SF Buyer's Club: Mexican Bar

JOHN ENTWISTLE: The courage of our staff is legendary, by the way. Everybody who works here has been on the front lines all over the place. It's kind of what's involved in drawing stronger people who have more to give, and this is where they give. Here's Dennis Peron, our director, presidente, all of that. [to Dennis] I'm going to give him back to you, Dennis...he's from Word magazine, an Internet publication...

DENNIS PERON: [peering at me over his glasses, imitating me peering at him] Which one?

HARRY GOLDSTEIN: Word dot com. World wide web....

DP: We're on it, I know that.

HG: Yeah, you're all over the web actually.... I'm going to come back and talk to you about some other issues, if that's ok....

JE: We'll get him back to you.... This is the Mexican bar. This bar sells Mexican marijuana. We're proceeding within the general direction of the smoking area, the club within the club. We have four grades of Mexican today, from the quad A, which is $35 an eighth, to the B Mexican, which is $5 an eighth, $10 a quarter, and it's every grade in between; and you can see that people can line up and just purchase it right over the counter in proper style.

HG: I've lived in Humboldt County [known as the Emerald Triangle and as being the largest area in the continental U.S., besides Kentucky, for marijuana cultivation. Local product: Humboldt Gold. Available upstairs in the California bar for $80 per 1/8 ounce.] for a while and I know there's a massive amount of production up there...why Mexican? Is there a qualitative difference?

JE: I'll tell you why. [to the bartender: Can I see that quad A Mex? A bag of it, anything...thanks man, thanks...that's all I want to show him.] Let me show you this. I'll show you why Mexican right now. There's only one way to demonstrate it. Smell that. [offers me a huge bud to sniff] That's really good pot.

HG: Yeah, spicy, right.

JE: That's really good. And it's cost-effective. I mean, we're dealing with the real world here. We don't pull it out of a hat...you know what I mean? That's why Mexican. And there are various grades. The B Mexican is a brown Mex, it's a clean Mexican. [to bartender: Hey, let me see an eighth of that B Mexican when you get a chance.] I want you to see this, this is actually a good thing to see. We also have a California bar upstairs, which you're going to see.

BARTENDER: This is a quarter.

JE: [pulls out a bud the size of my hand] This is what $10 will get you.

HG: [astonished, drooling internally] No way!

JE: That's why Mexican.

HG: That's amazing!

JE: $10.

HG: That's a huge amount.

JE: And we're not talking about something you can get in the street, either. We're talking something that's really clean.

HG: [speechless, stumbling] Yeah, I mean...

JE: Yeah, $10, dude. It's the real world, man.

HG: That would be at least 200 bucks on the street in New York.

JE: We can't put you on welfare or give you a food stamp for this, but we can meet you halfway.

HG: Oh my god.

JE: Half of that would be $5. We used to give away five. But when we got to 900 or 1000 people a day, we had to get rid of the free program. So this became our replacement for the free. $5 isn't asking too much. It works. You're getting subsidized. It comes back. We also give away a little now and then, but we can afford to give that product away. And it makes people very happy. Now I'll show you the rest of our place.

MEXICAN SMOKING LOUNGE:

JOHN ENTWISTLE: This is the smoking lounge. Gotta have a place where people can smoke a cigarette. In the California Bar, there are no cigarettes, just pot.

[I followed John through the haze and past the couches. People were lounging, laughing, rolling and smoking, breaking up new bags of pot, and separating bud from shake, seeds from shake. Crates of fresh California oranges littered the entire lounge and I grabbed one as we made our way over to the windows.]

JE: This is our spectacular view of City Hall. The Health Department. The Federal Building back there. The New College. Beautiful gardens and flags. Triple A. We feel like we fit right in. The Bill Graham Civic Center auditorium. The War Memorial around the corner. Really downtown. Plus having Fell Street is really nice too, not just Market Street, but to have a back street too, we have a neighborhood thing.