Tag: Marijuana

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Sunset District vs. Medical Marijuana

San Francisco is a haven for cannabis dispensaries. There’s at least one sometimes more in every neighborhood of San Francisco, except of course for the Sunset District. The Sunset District is the largest, most suburban district in the City, so big that it actually needs two supervisors. Katy Tang does the heavy work for the majority of the district, but the Inner Sunset is covered by Norman Yee who also handles the Lake Merced area which while technically isn’t a part of the Sunset District most of the people still sort of add it on as a part of the Sunset. Yet there isn’t as I mentioned a single cannabis dispensary in this area.

That was until recently. The people who run The Apothecarium in the Castro District have teamed up with Dr. Floyd Huen, husband of Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to open up a dispensary in the Sunset District at 32nd and Noriega. This hasn’t been sitting well with a few of the neighbors who have been egged on by the Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative, religious rights defender [as long as of course you’re talking only Christian rights] as well as being anti-LGBTQ [which sort of goes along with their religious freedom which of course trumps sexual freedom in their book] and also has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

The Apothecarium is very well run dispensary that tests all of its products quite rigorously and runs their business very much above board following all the necessary laws and rules. They have won awards from various groups for being the best cannabis dispensary in the United States so they’re a pretty top notch business. Dr. Huen is a well respected doctor of internal medicine who teamed up with the people from the Apothecarium with an eye towards additionally serving the Chinese community [as well as anyone else with a proper medical marijuana letter from one of the registered doctors].

Apparently the PJI found out about this and started contacting neighbors and feeding them false information about just want medical marijuana is and does. In the video footage below you’ll see what a good job the PJI did with their fear mongering to rile up a bunch of presumably locals — though that has been called into question — who wouldn’t look much different if they had torches and pitchforks in their hands. The meeting was shut down because Dr. Huen and the people from the Apothecarium never got a chance to speak because they were shouted down immediately as soon as they opened their mouths.

Well, a second chance is coming around. Tomorrow, May 3rd at 6:30pm at the Ortega Branch Library in the Sunset District there will be another general meeting to discuss the proposed location and I urge you to attend whether you’re in favor or against it. Please be respectful and not like the mob louts in the video below.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I’d like to say that I do not consume marijuana in any form, yet I think the Sunset District could use a dispensary or two. Sure, there are plenty who deliver, but then again why bother going to the local grocery store when they deliver to? Why even leaving your house when anything you can pretty much hold in your hand could be delivered? I don’t buy that line of thinking. Just like with groceries, people still like to see what they’re going to get before they get it.

The Apothecarium is a very upscale place if you google pictures of it [or see the above picture I posted]. Ace Pharmacy that used to be at the location was a very busy well used pharmacy that I don’t think anything had changed in the store since I can remember. They filled prescriptions and filled a lot of prescriptions. Jerry who was the last of the three original owners retired because he was just too tired to do the job anymore. His partners Sal and Joan [I believe I remembered their names correctly] where smart and got out early. Nothing had changed in the store and it was a bit of a dump to go inside, but it was a clean dump even though there were missing tiles of linoleum on the floor and their copy machine never worked, but they still left it there because they were too busy filling prescriptions to get rid of it.

While some might love the throw gentrification out there because there’s a business going in that will take care of the place instead of letting it rot I think it will help encourage others to do a few upgrades on their storefronts. Carmen Chu encouraged the businesses in that area and even got some funding to have the rotting awning replaced on many of the stores and while it was a small step, it still made a noticeable difference.

Medical marijuana dispensaries are not a place where anyone can walk in and buy drugs as some people have been led to believe. They actually usually look like private clubs in that there’s a doorman who checks to see if you’re on the list and if you’re not you don’t get in. Because of this there won’t be any selling drugs to kids or kids hanging out trying to get adults to buy up for them. The kids will be stuck hanging out near liquor stores to get their fix of Mad Dog 20/20. The risk is too high for them to sell to minors. It’s even worse than selling alcohol to minors.

There is no increase in crime because of the guards out in front which is another line that comes up frequently. Cannabis dispensaries always have very high tech, expensive crime deterrent gear installed because they’re selling a product that’s rather expensive. Pharmacies don’t even have that good equipment and they stock drugs that people could easily overdose on. Although that’s not entirely true since there has been a lot of graffiti spray painted on the place from people who don’t like the idea. I haven’t seen any lately so I guess their can of paint ran out.

