Drugs

Getting High in the 90s

Vice Magazine just posted up a bunch of photos from one of San Francisco's first medical marijuana dispensaries at Market and Van Ness.  Photographer Ken Miller explains:

You could go in and buy the weed you wanted and sit down and smoke it. Everyone was nice and friendly. I spent five days stoned out of my gourd, taking pictures. A membership was required to enter, but as a journalist, I was allowed in without one.

Read on.

CONTEST: Win Tickets to The Roxie's Screening of "Skatetown, U.S.A."

This Friday, our favorite neighborhood theater, The Roxie, 21st Amendment and CellSpace are hosting “the best roller disco movie party of the summer.”  The Roxie will be showing the Scott Baio (just ask anyone born before the Cobain assassination who he is) feature, “Skatetown, U.S.A.,” pouring cheap 21st Amendment beer for the crowd, and then sending everyone over to CellSpace for their infamous roller disco party.

If you're unfamiliar with the film, the trailer says it all: terrible music, a bad haircut on wheels discharging a firearm, a man wearing a top hat with beard covered in cocaine, tits, and Patrick Swayze.  From the trailer's YouTube description:

The third installment in the devil's unholy trilogy of godawful Eighties roller disco flicks meant to destroy mankind's collective sense of good taste once and for all. Naturally, I could not possibly recommend this movie any more highly.

The Roxie adds:

Patrick Swayze’s big screen debut! Two hunks are pitted against one another in a skate competition at a roller disco. At stake? A thousand bucks and a moped. Ninety-eight minutes of non-stop music, roller skating and comedy. According to her autobiography, former Brady Bunch starlet Maureen McCormick fell into severe cocaine addiction on the set of this movie. FREE TUBE SOCKS! BEER!

If you want to take part of this drunken, cocaine-fueled evening for free, tell us your best 4-wheeled, tube sock, or cocaine story in the comments, and if we like it, we'll hook you up with a pair of tickets.  Otherwise, you can go score yourself some tickets for $10 over at the Roxie's website.

Just Another Tuesday Night at Mission Hill Saloon

I don't go to Mission Hill Saloon nearly often enough, but after reading about the mayhem that goes down there on tastr, I'm tempted to change my ways:

Tonight at the Saloon, a man of many addictions with a bike seat necklace, walked into the bar and demanded a drink. When denied, he turned around and promptly downed a shot of hot wax from the candle nearest him. He stared everyone deep into their eyes and walked out. Wtf?

And if that isn't enough insanity for you, be sure to read up on their Buffalo Trace / Session Lager drink special.

Junky Food

Swing by Fell and Van Ness today, where you can inject yourself with 500 calories and chase the McDragon.

(Thanks Jake!)

A Saturday Afternoon in the Upper Haight

I found myself at a friend's Upper Haight birthday party last weekend.  He's a fairly normal dude: he drinks liquor by the bottle, is totally broke, has a few tattoos, is an aspiring filmmaker, rides a motorcycle at excessive speeds with a suspended license, and has no fear when it comes to igniting various explosives in urban areas.  A true San Franciscan.

He also happens to live in the Upper Haight. How he got there is not important, but we can all agree that moving into a room in an Upper Haight home is some cheap San Francisco living that doesn't have you riding the N Judah to work from the Outer Sunset.

It had always been my opinion that he and others represent modern Haight residents.  Sure, they have to walk over migratory gutter punks on their way to buy Captain Crunch, but the people who actually live in the 'hood could fit in anywhere around town, they just happen to live in the Haight.

So I roll up in the early afternoon to “Haight House,” which is about as cleverly named as Columbus Crib, Polk Pad, Fell Flophouse, Steiner Shack, Valencia Villa, or Turk Terrordome, and I quickly realized that all my notions on “the new Upper Haight” were complete and utter bullshit:

The first thing I see a trio tie-dying clothing on the kitchen table while dubstep being played on the roof rattles the house.

“Whoa, is that a bottle of Jameson?!,” one of the girls covered in blue dye excitingly asks.

I nod in her direction as my eyes slowly examine the walls around me and extend the bottle to her.

She takes a giant swig and puts the bottle down on the table and goes back to tie-dying a victimized shirt. “Just giving you a heads up, those are molly mimosas over there.”

The spectacle is almost indescribable.  Everyone around me is drinking PBR, Tecate, and Jameson, predominately wearing skinny jeans and torn leggings, into acceptable music (dubstep aside), yet live in the middle of a 1960's time capsule.  If this were a zoo, a pride of mature lions were dumped into the monkey cage with an ample supply mescaline and finger paints.

