Medical marijuana dispensary review: Top Shelf Alternatives in Boulder

Top Shelf Alternatives is a questionable name. The owners likely meant to suggest they carry top-shelf medicine compared to other shops in town, but depending on when you visit, it could mean the complete opposite.

Top Shelf Alternatives

1327 Spruce St Ste 300 (3rd Floor)
Boulder, CO 80302
303-459-5335

www.topshelfalternatives.com
Hours:11 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.
Owner/manager: Michelle Tucker
Opened: 2010
Raw marijuana prices for members: $35/eighth, not including tax.
Raw marijuana prices for non-members: $35/eighth, not including tax.
Online menu: Yes
Other types of medicine: Hash, tinctures, edibles, BHO.
Handicap accessible? Yes.

Last year, the shop was voted Best of Boulder by the Colorado Daily, and since that paper targets people who attend CU, the award gave me a good indication of what to expect: a shop where broke college students could pick up decent but cheap herb. It's located on Spruce Street at 13th, on the second floor of a commercial building just a few yards from the busy college bars of the Pearl Street Mall.

The generic smell of mixed herb hits as soon as you walk through the door from the street, and gets stronger as you walk up the stairs to the shop. I missed it, but the manager I spoke with after my visit said there was an elevator available, making the shop fully handicap accessible. The interior is painted in several colors, but the warm red walls grab most of your attention and energize the otherwise boring, doctor's office-esque space.

Nobody was behind the receptionist desk to the right as I walked in, but a woman behind a desk near the rear of the shop waved me back to her office, where she had me fill out a few forms before I could do my shopping. Paperwork was easy and I was finished before she had copied my red card and ID. Paperwork taken care of, I was led to the front of the dispensary and pointed in the direction of the bud bar, which takes up a small room next to the entrance. The woman gave me a quick rundown of what was on hand in the shop, including information about pricing and daily specials, before passing me off to the budtenders inside.

My first take confirmed my initial impression: strains and pricing scribbled on a white board behind the counter, slightly stoned employees behind the counter and jar after jar of leafy weed. There was an older guy ahead of me in line taking up every ounce of attention of three budtenders, who were crammed in behind the counter like ski valets trying to fit a tourist with rental gear.

The stock of herb was mostly kept in the glass case, though for some reason at least ten of the tall mason jars were popped open on the counter, airing out while the guy in front of me took his sweet-ass time. I would normally have waited, but with three budtenders behind the bar, I figured it wouldn't be that hard to be served. I was wrong.

After a minute of standing around staring at the case and waiting for one of the budtenders to even acknowledge me, I gave up and asked nobody in particular what was worth checking out. The reply was a vague gesture to the counter from one budtender to check out everything they had on the shelf. I was left to go through things like a bland Grapefruit, crunchy, an un-cheesy Cheese and a jar of shake being passed off as Sour Diesel.

Other reviews I have seen from customers have had nothing but nice things to say about the staff, so maybe the budtenders were having a hard day weighing out legal marijuana during my visit.

Top Shelf Alternatives also had two special strains, Blacktooth Grin and Lavender, at $15 per gram all the way up. I got a good look at both, and neither seemed to be of any better quality than the rest of the items on the shelf. If anything, cuts like the Golden Goat stood out more by having a strain-distinct smell. The budtender that pulled out the jar for me agreed that it wasn't their top in the shop, and he suggested I take home the Purple Sage instead.

The manager I spoke with on the phone said the shop just brought on a new master grower, and he has noticed improvement already over old crops -- the stuff he implied was on the shelf during my visit. He said the guy runs both hydro and coco-fiber setups and specializes in fruity, flavorful sativas like Golden Goat and Maui. The manager insisted that the most recent harvests of those strains have been fantastic.

As for their herb stock, nothing was awful, but little was impressive enough to make me want to take home more than two strains split over an eighth -- including the concentrates. But since the average price for an eighth of herb from an MMC in Boulder seems to still be about $50, based on my recent experience, I can see how this place got ranked near the top by simply keeping prices reasonable for the quality being offered.

Page down for this week's strain photos and reviews.