How does a man of substance dress in Santa Cruz? You have several ensemble choices. But my favorite is a good pair of leather shoes, clean denims, an aloha shirt of floral pattern, and a pair of wraparound sunglasses. Add a briefcase, and you’re an entrepreneur.

So was I dressed, minus briefcase, as I walked into the Green Vapors vape shop on Cedar Street. And I was received with deference by the sales clerk, a pale young man with the All-Seeing Eye of Ra tattooed across his Adams Apple. In Technicolor.

Damn. Outdressed.

Not long ago there were no vape shops in the Santa Cruz area; now there are three, with names like Green Vapors, Beyond Vape, and E-Smokey Treats. Two of them opened just this past summer. Vaping (vay-ping) is all the rage these days.

For those of you living in ignorance – as myself, three days ago – vaping is the realm of the electronic cigarette, or e-cigarette: a way of delivering nicotine vapor into a smoker’s mouth without tobacco, or even combustion. A e-cigarette is just a portable electric vaporizer in the form of a cigarette: load with a nicotine-bearing liquid, turn it on, and suck the vapor. You get the buzz without smoke or smell. In theory, it’s healthier.

And since you’re not smoking – you’re inhaling a heated vapor, nothing more – you can suck on an e-butt in places that bar “real” cigarettes. Most of these devices don’t even look like cigarettes anymore: they resemble pocket flashlights or metal-bodied marking pens. They’re referred to as vape pens, and by other names.

At Green Vapors I was shown a mind-boggling selection of vape hardware, and an equally mind-boggling array of vape liquids: all different strengths of nicotine, and hundreds of different flavors. Yes, you get flavors. Chocolate. Maple. Floral. Carmel popcorn. Whatever you want. It’s candy in your mouth with no calories.

“Some people buy it (liquids) with no nicotine at all,” the clerk explained. “They just want the taste. We get a lot of people on diets.”

“So, who exactly is vaping,” I asked. “Mostly kids?”

“We get all kinds of people,” he said. “And we don’t sell to anyone under eighteen.”

“To me, eighteen is a kid,” I had to say.

He smiled faintly. “Once in awhile we get an old guy who just wants to quit smoking.” Touche, thought the old guy. Though I don’t smoke.

I dropped in on Green Vapors for one reason: because houses are blowing up in Santa Cruz. And in a weird, indirect way, vaping is responsible.

In the past three weeks, two houses have blown up while their occupants attempted to make hash oil. Hash oil is a sort of marijuana concentrate; you throw a bunch of marijuana into butane, a highly combustible fuel used in camp stoves and barbecues. When the butane evaporates, it leaves a heavy, waxy residue heavy in THC, the chemical in marijuana that gets you high.

People call this concentrate hash oil,  “dabs,”  “honey oil,” or whatever the flavor of the month is. If it’s made with the butane process (there are other ways, but butane’s easiest and cheapest), it’s often called BHO.

Evaporated butane turns into a heavy gas that flows along the floor until it finds an ignition source; a pilot light in the next room, in one case. In another — well, somebody lit a cigarette. Boom. Serious damage to the house, and life-threatening burns to all involved.

Experienced drug makers know all this, and take precautions. These were amateurs. Hash oil has been around forever; it’s the strongest possible marijuana high, but difficult to smoke. You need a bong, a blowtorch, and a titanium nail. I’m not kidding; and I won’t go into details. Suffice to say: you can’t smoke it on the dance floor.

Or you couldn’t; until somebody figured out how to smoke it in e-cigarettes. Probably several somebodies.  It was one of those discoveries that was just itching to happen. See: “The Oil Game: How E-Cigarettes Have Become Stoners’ New Best Friend.”

So hash oil became very, very popular. It’s a huge high; and now you can have it anywhere, without telltale smoke or smell, and without that bloody blowtorch. Stoner entrepreneurs were quick to perfect e-cigs and vape pens that can vaporize the waxy hash oil without clogging up. Some enthusiasts assemble their own out of e-cigarette parts that they know will do the job. See: “Butane Hash Oil, Vaporizer Pens, and a Cheaper Option: E-Cigarettes.”

