i accompanied my friend rick to the “world famous” tacoma cannabis farmers’ market today…
rick is an “authorised” cannabis patient, but he can’t get around, because he is confined to a wheelchair, currently, so he calls me, and i go and rescue him. because of the fact that he is more-or-less permanently disabled, he gets one of those placards that people hang from their rear-view mirrors, which goes on my rear-view mirror when i am driving him around (exactly why he gets one and i don’t is another story entirely, and one with which i am not totally satisfied, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the current diatribe)… except that it wasn’t there yet, because i was driving (you’re not supposed to put them on the rear-view mirror until the car is no longer in motion, because they block your view). the cannabis farmers’ market has a parking lot in front of the building that is for disabled parking only. the guy that waved us into the parking lot saw that rick was holding the placard and waved us in, but the (EXTREMELY stoned-looking) guy who was handing out paperwork at the door waved us away, because he didn’t see the placard. i continued to park, and he continued to wave me away, and finally i got out and explained to him that we were authorised to park there, at which point he started to argue with me, until he saw that rick had put the placard in place while we had been talking. there was a line of people waiting to get in, and so we got in line, and the same EXTREMELY stoned-looking guy gave rick some paperwork to fill out, which he did. by the time rick got his paperwork filled out, we were at the front of the line, but there was a step, and no way to get the wheelchair over it with out raising more chaos with the already-noisy crowd that was now behind us… and then it turned out that they wanted paperwork from me as well, which included me signing a piece of paper that said i am a legal medical marijuana patient… which i am not. i told the guy this, and he said that he couldn’t let me in. so i went and sat in the car while the extremely-stoned-looking guy pushed rick into the building. they came out again a surprisingly short amount of time later, and rick explained to me that we should come back at 2:00, when there would be less chaos, and then we could both go in, so we went to another couple of dispensaries and perused the (now legal, despite the federal hissy fit that’s going on currently) varieties, and the ranges of raw bud, and edibles, and tinctures, and sodas, and topicals, and…
and, because of the fact that the dispensaries we visited were all in store-fronts with a dozen or so varieties, i thought i knew what to expect. i was wrong.
the “world famous” tacoma cannabis farmers’ market is, conservatively, 150 different vendors each of whom is selling anywhere from two or three, to as many as 25 or 30 different strains, plus the same wide variety of hash, and the edibles, tinctures, sodas, topicals and so forth i saw in the other dispensaries multiplied by 100.
this is what a farmers’ market should be like… and it was “foggier” inside than it was outside. there was a dense “medicinal” cloud that permeated the building. i understand where the extremely-stoned-looking guy was getting it from, now. i did notice that there was an “emergency” door that had been blocked open (so much for the bureaucratic foofaral at the door, just go around to the side) where people could go to get some fresh air.
EXTRA BONUS! despite the fact that i am not a medical marijuana patient, was able to legally purchase a bottle of honey-hash tincture for $15, and two grams of hash for $25. i traded a gram of “medicinal grade” bud and two joints from rick for the honey-tincture, because he’s not allowed to smoke at the facility. i also bought a cute little bong for $12… at that rate, i’m going to have to re-adjust my thinking about the beer-bottle bongs…
