Smoking in desert style
6 PALM SPRINGS-AREA CANNABIS LOUNGES WORTH THE VISIT.
AN G E L E N O S looking for a variety of communal cannabis experiences — legal ones, anyway — might want to consider road-tripping to Palm Springs for a weed weekend. That’s because while Los Angeles hasn’t issued a single consumption lounge license (the only two in the area are in West Hollywood), Palm Springs has issued 10, according to the most recent list provided by the desert city. In early January, armed with that list, I dashed out to the desert and checked out as many as I could (which turned out to be seven — two had yet to open and one was temporarily shuttered). Although there was a lot of overstuffed-sofa, college-dorm-room sameness to many of the places, they all had one thing going for them: They provided safe, legal and wholly entertaining spaces to buy and consume cannabis products. The ones on this curated list all brought a little something extra to the table that made them stand out. Four of them are right in the heart of downtown Palm Springs; one is a full-blown concert venue; and at least two inhabit former bank buildings (ironic because cannabis’ illegal status at the federal level means the businesses are foreclosed from many traditional banking services).
One of those former banks — now the Vault Dispensary Lounge — is a few miles down the road in Cathedral City, but it’s included here for two reasons. First, it was designed with the older — as in 35- to 75-year-old — crowd in mind. (“The kind of place my mom, my aunt and my mom’s friend’s would feel comfortable,” buyer and manager Matthew Sigurdson told me when I visited.) Second, because everything about it — from the welcoming bank-lobby vibe to the Wednesday night baked bingo games and carnival-worthy popcorn machine — hinted at the kind of shared space that might well be in store for the cannabis community once California’s consumption lounges fully catch their stride.
COACHELLA VALLEY GREEN DRAGON
This centrally located, 1,900square-foot space — which has the distinction of being the first licensed consumption lounge in Palm Springs — is the rarity among the city’s sanctioned smoking spots in that it seems to acknowledge the area’s bounty of Midcentury Modern architecture. So it’s probably worth pointing out that it happens to be right across the street from the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion.
Around the corner and a short elevator ride away from the dispensary floor, the second-floor lounge (with interior design by Art Department’s Bryant Berry) is awash in pops of color, including stucco orange behind the wood-patterned bar and mustard yellow in a private room, and mod fixtures that include highbacked, upholstered booth seating, wavy metallic mirror frames and vintage-looking ashtrays throughout. With windows that look out over Palm Canyon Drive, the space fills with natural light during the day, which also makes it stand out from the rest of the city’s communal cannabis gathering places.
One corner of the room is outfitted with a pair of microphones on swing arms for the occasional podcast session, and a private space just beyond it is the sort you might decamp to for a birthday party or private event. Green Dragon manager Troy Solomon says the private room can accommodate a dozen people, and the capacity of the entire lounge is 60.
Although lounge walk-ins are welcome on a space-available basis (with a $30 minimum purchase), reservations can be made in advance via Tock with
a $5-per-person reservation fee ($15 per person from 6 p.m. on), which will be credited toward your dispensary purchase.
Hours: The dispensary is open 9 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday. Lounge hours are 2 to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 2 to 7 p.m. Sunday. The last reservation of the day is one hour before the lounge’s closing time.
Perfect for? Anyone seeking to sesh against a mostly Midcentury Modern backdrop.
● 353 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, (760) 438-9333, weedmaps.com/dispensaries /coachella-valley-green -dragon/about
OG ARABIAN NIGHTS Don’t expect a full-blown vision of the Middle East. The thematic trappings of this centrally located dispensary and consumption lounge are limited to a handful of pointedarch doorways and hanging Turkish mosaic lamps. What you can expect is a narrow rectangle of a consumption lounge (maximum capacity 15), a bar cart full of games (Sorry!, Jenga, checkers and Connect 4), a basket of free snacks (Cheetos, potato chips and Doritos) and a $5 dab bar (which allows customers to purchase a single serving of cannabis concentrate).
With a dart board on the wall, movies on a big-screen TV and comfy upholstered seating and dim lighting all the way around, it feels like the kind of place you could while away an entire day. That’s probably why there’s a three-hour limit on your hang time here Fridays through Wednesdays; it’s 30 minutes on Thursdays, when the lounge is a popular pop-in for folks headed to (or coming from) the Villagefest, Palm Springs’ weekly nighttime street fair.
Hours: The dispensary is open 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. The consumption lounge opens at the same time and closes nightly at 9:45 p.m.
Perfect for? Ganja-enhanced game night or a mid-street-fair sesh.
● 232 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, (760) 656-0109, @ogarabiannights
FOUR TWENTY BANK
This two-story building was a First Interstate Bank before sitting vacant for two years. On April 20, 2021, it opened as a superspacious dispensary, consumption lounge
LOUNGES and concert venue that has repurposed the drive-through lane as a place for visiting food trucks to park (Tacos Al 100% was slinging Mexican food on a recent visit) and the bank vault as an arcade stocked with pinball machines and video games. The dispensary’s wares are displayed in glass cases in the center of the roomy, highceilinged space. A stage for live music anchors the back, and smaller, more intimate gathering spaces occupy the edges along with a trio of pool tables and a giant chess set with pieces the size of office wastepaper baskets.
There are a couple of things that make this a one-of-a-kind space worth wandering into. First is the sheer size: nearly 18,000 square feet of space in which patrons can partake; that includes a ground-floor lounge filled with sectional sofas, upholstered leather couches and at least one zebraprint reclining love seat and an upper level that’s home to two 800-square-foot VIP rooms that can be rented for special occasions starting at $300 for three hours. (Downstairs, there’s no limit to how long patrons can kick back.) Second is the fact that it’s a fully functioning, 555-person-capacity venue that hosts live music, DJ sets, puff-and-paint events and wellness-weekend drum circles and sound baths. (The owners reportedly have tried to get the Guinness folks to certify it as the world’s largest consumption lounge, but it’s definitely got the biggest footprint in the immediate area.)
