

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Secure but easy access

 

1944 OCEAN COLLECTIVE

Despite a somewhat forbidding waiting room, this neighborhood dispensary on a mellow stretch of Ingleside’s Ocean Avenue has a real family feel once you step onto the salesfloor.

I was in the market for edibles when I went to 1944, and chatted with the jocular sales staff about which available edible wouldn’t give me couch lock or paranoia — a fully-functioning treat, as it were. My budtender pointed me towards a sativa-based peanut butter cookie with high potency, and then made me feel OK about our difficulty making a decision. “We’re all stoners here,” he laughed.

Once you make your selection among the edibles, flowers, and tinctures on offer, head to the back of the low-glitz, comfortably appointed room to give your money at the cash register. Head back to the bud counter to pick up your selection — if you’re lucky you can grab a brownie bite, cup of tea, or apple from the buffet to assuage your munchies. There’s even a sign that announces the dispensary’s job counseling and resume writing classes. A somewhat cold exterior sure, but it belies a warm heart. (Reviewed by Caitlin Donohue)

1944 Ocean, SF.

(415) 239-4766

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2004

Price: From cheap to high

Selection: Large

Ambiance: Comfortable seating, jovial staff, family feel

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Forbidding waiting room, friendly inside

Access/security: Tight 



2011 REVIEWS

SPARC

The San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, or SPARC (1256 Mission, SF) immediately set a new standard for dispensaries when it opened last August, combining a stunningly beautiful facility with deep connections to the medical marijuana community and a strong commitment to taking care of patients and moving the movement forward.

Even the casual observer can see what a unique place this is. A selection of almost three dozen bud varietals is presented in the style of a Chinese apothecary, each strain laboratory-tested for strength and purity and labeled with THC and CBD levels. The facility was lovingly designed from scratch with state-of-the-art humidors and security systems, creating an environment that is warm, friendly, and secure, with more employees per customer than other clubs.

Below the surface, SPARC is also setting a standard. Founder Erich Pearson and others involved with the club have been movement leaders for many years and they have deep connections with growers, patient groups, and the progressive political community. So they offer everything from free acupuncture and other services to generous compassionate giving programs to strong support for all aspects of the vertically-integrated collective.

But it is the experience of visiting that is most striking. Get expert advice on choosing from a huge range on indoor and outdoor strains and then settle into one of the tables, load a bowl into the high-end Volcano vaporizer, and taste the fruits of SPARC’s expertise.

There are always lots of great deals to choose from, from one-pound bags for baking for $300 to eighths of the finest outdoor weed for as low as $28.

SPARC is truly an industry leader, setting a high bar for what dispensaries can be.

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 2010

Price: Wide range

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Warm, comfortable, hip

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Tight but welcoming

———–

IGZACTLY HEALTH CENTER

Opening in late 2010, Igzactly (527 Howard, SF) is the new kid of the block — but it’s already establishing itself as one of the best cannabis clubs around. With a rotating supply of almost 40 varieties of buds to choose from at a full range of prices, it has the biggest selection in town. I asked the bud tender how the club is able to offer such a wide array of high-quality buds, and he said it’s because they’re using a different model than most clubs. Rather than buying the buds from growers, Igzactly uses a consignment system, splitting the proceeds with the growers.

Complementing the huge stock of dried buds, Igzactly also has a large selection of cannabis-infused edibles, concentrates, tinctures, ointments, and just about anything you can get weed into. On top of that, Igzactly has a comfortable lounge and is one of just a handful of clubs that allows vaporizing on site, giving clients a choice of using the top-end Volcano or the Zephyr (my personal favorite) vaporizer models. They even offer complimentary teas and coffee.

The staff there is friendly and customer-oriented. For example, when the club opened, it offered prepackaged buds like most clubs, but it heeded customer input and quickly switched to displaying all their buds in huge jars and weighing them out on purchase, which many patients prefer. And he said the club plans to expand the lounge soon and to add on-site laboratory services by year’s end.

If Igzactly is a sign of where the industry’s headed, the future looks bright and verdant.

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2010

Price: From cheap to average

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Green, friendly, inviting

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Secure but easy access

———–

SHAMBHALA

I visited Shambhala (2441 Mission, SF) on its second day open, when the smell of paint was stronger than that of weed, so it’s hard to judge it fairly. Check-in for new patients was maddening slow to an almost comical degree, they weren’t yet taking credit cards and had no ATM on site, and they offered a bigger selection of rolling papers than bud varieties.

But I still liked this place, the only one in that stretch of Mission Street. The staff is very friendly and they seem to really know their products. Unlike many clubs that offer a few good deals, the only cheap weed here was Afgoo for $25 per eighth, less than half the price of most of the 13 varieties they offered. When I asked why it was so much cheaper, the bud tender explained that the buds weren’t as tight or well-trimmed as the dispensary expects, although it still proved to be plenty strong and tasty.

Beyond the buds, Shambhala is also part head shop, selling lots of nice glass bongs, a display case filled with pipes, and rolling papers of all shapes and flavors. And while its selection of edibles is small, they do feature all of Auntie Dolores’ yummy cookies and savory snacks, even displaying the pretzels, chili-lime peanuts, and caramel corn in large glass jars on the counter.

Once Shambhala finds its groove, it will be a solid addition to the city’s dispensary network.

Prepackaged buds

Open since 2011

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited buds, lots of paraphernalia

Ambiance: Clean, open, friendly

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/security: Tight

———-

MARKET STREET COOPERATIVE

It’s easy to overlook this place (1884 Market, SF), as I did last year when I first began to compile this guide. Nestled into the back of a wide sidewalk courtyard where Market meets Laguna just up the street from the LGBT Center, Market Street Cooperative has low-key signage and doesn’t seem to do much advertising or outreach, particularly compared to marketing-savvy clubs such as the Vapor Room, Medithrive, and SPARC.

But the operators clearly know what they’re doing, offering a wide product selection in a quiet, clean, no-nonsense environment. They offer a choice of buds for every taste and use, from the best high-end buds at a good price down to eighths for a dirt-cheap $18 and three different grades of shake, which many vaporizer users prefer over the tight buds that they need to grind themselves.

Access is limited to members, and the club insists on being able to verify the recommendation of users in a phone call to their doctors, a stricter standard that most clubs use and one that can get users turned away if their visit is after normal business hours (as they unapologetically did to my friend, the first time a club had denied him entry).

But once you’re in, you’re in, and this long-running club will take good care of you. 