Right now, hash oil goes for fifty bucks a gram at least; and yet it’s cost-effective. A tiny, tiny bit contains as much THC as the average joint. On the face of it, the BHO process for making hash oil is simple and easy; so a lot of young men would like a piece of that action. But too often the action explodes in their faces.

Exploding houses are now a nationwide phenomenon, through primarily in states like California where medical marijuana is legal and there’s a lot of pot around. Because you don’t even need the prime bud to make oil; waste trimmings from somebody’s grow will apparently do fine.

The local cops are not saying a word about e-cigarettes and BHO; in the papers they’re quoted as saying that BHO-makers are simply preserving marijuana till next season, as Granny canned fruits and vegetables for the winter.  But you don’t need to “can” pot in that way.  It keeps fine for months in an air-tight container. Don’t ask me how I know this.

All I can say: if you see the young men next door bring home a batch of butane gas tanks, it may not be a barbecue they’re planning. Or there may be a barbecue – but not one that was planned. See  “How to Make Hash Oil, Explode Your House, and Blow Off Your Hand in Three Easy Steps.”

Back at Green Vapors, I took a good look at the stock; but there was no way for me to tell which of the devices worked with hash oil, and which only worked with flavored nicotine juice. Maybe the owners of Green Vapors know; or maybe they don’t.  Maybe they just stock whatever sells best and don’t think too hard about it.

I’m reluctant to believe in coincidences: three vape shops open up in town; and in short order, for the first time ever, two houses blow up from BHO manufacture. Is there direct cause and effect here? Most probably, no.  Are the two phenomenon  related? Most probably, yes.

And two blasted houses are just the tip of the iceberg; the bulk of it, beneath the water, is all the guys who figured out how to make BHO safely. Or have been lucky… so far.

The human race is brilliant at unintended consequences. Go back to 1969, when computer scientists were making a first stab at building the computer network that would some day become the Internet. What would those trail-blazing techies have said if you’d told them that their work would someday create a thriving online gambling industry in Costa Rica? Or become the world’s most efficient system for delivering pornography?

What would they say? Probably something alone the lines of, “That’s not quite what we had in mind.”

I’m sure that’s true. But there are those who say that, early on, porn traffic drove the growth of the Internet. I can’t help but think that BHO is fueling this sudden burst of interest in vape shops and e-cigarettes. Time will certainly tell.

I thanked the young clerk for his assistance. I’d made it clear I wasn’t there to buy, and he’d still been very helpful. As I said, a majestic Hawaiian shirt brings cred in this town.

“But what does the “green” in “Green Vapors” signify,” I asked him finally.

He shrugged and said, “That name has never made sense to me.”

I wonder what sense it was supposed to make.

(A reprint from my old blog. JJ)

It came with my change for a meat loaf sandwich.

The cashier handed me paper currency and a few coins. As I stuffed the money in my wallet I saw words written across Washington’s face on a well-worn dollar bill.

 

People often write things on paper money — say what you want, it’s one way to spread a message. The Federal Reserve may disapprove, but who asked them? Besides, it only costs a buck, which you’ll spend anyway. And your message will travel the world until the bill wears out.

Back at the office I pulled out the bill and examined it. The dollar bore a quote from Shakespeare, printed in the crisp, round hand of a young woman.

And when he shall die,
take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

But who hasn’t been there, at least for a little while? And who wouldn’t feel sorry for someone who’d never felt it?

You know what it’s like: that feeling that the world and all that’s in it is completely and utterly perfect, because you love someone with all your heart and soul and — it must be said — hormones. And because you are absolutely sure that they love you back in just the same way.

You may be wrong. And even if you’re not, that fine madness will not last. But while it does, for a week or a month or a year, you walk with the gods and pity the poor mortals who don’t have what –or who – you have.

