Kind Pain Management is in a small, one-story, '60s-era duplex building.
Google maps.
It's got a dispensary for medical pot patients on one side and little old ladies getting their hair and nails done on the other.
The smell of greenery, however, occupies the entire building -- which is much better than the acrid, disgusting smell of a nail salon any day.
Kind Pain ManagementThe shop is not easy to spot if you're just driving past, as it doesn't really have any signage out front other than a handmade placard the size of a small flat-screen TV that simply says "KPM." It's best to look for the sign for Applewood Hair Design and Day Spa, which is much easier to see. Kind Pain Management has a really open layout, with the patient waiting area sharing pretty much the same space as the bud bar. My budtender, Leah, buzzed me in to the island-themed room, which is decorated with artwork from the owner's time living in Costa Rica: paintings of waves, miniature surf boards,Tiki masks and shields hung on the bamboo-lined walls. It all combines to give the space a cozy, low-stress feel perfect for cannabis shopping.2636 Youngfield Street Lakewood, CO 80215 303-237-KIND (5463) KindPainManagement
Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Raw marijuana price range: $15/gram $35/eighth-ounce, $185/ounce. Members receive about 10 percent off purchase as well as daily deals. Other types of medicine: Icewater hash, shatter oil, wax, edibles. Online menu? Yes. Handicap-accessible? Yes.
Paperwork was a breeze, and after getting my information into the system, I was ushered about five feet over to the glass display cabinet that serves as a bud bar. The selection was small during my visit, with around a dozen strains on the shelf, including a few jars down to their leafy, shaky bottoms. The shop also had a grip of strain-specific, waxy-looking bubble hash made from KPM trim by the folks at Essential Extracts, as well as a number of $25 half-grams of shatter and BHO produced by Natural Selection. Shatter sold for $25 a half-gram, while the hash came in around $25-$30 per gram.
Behind you when you're at the bud bar is a cabinet full of affordable glass pipes and bongs. Nothing fancy or too pricey, because, as my budtender noted, "The people who are going to go balls-deep and buy a fancy dab rig probably are going to a specialty glass shop for it. But we also don't want to carry a bunch of really cheap crap, either."
The Triple Diesel was going home with me the instant I took a whiff of the tangy, rubbery-smelling balls of neon-green nuggetry. Very well grown, with loads of amber crystals coating every millimeter of the bud. The sample I brought home was delightfully delicious along with being a potent bang for my $25 -- a great combination considering this medicine can be just as enjoyable for its effects as it can be for its sights, smells and flavors. A good middle-of-the-road smoke, Triple Diesel is great for maintaining an appetite all day with just a few small hits every few hours. It's also a nice way to unwind and de-stress at the end of the day without resorting to a heavy indica that puts you down like a tranquilized rhino. Continue for more photos and the rest of the review. Also worth mentioning was the sweet, citrus batch of Super Lemon Haze, with spear-pointed buds ripe with sugary trichomes. And while it's not the most flashy strain, the Hashplant in the shop was grown from seed and kept around for more than a decade in Kind Pain's private collections before hitting the shelves. The buds had a solid, pine-cone look to them, but when the budtender shoved the jar under my nose in the shop, all I could smell was her flowery hand lotion mixed with a light skunky spice.KPM's Pinepple Express was also a fruity consideration, but the buds weren't as dense and developed as the Triple Diesel or the Banner I ended up bringing home. Finally, the 707 Headband was down to the very bottom, but what was in there looked and smelled ripe and powerful, with huge, BB-like calyxes creating small popcorn buds that looked like miniature green grapes coated with powdered sugar.
I've seen a lot of Bruce Banner around lately, which makes it easy to overlook in most shops. But the Banner buds from Kind Pain Management were so well done that I couldn't keep my eye off the jar for very long. Then I got it home and started breaking it up, only to find three fully mature seeds in one of the buds, as well as a number of immature seeds in the other. Ouch. I'm not going to complain too much about the free genetics I scored, but if the entire batch is like this, then it's a problem and not a one-time random bud turning hermaphrodite due to stressful conditions.On the plus side, the buds were very potent and flavor-filled, with the cooling eucalyptus menthol of Banner coming through on the first two or three green hits. Typically a mellowing, relaxing and borderline psychedelic strain, the buds I brought home worked well as a nightly stress reliever, as well as to help deal with minor cramping pain in my belly a few days ago. So if you're looking for some seeds to experiment around with along with an eighth to smoke on, get over to KPM before this batch is sold out and kill two birds with one stone.
Shatter is produced for the shop by Natural Selection, which just took home an award for its flavor-filled shatter at the recent Secret Cup hash competition in Denver. There were a few strains on deck, including Banner and Hashplant, but I opted for a half-gram, thick amber chunk of the Chem '91 that had a very strong strain-distinct smell out of the package. Vaped on a titanium nail, the herb evaporated cleanly with a full flavor and an extremely potent, sativa-strong energy kick in the head. Before the nail had even cooled in my oil rig, I was cleaning up the office and debating whether or not I had enough time to mow the lawn, rake the leaves, clean the gutter and wash the windows in the two hours of daylight left in my afternoon. A good purchase for $25 a half-gram, though 10 percent off that price would put it at a more palatable $40 a gram.
Kind Pain Management offers $25 eighths for first-timers and members, and there are also always coupons online for $25/eighth deals -- so there's really never a need to pay full price for herb at the shop, my budtender said. Otherwise, non-members are paying $35 for an eighth and $185 an ounce.Despite one seeded bag, Kind Pain Management is somewhere I'll shop again*, since the overall quality was up there, especially for the relatively low pricing and, better, I felt welcomed like an old friend even though I was a first-time patient. I wrapped up my selections just as another customer walked through the door, greeting Leah like this was his Cheers and instantly detailing his life since the last time he was in the shop.
*We tried calling the shop today to follow up, but so far nobody has answered. Hopefully, it just means they are busy and not that KPM is one of the shops caught up in the raids earlier today.
Read more reviews from Westword's medical marijuana dispensary critic, William Breathes, in our Mile Highs and Lows blog, and keep up with all your Colorado marijuana news over at The Latest Word.