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 1999

Price: Moderate with lots of good deals

Selection: High

Ambiance: Low-key and business-like

Smoke on site: No

Sketch factor: Very low

Access/security: Tight 

 

RE-LEAF HERBAL CENTER

I wasn’t terribly impressed by ReLeaf (1284 Mission, SF) when I first reviewed the club in 2010, so at their owner’s request I returned recently to give them another look. They have definitely improved in both the feel of the club and its customer service, but it still suffers from some of the same shortcomings I noticed last year.

While they allow smoking on site, which is great, they don’t have any vaporizers or bongs on hand for patients to use, making it seem a little sketchy. The selection of buds is also fairly limited, with about a dozen varieties divided into two pricing tiers (although only a couple selections on each tier really looked and smelled great), and the clones they had on sale during my visit looked scraggly and sickly.

But the employees there are very nice and helpful, and the atmosphere in the club has become more inviting. There carry a large stock of edibles not available in other clubs, including smoothies and other refrigerated snacks that require a special permit from the city to sell. And the customer appreciation barbecue events they offer are a nice touch.

For a small storefront operation, Releaf does a fine job and it’s worth a visit. But with the way in which the bar has been raised for dispensaries in this city, I wouldn’t put Releaf in the top tier. Sorry guys, maybe next year.

 

Buds weighed on purchase

Open since 2007 ( with three years at previous SF location)

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: A loud head shop that also has some weed

Smoke On Site: Yes

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Moderate

—————

2010 REVIEWS

DIVINITY TREE

While the reviews on Yelp rave about Divinity Tree (958 Geary St.), giving it five stars, I found it a little intimidating and transactional (although it was the first club I visited, so that might be a factor). But if you’re looking to just do your business in a no-frills environment and get out, this could be your place.

The staff and most of the clientele were young men, some a bit thuggish. One worker wore a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt and another had “Free the SF8.” But they behaved professionally and were knowledgeable and easy to talk to. When I asked for a strain that would ease my anxiety but still allow me enough focus to write, my guy (patients wait along a bench until called to the counter) seemed to thoughtfully ponder the question for a moment, then said I wanted a “sativa-dominant hybrid” and recommended Neville’s Haze.

I bought 1/16 for $25 and when I asked for a receipt, it seemed as though they don’t get that question very often. But without missing a beat he said, “Sure, I’ll give you a receipt,” and gave me a hand-written one for “Meds.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: four years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: A transactional hole in the wall

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy. Membership available but not required

————-

GRASS ROOTS

Located at 1077 Post St. right next to Fire Station #3, Grass Roots has the feel of a busy saloon. Indeed, as a worker named Justin told me, many of the employees are former bartenders who know and value customer service. With music, great lighting, and nice décor, this place feels comfortable and totally legit. Whereas most clubs are cash-only, Grass Roots allows credit card transactions and has an ATM on site.

The steady stream of customers are asked to wait along the back wall, perusing the menus (one for buds and another with pictures for a huge selection of edibles) until called to the bar. When asked, my guy gave me a knowledgeable breakdown of the difference between sativa and indica, but then Justin came over to relieve him for a lunch break with the BBQ they had ordered in and ate in the back.

Justin answered my writing-while-high inquiry by recommending Blue Dream ($17 for a 1.2-gram), and when I asked about edibles, he said he really likes the indica instant hot chocolate ($6), advising me to use milk rather than water because it bonds better with the cannabinoids to improve the high. Then he gave me a free pot brownie because I was a new customer. I was tempted to tip him, but we just said a warm goodbye instead.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: A warm and welcoming weed bar

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HOPENET

Hopenet (223 Ninth St.) is one of the few places in the city where you can smoke on site, in a comfortable, homey style, as if you’re visiting a friend’s apartment. In addition to the loveseat, two chairs, and large bong, there is a small patio area for smoking cigarettes or playing a guitar, as someone was doing during my visit.

Although the small staff is definitely knowledgeable, they all seemed stoned. And when I asked about the right weed for my writing problem, a gruff older woman impatiently dismissed any indica vs. sativa distinctions and walked away. But I learned a lot about how they made the wide variety of concentrates from the young, slow-talking guy who remained.

He weighed out a heavy gram of White Grapes for $15, the same price for Blue Dream, and $2 cheaper than I had just paid at Grass Roots. That was in the back room, the big middle area was for hanging out, and the front area was check-in and retail, with a case for pipes and wide variety of stoner T-shirts on the walls.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: eight years

Price: Low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: Like a converted home with retail up front

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————

VAPOR ROOM

Vapor Room (607A Haight, www.vaporroom.com) is San Francisco’s best pot club, at least in terms of feeling like an actual club and having strong connections to its community of patients. It’s a large room where customers can smoke on site, giving this collective a warm, communal vibe that facilitates social interaction and fosters a real sense of inclusiveness.

Each of the four large tables has a high-end Volcano vaporizer on it, there’s a big-screen TV, elegant décor, and large aquarium. There’s a nice mix of young heads and older patients, the latter seeming to know each other well. But, lest members feel a little too at home, a sign on the wall indicates a two-hour time limit for hanging out.

Its early days in the spot next door were a bit grungier, but the new place is bright and elegant. It has a low-key façade and professional feel, and it strongly caters to patients’ needs. Low-income patients are regularly offered free medicine, such as bags full of vapor prepared by staff. Mirkarimi said the Vapor Room is very involved in the Lower Haight community and called it a “model club.”

But they’re still all about the weed, and they have a huge selection that you can easily examine (with a handy magnifying glass) and smell, knowledgeable staff, lots of edibles and concentrates, a tea bar (medicated and regular), and fairly low standardized pot prices: $15 per gram, $25 per 1/16th, $50 per eighth. And once you got your stuff, grab a bong off the shelf and settle into a table — but don’t forget to give them your card at the front desk to check out a bowl for your bong. As the guy told me, “It’s like a library.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: seven years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Warm, communal hangout

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————-

MEDITHRIVE

The newest cannabis club in town, MediThrive (1933 Mission, www.medithrive.com) has a bright, fresh, artsy feel to it, with elegantly frosted windows and a welcoming reception area as you enter. This nonprofit coop takes your photo and requires free membership, and already had almost 3,000 members when I signed up a couple weeks ago. Tiana, the good-looking young receptionist, said the club recently won a reader’s choice Cannabis Cup award and noted that all the art on the walls was a rotating collection by local patients: “We’re all about supporting local art.”

The decorators seemed to have fun with the cannabis concept, with a frosted window with a pot leaf photo separating the reception area from the main room, while the walls alternated wood planks with bright green fake moss that looked like the whole place was bursting with marijuana. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, at low volume.

