I have seen the future, and it works. Not only that—it’s fun. Doobie Nights is the brainchild of Damon Crain, a long-time cannabis cultivator who lost his crop to the 2017 Tubbs fire, and his partner, Brandon Levine, of Mercy Wellness in Cotati.
Crain and Levine are all in favor of mercy, wellness and medicinal cannabis, but they’re also advocates of the pleasure principle and want the holy herb to be used to enhance everything from making music and making love to taking a walk in the woods on a winter afternoon and stargazing at night. The possibilities are endless.
Doobie Nights deconstructs the traditional brick-and-mortar pot shop that once seemed destined to last as long as humans puffed on joints. Now, on the cusp of a new decade, Crain and Levine have buried the familiar, all-too drab commercial cannabis space of yesterday and replaced it with an exhilarating space-time odyssey that appeals to all manner of cannabis users, whether they use the term marijuana cigarette, joint, doobie, j-bomb or spliff.
Located on Santa Rosa Avenue just within city limits, Doobie Nights is a portal to a sensory environment of sounds and interactive images that are projected onto gigantic walls and that may remind aging rock & rollers of the light shows of the 1960s and 1970s. As heads once said: seeing is believing.
Potheads may choose to get stoned before they arrive at 3011 Santa Rosa Ave., park their cars and enter what some are calling a “gigantic womb.” If they do that they’ll get the full effect of the lights, sounds and swirling images that appear to loom on giant computer screens. Then again, even the intrepid might want a clear head to carefully select from a variety of products, including a great selection of gummies, before checking out the technology that makes Doobie Nights into a venue for the Wizards of Oz, the Alices of Wonderland and the pioneers of the video game revolution.
There will be food trucks, vendors of fine weed and giveaways at Doobie Nights’ grand opening. The event at the glorified, electrified, throbbing cannabis haven is sure to push the envelope.
“This is a place where the imagination can grow wild,” says Levine, who will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the opening of Mercy Wellness in April. Half-jokingly, or maybe not, he adds, “We’ve set the bar so high that you don’t have to smoke weed to get high anymore. The only place like it is outer space.”
His bro, Damon Crain, looks him in the eye and says calmly, “We want to evoke memories.”
Ursa Born, who grew up in cannabis-centric Humboldt, speaks for the whole crew on the Doobie Nights’ spaceship when she says, “We’re pre-Millennials and the first adapters of computers and cell phones. We’re blazing a trail again.”
