Chris Martin is the unofficial leader of the opposition effort. Forty years ago, his father transformed a large brick building that had once housed the world’s largest fruit-canning factory into a complex of shops, restaurants, and office space known as the Cannery. Martin is now the Cannery’s managing partner, and the complex is on the side of Joseph Conrad Square opposite the Green Cross’s proposed location. When I asked him why the dispensary would not make a suitable neighbor, he replied, “It’s kind of a dysfunctional block already. The two cafés on it are having fistfights trying to take customers from each other.”
For the last two years, Martin has been trying to make the Cannery and its surrounding neighborhood more appealing to local residents rather than just tourists. “We’re trying to make Fisherman’s Wharf more authentic and reflective of its commercial fishing roots,” he said. “That block should be pedestrian-friendly and compatible with the residents of this community. It’s not a moral issue. It’s a land use issue.”
When the Planning Commission was finally ready to consider the matter, however, Aaron Starr, a caseworker for the city’s Planning Department, told the six commissioners that the proposed location met all planning code requirements and that the department believed it should receive a permit. Another Planning Department employee, Zoning Administrator Lawrence Badiner, assessed the general situation facing the city’s dispensaries. The majority of them had planning code violations of one sort or another, he explained, and by August 2007 all of them would either have to comply with city code or face closure. “They’re all going to have to go through review processes like this one, and they’re probably all going to be controversial,” he explained. “A good number of them may just close down.”
In other words, this wasn’t just a matter of one more dispensary opening in the city. It was a test case. Under the new rules of San Francisco’s Medical Cannabis Act, was it actually possible for new clubs to open? Were some, perhaps most, of the established clubs in danger of being shut down as well?
When those who opposed the dispensary got their chance to speak, they each used the two minutes they were allotted to describe how a pot club would destroy life in the neighborhood as they had known it for decades. Parking on that block was already a huge problem, they explained. How could children laugh and play in Joseph Conrad Square when people were purchasing marijuana behind closed doors a couple hundred feet away? Why would any community-friendly business require so many surveillance cameras and security measures? And what about the numerous institutions within 1,000 feet of the Green Cross’s proposed location that qualified as “recreation centers”? The well-being and safety of the patrons of the Crab Openers Association Hall and the Norwegian Seamen’s Church, among others, they insisted, would be jeopardized by the intermittent presence of sickly potheads.
And perhaps most important, what would the tourists think? A medical cannabis dispensary might fit into a city like, say, Omaha, with its long tradition of hippies, beatniks, and countercultural rebellion. But San Francisco? When tourists think of Baghdad by the Bay, they think of the things Fisherman’s Wharf embodies—tacky T-shirts, overpriced crab served in dingy outdoor restaurants—not marijuana.
Ultimately, the Planning Commission agreed, denying Reed’s bid for a permit by a 4-2 vote. The next morning, the block where he was hoping to set up shop was already looking better. Parking was plentiful around the neighborhood. In Joseph Conrad Square, things were so quiet and peaceful that four figures slept on the tiny park’s benches. They were either drug-free children or homeless men; it was hard to tell, because they were swaddled in grimy blankets. The tourists, meanwhile, had a chance to enjoy the authentic San Francisco character of a bar called the Dirty Martini without the distraction of a nondescript cannabis dispensary. The neighborhood’s Norwegian seamen felt a little bit safer.
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