I do think the location is a bit odd though. Noriega Street between 30th Avenue and 33rd Avenue has become a very heavy Chinese shopping area. It’s like Chinatown in that area with few exceptions. Heck even the Middle Eastern owner of a cigarette shop up the block speaks to his Chinese customers in Cantonese. If I was going to put in a dispensary I’d probably be looking at the new La Playa micro-hood out by the beach on Judah. Cool waves and a cool buzz, it kind of makes sense in a Jeff Spicolli kind of way, but that being one of the hot new areas of the City the rent is probably going to be much higher.

So at this point my thoughts are to give it a chance. I’ve written to Katy Tang and given her my thoughts as well as forwarding this article to her.




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Outsidelands Travel Tips

OutsideLandsSince I’ve got a broken ankle I can’t do too much so I was checking out the prices last night after OutsideLands finished for taking a ride with the various TNC’s as an alternative to cab rides or muni. It was pretty shocking.

I drive for Sidecar and was able to drive last year and it was pretty busy. Most of the rides were short because people would park a few blocks away and walk to the concert. Most of my trips were for around $8-$10. This year it was different. A lot different.

I started checking prices around 9:30pm on Uber and Sidecar [Lyft doesn’t give estimates, but I had heard they were charging 25% Prime Time Tips on top of their ride fee]. Here’s what I found. I live a little over a mile from OutsideLands and was curious what a ride would cost me to get home from there:

Uber: $40 [estimate]

Sidecar: $6 [real price]

WTF?!?!?!

Yes, Uber has what is known as surge pricing. If Uber thinks there is going to be a high demand they will charge more to get more drivers out there. It’s actually the opposite of the supply and demand idea. When a lot of people want a product the price goes down to move more product. Uber is a service though, so when demand goes up so does the price. The biggest problem is that Uber isn’t the only game in town as much as they’d like to think.

Sidecar has a policy where driver’s can set their own prices, but new drivers are set up so that their first 25 rides will be forced to the minimum of $5 and base multiplier of 1.0. This doesn’t mean all rides will be $5, but they will be cheaper. This pricing makes regular Sidecar drivers stay competitive with the new drivers and not seriously overcharging for the service. It’s kind of an odd way of doing business, but it seems to work out better so far for the riders.

Another odd thing was that if you tried to get an Uber car at 9:30 on the Richmond side of Golden Gate Park it was surging at 5.0x, but if you walked a little bit to the Sunset side to get an Uber car it was at 2.0x. That’s over half the price. Here’s where it gets a little weird. Richmond side Uber to Russian Hill [a friend of mine asked me this question] $75. Sunset side Uber to Russian Hill $50. Yes, you could save $25 and take a longer ride just by walking the equivalent of a couple of blocks.

My advice to people looking for an alternative to the overburdened Muni to get too and from OutsideLands is that if you’re going to take Uber go to the Sunset [south] side of Golden Gate Park to request a ride, or just look for Sidecar which will save you the most money. It won’t guarantee you a $6, but it will definitely be a lot cheaper than Uber or Lyft.

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No Mo’ Mary Jane!

Seeing as the two times I’ve written about marijuana my hits have spiked and the two most searched terms are redneck girls and marijuana I guess I have to cater to my audience of guys who like to look at nekkid red neck girls smoking pot every once in awhile. So today I’ll be talking about the current attack by the federal government on California on profitable medical marijuana dispensaries.

When I first read it I like many others I’m sure thought that it was a Federal attack on the state’s legalization of marijuana for medical purposes. Then  I re-read the article and realized they were only attacking the mmd’s that were making money. Hmmm…I guess you can’t blame this on the GOP, because they would never attack a company that actually made money because they are the job creators.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of politicos can’t wrap their head around the term medical marijuana. I have trouble some times especially after I attended a job rally for a company called Mary Jane Magazine. A magazine focused on cannabis culture aimed at women. The biggest question people kept asking was, will you have a space available for us to medicate? I thought to myself, if you’re that sick you shouldn’t come to work. I’ve never asked a boss if there was a room for me to go and get drunk during work because of the stress. My mind stores a lot of useless information that it gets to pull up from time to time and today it pulled out Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies who made moonshine to help with her rheumatis’. I think we need to stop thinking about marijuana as a medical drug and think of it like we think of booze.

