Chapter 28: The Quiggles

After a few months together I paid for Sara and I to get our medical marijuana prescriptions at a shady doctor's office in Venice Beach. This allowed us to bypass any shady street dealers or middlemen and buy our weed from legal shops called dispensaries.

In the earlier days of Legal Medical Marijuana in California it was difficult to get a medical card. Nowadays you could go to these shops on the Venice boardwalk and get a year prescription for $100.

You waited in line. Filled out paperwork. Then saw some Doctor or Doctor’s assistant for 30 seconds.

He asked you what you wanted to claim your medical marijuana was treating. Anxiety, Sleep issues, Pain. You could make something up.

Then you went and paid at a cashier, and they gave you a certificate for medical marijuana. You needed the certificate to get inside dispensaries.

Sara and I made the mistake of checking out the first dispensary the doctor’s office recommended. It was right around the corner but it was really expensive.

Many of the shops near our house were expensive too. If you wanted a good deal you had to venture into some of the shittier neighborhoods.

The first shop we regularly patronized was a place called "High Quiggles" in Long Beach.

We originally discovered the shop by accident. We had been invited to a dinner party at a friend’s house in Long Beach and had been struggling to find parking. When we finally found parking it was several blocks away in front of this dispensary with a weird name.

We had a little time to kill and our medical recommendations on hand, so we decided to go inside and check it out.

It was owned and operated by an older hippie couple, the Quiggles, who quickly took a liking to Sara and me.

At the time dispensaries were very new and had many strict rules. It was typically a very sterile informal process to buy weed.

At High Quiggles we were treated like family. They were always giving us freebies or telling us inside info about different strains or products they carried. I would suggest different things for them to buy, and they made a genuine effort to start selling them even if it meant making it themselves. 

They even made me my own personal thc infused pizza one time. It was delicious.

Richard Eastman, one of the original activists who had helped make medical marijuana a reality in California, was a regular at the shop. We bumped into him a few times without even knowing who he was. I later discovered the older man with glasses I had shared several casual conversations with was a legit Cannabis legend.

We loved that place so much we even attended Long Beach city council meetings in support of the dispensary when the city shut it down.

Long Beach had passed a law limiting the number of dispensaries in the city. Mrs. Quiggle told me the only shops that were selected to remain open were places that city council members had personal investments in.

Despite overwhelming support and love from the community, the shop lost all petitions to stay open and had to close.

Towards the end, Mrs. Quiggle presented Sara and I with one of the custom display jars they used in the shop. She described it as a souvenir.

She also gave Sara a pair of Green high heels. The last I heard, The Quiggles moved to Ohio when Ohio legalized weed.

Chapter 28: The Plant