Medical marijuana dispensary review: AllGreens on Kalamath step up from ex-tenants

AllGreens is a new shop, but it's situated in one of Denver's oldest locations for medical marijuana dispensary -- which could be both a good thing and a bad thing. One one hand, the spot on the corner of Kalamath and Sixth Avenue is highly visible. On the other, it's been associated with some pretty low-grade herb thanks to the former owners, Cannabis Medical Technology.

AllGreens

762 Kalamath Street
303-658-0107
www.myallgreens.com

Owner: "Sean" (declined to give last name).
Hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday, closed Sunday.
Online menu: Yes.
Other types of medicine: Hash, edibles.
Handicap accessible? Yes.

I never made it in to Cannabis Medical, even with the shop's claim of being the first dispensary in Mile High. I never heard great things about the weed to begin with, and I couldn't take the increasingly obnoxious exterior latex graphics of dragons and marijuana leaves. The place always seemed like there was very little medical about it.

I wasn't alone in that sentiment. Westword's initial medical marijuana critic (he wrote temporarily before I was hired) was completely sketched out by the place. At the time, it was operating out of the back room of a printing shop also run by the previous owners, and staffers wouldn't allow him back into the dispensary unless he signed over his caregiver rights. Shit like that gets around, and you get a reputation pretty quick.

But that was then, this is now -- and now is AllGreens. Owner and grower Sean, who didn't give his last name or too much detail about the new shop, reveals that he was formerly associated with another dispensary due to the shotgun marriages of warehouses and dispensaries. AllGreens is his way of breaking out of that mold and offering patients smaller-batch herb, he says.

I'm sure by the time some of you make it in to AllGreens, the decor will have changed -- though that also depends on the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division okaying any structural changes to the dispensary. Currently, the entrance looks as if it leads to the print shop. I hit the buzzer, and about a minute later, my budtender (whom I later realized was also the owner) came and let me in the door.

Sean says he hopes to change the layout so people can enter from the Kalamath side of the building instead of through the parking lot off Sixth. The difference would mean easier handicap access for patients and a more lounge-like feeling, he says. For now, however, it's an undecorated shop with a few thrown-together glass countertops making up the bud-bar area. The shop has a lot of room, but for now, it's mostly unused, with a few folding chairs and so on taking up space.

Bud is separated by general stock and connoisseur ganja. Sean explained that all of the herb is grown the same, but the general stock tends to be buds from the middle and lower parts of the plants and receives a two-week cure and machine trim. In contrast, the connoisseur strains have a two-month cure and are trimmed by hand. The quality difference was clear in a lot of the strains, including the Sweet Tooth and Kong.

Sean was nice, explaining a lot about the strains as we went through them and pointing out qualities he liked both as a grower and as a puffer. Selection wasn't huge, so within a few minutes I had made my way through the tangerine-sweet top-shelf Sweet Tooth and Agent Orange, fuzzy-crystalled Cherynobyl, pungent Roadkill and Diesel-like Kong -- all of which were done in-house. AllGreens also had some smaller buds of Cherry Cola from Urban Cannabis, one of the few shops Sean says he'll trade herb with.

Sean told me later that his stock is grown in a coco mix using Canna and Advanced Nutrients, with a maximum of four plants per light and some plants getting their own. The AllGreens grow doesn't ever have more than 100 plants in flower, he says, nor do growers do things on a sea-of-green method. Still, he predicts he'll be able to keep up with demand and keep his prices between $30 and $40, on average, for an eighth, tax included, and even cheaper by the ounce, with some strains as low as $140 a zip.

I mostly stuck to the connoisseur strains, seeing as how they were priced at a reasonable $40. But from what I sniffed through on the lower shelves, the herb there seemed pretty decent as well -- just not as flashy and stinky. Only thing I would have avoided was the outdoor-like Fuma Con Diablo that was selling for $25 an eighth.

The shop usually carries hash and BHO, but the day I was in, just a few crumbs of bubble hash were on hand due to problems with the trim processors. AllGreens also stocked standard third-party edibles from Cheeba Chews, Dixie, CannaPunch and Phat Daddyz. But nothing caught my eye, which turned out to be a good thing, because AllGreens is currently cash-only and I had barely enough on me to cover the herb.

My one gripe about the place was charging $50 for an eighth of the connoisseur-level Kong when all of the other strains at that level sold for $40. Yes, it was a good strain with some very nice qualities to it, but not 25-percent-more-in-price better. I could maybe understand if the idea was to limit how much people buy of it so that more patients can try it. But ounces of it are selling for $200 for the rest of the month, so that doesn't seem to be the case. Otherwise, AllGreens is on the right track to buff out the low-quality, tarnished image of their location.

Page down for strain photos and reviews.