Selling Pot - 1969-70, San Diego Version

My brother had a pot business going in San Diego and invited me down to help him out in 1969. I was in Michigan and had just broken up with the bitch from hell so the move was easy to make. Hitched from Grand Rapids and made it in 4 days with one ride taking me from Iowa to 'Frisco. Rick had hooked up with some Navy guys that were stationed in SD and they were the basis of his biz. Love those swabbies. They would elect one or 2 guys from the ship to send into town for bud. That's where we came in. They would show up with, say, $100, and want 10 bags! No discount on quantity as I'm guessing those 10 bags went to 10 different guys. We also had a hook-up with the local Spanish gangbangers who supplied us with product. We were buying what we called mini-bricks. 35+ ounces of Mexican dirt reefer that had been put through a trash compactor until the brick was about 12 x 8 x 4 inches. We'd spread a newspaper over the dining room table and have a brick-busting party. That small brick would increase in size until it covered most of the table. Back then a 4-finger bag was called a lid and assumed to be around one oz. Prices on the mini-bricks hovered around $110-130, depending on who we went through. Even after pulling our stash we would have $300 worth of product from each brick. We could tell when the fleet was in town by how much bud we peddled. We had a big house on University Ave that we paid $125 a month for. We rolled in it for a year or so until I moved on. Good times.... BigSteve.

I used to get weed from a sailor in the 1990s.
He would bring back a couple kilos of Thai weed and sell them really cheap.
The silver buds were so good.

$75 zips of Mexican brick in florida 15 yrs ago. compressed so much it was small as a deck of cards.

Yep, can remember paying as little as $8 for a lid in '68, then $10, then $12. 4 finger baggies was about right or a Phillips pipe tobacco can packed. We'd get "Acid Weed" out of Houston that would put you on a 30 minute trip. Damn that stuff was evil.

I don't believe today's hype, "pot is much stronger now than it used to be". Mexican is still some of the best pot you can grow and smoke except for the occasional hermies.

Cool story, thanks for sharing.

Acid Weed? ..... i dunno what that could have been. DMT maybe but you would know the difference...

Bringing back memories. We used to travel down to SD area from the Bay Area in the early '70's to pick up those compressed bricks- usually paid $80 to $130. I remember using a hack saw to slice off a portion for "travel expenses" and what not. Don't do anything for free, especially risking my ass. After a while we didn't need to travel anymore because lots of people were bringing bricks to almost everywhere in CA. Damn those were some fun times. I haven't heard 4 fingered "lids" in a long time, most people don't even know what a lid is. "Times, there are a-changing".

Uncle Ben said:

Yep, can remember paying as little as $8 for a lid in '68, then $10, then $12. 4 finger baggies was about right or a Phillips pipe tobacco can packed. We'd get "Acid Weed" out of Houston that would put you on a 30 minute trip. Damn that stuff was evil.

I don't believe today's hype, "pot is much stronger now than it used to be". Mexican is still some of the best pot you can grow and smoke except for the occasional hermies.

Cool story, thanks for sharing.

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I'd like to meet the evil genius that came up with 'the grass is so much stronger now'.. That said, a simple Google new archive will show that in the early 70's when Legalization was close to becoming a reality (right before the inception of the DEA) the news was demanding that we had to do something about marijuana, because this isn't your fathers marijuana they were growing in the 30's anymore.. OLDEST trick in the play book..

I do sometimes miss the 80 dollar lbs and there is NOTHING like real imported Thai stick (heh), but then again, back then it was considered an imported crop, I'll take today's domestic market any day..

I lived in San Diego 75-76.....I remember the cops knocked on our door looking for someone that had been there earlier, but had left. They asked if they could look around (We had 15 kilo's in the closet) and when they went into the bathroom they lifted the toilet lid and saw we had attempted to flush about an ounce of weed (pot doesn't flush by-the-way)....for some reason they never checked the closet....and left.

