I hadn’t been to the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles for years and years so it was a shock to walk from my parked car to the Venice beachfront bike path one day last week and come across a garish medical marijuana dispensary. And there was nothing discreet about it.
The building is bright green and the huckster who stands outside–just like a barker in an old time carnival–wears bright green too. So there I was, a nice retired lady armed with a camera, and this huckster guy asked me if I wanted “to see the doctor”. “No,” I answered and walked away.
I headed for the ocean to take photos of surfers on a hot December day. One of the vampires in my short novella, New Vampire in Town, is a surfer and I’ll post those photos in the upcoming weeks. The young woman surfer at the top of this post could be a character in the novel except that she is surfing during daylight–not something vampires do.
After taking some photos of the ocean and surfers I walked back by the green building. As surprising as it was to see such open solicitation for marijuana sales, two things I saw later surprised me even more: In the photo you’ll notice two greenies talking to two other men. I eavesdropped a little and learned that the two non-greenies were apparently bureaucrats from the L.A. city government checking some official paperwork. I didn’t hear all the details of their conversation, though.
The second surprising thing was the sign on the dispensary door. It makes it very clear than this dispensary has relatively little to do with medical conditions–other than the ones in the dopers’ heads.
Call me old-fashioned, but drug dealers used to be a lot more discreet than this and much better dressed!