The large staff is very friendly and seemed fairly knowledgeable, and the huge selection of pot strains were arranged on a spectrum with the heaviest indica varieties on the left to the pure sativas on the right. Lots of edibles and drinkables, too. The cheapest bud was a cool steel tin with a gram of Mission Kush for $14 (new members get a free sample), while the high rollers could buy some super-concentrated OG Kush Gold Dust ($50) or Ear Wax ($45) to sprinkle over their bowls.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: one year

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Professional, like an artsy doctor’s office

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Very low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————

KETAMA COLLECTIVE

At 14 Valencia St., Ketama is a testament to how silly it is that clubs within 1,000 feet of schools aren’t permitted to allow smoking on site. This former café has a large, comfortable seating area and full kitchen, both of which have had little use since a school opened way down the street last year, causing city officials to ban smoking at Ketama.

Pity, because it seems like a great place to just hang out. Yet now it just seemed underutilized and slow. The staff is small (one door guy and a woman hired last summer doing sales), and we were the only customers during the 20 minutes I was there (except for the weird old guy drinking beer from a can in a bag who kept popping in and out).

But it still had jars of good green bud, several flavors of weed-laced drinks and edibles, and a pretty good selection of hash and kief at different prices, and the woman spoke knowledgeably about the different processes by which they were created. To counteract the slow business, Ketama has a neon sign out front that explicitly announces its business — another indication the industry has gone legit.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: Hippie hangout, but with nobody there

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but free membership required

————

MR. NICE GUY

Belying its name, Mr. Nice Guy (174 Valencia St.) thrilled and scared me, but not necessarily in a bad way. Located across the street from Zeitgeist, the thug factor here was high and so was the security, allowing no human interaction that wasn’t mediated by thick Plexiglass, presumably bulletproof.

After initially being told by a disembodied voice to come back in five minutes, I submitted my doctor’s recommendation and ID into the slot of a teller’s window, darkened to hide whoever I was dealing with. Quickly approved, I was buzzed into a small, strange room with three doors.

I paused, confused, until the disembodied voice again told me, “Keep going,” and I was buzzed through another door into a hallway that led to a large room, its walls completely covered in brilliant murals, expertly painted in hip-hop style. Along the front walls, a lighted menu broke down the prices of about 20 cannabis varieties.

Then finally, I saw people: two impossibly hot, young female employees, lounging nonchalantly in their weed box, like strippers waiting to start their routines. The only other customer, a young B-boy, chatted them up though the glass, seemingly more interested in these striking women than their products.

I finally decided to go with the special, an ounce of Fever, normally $17, for just $10. I opened a small door in the glass, set down my cash, and watched the tall, milk chocolate-skinned beauty trade my money for Fever, leaving me feeling flushed. It was the best dime-bag I ever bought.

Prepackaged buds

Price: Moderate, with cheap specials

Selection: High

Ambiance: Hip hop strip club

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: High

Access/Security: High security but low scrutiny

————-

BERNAL HEIGHTS COLLECTIVE

Bernal Collective (33 29th St. at Mission) seemed both more casual and more strict than any of the other clubs in town — and it also turned out to be one of my favorites.

After refusing to buy pot for a guy out front who had just been turned away, I entered the club and faced more scrutiny than I had at any other club. It was the only club to ask for my doctor’s license number and my referral number, and when I tried to check an incoming text message, I was told cell phone use wasn’t allowed for “security reasons.” On the wall, they had a blown-up copy of their 2007 legal notice announcing their opening.

But beyond this by-the-book façade, this club proved warm and welcoming, like a comfortable clubhouse. People can smoke on site, and there’s even a daily happy hour from 4:20–5:20 p.m., with $1 off joints and edibles, both in abundant supply. Normal-sized prerolled joints are $5, but they also offer a massive bomber joint with a full eighth of weed for $50.

The staff of a half-dozen young men were knowledgeable about the 20 varieties they had on hand and offered excellent customer service, even washing down the bong with an alcohol-wipe before letting a customer take a rip from the XXX, a strong, sticky bud that was just $15 for a gram.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: High

Ambiance: A clubhouse for young stoners

Smoke On Site: Yes

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Fairly tight

————-

LOVE SHACK

This longtime club (502 14th St.) has had its ups and downs, the downs coming mostly because of its location on a fairly residential block. After taking complaints from neighbors, the city required Love Shack to cap its membership, although that seems to be changing because the club let me in, albeit with a warning that next time I would need to have a state ID card. It was the only club I visited to have such a requirement.

Once inside this tiny club, I could see why people might have been backed up onto the street at times. But the staff was friendly and seemed to have a great rapport with the regulars, who seemed be everyone except me. The knowledgeable manager walked me through their 20-plus varieties, most costing the standard street price of $50 per eighth, or more for stronger stuff like Romulan.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum was the $10 special for Jack Herrer Hash, named for the longtime legalization advocate who wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a classic book on the history of the movement.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: nine years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Small, like a converted apartment

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Tight

————-

COFFEE SHOP BLUE SKY

Blue Sky (377 17th St., Oakland)is based on the Amsterdam model of combining marijuana dispensaries with coffee shops, although it suffers a bit from Oakland’s ban on smoking. Still, it’s a cool concept and one that Richard Lee sees as the future of marijuana-related businesses because of the synergy between smoking and grabbing a bite or some coffee.

Most of Blue Sky is a small coffee shop and smoothie bar, but there’s a little room in back for buying weed. “We’ve got the best prices around,” said the guy who checked my ID, and indeed, $44 eighths and $10 “puppy bags” were pretty cheap. Customers can also sign up to do volunteer political advocacy work for free weed.

The only downside is the limited selection, only four varieties when I was there, although the woman at the counter said the varieties rotate over the course of the day based on the club’s purchases from growers.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: 15 years

Price: Low

Selection: Very limited

Ambiance: A fragrant little room behind a coffee shop

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HARBORSIDE HEALTH CENTER

I have seen the future of legitimized medical marijuana businesses, and it’s Harborside (1840 Embarcadero, Oakland). With its motto of “Out of the shadows, into the light,” this place is like the Costco of pot — a huge, airy facility with a dizzying number of selections and even a “rewards card” program.

All new members are given a tour, starting with sign-up sheets for daily free services that include yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, consultations with herbalists, and classes on growing. Then we moved to a section with the clones of dozens of pot plant varieties available for purchase (limit of 72 plants per visit), along with a potted marijuana plant the size of a tree.

Harborside is also blazing the trail on laboratory services, testing all of its pot for contaminants and THC content, labeling it on the packaging just like the alcohol industry does. Some of the smaller clubs don’t like how over-the-top Harborside is, and they complain that its prices are high. But those profits seem to be poured back into the services at this unique facility.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: four years

Price: High

Selection: Huge

Ambiance: A big, open shopping emporium

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Tight

————-

SANCTUARY

The people who run Sanctuary (669 O’Farrell St.), the first club to fully comply with the new city regulations and get its permanent license, have been active in the political push for normalizing medical marijuana, as a wall full of awards and letters from politicians attests. Owner Michael Welch was commended for his work by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, where Sanctuary employee Tim Durning has been an active longtime member and former elected officer.