Hours: Dispensary and consumption lounge open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday.
Perfect for? Taking in a cannabis-enhanced concert or a chill, all-day hang.
● 296 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, (760) 318-6877, fourtwentybank.com
HOLLAND PHARMS
Located in the back of Palm Springs’ first social equity dispensary (social equity programs are designed to help cannabis entrepreneurs whose lives have been unduly affected by the war on drugs), the consumption lounge at Holland Pharms is one of the city’s smaller spaces, with just enough comfy couches, overstuffed chairs and table seats to accommodate a baker’s dozen (see what we did there?). But what it lacks in square footage, it more than makes up for in convenience because it’s located on the bustling stretch of the city’s main drag where desert visitors head to snap up sunglasses, vacation trinkets and cones of Lappert’s ice cream.
The brightly lighted dispensary space is dominated by black-and-white photo murals and quotes on the wall by famous tokers (Cheech and Chong, Snoop Dog and Bob Marley, to name a few) and a swirly, marble-patterned floor. That vibe meets break-room chic in the smoking area, which has a glittering disco ball hanging from the ceiling. A small water feature softly burbles in front of a “welcome to Palm Springs” aerial tramway wall mural; two industrial-looking air filters hum in the corners; and the television on the back wall serves up sports programming. “I usually have a basketball game or a fight on,” said owner Willie Holland, who noted that his top sellers are visitor-to-town-friendly prerolled joints and edibles. “The tourists love it,” he said of his petite pot pied-a-terre in the thick of downtown.
Hours: The dispensary is open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. The lounge is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.
Perfect for? Anyone looking to throw their support behind the city’s first social equity dispensary and consumption lounge. ● 150 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, (760) 656-0420, facebook.com/people/Holland -Pharms-Inc/100069898547423
REEFER MADNESS DISPENSARY & LOUNGE
This spot’s proximity to the Palm Springs International Airport (it’s exactly a mile, door to door) makes it a convenient first — or last — stop for those visiting the area by air. “People come in here all the time wheeling their luggage behind them,” says manager Puna Martin. “We’ve got signage at the airport too.” But the LGBTQ-owned dispensary and lounge (named after the unintentionally camp 1936 anti-weed propaganda film) is worth popping into for a puff or two even for those who haven’t winged their way to the desert.
That’s partly because of the deep bench of products it offers (flower and gummies are the most popular, says owner Steven Wijatyk). It’s also because it’s one of the city’s few consumption lounges that has a noticeable theme grafted (albeit lightly) onto its college dorm-meets-rumpus-room aesthetic, the result of a reality TV makeover for a Discovery+ show called “High Design.” Using the shop’s rabbit silhouette logo as a starting point, the dispensary — and its postage-stamp-size lounge area — cranked up the shop’s “Alice in Wonderland” motif to make the decor as entertaining to hazyheaded patrons as the movies on the Apple TV-connected big-screen television or the Arcade1Up games (10 in all) crammed into the old-school Ms. Pac-Man video game cabinet in the corner.
Among the delightful touches in that regard are the grinning Cheshire cat throw pillows on the couch, a dangling pocket-watch-and-chain installation (artfully disguising a pillar in the center of the room) in the lounge, and smashed teacup decor adorning the dispensary walls (painted with the words “Tea Party This Way”) as well as the undulating green HVAC ducting on the ceiling that hints at the hookah-smoking caterpillar.
Hours: The dispensary and lounge are both open 8 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. daily. The lounge opens at the same time daily and closes each night at 9:35 p.m.
Perfect for? Preflight tuneups, “Alice in Wonderland” fans.
● 4693 Ramon Road, Palm Springs, (760) 424-8588, reefermadnesslounge.com
THE VAULT DISPENSARY LOUNGE
This spot is technically in Cathedral City — about a sevenmile drive from downtown Palm Springs — but it’s definitely worth hailing a rideshare (or designating a driver) to check it out, especially if you’re in the mood for a weedenhanced bingo game. (Hosted by the musical duo of Deven Green and Handsome Ned every Wednesday at 7 p.m., the bingo event is free with a dispensary purchase, and the prize is a bag of cannabis treats.) Buyer and manager Sigurdson says the list of events and activities at the dispensary and lounge includes live music, drag shows and folks gathering to watch UFC fights and football games.
Located in a former bank building (hence the name), the 1,800-square-foot, 75-personcapacity lounge still has a bit of the bank-lobby vibe to it — in a good way — with an assortment of dark leather couches and chairs arranged around glass-topped coffee tables, a couple of cafe-style tables in one corner and natural light streaming through the windows. There are also five seats at a bar, behind which are bags of snacks, a cooler full of (noninfused) beverages, a movietheater-worthy popcorn maker and a hot dog roller cooker (hot dogs are free; the rest of the snacks will cost you $1 to $3).
Sigurdson says the dispensary and lounge spaces were designed to make older customers feel comfortable.
And Sigurdson knows of what he speaks. During my brief mid-January visit, at least two 80-somethings popped in to make purchases, and 67-year-old voice actor Scott Lawler (accompanied by his dog) was posted up at the bar. Although Lawler says he could just as easily consume at home, he prefers to visit the Vault. “I’m here about three times a week,” says Lawler. “It’s social. I like the people. I like the LGBTQ representation.
I think this [place] is a great example of what cannabis can be.”
Hours: The dispensary and lounge are open 10 a.m. to
8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Perfect for? Baked bingo and boomers.
● 35871 Date Palm Drive, Cathedral City, (760) 866-9660, enjoythevault.com