San Francisco weighs ban on new head shops

[The Straight Story]

San Francisco weighs ban on new head shops


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Counterculture tourists hoping to catch a whiff of Flower Power still make their way to the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets, where the spirits of Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead rock on in stores offering T-shirts, posters and pot-smoking paraphernalia.

While other businesses in the cradle of hippie culture are folding, head shops dealing in roach clips, rolling papers and hand-blown glass water pipes have proliferated on Haight Street — so much so that a San Francisco politician has proposed a law to prevent any more from opening in the neighborhood.

Ross Mirkarimi, a member of the city Board of Supervisors who represents the Haight, has asked his colleagues to adopt a three-year moratorium on new joints that sell smoking equipment.

With at least a dozen such shops already operating in a six-block area, Haight Street has too many places where tourists can go to feed their heads, and too few where locals can buy groceries or rent DVDs, Mirkarimi said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i9rZ_yYn6PuxmBik79yl12vSTDywD96ASLB83

[Occam Bandage]

1. Those damn San Francisco Values at work. nt

[EFerrari]

2. There are also great cigars at those head shops.

I don't see how new ones would be sustainable, in any case. There are already three big ones and a bunch of liquor stores on that section of Haight Street. Why is Ross wasting his time with this.