Sanctuary has a generous compassionate giving program and caters to lots of poor residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood. While the club is prohibited from allowing smoking, they fudge the restriction with a Volcano vaporizer. “A lot of patients are on fixed income and live in the SROs, where they can’t smoke, so we let them vaporize here whether they buy from us or not,” Durning told us.

Those who do buy from them find a huge selection — including 20 different kinds of hash and 17 varieties of buds — at a wide price range. Staffers know their products well and take their business seriously, giving a regular spiel to new members about responsible use, which includes maintaining neighborhood relations by not smoking near the business.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low to moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Campaign headquarters for the marijuana movement

Smoke On Site: No, but vaporizing OK

Sketch factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

GREEN DOOR

If low prices or a huge selection of edibles are what you seek, Green Door (843 Howard St., www.greendoorsf.com) could be the club for you.

Eighths of good green buds start at a ridiculously low $25 and go up to just $50 (the cheapest price for eighths at many clubs and also the standard black market price). If that’s not low enough, super-broke users can buy a quarter-ounce bag of high-grade shake for $40.

If you didn’t already have the munchies going in, you’ll get them perusing the huge menu of edibles: from weed-laced knockoffs of Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for just $5 to cupcakes, ice cream, or Chex party mix. They have lots of hash and other concentrates as well.

Somehow, the club also manages to have a strong compassionate giving program and contibutes to local civic organizations that include the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Maitri AIDS Hospice, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

The club itself is a little sterile and transactional, with an institutional feel and employees stuck behind teller windows. But even though that and the steady flow of tough-looking young male customers raise its thug factor a bit, the employees all seemed friendly and helpful, giving free edibles to first-time customers.

Prepackage buds

Open for: nine years (five here, four in Oakland)

Price: Cheap

Selection: High for edibles, moderate for weed

Ambiance: Like a community bank of cheap weed

Smoke On Site: No

Sketch factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy access, high security

————–

 

2011 Cannabis Club Guide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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2011 Cannabis Club Guide

Welcome to our 2011 Cannabis Club Guide. We’ve added four new clubs to our updated guide, a continuation of last year’s.

As I created my list of the clubs I planned to review, I found abundant online resources such as San Francisco Cannabis Clubs and Weed Tracker. But an even better indicator of how mainstream this industry has become were the extensive listings and reviews on Yelp.com.

I combined that information with recommendations from a variety of sources I interviewed to develop my list, which is incomplete and entirely subjective, but nonetheless a good overview of the local industry and the differences among the clubs.

Also, like our restaurant reviewers, I didn’t identify myself as a journalist on my visits, preferring to see how the average customer is treated — and frankly, I was amazed at the high level of friendly, knowledgeable customer service at just about every club. To comply with city law, all the clubs are fully accessible by those with disabilities.

So, with that business out of the way, please join me on my tour of local cannabis clubs, in the (random) order that I visited them. 

2011 REVIEWS

SPARC

The San Francisco Patient and Resource Center, or SPARC (1256 Mission, SF) immediately set a new standard for dispensaries when it opened last August, combining a stunningly beautiful facility with deep connections to the medical marijuana community and a strong commitment to taking care of patients and moving the movement forward.

Even the casual observer can see what a unique place this is. A selection of almost three dozen bud varietals is presented in the style of a Chinese apothecary, each strain laboratory-tested for strength and purity and labeled with THC and CBD levels. The facility was lovingly designed from scratch with state-of-the-art humidors and security systems, creating an environment that is warm, friendly, and secure, with more employees per customer than other clubs.

Below the surface, SPARC is also setting a standard. Founder Erich Pearson and others involved with the club have been movement leaders for many years and they have deep connections with growers, patient groups, and the progressive political community. So they offer everything from free acupuncture and other services to generous compassionate giving programs to strong support for all aspects of the vertically-integrated collective.

But it is the experience of visiting that is most striking. Get expert advice on choosing from a huge range on indoor and outdoor strains and then settle into one of the tables, load a bowl into the high-end Volcano vaporizer, and taste the fruits of SPARC’s expertise.

There are always lots of great deals to choose from, from one-pound bags for baking for $300 to eighths of the finest outdoor weed for as low as $28.

SPARC is truly an industry leader, setting a high bar for what dispensaries can be.

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 2010

Price: Wide range

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Warm, comfortable, hip

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Thug factor: Low

Access/security: Tight but welcoming

———–

IGZACTLY HEALTH CENTER

Opening in late 2010, Igzactly (527 Howard, SF) is the new kid of the block — but it’s already establishing itself as one of the best cannabis clubs around. With a rotating supply of almost 40 varieties of buds to choose from at a full range of prices, it has the biggest selection in town. I asked the bud tender how the club is able to offer such a wide array of high-quality buds, and he said it’s because they’re using a different model than most clubs. Rather than buying the buds from growers, Igzactly uses a consignment system, splitting the proceeds with the growers.

Complementing the huge stock of dried buds, Igzactly also has a large selection of cannabis-infused edibles, concentrates, tinctures, ointments, and just about anything you can get weed into. On top of that, Igzactly has a comfortable lounge and is one of just a handful of clubs that allows vaporizing on site, giving clients a choice of using the top-end Volcano or the Zephyr (my personal favorite) vaporizer models. They even offer complimentary teas and coffee.

The staff there is friendly and customer-oriented. For example, when the club opened, it offered prepackaged buds like most clubs, but it heeded customer input and quickly switched to displaying all their buds in huge jars and weighing them out on purchase, which many patients prefer. And he said the club plans to expand the lounge soon and to add on-site laboratory services by year’s end.

If Igzactly is a sign of where the industry’s headed, the future looks bright and verdant.

Buds weighed on purchase

Opened in 2010

Price: From cheap to average

Selection: Huge!

Ambiance: Green, friendly, inviting

Smoke on site: Vaporizing only

Thug factor: Low

Access/security: Secure but easy access

———–

SHAMBHALA

I visited Shambhala (2441 Mission, SF) on its second day open, when the smell of paint was stronger than that of weed, so it’s hard to judge it fairly. Check-in for new patients was maddening slow to an almost comical degree, they weren’t yet taking credit cards and had no ATM on site, and they offered a bigger selection of rolling papers than bud varieties.