Most of the people I know who consume marijuana do so for many of the same reason people who drink a martini or shot of scotch do. It helps them relax after a stressful day at work. It helps them relax, etc. Medical marijuana users just use terms that make it sound like a pseudo-science drug. Let’s face it, if I do a couple of shots, pop a valium or smoke a joint [not at the same time, of course] it has the same effect. It’s time to call a spade a spade. The difference is that nobody has beaten their wife after smoking a joint or destroyed their liver from consuming marijuana. It is far less deadly than alcohol or barbiturates. You don’t have to smoke it anymore you can consume a tincture or brownie so the smoking hazard is removed. If we treated marijuana like we treated booze it would be a good thing. We would be taxing it and bigger more efficient companies would be coming in to make it cheaper. Some dispensaries sell their pot at the low price of $45/gram. Now I don’t know the weight of a pack of cigarettes, but let’s say it’s an ounce. You can get an ounce of tobacco for under $6 in San Francisco [$10 in NYC]. What if you could get an ounce of marijuana for $6 including all the added taxes like cigarettes have? California would recover more than the rest of the nation and probably become THE largest economy in the world instead of the eighth largest.

We are living in an age where there is hardly anyone who can say they haven’t tried marijuana at least once. Hell, I’m sure Mitt Romney tried it at some point. I think Rick Perry is using it right now after seeing some of his clouded speaking during the debates. Let’s just legalize it and tax it and make it into a commodity that we can control instead of calling it a controlled substance that the government isn’t really controlling. Which brings to mind a possible urban myth of the government developing it’s own WMD which was a strain of pot called G13 which was supposed to be extremely potent enough to cloud the minds of our enemies and dissidents.

The government knows about marijuana, now they just need to show the small percentage of people that it’s like booze so they can understand that. Then they’ll all be saying to the politicians, hey how can we start making some money off of it? The biggest people against the legalization were the pot growers themselves because they knew that some corporation would come in and find a way to do it better for less. Why else are there so many Escalades and BMW in Humboldt county next to the trucks?

So to sum it all up, the federal government isn’t really against marijuana, just people who make money off of marijuana. I suppose if they’d tax it and make some money off of it they’d think different. Steve Jobs smoked pot. How else do you think we’d have computers in our back pocket today.

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Happy Birthday Wavy Gravy! Don’t Take the Brown Acid!

Wavy Gravy is an icon of San Francisco in the 60’s yet he came from New York and lives in People’s Republic of Berkeley. On the 15th of May he will turn 75 years old. For most people today they probably equate hippies with being old, but for those of us reaching middle age we still scratch our heads at the thought of old hippies. Maybe not so much as we used to.

Born Hugh Romney [hmmm…any relation to Mitt?] he received the name Wavy Gravy from of all people B. B. King in 1969 when B. B. just before taking the stage at the Texas International Pop Festival saw Hugh sitting backstage and asked him, “Are you Wavy Gravy?” to which Hugh replied, “Yes” and B. B. responded with, “It’s OK, I can work around you” and preceded to go onstage and play. Not sure who was drinking the Kool Aid that day, but methinks B. B. might have had a glass or two

I guess that was a bit of a day of revelation because Hugh decided from that day to use the name Wavy Gravy as his legal name. He had also chose to portray himself as a clown because as a demonstrator for peace he thought that it would be difficult for the Police to have it in their hearts to arrest a clown. We’re not talking the drunken, swearing after hours staggering around in misery type of clown that TV likes to portray and make people like my wife afraid of clowns, but the happy childlike things are better type of clown.

Wavy Gravy as a clown has brought about change in the world one smile at a time. He started the Hog Farm collective commune in Los Angeles in 1966 which wasn’t the free love, let’s run naked and do nothing else type of commune but a group of people who lived and worked on the hog farm of Claude Doty and turned it into a showbiz enterprise staging concerts in the Los Angeles area before the group relocated to Black Oak Ranch in Northern California in the 90’s.

Wavy also started Camp Winnarainbow which was originally started as a day care for Sufi children so that their parents could meditate and pray and wouldn’t be penalized from that because they had kids. Wavy took the kids and made them have fun by running it like a circus and teaching the kids performing arts. It’s still thriving today though looking a bit less hippie.

He even managed to influence Ben & Jerry to create a Wavy Gravy ice cream. I have to say I haven’t tried it just because it sounds like there’s gravy in the ice cream which seems wrong to me, but there is no gravy in Wavy Gravy ice cream. I suppose that came from the time he spent with the Merry Pranksters in the 60’s. What he might be best known for, at least to me was as head of security at Woodstock [the original one] he walked up to the mic one day and gave everyone the warning, “Don’t take the brown acid.” That moment was immortalized in the movie Woodstock and showed that he wanted everyone to have fun, just have fun safely.