I was walking down Newport Ave another time after scoring acid, hash, and weed from the Newport Hotel and they asked me if I saw any drug dealers....of course I said no....(I was wearing one of those denim coats with patch pockets bulging with dope)....they kept debating on if they should search me or not...but somehow the dope Gods were in my favor and they let me go.

One day my neighbor who sold me pot and Quaaludes showed up in a 1959 (I'm guessing) Corvette convertible and asked me if I wanted to go for a spin.....fuck yeah. We're cruising around Mission Beach when he managed to stall it in the middle of an intersection...this was about the time he told me he stole the car....and he couldn't get it started again (mechanical fuel injection). We jumped out of the car and took off in separate directions....leaving the car right there in the middle of a busy intersection.

Speaking of Quaaludes......I went down to Blacks Beach (it was a nude beach) to catch some sun and some sleep (worked the mid-night shift) and dropped a Quaalude....bad mistake. I woke up 9 hours later and it became quite apparent that I rolled onto my side very early into my slumber and right down the middle of me (yeah, I was naked) I was totally burned on one side, and white on the other. I looked like a fuckin' freak. I can tell you that climbing those cliffs whacked out on ludes is no easy task either. You should have seen how I looked as all that sunburn peeled.....one half looked fine...the other was something you'd see in a zombie movie.

One last story....was in the same neighborhood scoring a couple of lids from a dealer behind someone's house. About 5 minutes after we scored, we see our dealer running his ass off...with hand-cuffs on and two cops chasing him. We decided it was a good time to go home.

I loved San Diego back in the 70's......Blacks Beach, OB, MB, Broadway, Balboa Park....it was a great place.

If anyone knows or remembers a Gerry Garcia clone that sold pot at Newport Beach and his name was Dusty...tell him I said "HIGH".

As far as pot being much stronger now than before....keep in mind many of us smoked the leaves and an occasional bud. Keep in mind much of the "mexican" we had back then lived up to the bad reputation. Try selling that pot these days....at least around here....requires standing on a street corner in a very bad neighborhood.

Heh.. I hear ya..; Navajo reservation, probably 1975. I am hitchhiking through and the car I am in (full of drinking Indians, Sigmund who is driving has no license I just find out 'Hey, anyone have a license' he says as we are gettign pulled over)

They are liquored up (on the reservation, they LOCKED the booze in the glove box and said they had no key).. the cops line us up on the road (my buddy I just realize, is a full blown Indian and I guess they think he is one of them, and by the way, State Troopers can only really mess with ME on the reservation)..

I have a Bong (dry) in myy coat pocket, and a pocket STUFFED full of grass in my pants.. They search the car.. pissed they can't get into the glove box they start focusing on my coat where the bong is.. he walks over to me (pockets full of grass) ((I am the white guy, they would have to call in reservation police to deal with others)..

'YOu know what we just found in that car' the trooper asks me and only me.. the silent passenger up to this point.. I am damn near ready to confess.. you found my bong mother fucker.. ok ok. now what.. and instead I say 'I hope you found something nice'.. and the cop looks at me and says 'We found a marijuana seed.. do you know what we can do to you in this state for a marijauna seed"? (I doubt they did find one)..

Well, at this point I was sorry for pissing my pants, and I said something like 'Gosh, I am just hitch hiking, do y ou think it would be safe for me to hitch hike from here?"..

Instead they cut a deal where my buddy (who had a licensee) could drive the car away.. (we were in the middle of the fuckin desert in summer) ....

That same week, news made it of a guy who was doing 20 years in Wyoming for two joints..


Ha ha.. haven;t thought about that in years.. Pretty par for the course for them hitch hiking days,, I miss them, yet don't much care to do it every again.. ha ha

I remember "The Postman", outside of Winterland, SF selling anything you wanted before the concerts. They guy wore an old Postal uniform jacket and carried an old letter carriers type bag. Saw him there for several years. Anyone who went to Winterland probably ran into him.

