In the world of trendy hotel one-upmanship, the Standard is a major player. If it wasn’t the first to embrace rooftop pool parties, human zoo animals and oversized in-room rubber feet, it’s certainly become the destination we identify with jumpstarting the widespread rise of such fashionable elements.
Ok, maybe giant feet furniture never totally caught on, but the hotel’s plans to put a boutique for cannabis edibles on its ground floor does make perfect sense for the times. Because in exactly 41 days, cannabis finally turns legal in California. Not that we’re counting.
And soon after, Lord Jones, makers of rather elegant-looking cannabis and CBD confections, and the packaging that surrounds it, will open a retail store at the Standard Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard.
Both hotel guests and the public will be welcome to shop here, raising the potential that obtaining a couple of edibles on your way to a friend’s room will be easier than filling a bucket of ice.
The partnership is already reaching Bill Maher-Woody Harrelson heights, apparently, with press materials promising plans for “an exclusive line of co-branded THC and hemp derived CBD products that will eventually be available to guests at all Standard hotels.”
That’s all hotels.
That means the two brands are diving into the brave new world of legalization together, with eyes on legal weed spreading far beyond the Golden State. Which is thinking we like to see, due to a pressing feeling that people in Kansas might not be smoking enough weed.
However, one caveat to the news does say the opening “is currently subject to approval from regulatory authorities in California.”
Uh-oh. Those guys sound a little like NARCs.
And that does bring up the rather unprecedented playing field that Californian tokers new and old find now themselves on. As the emergent chronic industry is ever more one of compliance, with ganjapreneurs attempting to toe a thin line between what’s legal on both state and federal levels.
In other words, this is a bad time if you’re a dipshit pushing 500-mg edibles that look like Fun Dip.
But if you’ve paid any attention to the state’s marijuana product marketers over the past year, you’ve no doubt noticed that weed isn’t really being marketed to traditional stoners anymore.
Because they’ve already been smoking and eating and anointing themselves with Purple Urkel terpenes since 2003, around the time the decriminalized floodgates truly burst open for medical herb.
And in order to break into the new and constantly regenerating market of the cannabis-curious, these days the buzzwords are all low-dose, responsible use, wellness and cannabis dinner parties. As opposed to bong-tokes, dabs, some brownie your friend’s friend made and spacing one’s face before wondering how to get home from the Dead show.
Today, it’s all about marijuana finding its high place at bridal showers and tech summits and as an energizing go-to between yoga class and the late morning realignment of your personal brand to broadcast your essence to the universe.
A cannabis boutique placed inside a boutique hotel fits nicely into this more sanitized version of everyone getting high. So hopefully the Standard gets to live the dream of being the first, becoming an inevitable part of the zeitgeist.
And a welcome one. Because it’s sort of like putting a song into the air. An enhancement to our environment. Another positive molecule circulating through this tough and befouled urban sphere. And one less bar.
A highly-visible, mainstream brand-aligned cannabis business on our streets is yet another important shot in making cannabis accessible and normalizing its open enjoyment.
And should the trend continue positively (meaning some bro doesn’t mix too many natural meds with his vodka-and-Red Bull before missing a cannonball to the pool from his balcony), it won’t be long before cannabis finds greater acceptance in the public arena, and an ensuing rush of social venues adapting to its intake and popularity.
Meaning, hopefully it won’t be long now before you’re getting baked at Coffee Bean and the AMC.
