November 2005
This picks up where I left off the last excerpt from the moleskin journal I carried with me.
Friday the 18th resumes. It’s a bleary morning when my wake-up call awakens me (too soon). I rethink my plan of attempting to find a better hotel and book two more nights. Then little more rest before setting out in search of healthy food. Right outside a quick bus takes me to the center of the commercial district, a curving street for buses only outside a department store descended from the original Hudson Bay Trading Company. In the wintry bustle I look for young folks who might know where to find a “brown-rice restaurant”. A girl thinks a moment then suggests Commercial Drive and tells me what bus to take, the #20. So I roll off along increasingly desperate-looking urban blocks. Suddenly a guy seated behind me begins to yell at the driver, “Just drive the fucking bus.” He apparently had observed the middle-Eastern driver being in his opinion discourteous to a working-class white woman boarding the bus. The driver doesn’t say a word. It’s another early impression of this feisty Western city somehow reminding me of the United States before all the cloak and dagger security paranoia made everyone seem either timid or ambiguously threatening.
I notice several Rastafarian or hemp-related shops. Most striking among them is the one with the giant sign, BC MARIJUANA Party Bookstore. As the route proliferates with desolate sidewalk scenes, I decide to hop off on a mild–looking block and double back. I get on a 20 bus in the other direction to check out that bookstore and ask for recommendations. I neglect to show my transfer in my hurry. The driver notices but just shakes his head a tad. I get off in a few blocks anyway.
The store is devoted to all things cannabinoid and the guy at the counter is very friendly. When he hears that I am approved for medical-cannabis in California, he sweetly asks to see my identifying cards. He’s obviously delighted by them, the sophistication and progress implied in them. He leaves me a moment to get me the address of the Compassionate Clinic which is also conveniently located on Commercial Drive. There’s a bud just sitting unguarded within reach just behind the counter. I have a sense that rather than just send me to an Amsterdam-style café he wants me to help legitimize the visitor program by going to the clinic as a cannabis patient with credentials. He also has the specifics for a natural foods restaurant along the way.
I start to survey the surrounding topography as I get back on another bus. The fabled snow-covered peaks are visible between buildings where streets slope down to waterside and I pass a little square with a metal statue. It reminds me of Fall River, Massachusetts combined with Santa Cruz, California. I overshoot my stop but enjoy walking back along a street with coffeehouses and nice shops. A cute young guy in a quaintly mismatched suit jacket , shirt and tie addresses me—he’s running for office. We walk together a little even though I’m no potential vote running for office. He knows vaguely where the natural foods cafe is saying it’s called “Sweet Cherubim”. I’m just about famished by the time I arrive but revive with a lunch of curry, brown rice and borscht. The people working and eating there are much like folks you would see in a similar place anywhere in the Bay Area. I watch a sweet quiet girl working and she notices me a little. Very much restored despite approximately eight hours sleep over two days, I get up. Adjoining the cafe is a natural foods shop where I make some purchases including some great local organic chocolate.
Then back out to hop yet another #20 bus all on the same original fare ($2.25). Past a Sky Train station and side streets consisting of more wooden houses. We climb a little hill and I find the area where the clinic is located. Outside the bus is a little park-- deserted but for one semi-furtive man. I refrain from asking him if he knows where the dispensary is, look for a sign, and follow my nose.
Locate the clinic and work with the girl at the desk to be admitted as a visitor. It's a sweet community place. You go behind a thin curtain to the herb counter. There are some easy chairs arranged nearby where people examine their medicine maybe smoke a little. She calls the Green Cross in San Francisco--their computer is down they can't check my name. I have my official letter from Dr. Frank back at my hotel room, but I hadn't planned to need it. They had been thoughtful enough to reproduce my doctor's letter in miniature on the reverse of my Green Cross card. I allow this to be photo-copied along with my driver's license for their file. I'm helping them establish their visitor's program by taking the time to do this.
She calls Dr. Frank's office and they request a fax of my letter. She faxed that, called them back, and that was that. I'm picturing the office assistant in Berkeley checking to see if I'm paid up and legit. Finally so informs me I'm entitled to four visits a year--how charming a thought.
The whole feeling of the place, connected to local medical center, seemed so much more naturally concerned for folks than the stressed-out under-staffed clinics back in California. The only reason she said she needed to confirm it was that both my photo cannabis IDs were out of date, only the non-photo second issue Green Cross card was up to date. She needed both on the same card, absent my letter, again a manifestly reasonable demand. Because it is there, to a lesser extent, as it is here--only trouble-making opponents would go to the lengths of faking pot ID cards so they could later accuse the clinics of having accepted them out of laxity or venality.