Gawd those are some funny stories! Yous is crazy!

DMT, probably.

Thai sticks? Some of the most potent weed I've done. Rumor was they were soaked in opium.

Guess I'm getting old. Don't do that stuff any more. Don't even smoke much pot. Almost hit bottom in the late 60's doing too much psychedelics, especially some really strong LSD. It eventually catches up with you. In fact, got a friend my age that never grew out of the substance abuse thing. Hadn't seen him in years and visited. He looked awful, didn't recognize him - had few teeth, skinny, skin hanging like loose laundry, ruddy. Come to find out he got like a $300,000 inheritance when his parents died, moved to Austin, and blew it (and his health) on meth. Last time I saw him he was in the hospital after doing too many legal upper drinks, RedBull type....... almost got his kidneys and liver. He was drinking 12 a day.

Live and learn!

Thai-stick.......yeah, I'm pretty sure that the stuff was opiated. I got into a high-speed police chase (helicopters and all) smoking thai and drinking cheap wine. I had a brick of the stuff in the trunk of my 340 Plymouth Duster when I finally got pulled over and had wine bottles rolling around the back seat of the car. By the grace of the pot-Gods, they never checked my trunk and gave me a ticket for "drag racing" because the judge hates drag racing worse that 110 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.

He was right......I got 60 days in jail, $100 fine, and a year's revocation of my license.

I never thought Thai stix were opiated. Opium has a sweet perfumey taste and smell that I never saw on a stick. The sticks I remember were mostly golden in color and had a peppery taste. Got twisted once and tried to make my own Thai sticks from my sensimilla grow. I never got close to a real one. Heavy sigh.... BigSteve.

You got me wondering if Thai stick was indeed opiated as opitates now give me migraines. Here's a link to what thai-stick was all about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_stick

For what it is worth.. and it is just one guy's tale, it's a small story in a large world and means nothing overall.. .. I LITERALLY got my thai stick from a man who was from Thailand and received it in the mail from the source. He was in San Jose, .. We met by mutual acquaintance and couldn't understand too much of each other, except we both had a sense of respect and an 'honest deal'.

I acquired it very reasonably for some time.. Earlier to mid 70's, off and on for a few years as travel would allow. Sometimes I would drive down there (1000 miles) and the 'mail' wouldn't come as usual.. and I would be held up for a day or two worried.. paranoid.. *L*


Anyway, I know as a fact 'what I got' was 'just weed on a stick'.. Nothing more, nothing less.. very very good weed, that's what it was. And I also know other people ACCUSED me of it being opiated at the time.. they read it, heard it, whatever.l.

Very very good weed on a stick.. SOMETIMES sporting a seed.. damn if I would of known now, what I didn't know then..

Again, I wasn't the only source heh,, .. just one guy getting one consistent thing.. but in my world there was no embellishing being done to that I could figure.. (I've been wrong before.. ) It was always the 'same' and always 'the best'.

Certainly give any modern Mongo Purple Pussy Kush Mango Pinapple Whip Cream Funky Monkey shit a run for it's money.


(I oft want to know what ever happened to the guy.. I think about it sometimes.. Steady as a rock, then one day no more phone calls so I drive to his house, he is not there anymore.. not that unusual, but ZERO indication this was going to happen.

lilroach said:

You got me wondering if Thai stick was indeed opiated as opitates now give me migraines. Here's a link to what thai-stick was all about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_stick

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Dipped in hash oil? So that's why I had a 24 hour hangover after smoking that stuff.

From my understanding Thai Sticks were not opiated, it's a myth. Still I've never seen or tasted anything similar since the '70's. The Myth was that the opiated sticks were called "Buddha Sticks". We used to get oz's of sticks for about $160+. Usually got between 13 to 20 sticks to an oz. Some of the best bud I've ever smoked, I loved the "hashy" taste.