But I still liked this place, the only one in that stretch of Mission Street. The staff is very friendly and they seem to really know their products. Unlike many clubs that offer a few good deals, the only cheap weed here was Afgoo for $25 per eighth, less than half the price of most of the 13 varieties they offered. When I asked why it was so much cheaper, the bud tender explained that the buds weren’t as tight or well-trimmed as the dispensary expects, although it still proved to be plenty strong and tasty.

Beyond the buds, Shambhala is also part head shop, selling lots of nice glass bongs, a display case filled with pipes, and rolling papers of all shapes and flavors. And while its selection of edibles is small, they do feature all of Auntie Dolores’ yummy cookies and savory snacks, even displaying the pretzels, chili-lime peanuts, and caramel corn in large glass jars on the counter.

Once Shambhala finds its groove, it will be a solid addition to the city’s dispensary network.

Prepackaged buds

Open since 2011

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited buds, lots of paraphernalia

Ambiance: Clean, open, friendly

Smoke on site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/security: Tight

———-

MARKET STREET COOPERATIVE

It’s easy to overlook this place (1884 Market, SF), as I did last year when I first began to compile this guide. Nestled into the back of a wide sidewalk courtyard where Market meets Laguna just up the street from the LGBT Center, Market Street Cooperative has low-key signage and doesn’t seem to do much advertising or outreach, particularly compared to marketing-savvy clubs such as the Vapor Room, Medithrive, and SPARC.

But the operators clearly know what they’re doing, offering a wide product selection in a quiet, clean, no-nonsense environment. They offer a choice of buds for every taste and use, from the best high-end buds at a good price down to eighths for a dirt-cheap $18 and three different grades of shake, which many vaporizer users prefer over the tight buds that they need to grind themselves.

Access is limited to members, and the club insists on being able to verify the recommendation of users in a phone call to their doctors, a stricter standard that most clubs use and one that can get users turned away if their visit is after normal business hours (as they unapologetically did to my friend, the first time a club had denied him entry).

But once you’re in, you’re in, and this long-running club will take good care of you. 

Prepackaged buds

Opened in 1999

Price: Moderate with lots of good deals

Selection: High

Ambiance: Low-key and business-like

Smoke on site: No

Thug factor: Very low

Access/security: Tight 

 

RE-LEAF HERBAL CENTER

I wasn’t terribly impressed by ReLeaf (1284 Mission, SF) when I first reviewed the club in 2010, so at their owner’s request I returned recently to give them another look. They have definitely improved in both the feel of the club and its customer service, but it still suffers from some of the same shortcomings I noticed last year.

While they allow smoking on site, which is great, they don’t have any vaporizers or bongs on hand for patients to use, making it seem a little sketchy. The selection of buds is also fairly limited, with about a dozen varieties divided into two pricing tiers (although only a couple selections on each tier really looked and smelled great), and the clones they had on sale during my visit looked scraggly and sickly.

But the employees there are very nice and helpful, and the atmosphere in the club has become more inviting. There carry a large stock of edibles not available in other clubs, including smoothies and other refrigerated snacks that require a special permit from the city to sell. And the customer appreciation barbecue events they offer are a nice touch.

For a small storefront operation, Releaf does a fine job and it’s worth a visit. But with the way in which the bar has been raised for dispensaries in this city, I wouldn’t put Releaf in the top tier. Sorry guys, maybe next year.

 

Buds weighed on purchase

Open since 2007 ( with three years at previous SF location)

Price: Moderate

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: A loud head shop that also has some weed

Smoke On Site: Yes

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Moderate

—————

2010 REVIEWS

DIVINITY TREE

While the reviews on Yelp rave about Divinity Tree (958 Geary St.), giving it five stars, I found it a little intimidating and transactional (although it was the first club I visited, so that might be a factor). But if you’re looking to just do your business in a no-frills environment and get out, this could be your place.

The staff and most of the clientele were young men, some a bit thuggish. One worker wore a “Stop Snitching” T-shirt and another had “Free the SF8.” But they behaved professionally and were knowledgeable and easy to talk to. When I asked for a strain that would ease my anxiety but still allow me enough focus to write, my guy (patients wait along a bench until called to the counter) seemed to thoughtfully ponder the question for a moment, then said I wanted a “sativa-dominant hybrid” and recommended Neville’s Haze.

I bought 1/16 for $25 and when I asked for a receipt, it seemed as though they don’t get that question very often. But without missing a beat he said, “Sure, I’ll give you a receipt,” and gave me a hand-written one for “Meds.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: four years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: A transactional hole in the wall

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy. Membership available but not required

————-

GRASS ROOTS

Located at 1077 Post St. right next to Fire Station #3, Grass Roots has the feel of a busy saloon. Indeed, as a worker named Justin told me, many of the employees are former bartenders who know and value customer service. With music, great lighting, and nice décor, this place feels comfortable and totally legit. Whereas most clubs are cash-only, Grass Roots allows credit card transactions and has an ATM on site.

The steady stream of customers are asked to wait along the back wall, perusing the menus (one for buds and another with pictures for a huge selection of edibles) until called to the bar. When asked, my guy gave me a knowledgeable breakdown of the difference between sativa and indica, but then Justin came over to relieve him for a lunch break with the BBQ they had ordered in and ate in the back.

Justin answered my writing-while-high inquiry by recommending Blue Dream ($17 for a 1.2-gram), and when I asked about edibles, he said he really likes the indica instant hot chocolate ($6), advising me to use milk rather than water because it bonds better with the cannabinoids to improve the high. Then he gave me a free pot brownie because I was a new customer. I was tempted to tip him, but we just said a warm goodbye instead.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: A warm and welcoming weed bar

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HOPENET

Hopenet (223 Ninth St.) is one of the few places in the city where you can smoke on site, in a comfortable, homey style, as if you’re visiting a friend’s apartment. In addition to the loveseat, two chairs, and large bong, there is a small patio area for smoking cigarettes or playing a guitar, as someone was doing during my visit.

Although the small staff is definitely knowledgeable, they all seemed stoned. And when I asked about the right weed for my writing problem, a gruff older woman impatiently dismissed any indica vs. sativa distinctions and walked away. But I learned a lot about how they made the wide variety of concentrates from the young, slow-talking guy who remained.

He weighed out a heavy gram of White Grapes for $15, the same price for Blue Dream, and $2 cheaper than I had just paid at Grass Roots. That was in the back room, the big middle area was for hanging out, and the front area was check-in and retail, with a case for pipes and wide variety of stoner T-shirts on the walls.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: eight years

Price: Low

Selection: Moderate

Ambiance: Like a converted home with retail up front

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————

VAPOR ROOM

Vapor Room (607A Haight, www.vaporroom.com) is San Francisco’s best pot club, at least in terms of feeling like an actual club and having strong connections to its community of patients. It’s a large room where customers can smoke on site, giving this collective a warm, communal vibe that facilitates social interaction and fosters a real sense of inclusiveness.

