Now this is my kind of bar

wellfleation · 05-17-2011, 06:38 PM

Toke up in Portland, Ore. My kind of bar if. . .

everyone wasn't sick with AIDS and other ailments. So many possibilities though. I see what the future can be.

Parallax · 05-17-2011, 07:30 PM

what the fuck kind of news website would have me register and pay fees to read it?

Xil · 05-17-2011, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parallax

what the fuck kind of news website would have me register and pay fees to read it?

its not making me pay to read it...maybe its a regional thing

Cerpin Taxt · 05-17-2011, 07:38 PM

There's a little 'x' at the bottom right of the pop-up that comes up once you open the page

Flamingnun · 05-17-2011, 11:19 PM

Fixed.

Xil · 05-18-2011, 12:39 AM

apple stores make me ill

The Don · 05-18-2011, 12:59 AM

Why?

I like them. Great service, cool products.

For the price you pay, the service has better be good.

wellfleation · 05-18-2011, 04:03 AM

I don't know what the problem is, the paper is pay for read but you do not have to pay to read this. I'm not registered and it shows fine for me.

Quote:

PORTLAND, Ore - Lights dim. A white-haired man of perhaps 50 approaches the stage. He's wearing a blue suit jacket, open-neck shirt, black leather loafers and sunglasses, indoors, at night. He's got the Sinatra panache down.

Then, the voice, a rich baritone, sweeps over the audience of a couple dozen glazed and grinning pot smokers.
More Times Breaking News

"Day and night, night and daaaaay," he croons the Sinatra standard into a mic in his right hand. "Only you beneath the moon or under the sun, whether near to me or far, it's no matter darling where you are.

"Dum dum, dum dum de-doo-dee-dum."

The audience yelps and coos in appreciation.

This is karaoke night at Portland's Cannabis Cafe, a combination of the bar from Cheers and a street-side pot palace in Amsterdam. It is perfectly legal in this smoky room for medical marijuana patients to burn, eat, rub, filter and roll marijuana.

There are cancer patients, AIDS patients and sufferers of smashed vertebrae and pinched nerves. There are also those who find refuge under Oregon's "severe pain" allowance - tell a marijuana-friendly doctor you've got pain, and you've pretty much got weed.

Since the medical marijuana law's passage in 1998, nearly 40,000 patients have gotten access.

The pot in the cafe is brought in by patients or donated by growers. Money doesn't change hands unless it's to buy a sandwich or coffee. The price of admission: a $20 monthly charge and a $5 door fee.

The cafe has farmer's markets of donated weed-laden goodies, a weekly comedy show and even an employees' night. On Thursdays, it's karaoke. An ill-lit stage catches an occasional cloud of puffy white smoke blown from a pipe or a bong or a vaporizer.

The Sinatra crooner, unlike many tonight, has got the goods.

The rest of the evening will be spent alternatively cringing and clapping at the cluster of medical marijuana users who make it their business to be at the cafe when karaoke kicks off at 7 p.m.

From table to table, the stories pour out of them. Most declined to give their names to The Associated Press.

Teresa Sheffer was hit by a train while driving in Alto, Mich. It broke every major bone on her right side and left her with damage to her spine. Now her pain sometimes gets so severe it forces her to huddle in her house, alone.

But sitting six paces from the stage with a pipe in front of her and a thick pinch of locally grown pot packed into her friend's bong, she's relaxed. If there is a point to the Cannabis Cafe, it is to give people who smoke pot a place to do it together.

"It's a family here," Sheffer said. "You see other people with the same problems, but it's not a hospital. It's a reason to get out of the house so you're not just a hermit in the dark with pain pills."

To Sheffer, smoking marijuana softens the dull aches and sharp pangs of pain she still experiences. Others enduring chemotherapy say it alleviates their nausea. Marijuana at the Cannabis Cafe is a sleep aid, an appetite stimulator and a headache reliever.

Toward the back of the cafe on a couch dug into a little nook under a billiard lamp, Joe Winn, 30, leans into a bong, takes a giant drag, holds it and exhales. He comes here regularly, is in fact a volunteer for the place, and likes the crush of activity when people stream in.

Three feet away, a man who would only be identified as "Redeye" hauls out a 6-foot plastic bong he nicknamed "The Staleblazer," a play on Portland's NBA team and the stale smoke that accumulates from the water chamber to mouthpiece.

A few minutes later, he's up on stage, doing a muddled rendition of Sublime's "Two Joints." His thick, red dreadlocks bounce off his back, giving the impression of a Rastafarian leprechaun doll being shaken by a child.

But he, like everyone who performs, gets the crowd's "wooo!" of approval.

