LOS ANGELES — When the Artist Tree Studio Dispensary Lounge opened its doors on April 20, on the two floors above its West Hollywood dispensary, it became — for the next few months, at least — the only legal cannabis consumption lounge in the Los Angeles area to be up and running. (The Original Cannabis Cafe, which was open pre-pandemic at the opposite end of WeHo, is currently closed, and the City of Los Angeles has not issued any consumption-lounge licenses to date.)
To find out what it's like to get high in public and surrounded by total strangers these days, I booked a table, grabbed my best blazing buddy, Chip, and set off to Santa Monica Boulevard. It turned out to be buzz-inducing balm for the soul, and the kind of place where both the seasoned social smoker and the novice cannathusiast will feel at ease.
In no time at all, we were cackling like schoolkids on the playground of the mind, back-and-forthing lines from those Progressive Insurance commercials about turning into your parents.