Each of the four large tables has a high-end Volcano vaporizer on it, there’s a big-screen TV, elegant décor, and large aquarium. There’s a nice mix of young heads and older patients, the latter seeming to know each other well. But, lest members feel a little too at home, a sign on the wall indicates a two-hour time limit for hanging out.

Its early days in the spot next door were a bit grungier, but the new place is bright and elegant. It has a low-key façade and professional feel, and it strongly caters to patients’ needs. Low-income patients are regularly offered free medicine, such as bags full of vapor prepared by staff. Mirkarimi said the Vapor Room is very involved in the Lower Haight community and called it a “model club.”

But they’re still all about the weed, and they have a huge selection that you can easily examine (with a handy magnifying glass) and smell, knowledgeable staff, lots of edibles and concentrates, a tea bar (medicated and regular), and fairly low standardized pot prices: $15 per gram, $25 per 1/16th, $50 per eighth. And once you got your stuff, grab a bong off the shelf and settle into a table — but don’t forget to give them your card at the front desk to check out a bowl for your bong. As the guy told me, “It’s like a library.”

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: seven years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Warm, communal hangout

Smoke On Site: Yes!

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————-

MEDITHRIVE

The newest cannabis club in town, MediThrive (1933 Mission, www.medithrive.com) has a bright, fresh, artsy feel to it, with elegantly frosted windows and a welcoming reception area as you enter. This nonprofit coop takes your photo and requires free membership, and already had almost 3,000 members when I signed up a couple weeks ago. Tiana, the good-looking young receptionist, said the club recently won a reader’s choice Cannabis Cup award and noted that all the art on the walls was a rotating collection by local patients: “We’re all about supporting local art.”

The decorators seemed to have fun with the cannabis concept, with a frosted window with a pot leaf photo separating the reception area from the main room, while the walls alternated wood planks with bright green fake moss that looked like the whole place was bursting with marijuana. There’s a flat-screen TV on the wall, at low volume.

The large staff is very friendly and seemed fairly knowledgeable, and the huge selection of pot strains were arranged on a spectrum with the heaviest indica varieties on the left to the pure sativas on the right. Lots of edibles and drinkables, too. The cheapest bud was a cool steel tin with a gram of Mission Kush for $14 (new members get a free sample), while the high rollers could buy some super-concentrated OG Kush Gold Dust ($50) or Ear Wax ($45) to sprinkle over their bowls.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: one year

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Professional, like an artsy doctor’s office

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Very low

Access/Security: Easy, but membership required

————

KETAMA COLLECTIVE

At 14 Valencia St., Ketama is a testament to how silly it is that clubs within 1,000 feet of schools aren’t permitted to allow smoking on site. This former café has a large, comfortable seating area and full kitchen, both of which have had little use since a school opened way down the street last year, causing city officials to ban smoking at Ketama.

Pity, because it seems like a great place to just hang out. Yet now it just seemed underutilized and slow. The staff is small (one door guy and a woman hired last summer doing sales), and we were the only customers during the 20 minutes I was there (except for the weird old guy drinking beer from a can in a bag who kept popping in and out).

But it still had jars of good green bud, several flavors of weed-laced drinks and edibles, and a pretty good selection of hash and kief at different prices, and the woman spoke knowledgeably about the different processes by which they were created. To counteract the slow business, Ketama has a neon sign out front that explicitly announces its business — another indication the industry has gone legit.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low

Selection: Limited

Ambiance: Hippie hangout, but with nobody there

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy, but free membership required

————

MR. NICE GUY

Belying its name, Mr. Nice Guy (174 Valencia St.) thrilled and scared me, but not necessarily in a bad way. Located across the street from Zeitgeist, the thug factor here was high and so was the security, allowing no human interaction that wasn’t mediated by thick Plexiglass, presumably bulletproof.

After initially being told by a disembodied voice to come back in five minutes, I submitted my doctor’s recommendation and ID into the slot of a teller’s window, darkened to hide whoever I was dealing with. Quickly approved, I was buzzed into a small, strange room with three doors.

I paused, confused, until the disembodied voice again told me, “Keep going,” and I was buzzed through another door into a hallway that led to a large room, its walls completely covered in brilliant murals, expertly painted in hip-hop style. Along the front walls, a lighted menu broke down the prices of about 20 cannabis varieties.

Then finally, I saw people: two impossibly hot, young female employees, lounging nonchalantly in their weed box, like strippers waiting to start their routines. The only other customer, a young B-boy, chatted them up though the glass, seemingly more interested in these striking women than their products.

I finally decided to go with the special, an ounce of Fever, normally $17, for just $10. I opened a small door in the glass, set down my cash, and watched the tall, milk chocolate-skinned beauty trade my money for Fever, leaving me feeling flushed. It was the best dime-bag I ever bought.

Prepackaged buds

Price: Moderate, with cheap specials

Selection: High

Ambiance: Hip hop strip club

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: High

Access/Security: High security but low scrutiny

————-

BERNAL HEIGHTS COLLECTIVE

Bernal Collective (33 29th St. at Mission) seemed both more casual and more strict than any of the other clubs in town — and it also turned out to be one of my favorites.

After refusing to buy pot for a guy out front who had just been turned away, I entered the club and faced more scrutiny than I had at any other club. It was the only club to ask for my doctor’s license number and my referral number, and when I tried to check an incoming text message, I was told cell phone use wasn’t allowed for “security reasons.” On the wall, they had a blown-up copy of their 2007 legal notice announcing their opening.

But beyond this by-the-book façade, this club proved warm and welcoming, like a comfortable clubhouse. People can smoke on site, and there’s even a daily happy hour from 4:20–5:20 p.m., with $1 off joints and edibles, both in abundant supply. Normal-sized prerolled joints are $5, but they also offer a massive bomber joint with a full eighth of weed for $50.

The staff of a half-dozen young men were knowledgeable about the 20 varieties they had on hand and offered excellent customer service, even washing down the bong with an alcohol-wipe before letting a customer take a rip from the XXX, a strong, sticky bud that was just $15 for a gram.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Fairly low

Selection: High

Ambiance: A clubhouse for young stoners

Smoke On Site: Yes

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Fairly tight

————-

LOVE SHACK

This longtime club (502 14th St.) has had its ups and downs, the downs coming mostly because of its location on a fairly residential block. After taking complaints from neighbors, the city required Love Shack to cap its membership, although that seems to be changing because the club let me in, albeit with a warning that next time I would need to have a state ID card. It was the only club I visited to have such a requirement.

