Chapter 28: The Quiggles

After a few months officially together, Sara and I went to Venice Beach boardwalk for a weekend day trip. Venice was the best place to buy a new bong. We went door to door at what seemed like dozens of smoke shops looking for the best deal on something we both liked. I mainly had my heart on paying a visit to the old Smokin Heaven shop.

As we were walking along, a young hippie with dirty dreads wearing a weed leaf costume approached us.

"You two smoke the ganja?" the hippie asked.

"Yes." we said with a smile.

"We are doing a special today, get your medical marijuana recommendation for $100! Just right in that door!" the hippie said.

The hippie then pointed to a nearby shop.

"Stop buying weed from shady street dealers and get it from legal dispensaries today."

In the earlier days of Legal Medical Marijuana in California, it was difficult to get a medical marijuana prescription. Nowadays I had heard rumors of these shady back-alley shops on the Venice boardwalk that sold you a year prescription for $100.

"What do you think? You want to check it out?" I asked Sara.

"We could always go inside and if it seems weird, we can leave." Sara said.

We walked into what looked like your typical smoke shop. An Asian woman stood behind a counter in the back of the room. I took a quick browse of the bongs in the smoke shop as we walked towards the woman.

"You here for Medical Marijuana recommendations?" the woman asked.

"Yes. I have back problems." I told her.

The woman's mood changed. Suddenly she seemed friendlier.

"Right this way!" the woman said as she lifted a curtain to her left revealing a doorway.

We both thanked the woman and walked through the doorway and down a white sterile hallway.

"First door to your right, have a seat and someone will bring you the paperwork to fill out." the woman added.

We walked down the hallway and entered the first door on the right. It was filled with healthy looking stoners sat in chairs filling out paperwork on clipboards. There were weed themed posters on the walls. An old TV with "Cheech and Chong" was playing in the corner.

Sara and I took two empty seats next to each other. It was quiet. We both looked at each other unsure if we should talk. A few minutes later a young-looking man with long shaggy hair and a lab coat walked into the room. He handed Sara and I each a clipboard and a pen. On the clipboard was our medical paperwork.

The paperwork was pretty standard. They asked for your basic information, brief medical history, the usual stuff a doctor office asked for. One the second page was a section with numerous symptoms and ailments. You were asked to circle any you suffered from. They were stuff like sleep problems, back pain, loss of appetite, health issues almost anyone could claim.

One by one we noticed the shaggy man in a lab coat come take people in the waiting room for the next step.

"Did you fill out all the paperwork?" I asked Sara quietly.

"Ya, seems a bit easy." she whispered back.

After 45 minutes it was Sara's turn. I told her to go first. She stood up and followed the man in the lab coat. I waited for another five minutes before the man returned for me. He took the paperwork from me and asked me to follow him. I followed him back out into the hallway and into another room. I sat down in a seat positioned in front of a wooden desk. Sat at the desk was an older burned-out looking man wearing glasses and scrubs. He had long grey hair and bags under his eyes. The man looked over my paperwork for a few seconds.

"Hello Jordan I am Dr Brandias." the man said.

"Nice to meet you!" I said trying to be friendly and polite.

"I see you are complaining of sleep disorders, back pain, and anxiety." the doctor asked me.

"Yes, that's correct. I find smoking weed helps me with all those things." I replied.

The doctor continued to look over my paperwork. He rubbed his chin and raised his eyebrows. He placed his own paperwork on the clip board and scribbled something I could not see.

"Alright, I am going to prescribe you medical marijuana for one year. Come back in a year and we will see how it's going."

"Thank you doctor." I replied.

"Take this paperwork back to Cathy in the front. It was nice to meet you, Jordan. Good luck." the doctor concluded.

I walked out of the room and back down the hallway to the smoke shop. Sara was there waiting for me. I handed the paperwork to the Asian woman standing behind the counter.

"Ok, two recommendations, that will be $200." the woman informed me.

I paid and the woman handed us each a certificate stating the doctor had prescribed us medical marijuana. You needed the certificate to get inside dispensaries where they sold weed. She also gave us each an ID card. This was to carry on us at all times in case we ran into police.

"Are you going to buy weed today?" the woman asked us.

"Of course we are!" Sara told her.

"We like to recommend everyone to our friends around the corner at Venice Green. Tell them you just got your recommendation here and they will give you a deal."

