Last week a legal pot shop opened near where I live, the first of its kind in the area, so I visited it yesterday and bought some pot, legally.

Outside the front door stood a large young bald man who asked me for identification. This large old bald man gave him my driver’s license which he duly scanned with an iPad, so now I’m included in some pot smoker’s database kept by the state, even though I don’t smoke pot.

You could smell pot outside the store, and the young bald door checker was certainly high. There is a second set of opaque glass doors that you have to pass through to reach the inside, which gives you the feeling that you’re doing something illicit. There was an older security man standing inside against a wall; he gave me a hard look but didn’t say anything

This shop is brand new and completely unadorned, just a plain floor and walls with glass cases holding the merchandise. I have no idea what any of the new stuff is (various “pens” and other things); I was there to buy flower.

A friendly young man (totally stoned) came over and asked me what I was looking for and I said I wanted the lowest THC flower they had in stock. I explained that I hadn’t smoked weed for 30 (!) years and was not prepared for the various nuclear varieties that have been developed during that time. (Louis CK has a great bit about this which I’d find and link to but I can’t be bothered).

He said that the lowest THC flower they had in stock was “Cinderella 99 HV” which is grown by High Falls Canna located in High Falls, NY (Ulster county). All the products sold in New York state pot shops must be produced in New York state, which is a good thing I suppose (vertical integration of sorts).

As you can see from the packaging above, it’s an eighth of an ounce (3.5g) with 15.33% THC (153.3mg of THC per gram) and 1.3% CBD. I don’t know what the 99 HV part of the name means. HV means “Hudson Valley,” maybe? 99 is the 99th variation on the strain? [Update: friendly potheads have written in to inform me that the strain is named Cinderella 99, that is the full name, so “HV” must stand for Hudson Valley … this is sun-grown weed.]

It cost $50 plus 9% state excise tax ($4.50) and 4% local excise tax ($2), and then they rounded it up to $57 total since they didn’t have any coin change, which I didn’t notice at the time. This is a cash-only operation. The cashier was also very friendly and very stoned. Everyone I encountered was high as a kite except for, I assume, the security man who gave me a hard look.

Here is the back of the package below which instructs one to enjoy the product in your favorite smoking device. This made me laugh and I wasn’t even stoned yet.

I walked out of the shop and went on my merry way. The bag has a zip lock seal within, after tearing off the top, and even before you open it, you are hit with that strong pot smell which some people find unpleasant, but I can tolerate it. This is what a bud looks like:

I weighed the contents on a kitchen scale which rounded up to 4 grams, so there was definitely 3.5 grams of flower within. My state-sanctioned dealer did not shortchange me.

My “favorite smoking device” is what we called a “bat” thirty years ago, also known as a one-hitter. This is the one I use:

I had one puff of Cinderella 99 HV using this device and regret to say that I didn’t keep track of the amount of time that elapsed before I was hit with the sensation of being stoned, but I can say that it was a strong sensation when it arrived and was probably within three to five minutes. I felt flush and had some odd physical sensations that weren’t entirely pleasant, but they passed quickly. Then I was high, which means I was having unusual thoughts and bizarre ideas, which I enjoyed. I also experienced time distortion, but it wasn’t too bad.

I watched some of the old Hitchcock movie, The Trouble With Harry, and was amused by all the bawdiness, the constant sexual double entendres … Hitchcock really was a dirty-minded old bastard (and great filmmaker).

I also had one deep insight that I remember (I had many other deep thoughts which I can’t remember), which is that pot smoking ideally is a shared experience, not something you do alone. Not that there’s anything wrong with being alone with your own stoned thoughts, but ideally you are sharing them with another person (or people) who are similarly stoned. This seemed deep at the time at least. :-)

The high was pretty intense for me and there’s no way that I would smoke pot regularly, or even irregularly. It will take me many, many years to finish this 3.5g of flower, which cost $57 including tax.