Once inside this tiny club, I could see why people might have been backed up onto the street at times. But the staff was friendly and seemed to have a great rapport with the regulars, who seemed be everyone except me. The knowledgeable manager walked me through their 20-plus varieties, most costing the standard street price of $50 per eighth, or more for stronger stuff like Romulan.

On the more affordable end of the spectrum was the $10 special for Jack Herrer Hash, named for the longtime legalization advocate who wrote The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a classic book on the history of the movement.

Buds weighed at purchase

Open for: nine years

Price: Moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Small, like a converted apartment

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Tight

————-

COFFEE SHOP BLUE SKY

Blue Sky (377 17th St., Oakland)is based on the Amsterdam model of combining marijuana dispensaries with coffee shops, although it suffers a bit from Oakland’s ban on smoking. Still, it’s a cool concept and one that Richard Lee sees as the future of marijuana-related businesses because of the synergy between smoking and grabbing a bite or some coffee.

Most of Blue Sky is a small coffee shop and smoothie bar, but there’s a little room in back for buying weed. “We’ve got the best prices around,” said the guy who checked my ID, and indeed, $44 eighths and $10 “puppy bags” were pretty cheap. Customers can also sign up to do volunteer political advocacy work for free weed.

The only downside is the limited selection, only four varieties when I was there, although the woman at the counter said the varieties rotate over the course of the day based on the club’s purchases from growers.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: 15 years

Price: Low

Selection: Very limited

Ambiance: A fragrant little room behind a coffee shop

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

HARBORSIDE HEALTH CENTER

I have seen the future of legitimized medical marijuana businesses, and it’s Harborside (1840 Embarcadero, Oakland). With its motto of “Out of the shadows, into the light,” this place is like the Costco of pot — a huge, airy facility with a dizzying number of selections and even a “rewards card” program.

All new members are given a tour, starting with sign-up sheets for daily free services that include yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, consultations with herbalists, and classes on growing. Then we moved to a section with the clones of dozens of pot plant varieties available for purchase (limit of 72 plants per visit), along with a potted marijuana plant the size of a tree.

Harborside is also blazing the trail on laboratory services, testing all of its pot for contaminants and THC content, labeling it on the packaging just like the alcohol industry does. Some of the smaller clubs don’t like how over-the-top Harborside is, and they complain that its prices are high. But those profits seem to be poured back into the services at this unique facility.

Prepackaged buds

Open for: four years

Price: High

Selection: Huge

Ambiance: A big, open shopping emporium

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Tight

————-

SANCTUARY

The people who run Sanctuary (669 O’Farrell St.), the first club to fully comply with the new city regulations and get its permanent license, have been active in the political push for normalizing medical marijuana, as a wall full of awards and letters from politicians attests. Owner Michael Welch was commended for his work by the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, where Sanctuary employee Tim Durning has been an active longtime member and former elected officer.

Sanctuary has a generous compassionate giving program and caters to lots of poor residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood. While the club is prohibited from allowing smoking, they fudge the restriction with a Volcano vaporizer. “A lot of patients are on fixed income and live in the SROs, where they can’t smoke, so we let them vaporize here whether they buy from us or not,” Durning told us.

Those who do buy from them find a huge selection — including 20 different kinds of hash and 17 varieties of buds — at a wide price range. Staffers know their products well and take their business seriously, giving a regular spiel to new members about responsible use, which includes maintaining neighborhood relations by not smoking near the business.

Buds weighed on purchase

Open for: six years

Price: Low to moderate

Selection: High

Ambiance: Campaign headquarters for the marijuana movement

Smoke On Site: No, but vaporizing OK

Thug factor: Low

Access/Security: Easy

————–

GREEN DOOR

If low prices or a huge selection of edibles are what you seek, Green Door (843 Howard St., www.greendoorsf.com) could be the club for you.

Eighths of good green buds start at a ridiculously low $25 and go up to just $50 (the cheapest price for eighths at many clubs and also the standard black market price). If that’s not low enough, super-broke users can buy a quarter-ounce bag of high-grade shake for $40.

If you didn’t already have the munchies going in, you’ll get them perusing the huge menu of edibles: from weed-laced knockoffs of Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for just $5 to cupcakes, ice cream, or Chex party mix. They have lots of hash and other concentrates as well.

Somehow, the club also manages to have a strong compassionate giving program and contibutes to local civic organizations that include the Black Rock Arts Foundation, Maitri AIDS Hospice, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

The club itself is a little sterile and transactional, with an institutional feel and employees stuck behind teller windows. But even though that and the steady flow of tough-looking young male customers raise its thug factor a bit, the employees all seemed friendly and helpful, giving free edibles to first-time customers.

Prepackage buds

Open for: nine years (five here, four in Oakland)

Price: Cheap

Selection: High for edibles, moderate for weed

Ambiance: Like a community bank of cheap weed

Smoke On Site: No

Thug factor: Moderate

Access/Security: Easy access, high security

————–

 

Alerts

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0

news@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 22

Floyd Westerman Retrospective

You may remember him for his role in “Dances with Wolves” as Chief Ten Bears and as a country western singer/songwriter. But Floyd Westerman, a.k.a. Red Crow, was also an outspoken activist for Native Americans and the environment. A new documentary by Steve Jacobson explores his later life and activism. Along with the film, there will also be a social hour at 6:30 and a discussion following the film.

7:30–9:30 p.m., $5 suggested donation

Humanist Hall

390 27th St., Oakl.

510-681-8699

Real Mercantile Holiday Bazaar

If you still have some holiday shopping to do and just can’t summon the will to hit the stores or feed the machine, you can get some great stuff while supporting the local arts community and underground economy at the Real Mercantile Holiday Bazaar. held at arts impresario Chicken John spacious home and performance space. Homemade gifts and food are all available in a festive and very San Francisco atmosphere.

5–9 p.m., free

Chez Poulet

3359 Cesar Chavez, SF

www.therealmerchantile.com

THURSDAY, DEC. 23

Festivus 2010

San Francisco’s legendary Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and pot activist Ed Rosenthal’s Green Aid unite to present a night of fundraising for the Medical Marijuana Legal Defense and Education Fund. The bash features an airing of grievances, feats of strength, the annual meeting of Dessert First Club, and live music and entertainment including The Phat Fly Girls and burlesque. Creative dress and cross-dressing encouraged.

7:30–11:30 p.m., $50 presale, $60 at door

SomArts

925 Brannan, SF

415-515-7483

SUNDAY, DEC 26

Get Your Spawn On

Join Brent Plater on a stroll through Muir Woods National Monument to learn more about coho and steelhead salmon and how to help them survive. The walk also features a search for endangered salmon in Redwood Creek. Make sure to wear something warm and bring your hiking boots.

