Legal schwag!

Well, you definitely get you what you pay for in the legal cannabis market, that’s for sure.

I have no idea what I was thinking. I didn’t have to be penny wise, pound foolish. It was pay day, I had a Friday morning in front of me and best of all, four dispensaries all within a short hop from one another. I took in the menu at Natures Herbs, bought a couple of grams (Outer Space, LA Confidential) at XG Platinum, walked in and walked out of Smokey’s (too much of the dirty hippy vibe for me, thanks) and then decided to take a look, once again, at the busiest house in town, LivWell.

I was decidedly turned on by the hip urban dispensary look a few weeks ago when the place was fresh and new, but somehow, after schlepping in on a snowy day, with folks all bundled up in the finest homey duds, sniffing all the dirty, cabin fever bodies, sitting, waiting, just another number in the stack, it just didn’t have the cool hip appeal that it did before.

It wasn’t as if I needed bulk of any kind. I am sitting on a bit of mota now, especially since I have been reading up and buying product as a form of “learnin’” in preparation for that illusory cannabis job I am dreaming about in my far off future. I had been fascinated by the idea of buying an ounce of shake lately but I didn’t feel like doing a cross county drive into Denver to secure it. No, an eighth was going to be fine by me that day. I had in my head that Flo was the answer to my work-a-day energy needs and I sought it out, found it and then, last minute, turned my nose up to it. Face it, I was feeling cheap. I wanted a bargain, quality be damned. Yeah, I could tell that I was going to be cheap ass bastard that day (as my brother would say) and well, I found out how cheap some places could be.

In my heartI  knew that I wanted something better, just by doing a sniff test on the jars. Limon was looking fine, smelling even better, but I had to ask, just had to see, what their pre-loaded 1/8ths looked like. 303 Kush, must have been sun grown down south, loose and fluffy and well, bulky. I turned up an opportunity for a fresh weighed gram of high terp dope and instead took away a wee jar of, well, who knows what.

Maybe I was feeling ghetto just being in that place. Maybe I was thinking I needed to play down where my homies play. Looking around I know that some folks were scraping by, that some were passing up paying for heat or food to have their mota fix. I know that mota is not addictive but a certain kind of lifestyle is and mota is just part of that lifestyle. Me, I don’t have one that says I need to buy cheap weed. Maybe for me it was more a Margaret Mead in the South Pacific thang. Maybe I just wanted to be one with the natives, be down with the homies.

In the end it just wasn’t necessary. I took that little jar home and emptied it out in the palm of my hand and took a deep whiff, a whiff that I couldn't really get at the store. It didn’t smell like any Kush I had ever smelled before, that’s for sure. It smelled like it was rushed through the drying process, and it was certainly not cured properly. Very green, almost like something old Trigger would be happy to munch on. Next I took a bud between my fingers and crushed it. Dry as the package of baklava I bought from Safeway the other day. Cracker dry. Crumbled to dust in my hand. Bummer. No flavor notes, no excitement there.I was going to be doobie practice material and not much more.

Well, I should have known better but I had to do it. I kept seeing those ads for 100 dollar ounces and thought how nice it would be to have a fat baggy of dope at that price. Well, this isn’t Mendo and this place has a different way of stocking their shelves, of dragging in the locals for deals. Hmm, deals. I know that when I used to buy bags of schwag in the day I knew what I was getting: seedy, flat, brown and stemmy dope. I knew it was going to take a bag full just to get high and well, when you are playing cat and mouse with the man any bag of dope would do. These days I know I can spend as much as I want, see and sniff and oogle over whatever a shop has in the jars behind the counter. It really is a buyer’s market as I found out the hard way the other day. With four shops to choose from I should always be able to walk away a happy man.

Shame on me.

Ok, so I got an eighth of legal schwag. No stems, no seed, sure, but wow, what a shitty bag of weed. Never again. Went down the next day to Natures and got an eighth of Spiritual Punk for 20 bucks. Just what I paid for that trash dope at the other place. Ah well, live and learn. And better yet, enjoy.

Salud!