Let's go get high... legally!
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Back when I lived life one toke over the line, marijuana landed me in some pretty strange situations. One time in high school, a friend took me to his brother’s fraternity party at the University of Colorado. Three rips off a gravity bong later I was convinced I was related to Ryu from Street Fighter—or at least, like, the character he’s based on, man. Not even kidding. I found myself pontificating loudly to anyone who would listen on the uncanny familial resemblance. The fraternity brothers found this hilarious and egged on my every tweaked-the-fuck-out move. Paranoid, I came to the conclusion that the dickheads were mocking me and I took to the streets, where the people would better understood my plight. I awoke three hours later shivering in a cemetery and sheepishly returned to the frat. Their laughter still haunts me.
The quest for marijuana has led me to sketchy dealers' apartments, weird after-hours parties, foreign back alleys, once even into a limousine with Mos Def. And yet, without question, the strangest place marijuana has ever led me is Nature’s Kiss on South Broadway. Why? Because weed is legal there.
Unless you’ve been asleep in a cemetery for the past few months, you’ve probably noticed that pot dispensaries have been popping up like Bébé’s kids in a blunt circle. Colorado legalized medical marijuana in 2000, but the distribution of it has been slow coming. Two recent decisions changed all that. This past summer the Colorado Department of Health was all, “Y’all motherfucking pot doctors can sell to as many motherfuckers as y’all feel like!” Then the U.S. Justice Department was like, “Straight the fuck up! Furthermore, in states where medical marijuana be approved, we ain’t gonna prosecute people who get their medical slang on, nor people who smoke ’cause they achey and shit!” Then the two parties dapped, chest-bumped, and from that contact one million pot dispensaries exploded onto the streets of Denver. And one such dispensary was Nature’s Kiss, smack dab in the middle of what co-owner Bruce Carter calls “Broadsterdam.”
“It’s more about the Amsterdam coffee shop mentality,” Carter explains. “We’re not one of those places that just sells to you, then kicks you out. It’s more about the experience, caring about and getting to know the customer. I’d be cool with people referring to the whole area as Broadsterdam—but they can’t use it in their marketing. I trademarked the name, and I’ll definitely sue the shit out of anyone that uses it.”
Before Carter can point out the Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh Museum, we head inside Nature’s Kiss where patients are medicating on thrift-store couches beneath the stoner artwork adorning the walls. It looks like your friend’s basement—that friend’s basement. And like that friend’s basement, there’s an eclectic group assembled, only with no narc-ass mom upstairs. One young patient takes a small bong rip on the couch before returning to read The Omnivore’s Dilemma. A man with a ponytail purchases Orange Kush to go in a brown paper bag. A hoodie-clad, middle-aged woman stops by, smokes up, and bounces. Two Steelers fans in matching beanies enter looking relieved; bureaucratic hang-ups with paperwork have prevented their first few attempts.
“The trick to running a dispensary is to have a good attorney, someone who is constantly studying the laws,” says the Kiss' genetics consultant, Colin Gordon, pointing out that regulations and protocol seem to change weekly. “Information is the weapon of the ganjaprenuer.”
Having good pot doesn’t hurt, either. Nature’s Kiss carries 240 different strains, available in many forms, from caramel to joint to gram and beyond. All you need is the proper paperwork and a doctor’s recommendation. Of which, Nature’s Kiss will be happy to arrange an appointment for you with the doctor who makes office hours there several times a week.
“I went from being a drug dealer to being a medicinal pharmacy helping people that have these life-threatening diseases,” Carter says proudly, pointing out the newly handicapped-accessible bathroom. “I don’t mean to be cheesy, but it feels really good.”
As good as it is, Carter and the gang know that the system still has a lot of kinks to iron out. They talk, for example, about other dispensaries wrongly convincing customers that their identification card is only good at that specific location. “There’s still a lot of shiesty stuff going on,” Carter notes. “But we figure those guys will get what they have coming to them.”
Especially if they start referring to themselves as Broadsterdam.
