Roll up and chill out at trailblazing cannabis joint
UNITED STATES: The speakeasy decor is meant to evoke San Francisco’s decadent past, but the Barbary Coast cannabis bar and smoking lounge is as contemporary as any of the nearby tech startups.
State-of-the-art equipment lurks amid the leather booths, flocked velvet wallpaper and stained-glass chandeliers. In the lounge, customers puff joints and use VapeXhale vaporisers at their tables. Inside a glass-walled ‘‘dab bar’’, they consume hashish via water pipes, supervised by ‘‘budtenders’’.
What makes the scene at the Barbary Coast Collective cuttingedge is not the hardware, though; it is the fact that it exists at all.
When California legalised sales of recreational marijuana this year, it was following in the footsteps of five other US states. Its size and wealth always promised to transform the cannabis industry on a scale unseen in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Nevada. One way is by introducing cannabis-smoking lounges.
At present, California is the only state in America to allow enthusiasts to smoke their purchases in special rooms attached to licensed marijuana shops. In other states, customers are supposed to go home with their purchases, which has hindered the expansion of the burgeoning industry.
Oregon, Massachusetts and Alaska have rejected proposals to introduce cannabis cafes. Nevada will vote next year. Colorado ruled against introducing ‘‘tasting rooms’’ for cannabis but has left it up to each city to decide its approach – Denver has issued just one permit for a marijuana lounge.
Although California has taken the lead, marijuana regulation in the state is a patchwork affair. Cities have broad autonomy to decide how extensively they will chase the ‘‘green rush’’.
The legal cannabis industry is predicted to be worth over US$5 billion (NZ$6.9b) in California by the end of next year, according to specialist research firm BDS Analytics. In some areas, recreational marijuana sales remain outlawed. In nearly all of the state, marijuana lounges are banned.
San Francisco is the only city where lounges in the style of Amsterdam’s coffee shops are up and running.
The city had permitted medical marijuana patients to smoke in licensed dispensaries for years. That privilege has now been extended to recreational users.
The Barbary Coast Collective, named after an old San Francisco red-light district, began life as a medical marijuana dispensary in 2013 in a rapidly gentrifying part of the city, home to numerous technology companies. It opened its smoking lounge to medical users last year, then spent several months upgrading it for the recreational users’ boom. It opened to all on March 6.
Jesse Henry, general manager at the lounge, said the owners planned to open a bigger shop and smoking lounge about two kilometres away once San Francisco’s health officials had finalised regulations and issued new permits. The design concept is intended to give visitors a sense of place.
‘‘This city is built for tourists,’’ he said. ‘‘We put a lot of work into giving them a San Francisco experience.’’