Medical marijuana dispensary review: The Grasshopper Alternative Medicine

Mixed in with the boutique specialty shops, craft beer houses and other restaurants in the area, Grasshopper Alternative Medicine blends in well with its East 17th Avenue neighbors. Aside from the ubiquitous green medical marijuana crosses, the clinic could pass for a coffee shop thanks to its wooden front porch and stacked-up patio chairs and tables.

The Grasshopper Alternative Medicine

Location: 1728 E. 17th Ave. Denver
Phone: 303-388-4677
Website: www.thegrasshopperdenver.com
Hours of operation: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed Sunday. (The shop will open at 10 a.m. starting in January.)
Owner/manager: Dave Kilroy
Mission statement: "We want to provide an all-around organic experience."
Opened: November 2009
Raw marijuana price range: $39-49
Other types of medicine: Edibles, hash, topical oils.
Handicap access: Yes.

I had just pulled back into town after a day on the hill and the combination of the pillow-soft leather armchair that I had flopped into and the early fading sunlight nearly put me to sleep. Catching myself nodding off, I got up and chugged a few glasses of water from the cooler while staring at the display rack of vapes and pipes from a local head shop along the back wall by the check-in booth.

There were a surprising number of women in the Grasshopper waiting room considering that the overwhelming number of patients I see in dispensaries are dudes. Two older, retirement-age women were in line ahead of me, while behind me, a woman about my age, wearing a dark business pantsuit, flipped through a magazine. The only other male patient I saw was on my way out. "I think that sums us up," owner Dave Kilroy said about the crowd I saw in the shop. "It's not your stereotypical dispensary buyer. It's not just you and me, man. It's everybody."

After about fifteen minutes of waiting, I was walked back through the security door by my budtender, a woman who enthusiastically greeted me and then led me into the dispensary. The bud room is a sky blue color and along one wall are large, gallon-sized clear jars filled with the shop's organic herb. Below the jars were various edibles from the shop's ganja-chef neighbors at Mile High Ice Cream and Nancy B's edibles. In the middle of the room were two large, white dividers separating desks and creating little sit-down consultation areas for patients. On large shelves behind my seat were dozens of hefty $19 clones.

On the counter was a small display with about sixteen different strains. I popped open a tester jar with a fluffy nug of Durban poison inside and instantly smelled up the partitioned-off area the two of us were sitting in before doing the same with nearly every other sample. I felt like an asshole taking as much time as I did, but nearly everything I smelled was better than the last jar -- a treat after the wet hay I found a few weeks ago. Kilroy said everything they grow is organic, going so far as to use things like cinnamon as a pesticide instead of more powerful treatments. He said the shop has built up an "arsenal" of strains and currently all of its medicine comes from their two grow spots.

The budtender had her suggestions for me, including a cut of Banana Kush for back pain. Other worthwhile strains were cuts of SNEZ, Berry White and a funky Silver Haze. The shop also had three levels of bubble hash, sold in pre-packaged grams. Eighths of herb at the shop sell for $49 before sales tax (except for a few "recession buster" strains that I spaced looking at), and with a gram of hash and a 10 percent first-timer discount, I headed home to take a nap about $75 lighter.

Page down to see what William took home this week.