My regular dispensary was closed, so it was time to diversify, to second
source.

Using weedmaps, I found a place <7mi from home, albeit in santa ana.
Mr GPS was useful as ever.

It was in a similarly obscure single story industrial / mall complex.
There was a sign though, and I saw someone going to his car with an
opaque bag and asked him... giving only 2 letters of the 4 letter name
he directed me to the door.

This was a larger place, the lobby could have held my regular dispensary.
There was a guard, which there isn't in Irvine. Just the receptionist, "Tyler Durden" and the sales associate. At this new place they took credit cards,
which Irvine doesn't. You pass the card and driver's license into a
banker's sliding drawer, faced with a 2-way mirror. Sales desk samples are in clear-topped
containers with vent holes for smelling. But you get your buds via the
banker's drawer and mirror. They come in a bag labelled prescription Rx, in
plastic jars with annoying tops. Recently Irvine has started using plastic
jars too; once I got glass jars, then polythene baggies, recently rigid jars.

I write in part because this is a unique part of american history. I wonder
if there are diaries of speakeasy visitors.

In Irvine, you go to a very obscure skinny office in an industrial park,
authenticate, and go into a small locked room with clear shelves so you
can see all the material (actual stock) on the bottom, mid, and top shelf.
Typically top shelf material is worth it.

The botanical all have funky "strain" names, which are apparently not local or random, as they can be found on international web sites. Anyway, evolution
and artificial selection at its finest. Absolute finest.

The Santa ana dispensary had a posted and verbally reinforced policy of no cell
phones, pagers, or cameras. Irvine is not that paranoid. And if you could use
one of the gizmos, you could readily disguise it or substitute a stealthier gizmo.

I may be legal these days, but the opsec is still there.