I actually got to meet Wavy a few years ago at a place you wouldn’t expect to see a hippie at. My wife and I were celebrating our wedding anniversary and decided to go to Harris Steakhouse in the city. We liked to have early dinners when we went out to avoid having to scream at each other over our expensive meal. We were the first ones in the restaurant. My wife ordered the Prime Rib and I had the Bison steak [rare!] as we were waiting for our meals to arrive in walks Wavy and his wife Jahanara and they are seated next to us. My jaw kind of dropped because I was raised that hippies were supposed to love the earth and not want to harm animals so they were always vegetarian. Well my parents were wrong teaching me that. I got up and walked over to him and extended my hand and introduced myself. He responded sort of like a celebrity who was just trying to have dinner and not be disturbed and I picked up on that and left at the handshake because I was supposed to be there to celebrate my anniversary after all.

As we got up to leave after dessert and started walking towards the door he extended his cane to block our path for a moment and wished us both a happy anniversary and happy life together. I had never received a hippie’s blessing before, but that day just seemed brighter because of it.

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Politics! Politics! Politics!

Note to readers: Having discovered that my name server had changed a little to late when I moved things over to the new server I suddenly lost a few posts and pictures which threw me off for a bit. Now I will hopefully regain my stride and get back to more regular posts.

The only thing that got more people’s attention than the Giant’s winning the world series was the election and pretty much as I figured California mooned the rest of the country.

Jerry’s back as President Governor followed by the rest of the Democrats just showing that we’re more a blue state than we were yesterday. Queen Meg will now have to be questioned on her business acumen after investing over $100 million dollars in a campaign that failed. Think of what she could have done with that money if she hadn’t run and started the Whitman Foundation to help needy kids or homeless people or some other ennobling cause. She’d be seen as a hero, but now she’ll go down as a business woman who spent the most money in a campaign that failed.

Oh yeah, pot is still illegal.

The coastal areas were all in favor of it and the inland empire was against it.  What surprised me the most was that Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin showed support for prop 19 yet Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown, Kamala Haris, Barbara Boxer and the California Cannabis Association were against it. Wait, Governor Moonbeam didn’t want pot legalized? What’s he been smoking? It turns out on the against prop 19 list where a large number of pot producers who would, so they thought, lose money if it was legalized because it would drive the price down. Any quick trip online to look at prices for medical marijuana show that that’s not true.

Personally, I think it’s a shame that it didn’t pass. It would have increased the revenue that we already get from medical marijuana sales (which is currently north of $100 million) and it would have given California another reason to be a “go-to” spot. Estimates put the potential gains for the state at north of $4 billion per year.  Think of what that money would have done for our schools, our roads. It’s even possible that we could have eliminated state income tax if it passed. Nevada fortifies itself from gambling revenues so its residents don’t have to pay state income tax. Think about it. Even though our own Governator was against prop 19 he decriminalized have up to an ounce as a $100 fine.

I think the best that can be said about this was said by Richard Lee of Oaksterdam University, “Over the course of the last year, it has become clear that the legalization of marijuana is no longer a question of if, but a question of when.” I guess we just need the state to need the money more and have less people who don’t want to put their political careers on the line to support it.

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Marijuana as a commodity

big_bud_marijuana
Marijuana, the crop of the new millenium

I’ve been seeing a lot lately about California making marijuana legal and taxing it in the same sort of way it works in Amsterdam.

Personally, I think this is a good idea. Everyone knows that California is the biggest pot growing place in the US if not the world and cash it’s bringing in is in the billions of dollars. Yes, it is a drug, but so is alcohol and vicodin and valium and all the other prescription medicines out there that. Yet if your company drug tests, none of these will keep you from getting a job, marijuana on the other hand, will.

Historically from what I could find there has never been anyone who has died of an overdose of marijuana [leaving out the possibility of them being stoned and crashing their car]. Alcoholism has killed thousands of people an when you mix in the people who mix alcohol with prescription drugs the numbers jump up even more.

We have medical marijuana clinics now and that makes it easy for people to get a card and get marijuana for it’s medicinal value. These are more of a minor blip in the marijuana cash crop business. Now think about this. If it becomes legal and taxed large companies would jump in and set up farms that would end up producing more marijuana as less cost which would overall end up dropping the price to offset the taxes placed on it. This could overall make it cheaper to purchase than it would to try and grow it similar to common vegetables like lettuce.

California needs cash badly and when you have a billion dollar industry that if legalized and taxed could turn into a trillion dollar industry I firmly believe that California would get a good boost to it’s economy. Not just from sales, but think of all the people who would come as tourists just because they could purchase marijuana legally. This would obviously boost border towns that usually need some help, but it would also boost the economies of metropolitan areas. Which would also help increase the hotel and restaurant business as well. All this would help to bring back the economy in California which while being the 8th largest economy in the world, has some of the worst marks in our school systems.