Sara and I made the mistake of checking out the dispensary the doctor’s office recommended. It was right around the corner. The security was very strict. They spent thirty minutes copying my paperwork and CA ID. They even called a number listed on the paperwork to confirm it was legit. They wouldn't allow Sara and I to even stand together or shop together. Sara became annoyed and decided to wait in the car.

The weed at the shop was overpriced. You didn't get to see it before you bought it. You just selected a name off a board on the wall and hoped for the best. I choose Master Kush and paid $140 for seven grams. The weed came in a plastic medicine container with a cool sticker on it. The sticker had Master Kush in fancy writing, and several standard warnings like to avoid using cannabis and operating motor vehicles.

Sara later purchased me a book with blank pages and we started collecting the cool looking stickers we acquired from different dispensaries. We would peal the sticker off the medicine container and then re stick it into the book. Sometimes I wrote little notes under the sticker if it was a strain one of us really enjoyed.

I came to discover the shops in Venice were mainly for tourists visiting Venice Beach and new people who just got their recommendation. Many of the shops near our house in the beach cities were expensive too. I came to learn, 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. It was a 30 to 45 minutes from Redondo depending on traffic.

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 a spot, it was several blocks away in front of this dispensary with a weird name.

"We are thirty minutes early and we have a little time to kill. Do you have your medical recommendation on you? I have mine." I told Sara.

"Ya I have mine in the glove box." Sara told me.

"Let's check out this dispensary." we decided to go inside and check it out.

The dispensary was owned and operated by an older hippie couple, the Quiggles. The weed was cheaper than our local shops. Mrs. Quiggle was an older short curvy woman with glasses and light blond hair. She claimed to be psychic and gave me witchy vibes. Mr. Quiggles was a taller man with long grey hair and bags under his eyes. He was quiet most of the time and only spoke about weed.

"Make sure you smell the Snoop's Master Kush. It's a good one." Mr. Quiggle told me in a low voice.

"Please try these new edibles for free and let us know what you think next time." Mrs. Quiggle told Sara while handing her a package of weed gummies.

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. It was hard to not keep coming back.

Some customers came in, bought their stuff and left. We always stayed and made conversation with the Quiggles or the other budtenders. It seemed to pay off because they were always giving us free stuff.

"Have you guys ever seen weed sodas?"

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. 

"What about weed pizza?"

Mrs. Quiggle even made me my own personal thc infused pizza after I suggested it one time. Sara and I shared it on the ride home. It was delicious.

There was always one older gentleman with glasses and fake teeth at the shop talking politics. Overall he was a nice guy. He was constantly trying to get people to buy his book. I later discovered he was a legit Cannabis legend, Richard Eastman. He was one of the original activists who had helped make medical marijuana a reality in California.

One day when we arrived Mrs. Quiggle looked upset.

"I have bad news my friends." Mrs. Quiggle told us.

"The city of Long Beach has decided to shut us down."

"Why what happened?" I asked.

"Long Beach passed a law limiting the number of dispensaries in the city. They claimed they did a random draw to decide which shops were allowed to remain open. Suspiciously enough all the shops that were selected to remain open were places that city council members had personal investments in. It's corruption at it's finest." Mrs. Quiggle explained.

"That's bullshit!" Sara commented.

"There is a big city council meeting next week on Wednesday. We have been allowed a chance to speak and defend our claims. We could really use your support." Mrs Quiggle replied.

"Of course we will be there!" Sara and I told her.

I remember it was raining really hard that day at the city council meeting. I had a big jacket on and Sara and I sat in the row behind the Quiggles. Richard Eastman got up and gave a passionate plea attempting to convince the city council to change their minds.

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

On one of the last days they were opened, Mrs. Quiggle presented Sara and I with one of the custom display jars they used in the shop. It had the Quiggles logo drawn across the top.

"Keep it as a souvenir so you'll always remember us." Mrs. Quiggles told me.

"I also thought you might like these heels. I had a dream that you would need them. Perfect for a cannabis queen."

Mrs. Quiggle randomly gave Sara a pair of Green high heels.

"What will you do now that the shop is closing?" Sara asked Mrs. Quiggle.

"We are thinking about moving back to Ohio. They are working on their own legalized weed out there and it might be a good opportunity for an experienced business." she told us.

A few weeks later we tried to come back one more time only to discover the doors and windows boarded up and the Quiggles sign removed.

Many years later I found an article in a cannabis magazine about the Quiggles and how they started a successful cannabis business in Ohio.

Chapter 28: The Plant