I realized Friend and I were having a mild bout of culture shock when the scary looking walled and gated concrete mass that we deduced was a mental hospital/prison turned out to be the local high school. (I hate it when my Caucasian suburban life rears its ugly head.) Some cautious exploring showed us that everything was shut up tight with not a soul in sight (save our trusty soccer friends) and I couldn’t help but hum the chords of Gangsta’s Paradise as we drove up and down the streets of barred and graffiti bodegas. While some of the graffiti was true art (something I genuinely enjoy seeing) most of it was just ghetto tags laying claims to turf, calling out insults, and all sorts of other things I couldn’t understand cause I didn’t speak “gang”.
A call from our host (we’ll just call him Host from here on out) told us it was safe to come on over he was up. We park, gathered all of our belongings and approached a home that, were it a woman, would have been an aged beauty queen. You could see that the bones of the place once held great beauty but that her glory days had passed. We garnered a few strange glances from neighbors as we walked up the stairs, past unlevel steps, overgrown plants, soaked couches, stray cats and overflowing cigarette trays into the home. Inside it was more of the same as the outside…a heady mix of declining beauty and the unusual. My eyes scanned the surfaces taking in each piece and determined the overall décor message was “we care a lot about certain things, and almost nothing at all for everything else….you’re welcome to be here but don’t expect too much.”
Host was a very nice guy though you could see he had a Bohemian air about him…he was light on details, unfamiliar with the concept of plans, and talkative about the small stuff. In short, very warm and easy to hang with but after 2 days in his house I couldn’t say that I actually know anything about him other than what I could deduce from the contents of his home. We had a small bit of chit chat about the area (ohhh high school you say? Hmmm) and took note of the small things like Friend, who was dressed head to toe in bright red, might want to change her clothes since this was a crypts (blue) neighborhood. That there was a roommate lurking about but he should be up so don’t worry about noise. His dogs were adorable and endearing so tummy rubs and lovin’ all around, good dogs set me at ease instantly. And then he disappeared and returned with a blow torch. Just when you started to get comfortable. I eye Friend with the, “uhhh I’m not doing crack and neither are you right?!” look on my face. This is a weekend getaway for us, but when it comes to the drugs portion I’m just along as the general observer, light participation if I want and protector of any truly bad shit that Friend may stumble into. The appearance of the blow torch caused my bad-shit-o-meter to twitch.
Clearly Host is an expert in the world of weed consumption and we are about to get school.
What happens next is a lesson in smoking hashish (or hash). The sticky resin is placed in the bowl of a bong, but this bowl has many small holes rather than one larger hole. Then, using the blow torch, a metal rod is heated to red hot and pressed into the bowl causing the hash to burn and from there it’s like a normal bong hit. A massively strong bong hit. Friend appears to be having fun. Yay Friend!
After that interesting lesson its time for Host to leave for work and we are just going to kick it until the start of the Cannabis festival in a few hours. Another roommate shows up (though we had no idea there was another roommate so that was interesting) and we say hello and proceed on our way…off to the main reason we came to LA – Cannabis Cup!
To be continued…
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