As San Fran Becomes a Playground For the Rich, So Do Its Pot Shops

I mentioned in an earlier article how “artisanal” pot was becoming increasing popular among San Francisco’s budding tech crowd, as well as young affluent millennials looking to stray from the shady scenes marijuana is often associated with, such as dingy alleyways, moldy basements, children’s’ parks, dilapidated dispensaries, the back seat of my car. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to spruce up our aging dispensaries. Many have not changed aesthetically within the last 10 years or so and always seem to bear the same earmarks. Plenty of our dispensaries maintain the same burly doorman who is usually cool as hell with you after your first 10 visits then forget you after your 11th; the same sparse interiors or rooms so ramshackle they look like they belong to a weed hoarder; the same young friendly staff, the same awkwardly placed palm cards displaying this product or that, the same brightly lit and painfully tacky neon signs.

But high-end, artisanal weed shopping? Should this even be a thing?

According to San Francisco’s new high-end dispensary, Harvest, it should be. They aim to remedy the stereotypes of the shabby dispensary by providing an upper-class shopping experience, 7X7 reports.

This was done primarily by initiating its location, which ultimately drew in its clientele.

Harvest has replaced the former Hemp Center location in the Inner Richmond district, its facade more like a Hollywood Boutique than your average pot shop. Perfect for affluent white couples from Seacliff who prefer their wine chilled, it’s so damn pretentious it makes the Marina look like Hunters Point. As 7×7’s Herb Caine described:

“Harvest feels more like a high-end tea boutique meets The Body Shop. Large windows, stamped with a sandblasted abstract daisy, provide full transparency to what’s inside. And there’s no linebacker-sized security guard to skeptically eyeball passersby. Simply open the door and be greeted by a cheerful gal who’ll direct you to a small sign-up table. “

But wait, it gets even more high-end than that.

Once inside the club patrons are free to sip complimentary Pelligrino water and groove to music playing throughout the shop. A state of the art ventilation system slowly wafts out soothing scents of cinnamon and lavender. Even more unique, patrons are free to touch and smell the products, as everything is laid out before you and not tucked behind your typical glass partition.

Now I will be honest and interject a bit of myself here. Initially, this all sounded fairly fine. Why? Because it’s a different model and dispensaries that possess their own unique style stick around longer.

But here’s where Harvest may lose a lot of people, including myself (then again maybe we aren’t their core demographic). When you enter Harvest, and smile in the face of the pretty girl greeting you at the door, and sip your Pelligrino water, and hum along to Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” and touch and feel and smell all the weed in the shop, expect to pay as much as $218 for just one gram of premium artisanal cannabis concentrates. Of course, prices for many of the products, while higher than average, are still fairly reasonable. But still, $218 for a gram?

Naturally, Harvest also contains a members-only VIP section. And what happens back there? Who knows. Maybe it becomes the Champagne Kush room.

Harvest, 4811 Geary Blvd. (Inner Richmond), 415-702-6767