At this point, I realize if I am to truly appreciate the phenomenon which I just walked into, I'm going to have to “do as the Upper Haighters do” and go drink for drink with these kids.  So after putting back a Thursday evening's worth of beer and booze while admiring the hanging underwear and finger paintings on the back deck, I haphazardly stumble into the living room during my directionless trek to the bathroom.

The living room basically speaks for itself.  A strange and frightening old man with clothes I've never seen any human being wear on any day that wasn't Halloween bobbed back in forth in the middle of the room while two bros chilled out smoking weed.  A tie-die painted ukulele rests against a bongo, begging for protection.

On the roof, figuring that's as good a place to pee as any, I encounter an unreserved girl showing off a fresh Grateful Dead tattoo.  “I got this done in the living room last night!” Much like a Mission kid showing off his new sleeve, she goes on to talk, at length, of its meaning and the “street cred” it affords her now around the Haight.  She is speaking words at me, but all I can bother to think about is whether or not Jameson is now being made with wormwood.

After hanging out on the roof for an hour or so, a penniless vagabond made his way into the house after a long day holding up a meaningless sign and begging for change.  Within moments, the “sick bassline” overtook his body like a poltergeist and he's swinging around his didgeridoo with a wanton disregard for the safety and emotional well-being of those around him.

What's this? A Modelo-toting bro follows the human-didgeridoo hazard to the roof while carrying a random American Flag-clad cylindrical object.

Suddenly both of these men are dancing and screaming on the ledge of the house.  This can't possibly end well for them, but will probably end alright for us.

Then in a moment a better judgment, the cliff dancers step back from the precipice and the second guy abruptly reveals he was holding an extendable American Flag didgeridoo.  I'm now listening to a freestyle didgeridoo battle and contemplating throwing myself off the building.

When I begin to think things cannot and stranger, hours of alcohol and marijuana consumption begin to form a category 5 hurricane of drunk that is going to make landfall before FEMA can protect the citizenry.  Conscious of the fact my brain would eventually cease writing to disk, I begin taking notes on yellowing BevMo! and Jamba Juice receipts crumbled at the bottom of my bag.

The majority of these notes are the unintelligible scrawls of a man grasping to the last legs of sobriety. Deciphering them with the futility of reading hieroglyphs before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the last remaining primary documents from a Saturday afternoon in the Upper Haight describes a grisly crime scene of music and fashion abuse:

  • A tribe of girls are frolicking on the roof in Indian headdresses.
  • People are still tie-dying shirts while drinking PBR.
  • Some white dude with dreadlocks recognized my friend's pipe and knew who made it.
  • DJ playing a dubstep remix of “Hip Hop” by Dead Prez. This song totally needed a dubstep remix.
  • Girl with new tattoo having two didgeridoos simultaneously blown into her ears.
  • Just introduced to a man wearing a top hat and monocle.  Terrified.
  • Man sitting next to me wearing an Indian headdress and Ray-Bans.  He's rolling loose-leaf American Spirit cigarettes.  Can't be real.  I must have drank a molly mimosa.

Reviewing photographs taken from the party the following day, I learned that molly mimosas or various hallucinogens were not responsible for my tribal visions; all this really happened:

Dolores Park Heroin Bust

It took three squad cars and six officers to take care of this pillowcase full of needles yesterday afternoon.  And for the 45 minutes in which they collected evidence, I, predictably, was not offered herb, truffles, gannnnnnnnnnnjjjaah treats, special cookies, cold beer, or cold water.

San Franciscan Vodka is Fruity, Self-Referential

Gross. I saw this at a liquor store in Pac Heights last night. I'd heard that Absolut was coming out with a line of San Francisco vodka but I didn't think it'd be this shitty. Apparently its flavored with a combination of grape, dragon fruit and papaya, which is guess is perfect if you're trying to slip someone a roofie at Bar None. Maybe if you dump it into a 40 of High Life it'll taste like Four Loko…

How To Get Pills in SF

Muni Diaries just shared this gripping tale of a man's first ride on Muni and the coversation he eavesdropped in on:

GIRL 1: Crap, you know what? I don’t think I have any more pills.
GIRL 2: Really? I thought Chris still had some from the knee thing?
GIRL 1: Nooo, those are long gone. I’m talking about from what Julie had left.
GIRL 2: Oh! Did I tell you what me made Jeff do last month? We were at (some bar I don’t remember the name of) and decided we needed some Vicodin. Nobody had any so we convinced Jeff to go to the ER and get some.
GIRL 1: Shut. the Fuck. Up. Did it work?
GIRL 2: Yeah we just told him to make something up, so we found a clinic within walking distance and he walked in and put “Gout” on the form they handed him. Voila! Vics.
GIRL 1: Huh. (thinks for a second) What’s gout?
GIRL 2: Um, I actually don’t know.

Read on to find out about the guy's subsequent tweeting troubles.

[photo by sirgious]

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