10–12 p.m., free with RSVP

Meet at the Dipsea Trail trailhead

Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley

www.wildequity.org/events/3166

TUESDAY, DEC 28

Castro Queer-in

Join concerned local resident ins protesting the recently passed sit/lie ordinance more formally known as Proposition L. Bring out any and all musical instruments, games, food to share, face-painting kits, and any items to barter. Everyone will gather outside of Harvey Milk’s former camera store.

Noon–2 p.m., Free

575 Castro

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

War on drugs rages on

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
0
War on drugs rages on

By Pamela A. MacLean

news@sfbg.com

The two Norton brothers thought someone was breaking into their Oakland apartment to kill them one pre-dawn day in October 2007. Instead, a couple dozen well-armed and screaming federal drug agents stormed the place, rousted the pair, and dragged them around the apartment before arresting them.

Winslow and Abraham Norton operated one of the most successful medical marijuana dispensaries in the Bay Area, the Compassionate Patients’ Cooperative of California, in Hayward. In just the first six months of 2007, the operation grossed $26 million.

But if they thought facing a federal indictment on charges of conspiracy to possess and distribute more than 1,000 kilos of marijuana and money laundering was their worst nightmare, the Norton brothers just weren’t dreaming big enough.

The pair — with all-American good looks, close-cropped beards, and infectious smiles — finish each other’s sentences when they describe their run-in with the federal justice system.

“We were 11 and 14 when medical marijuana was legalized, and we grew up in Berkeley,” Abraham said “It may be naïve, but we didn’t understand the legality. Now we know federal law a lot better.”

Abraham, 26, and Winslow, 29, played by the rules in California’s fledgling medical marijuana law. In 2005 they got an Alameda County permit to operate from the former Sheriff Charles Plummer, a seller’s permit from the state, paid taxes, and had random inspections by local police.

They even hired security guards to patrol the place to make sure patients felt safe. After abandoning a couple of security companies as “no good,” they hired a tough bunch that had former Navy SEALS, Marines, and cops in their ranks, SEAL-Mar Security. They rotated a crew of 44 different guards who patrolled outside and carried Glocks, Smith & Wessons, Sig Sauers, and Rugers to make sure no one caused trouble.

“We are very proud we were squeaky clean and examined under a microscope,” Winslow said. “We never did a deal out the back door,” Abraham insisted. They sold so much marijuana to legitimate patients “it never made sense and it would have hurt the company” to do any illegal side deals, Winslow said.

But selling marijuana is still a federal crime, and in negotiations the prosecutor insisted the brothers accept five-year minimum prison terms. They refused, offering to plead guilty to conspiracy and let U.S. District Judge D. Lowell Jensen set the sentence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Corrigan balked. Then, according to the Nortons and their lawyers, Corrigan upped the ante, threatening to indict their mother, who helped out in the co-op by opening up for the early shift.

“We had to tell her over a Thanksgiving,” Winslow said. “It was pretty miserable. We didn’t know what to do.”

Then, in February 2009, the government indicted their father instead, along with a coworker, and added a far more serious charge: aiding in the carrying of a firearm to further a drug crime. That charge alone carries up to life in prison, but no less than five years.

The Nortons had no guns. It was the gun-toting security team that was “aiding” in a drug conspiracy.

“It is plain and simple coercion, nothing less than that,” said Harold Rosenthal, Abraham’s attorney.

“When we heard the charge, we said ‘you must be kidding,'” says Doron Weinberg, the high-profile defense lawyer who defended record producer Phil Spector in his 2007 murder trial. “I have never before heard of a person charged with violation of a gun law because they hired a security guard.”

Although there is a new U.S. attorney, Melinda Haag, she isn’t talking. “It is an ongoing case so we have no comment,” said her spokesman Jack Gillund.

Sheriff Plummer, who retired in 2007 after 50 years in law enforcement, said of the weapons charges: “It’s bullshit.”

“While I don’t favor their type of business, it was legal. I wanted to make damn sure they were protected, people were protected, and the building was protected. I told them to hire a security crew,” he said.

Abraham says Plummer assured them during a county Board of Supervisors meeting that if they did everything he required, the feds would leave them alone. “I could have said that,” Plummer said when asked about that assurance.

Although the new charge is “aiding” use of weapons, the security crew was not charged with a crime. It had no effect on the guards or the company, according to Tom Turner, one of SEAL-Mar’s owners.

The indictment of their father, Michael, was no accident. Michael is a patient of the dispensary, but the brothers and his lawyer, Bill Osterhoudt, say Michael had no ownership interest in the co-op.

What Michael Norton does have is a criminal record. In the 1980s, he went to prison for two years in what was known as the Kona coffee caper. He bought low-cost Guatemalan coffee beans and sold them as pricey Hawaiian Kona coffee.

Piled on to the Norton brothers’ legal problems is a tax bill that went unpaid when the federal agents raided their apartment and the business. When the federal agents swept in three years ago, they seized the brothers’ two cars, a house they just bought, more than 300 pounds of marijuana, and an electronic deposit of nearly $340,000 in sales tax sent to the state Board of Equalization, according to Winslow.

“We thought the wire transfer cleared. We had confirmation, but the government still seized it,” Abraham said. “They stole the money,” Winslow said. That debt, with penalties and interest, is now close to $1 million, according to Abraham.

“The feds snatched the sales tax money and left the Nortons liable for it, and now they have liens against them for the money,” Rosenthal said.

The irony for the brothers is that they believe they were the first dispensary to voluntarily pay sales taxes. “We collected them for six months and took a check for $1 million to the BOE,” Abraham said. “They didn’t want to take money from medical marijuana sales and told us to call it something else,” Winslow said. “We refused. They wanted us to lie and say the bags cost $300 and the contents were free. But that would have screwed up our accounting.”

After accepting the initial payment, within a week the board issued letters to all the dispensaries in the state asking for sales tax, according to the brothers.

Judge Jensen rejected defense efforts to get the gun charges thrown out in September. But Jensen, a Republican former prosecutor, signaled he is not happy and ordered both sides to sit down Dec. 9 for formal talks before a magistrate to see if they can resolve the case.

“It’s not enough to say we want the case dropped,” Abraham said. “Our credit is destroyed. We can’t work.”

“Three years later we are still fighting it,” Winslow said. “We’ve been fighting this almost as long as the dispensary existed.”

As for the brothers’ chances to negotiate a resolution with the feds, Rosenthal said, “I’m somehow hoping the clouds are going to part and sanity is going to set in.”

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