While I have some “intellectual” lucubrations to emit, I’m traveling and need to save my brain till after I talk today. Anyway, I have some photos of our food-and-drug excursion in Portland last night.

Portland is a town that prides itself on quirkiness: people wear weird clothes, sport lots of tattoos, and ride bicycles that are either six feet tall or “recumbent” bikes that you ride while lying down. There are lots of people with goth clothing and blue hair, as well as white people engaging in the culturally appropriative sin of wearing dreadlocks. As Peter Boghossian says, “People in Portland try hard here to be different, but they wind up being different in the same way.”

Regardless, it’s a wonderful town, and I’ve always said that, like Berkeley and Cambridge, Massachusetts, it should be declared a “National Historical/Cultural Preserve” to prevent its Sixties-ish nature from being corrupted.

Last night Peter and I went out to eat. He’s a big sushi maven, and apparently can eat more sushi than any human alive. (He tells me that, unrestrained, he can eat 100 pieces or more!) I love sushi, too, though I can’t eat that much, so we repaired to one of Portland’s best restaurants of the genre, the Yama Sushi and Sake Bar.  We had a lobster roll followed by an enormous plate of sashimi. Here is the evidence:

It was quite a feast. Afterwards, Peter suggested that I might want to sample the wares of “Fifty Licks,” a very famous ice cream store in Portland. How could I refuse? The ice cream is homemade on the premises.

Here’s the ice cream menu for last evening. How could I possibly decide? Fortunately, they let me sample several flavors, but I really wanted to try them all:

Lavender mint chip! Grapefruit rose sorbet! (I didn’t try those.) I did try “G.O.A.T”, which is made with goat cheese, and was great. The “Thai Rice” flavor really did taste like rice, though I found it a bit bland. And I didn’t try “caramelized honey” 🙁

I wound up ordering two scoops (one is never enough): cardamom and blood-orange creamsicle. The first scoop was rich with the incomparable flavor of that Indian spice, which I love, and the creamsicle was a full-cream ice cream with swirls of blood-orange ice cream mixed in it.  My prize:

On the way home, Peter suggested that I might want to see a marijuana “dispensary,” since marijuana is now legal for both medical and recreational use in Oregon, and is sold widely. And, as I did in Colorado, I visited one. It’s a lot more laid back in Oregon, as they don’t demand that you show your driver’s license if you’re old like me, they don’t have cameras all over the place, they don’t allow only two people max into the shop at a time, and—they not only allowed me to take pictures, but encouraged it!

There are two counters in the shop: one for everyone (“recreational” drugs, which comprise only dried weed), and “medical” drugs, which include extracts, vapors, and the stronger stuff. But the recreational pot itself is very strong, as it’s now grown by people who can breed for higher tetrahydrocannabinol levels (THC; the stuff that gets you high), but also can breed for higher levels of cannabidol (CBD, which isn’t psychoactive but has side effects, like reducing nausea, that are useful for medical users). They sell a number of dope varieties, all labeled with their levels of THC and CBD. You can buy pot that has low THC but high CBD, or vice versa.

It’s all much stronger than it was when I was in college in the Sixties. It’s also more expensive, but you can still buy a fat joint, pre-rolled, for between $2.50 and $10.00.

We went to the highly rated Pakalolo Dispensary (the owner came from Maui, and I think it’s a Hawaiian word), and here are the varieties of pot and some of the joints and edibles on offer. Each big jar below contains a different variety of marijuana, all with the levels of THC and CBD labeled. Dope growing and selling is big business here, and yesterday the store did a brisk trade because it was April 20: 4/20 or 420 is the insider’s magic number for marijuana.

The vendors:

Joints (where did that word come from?). Notice the Obama Kush, presumably named after the President, who of course lived in Hawaii:

Peter decided to purchase a single joint, which they will roll for you on the spot (including inserting a filter!): this place is one of the few dispensaries in Portland that will roll a joint for you to order. Peter selected a very strong weed, although not the strongest, which had 26%+ THC. This one was called “Wedding Cake,” and smelled unlike any marijuana I’ve ever smelled: incredibly powerful, spicy, and even cake-y.  The owner said that it was highly reviewed by several drug-rating websites and magazines (see here, for example). Things have changed a lot since the Sixties!

They weigh out a gram of the stuff, which is enough for one joint (you buy it by the gram when you’re having a custom-made joint; the rolling is free):

The roller then put the weed into a plastic cup with points in it. I never saw one of these and was of course curious about its purpose:

It turns out that this device is the best way to crush the buds of marijuana into flaky weed to put into a joint. Doing it with your hands, which is the way everyone in my generation did it, is bad, said the owner, because you lose precious THC on your fingers, and don’t get an even grind. You simply close the drug-containing cylinder and rotate the top: the points help crush the buds without loss of THC:

The result. Imagine: there are companies that make devices to crush buds into dope ready to be smoked! I asked if the device removed seeds, and he said “There aren’t any seeds in there. And if you found one, you’d best save it and grow a plant with it!” Since this dope is a hybrid, though, I’m not sure if that would breed true for the product.

The owner was, of course, a real expert in rolling joints, and used a kind of translucent paper that I’ve never seen:

Tamping it down with a chopstick:

\

A filter was added (to the right of the joint), they topped up the joint with some extra stuff (no charge), and then put it into a protective tube:

They even labeled the tube! As I photographed it, the owner put his card in front as he said he’d appreciate the publicity for his store. So, if you’re in Portland and want to sample the wares, you’ll know where to go:

I didn’t smoke any because I’m lecturing today, and it was late by the time we got home. But I want to essay it before I leave Portland.

I suspect legalized possession might come to Illinois before long, and perhaps even stores like those in Portland. As Steve Pinker asserts, the world is getting morally better. If alcohol is legal, then surely marijuana should be too.