SPARC: The Apple Store of Marijuana Shops!

SPARC: The Apple Store of Marijuana Shops

via Fast Company by Ariel Schwartz on 9/10/10

Like your local Mac market, SPARC is slick, modern, and offers specialized instruction--in acupressure and self-healing, Ayurvedic cooking, art therapy, and calligraphy.

Not into the stoner aesthetic but still want your pot straight from the local dispensary? The San Francisco Patient and Resource Center (SPARC) has you covered. This recently opened San Francisco dispensary combines the sleekness of an Apple store with the quality strains of marijuana that Californians have come to expect from the corner pot shop (or so we hear).

The nonprofit is an outgrowth of the Cannabis Collective, an organization that provides reasonably priced marijuana to low-income patients with chronic disease. As such, SPARC offers pot at a deep discount compared to other dispensaries--$28 for an eighth of the daily special, and $35 an eighth for many other strains.

SFist reports that SPARC emblazons its menu and price guide on LCD screens, offers pot in glass apothecary jars with custom labels, and shows off its wares in wood and glass cases. From the outside, SPARC might even be mistaken for an art gallery. And like your local Apple store, SPARC offers classes, including acupressure and self-healing, Ayurvedic cooking, art therapy, and calligraphy.

It's the kind of place that could act as a blueprint for other dispensaries if marijuana ever becomes fully legalized--modern, sterile, and comfortable for the business set.