Cannabis might not be the cure for my stomach condition, but it sure helps.
This week I stopped by Cure Colorado Dispensary to see if they had anything on the shelf to sooth what ails me.
Cure Colorado Dispensary
6200 East Yale Avenue Denver, CO 80222 720.296.2857 www.curecolorado.com
Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays. Other types of medicine: Hash, BHO, edibles, tinctures, medicated drinks. Online Menu: Yes. Handicap-accessible? Yes.
The shop is in a very discreet location, on the corner of a tiny strip center tucked back in a wooded parking lot along Yale Avenue. The center shares the building with an insurance company, whose sign on the marquee out front is easier to spot than the low-key one Cure has put up below it.
I was let in the door by a tall, skinny dude with an Afro pick stuck in his 'do and a big smile on his face. He led me over to the receptionist desk, where I handed my paperwork to a Samoan-looking dude with his long hair pulled up on top of his head into a huge, curly poof. His accent made it seem like he's spent more time on a beach than a mile high on the cusp of the Midwest. A budtender I spoke with later told me the dude was their grower and he is, in fact, from Hawaii.
The reception room isn't much larger than the desk sitting in the center of the space, so I took a seat in a chair next to it so I wouldn't hover over the dude as he was working. The three of us shot the shit for a minute while my info was loaded into their computer, making it feel more like visiting friends than a clinical, sterile medical setting. After the owner copied my paperwork and ID, I was sent back to the bud bar. "Cousin," as the grower called him, walked me back and joined a woman with a badass tattoo on her leg to help me make my selections.
The bud bar is a somewhat unique setup -- a chest-high, long, U-shaped center counter with openings at the end near a wall where all of the shop's goods are shelved. Herb is kept in massive and heavy multi-gallon glass apothecary jars scattered at different levels along the shelves and mixed in with cannabis-related products, from icewater-extracted hash to blunt wraps and edibles. The budtenders will pull down any jar you want to see and plop it right in front of your face on the counter.
But due to bad timing, the shelves during my visit looked nothing like they do in the picture to the left. Unfortunately, Cure was down to just three jars filled with their in-house strains -- Jack Flash, OGP and FLO -- all on the top shelf. The lower-priced strains on the bottom shelf were all purchased from other shops, so I didn't really pay them too much attention other than peeking at the scraggly, outdoor Super Silver Haze and catching a whiff of the not-so-hazy hay. The budtender I spoke with on Thursday of this week told me the center had been running low and would be back up with full stock in a week or so, though. Herb is capped at $30 an eighth or $200 an ounce for top-shelf, and the lower-shelf stuff was going for $25 an eighth and $175 an ounce.
Appropriately, the shop specializes in Hawaiian-based strains like Maui, Banana and OGP, or Oahu-Grown Pakalolo, with its pineapple-fruity smell and bright-orange pistils (pakalolo is Hawaiian for crazy weed). Like a lot of the state's flora, cannabis isn't native to Hawaii. By most accounts, ganja made its way there in the early 1970s, brought by mainlanders moving to catch the island vibe of surf, sun and Aloha. In the time since, though, Hawaiians have become known for fruity, organically produced sativa-dominant strains.
The Flo ended up beating out the Jack Flash for the other top-shelf bud I brought home, mostly because the Jack lacked the unique candy-haziness it should have had. Otherwise, the buds weren't bad, but I like my buds to stink properly.
As for hash, Cure carried a few different strain-specific types ranging from $10 on the low end for mixed blond hash to $20 for grams of "full melt" (more on that later). No BHO, though the dispensary normally stocks Moon Rock-brand waxes for $25 a gram. The edibles selection was decent, though hard to pick out among all the other paraphernalia, including blunt wraps and papers mixed in on the shelves. Cure does carry the new CBD-rich Cheeba Chews for $10 a chew and had a freezer full of ice cream from Dixie Chills.
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The shop also sells clones of its strains, including the OGP, and has a room set aside with a few on a folding table under a grow light to choose from. I didn't get a super-close look at anything, but there were no obvious signs of nastiness like webs or spots on the fan leaves.
The flowers Cure had in its garden were clean, and the $200/ounce cutoff on everything makes it easy on the wallet as well. I want to say the shop was a solid find -- but it's hard to really tell what CCD can do when the selection was down as low as it was. It's at least worth another visit once the shelves are stocked.
Page down for medical cannabis photos and reviews. OGP: $30/eighth or $200/ounce It might be more accurately called Mainland-Grown Oahu Pakalolo or M'gop for short. Either way, this strain has an island vibe to it, with a breezy, undeniable fruit-punch aroma mixed with a skunky, almost hazy base when split open. The buds were all very dense and look like they were trimmed in a machine with such close cropping of the sugar leaves and shaved appearance of the nug. The buds scoped clean with no nasties inside to surprise me. Nothing outstanding about the taste, with a light mixture of sugary sweetness and skunk fart. Medicinally, this energy-boosting sativa hit me square in the middle of the forehead after the first two tokes from a bowl, waking me up like a cup of coffee and getting the stomach gears grinding away. Flo: $30/eighth or $200/ounce As much as I didn't want to repeat strains two weeks in a row, the Flo from Cure was too good to pass up compared to what was left after my M'gop OGP choice. Like last week, the chunky, amber-trichome-covered calxyes and menthol-like Kush smell got me at hello -- especially having been able to stick my entire face in the stock jar on Cure's shelves. Very pretty yellowish-tan appearance to the nug overall, with rust-red pistils finding space here and there to pop to the surface.Very bubbly, round calyx development without feeling too dense. Appearance-wise, this Flo was on the money. Taste was lagging behind, though, and I lost the unique Flo flavor of sweet, fresh-turned soil mixed with the coolness of a eucalyptus leaf. For $30 an eighth, there's no complaining here, though. The buds burned clean down to a white ash and were potent enough to help curb morning sickness and the anxiety that can come with it for me. Durban Poison Hash: $20/gram Continuing with my solvent-less concentrate kick of late, I snagged a gram of the Durban Poison full-melt hash last minute as an afterthought. I didn't really check out the hash up close, just chose the highest grade and a strain name I often enjoy smoking. But when I got home, I was a little disappointed in myself for not paying better attention. Not that the crumbly, pliable dark chunks I smoked were bad; they had a very rich, concentrated Durban flavor and burned with a thick, powerful smoke. But the term "full melt" shouldn't be used to describe this consistency of hash, because it didn't melt at all. Instead, it sizzled and browned and burned well, but it didn't melt down into the bowl, which is how full-melt-grade hash gets its name. Overall pretty standard, and considering the quality of the hash, it should be selling for about $5 less per gram.
Read more dispensary reviews from William Breathes in our medical cannabis blog, Mile Highs and Lows, and keep up with all your marijuana news over at The Latest Word.
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