A Visit to SPARC in San Francisco

Ah, San Francisco! Origin of the 60s peace/love/acid/lids movement, and home to the most famous intersection of hippiedom, Haight-Ashbury.

Felicity and I found ourselves there last week. We had gone to pick up some specialized tools for work I’m doing on our house, and meet a friend for lunch, and we thought we’d visit SPARC. It’s been a long time since either of us has seen the inside of a dispensary, and SPARC is one of the most legit dispensaries anywhere.

Dispensaries are like candy stores the first few times, but if you’re serious about your medicine, you want what can potentially help you, rather than the latest get-high goodie. But there are some edibles you just can’t make at home. So I picked up some caramels (always a favorite in our family!), which turned out to be made with Granddaddy Purps, a very old and respected indica strain, and a Kiva chocolate bar. And then got some very high CBD strains that I’ve been hearing about, for further testing at home that I’ll be writing about soon.

After we went walking 2½ miles up and down Mission to see some sights, waterfalls, gardens, and buildings, we decided we were too tired to go to Chinatown for dinner like we had planned, and headed home, even though that involved driving in rush hour traffic and such. Felicity said she felt lousy and was coughing, probably from lots of walking next to cars, which she’s not used to doing.

To help calm me down, I turned on KFOG, possibly the last, best radio station in the entire world. Sure enough, the first thing they played for me was “Smoke Two Joints” (the original, of course). I don’t remember noting the time at the time, but 4:20 PM wasn’t that far off.

Felicity was still feeling bad from the pollution, so she opened the car window for fresh air but still almost barfed right out of it. So we pulled over for some food, gas, and rest, and I had a tiny corner of the Kiva chocolate and a single hit from my MFLB. That was enough to calm me down without getting me high at all.

Soon after getting on the road again, we started hearing a lot of road noise and I smelled what I thought was carbon monoxide/exhaust and Felicity was getting a headache. Concluding that I didn’t close the rear hatch, I pulled off again at the nearest exit to fix it. All this was either from a passing vehicle or a glitch in the Matrix, because the hatch was indeed closed and properly locked and such.

But then I noticed a smoke shop and figured maybe this was the universe’s way of telling me to check it out. I checked it out and the next thing was that I was handing Felicity a stash jar that was just perfect for her:

Starbuds Cannabis stash jar

And then she told me that while I was in there checking out jars, she realized that all her problems had come not from the pollution, but from her French fries at lunch, since they had obviously been fried in peanut oil. She had been fighting off a potentially deadly allergy all day, but because she had gotten a brief exposure to peanut oil a few weeks ago (which she spit out as soon as she realized), she had enough antibodies still floating around to stop her from going into anaphylactic shock.

So we got home and she took some Benadryl, and some all-purpose calming and antistress capsules (i.e. cannabis) and she was fine.

http://BeyondChronic.com

Old Hippie is a father of two boys and thankfully living in California where all this kind of thing is legal. He started smoking marijuana in 1967 in high school, experimented with mind-expanding drugs of all kinds, and then straightened out 15 or so years later to become an airplane pilot. After being diagnosed with depression in 2000, he lost his job and most of the following decade to prescription medications (such as antidepressants) which sapped his energy and will. Finally, a chance conversation with a friend led to a doctor’s recommendation for medical marijuana (MMJ). This changed his entire life, health, and outlook for the better. BeyondChronic.com is his continuing story. It’s also his way to provide experienced advice on using medical marijuana effectively and responsibly, as well as advocacy, activism, and support for others. Old Hippie teaches about safe use of cannabis edibles, Canna Caps, vaporizers, dosing, and even microdosing.

10 comments

Where did you get the one that you got? Where in San Francisco? These are hard to find. Been looking for one for a while now. Any help would be great.

Yes I agree there are a lot of Cali jars available. Tried to search for StarBuds jar The only thing that comes up is Some guy on ebay had some for sale. But the listing and the guy no longer a seller on ebay. Did a Google and Bing search and that’s the only listing that comes up. But thanks for the effort……P.S. Called like 4 smoke shops in and around Haight and none of them had the StarBud jar. Thank you for your input.

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