The cafe doesn't need any special license to operate. The impetus for starting the cafe was President Barack Obama's 2009 pledge to soften the federal stance on medical marijuana.

A year ago, owner Madeline Martinez brought in a pair of local police officers to tour the cafe as a sign that the place was more than a marijuana speakeasy. She said they were polite.

The place isn't turning a profit yet. Martinez thinks that within a few years, Oregon will legalize a drug that already enjoys near-legal status and that's when the real money will roll in.

Think of it, she says: Movie theaters, bars, hotels and, maybe, a taxi service, all catering to marijuana smokers.

But for now, it's all donated weed and free music and a prominent budget deficit for the state of Oregon - $3.5 billion in all - that Martinez insists could be ameliorated by the sale and taxation of cannabis.

The mindset at the cafe is a blend of avid horticulture, sharing-is-caring communalism and good old-fashioned West Coast anti-authoritarianism.

It is also, however, just a karaoke club in the Pacific Northwest. Replace the bongs and pipes with martini stems and Tom Collins glasses and it would be nearly indistinguishable from any other bar.

"Coming up on stage, we've got our own Supremes. Come on up here ladies," an emcee laughs into the microphone. A minute later, he is replaced on stage by three women their 50s, each in a feather boa, singing, with moderate difficulty but not much concern, 1964's "Baby Love."

Melody Reid, one of the few in the cafe who chose not to sing, says she would frequent bars in her younger days before thyroid cancer and a gastric pacemaker, and that she grew tired of the constant pick-up attempts by stumbling drunks.

"I've been to bars, had them just crawling all over you," she says with a laugh, between pulls off a petite green pipe. "This is much more relaxed.

"And stoners," she says, "are way better karaoke singers than drinkers anyway."

Mescalito · 05-18-2011, 04:43 AM

They are healthist.. maybe I should do my back in.. so I can get in.

M

adventure · 05-18-2011, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xil

apple stores make me ill

I think its an amazing business model, where do you see knowledge staff and attention to detail besides an apple store. This is how they retain customers. Yea for Stevey Jobs! and now back to Pot

stonerkid · 05-18-2011, 11:46 AM

lol maybe you gotta be in portland! i could see the page fine! and how come i never knew about this!!?

fenderbender · 05-18-2011, 03:52 PM

^you dont meet the minimum pube requirements sry

05-17-2011, 06:38 PM	#1 (permalink)
wellfleation Old School Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Methuen, MASSHOLE Posts: 3,854 Thanks: 196 Thanked 601 Times in 427 Posts	Now this is my kind of bar Toke up in Portland, Ore. My kind of bar if. . . everyone wasn't sick with AIDS and other ailments. So many possibilities though. I see what the future can be. __________________ FIGHTPOWER

05-17-2011, 07:30 PM	#2 (permalink)
Parallax Admiral Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 4,739 Thanks: 160 Thanked 590 Times in 318 Posts	what the fuck kind of news website would have me register and pay fees to read it? __________________ FUCK THE ROBOTS!!! NUKE THE WHALES!!!

05-17-2011, 07:38 PM	#4 (permalink)
Cerpin Taxt Yahookan Zealot Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Canada Posts: 7,213 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 843 Thanked 1,919 Times in 1,011 Posts	There's a little 'x' at the bottom right of the pop-up that comes up once you open the page __________________ Step Back. Evaluate. Recognize. "All memory is really a form of regurgitation of undigested experience." -Alan Watts

05-17-2011, 11:19 PM	#5 (permalink)
Flamingnun Shpadoinkle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: roflmao Posts: 17,491 Thanks: 1,046 Thanked 2,633 Times in 1,185 Posts	Fixed. __________________

05-18-2011, 12:39 AM	#6 (permalink)
Xil OD'ing on sobriety Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Mizzura Posts: 3,334 Blog Entries: 1 Thanks: 1,036 Thanked 1,158 Times in 717 Posts	apple stores make me ill __________________ "we'll show these fascists what a couple of hillbillies can do"

05-18-2011, 12:59 AM	#7 (permalink)
The Don You follow? Join Date: Sep 2001 Posts: 11,151 Thanks: 544 Thanked 781 Times in 426 Posts	Why? I like them. Great service, cool products. For the price you pay, the service has better be good. __________________ I am genuienly sad about my thanks:post ratio

05-18-2011, 04:43 AM	#9 (permalink)
Mescalito Oneironaut Join Date: Aug 2001 Posts: 6,295 Thanks: 868 Thanked 910 Times in 447 Posts	They are healthist.. maybe I should do my back in.. so I can get in. M

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