I tell the girl I'm going to write up my visit and I may. While this is happening a West Coast style old time hippie guy comes up and pays oblations to me like I was officiating alongside the desk. The white-bearded wants me to bid him adieu, so aI wish him peace. He leaves forgetting his jacket, a testament to the potency of the herb and, as it turned out, a strange foreshadow.
So it's behind the curtain with me. The counter staff is charming and the herb selection chalked on a blackboard is very reasonably-priced. They have four varieties, two for $8 a gram, and two for $9, Canadian dollars. With due deliberation I have arranged to have a sufficient amount for my time in Canada with me already, so I acquire only one gram of their best Sativa. The young man helping me is effusive in his enthusiasm for my experience there. He urges me to try the other best bud as well, but I don't want to have to over-consume to finish it all before reaching the US border next week. They are very interested by my stories of the Bay area medical marijuana scene and express love for the SF Bay Area. They provide me with some of the story of B.C. cannabis, a story which would be added to by other encounters over the next few days. Next I roll it up there producing a book of Club papers to do so. I regale them with my life-time of Club papers story.
Briefly, in 1978 I wrote to Highway Imports for a Club papers poster as advertised in High times magazine. In my letter I told the tale of my summer in Oaxaca in 1974, when buying cigarette papers was a risky business subject to informers relaying the information to the Federales--military drug cops. I had brought a nice supply of packs of Club papers, a very thin high quality paper manufactured in Italy by S.D. Modiano. They have no glue on them but self-adhere quite well when handled properly. My friends and my love for them caught the notice of someone we met who traded me four ounces of a very good, although seed-bearing red and green bud for one pack of Club. Following my letter, a carton arrived at my home from Highway imports, containing ten boxes of fifty books each of the small Club packs, and ten more boxes of packs of their double-wide version, as well as a T-shirt and various printed promotional matter. In a letter they said that they wanted to excerpt my letter in their advertising--perhaps they did, I never saw it. In February 2009, thirty years later, I used the last of my free Club papers to roll a nice shorty of one of my high quality blends.
Back at the Vancouver compassion center, they supplied me with scissors and a tray. I saved it for later as I was still light in my loafers due to lack of much sleep. I bid fond farewell with the feeling of leaving a place I'd probably never see again.
Now I just have to spring for one more fare for my return to the hotel. A bus takes me downhill to the Commercial/Broadway skytrain station. It's fast and fun--no one checks fares, and there are no turnstiles. From the skytrain I see a good deal of the dusky city of Vancouver: a boat mooring lagoon; an old world's fair-like "golf ball" geodesic structure; an "inflatable" stadium: then the looming building downtown. I'm there in no time exiting below the Hudson Bay department store, descendant of the original trading company that traversed Canada. Another bus takes me down trashy but hip Grandville Street to my Howard Johnson's. Snugly back indoors, I sample the newly-acquired organic foods and BC stash--like wow. I soon fall off for a deep nap.
I rise again for adventure by early evening. There's a coffe-machine in the room with nice coffee provided-so I revive with a strong cup or two. A cool bell hop named Curtis directs me to a nearby bottle shop for some libation. This entire part of town is rocking Friday excitement--the sidewalks are jumping. The Canadian style bottle shop amid this party hysteria is a weird experience for someone from south of the border. It is a humorous, no-frivolity state-run place with grim cashiers checking ID in a small place of high prices. In the beer section, heavy on the Molson and Labatts, I say to two guys in a fake Irish accent, "Don't they have Guinness?" They find it and it's a 4-pack of cans for $14.50! But they want me to drop it and accompany them to a casino--they have a limo waiting outside. Bimbos, gambling, booze, late hours--it sounds exactly like what I don't want. I decline the invitation, saying I'm too tired, and I am. They were alright, could tell I'm fun. Rock clubs abound in this part of town including a classic blues road house, The Yale, fronting Yaletown which stretches off across the blocks behind it, just before the Grandville bridge. At another club on the ground floor of my hotel I scrutinize the promo photo of the night's performer. I ask the bouncers, ubiquitous in this rowdy scene, what kind of a place it was. They say she's a country singer I ought to check it out. I tell them I'm out of the game. I'm going to watch TV and drink Guinness. They say that they wish they were doing that too. And it's a mellow enjoyable night in a warm, quiet room. I still manage to be awake until 3AM despite stout, herb. Finally onanistic tension reduction therapy applies. Switching out the lamp, I decide to stay put at HoJo's for the duration of my visit and check out Sunday.
