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Surveying the state of San Francisco\u2019s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in 1967, the king of the Gonzos himself, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, observed that \u201cmarijuana is everywhere.\u201d Not long beforehand, hippies had flooded into the neighborhood en masse, and countless more were allegedly on the way. Suddenly, as Thompson wrote, hordes of people were smoking \u201con the sidewalks, in doughnut shops, sitting in parked cars or lounging on the grass in Golden Gate Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scene that he went on to describe made the mere presence of pot seem innocuous by comparison. LSD was easily available, and \u201cheads\u201d had overrun Haight Street, turning it into what Thompson saw as a veritable carnival of human experience. \u201cWho needs jazz, or even beer,\u201d he asked, \u201cwhen you can sit down on a public curbstone, drop a pill in your mouth and hear fantastic music for hours at a time in your own head?\u201d The population explosion was astronomical: hippies in the \u201cHashbury<\/a>\u201d were allegedly living up to 200 people in a house \u2014\u00a0many of whom were being fed by a civic group known as the Diggers, who had largely taken the place of city government.<\/p>\n Surveying the Haight on a blustery March afternoon more than fifty years later, however, marijuana was certainly still present, but it wasn\u2019t necessarily to be found where you may expect. Regulations, technology and legalization have brought change to the cannabis landscape of San Francisco<\/a>, but perhaps nowhere is the shift more stark than in the Haight neighborhood, and in the Lower Haight in particular.<\/p>\n Currently, there is only one cannabis dispensary on Haight Street, a tiny outpost of the local chain Sparc<\/a> (473 Haight Street), that has obtained a recreational license and is open to anyone over 21. Unlike its sister stores, however, which feature elegant decor, an abundant selection and a welcoming ambiance, the Haight Street location is about as charming as a prefab dentist\u2019s office, and filled me with a similar degree of anxiety upon entering its whitewashed antechamber.<\/p>\n Inside, the fruits of technology are on display in abundance. Long gone are the days of guessing whether you\u2019re buying something that will leave you unaffected or drooling in a ball on the floor. A smattering of iPads displayed the dispensary menu and lots of handy information on legalization policies, various strains and more, all arranged in a non-threatening, easy-to-digest fashion for the uninitiated. Thanks to recent regulations, however, many of the products behind the glass counter were in very un-sexy childproof bags, giving the whole operation the feel of a CVS pharmacy that also happened to sell premium bud.<\/p>\n In the early 1960s, as historian and author Michael Castleman points out, \u201cHaight-Ashbury was a dirty, run-down inner-city neighborhood where apartments were really cheap.\u201d Nowadays, it\u2019s prime real estate, chock-full of high-end food, drink and fashion (including cannabis mogul Berner\u2019s high-end Cookies clothing store, at 1429 Haight). The street\u2019s beautiful Victorian row homes still loom radiant and grand in shades of purple, blue and cream; albeit, bumping up occasionally into new condos that look like they were dropped out of the sky by aliens on their way home from vacation in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.<\/p>\n As the sun peeked out from behind the fortress of gray clouds, I strolled east on Haight, eventually stumbling across the Black Sands Brewery (701 Haight), where the staff were as sunny as the decor. Settling down at the bar with a matcha latte and a savory pastry, it felt like the right time to order some CBD gummies.<\/p>\n Some technical difficulties aside, Eaze<\/a>, Northern California\u2019s most successful and prominent weed delivery service, offers a simple and stress-free process for ordering cannabis. The menu is limited, at least compared to many brick-and-mortar dispensaries, but each item comes with a detailed description. I ordered some Tropical Twist CBD gummies by Valhalla Confections<\/a> (10 pieces, each containing 10 mg CBD and 5 mg THC) and hunkered down to wait for salvation, which took about 20 minutes. It\u2019s hard to take your eyes off your phone as the built-in clock counts down, the imminent arrival of your tasty treats becoming more thrilling with each passing second (although that could have been the matcha kicking in, too). Of note: It can also be hard to take your eyes off the Black Sands bathroom, full of dazzling, mesmerizing patterns of lights and mirrors.<\/p>\n Nine minutes\u2026 three minutes (for a long time)\u2026 suddenly, a van pulled up outside, and a cheery Eaze driver strolled on in, a disconcertingly cute bag in her arms. For me! It was mine! I paid in cash. The bartender didn\u2019t bat an eye, although she politely declined a big ol\u2019 CBD gummy of her own.<\/p>\n Easy freakin\u2019 peazy. None of this is to say that the Haight Street hippies of lore have gone completely extinct. Keep strolling east on Haight, towards Golden Gate Park, and they become more numerous, especially around the dreamy green wash of Buena Vista Park. Going by the numbers, however, it would be difficult to argue that they represent anything more than a faint echo of the ecstatic past. But they are still there.<\/p>\n \u201cPot is currency here,\u201d remarked one anonymous Haight Street busker, decked out in a dusty blazer and floppy hat. \u201cStreet kids never have money, but they always have pot.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, with the advent of legalization, the culture is shifting drastically away from the grime and chaos of San Francisco\u2019s fabled past, a time when \u2014 as Thompson pointed out \u2014 refusing a joint meant you were immediately suspected of being a narcotics officer. Call it a step in the right direction, an economic boon or a cultural tragedy, the change is hard to miss.<\/p>\n If you want proof, look no further than Haight Street.<\/p>\n Originally published in Issue 31 of Cannabis Now.\u00a0<\/em>LEARN MORE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> have you been to Haight-Ashbury? Do you remember cannabis in the \u201960s?<\/p>\n The post Fear, Loathing & Phone-Based Weed Delivery in Haight-Ashbury<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Surveying the state of San Francisco\u2019s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in 1967, the king of the Gonzos himself, Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, observed that \u201cmarijuana is everywhere.\u201d Not long beforehand, hippies had flooded into the neighborhood en masse, and countless more were allegedly on the way. Suddenly, as Thompson wrote, hordes ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27653,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,2882,2893,170,4869,4870,85,4622,2894,151],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27654,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27652\/revisions\/27654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Haight](\"http:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/haight-ashbury-cannabis.jpg\")
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\nRead More: Fear, Loathing & Phone-Based Weed Delivery in Haight-Ashbury<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"