I imagine a young woman, smitten and starry-eyed, lovingly printing Juliet’s words on the dollar bill so that some one else out there might read it and know how wondrous love can be.

A year or two or ten down the line, she might remember this gesture and scoff — at her youth, her innocence, her temporary insanity.

She shouldn’t. It may be insane and unwise to let someone else become one’s entire universe. But without a good slog upstream through the fiery torrent of romantic love, how can you truly grow up? Without the memory of passion there can be no wisdom: only dry platitudes of common sense, applied by rote and without understanding.

First love — you have to feel it, once. Who’d want to miss it, no matter how doomed it turned out to be?

I kept the bill in my wallet for a few days. But then I spent it, and send it on its way again. Freeing Juliet to croon again of love and madness from the wallets of strangers, a long-lingering echo of some young woman’s all-too-brief walk with the gods.

My thumb continues to heal. That’s the good news. I also learned several things about myself during my recent hospital stay. Most of them were good.

I have a blood oxygen content of 97; that’s very good. I know the figure by heart because they measured it four times.

My lungs? They’re good. The x-rays came back completely clean.

The ER gave me my first electrocardiogram ever. I passed; electrically, my heart’s a genius.

Mechanically, though, it’s acquired a ding. “I’m picking up a swishing sound every few beats,” said the old doctor with the stethoscope. “Means you’ve got a leaky valve.

“T’ain’t no big thing. Arnold (Schwarzenegger) got his fixed, but that was ’cause he wanted to train with heavy weights for some movie.”

But I like to train with heavy weights, too, so it is a big thing. And in truth really hard workouts have grown tougher lately; I have no energy for an hour afterwards. But are better workouts worth an operation? Don’t think so; I may drift toward the lighter end of the dumbbell rack.

I also learned that I am unusual, a sport, a prodigy, a mooncalf. At least in the hospital’s eyes.

“What medications do you take?” asked the ER nurse. As later in my hospital room, did the charge nurse, a roving pharmacist, and a clerk filling out forms on a computer built into a wheeled cart.

“None,” I answered.

“None at all?” each repeated. Four times I shook my head.

I asked the pharmacist, “So is it unusual for a 57-year-old man not to be taking prescription medications?”

“It’s very rare,” she said.

But it’s not rare; people without insurance often don’t get prescription meds. What she meant is that people with the wherewithal to go to the hospital, of a certain age, are almost always taking prescription medications.

But is that because they need them? Or because the system thrusts drugs upon them?

For two years a young primary care doctor at CorpoHealth Clinix has pushed blood pressure medication at me. MY BP has measured in at around 140/80 for 20 years. That used to be called ‘high normal,’ and not treated. Now it’s called Stage 1 Hypertension, and they want to give you drugs. Not because you need them badly right now, but so that you’ll already be on the drugs later, when you really need them.

Honestly, that’s the logic. I looked it up. Not everybody uses that standard. But when you’re paid by the treatment, you treat as quickly as possible; in a 15-minute appointment, it’s quicker to throw a pill at someone than to have a deep discussion on lifestyle changes. And then the patient has yet another pill to take for the rest of his life.

And that’s why the hospital rarely sees patients who don’t take prescription medicine.

CorpoHealth lays down the treatment recommendations, and my primary physicians follows them. He’s not experienced enough to be cynical, or good enough to listen very well. I’ve lost 30 pounds in two years, and my measured blood pressure has dropped slowly. But Doctor Young still kept pushing the pills.

Finally I told Doctor Young, as he was checking the thumb that would send me to emergency two days later, “My blood pressure actually goes up when I get it taken. I can feel it.” It’s true; it’s always been true. I’ve never been sure how much it skews the measurements, though.

Doctor Young actually listened for about five seconds and gave me a blood pressure log to fill out at home over several days. I guess I’ll have to, for cred against a medical community that wants to treat me more than it wants to cure me.

Two days later I was back to see Doctor Young with the grotesquely pus-filled thumb that would cause him to dispatch me to the ER. I had other things on my mind while the medical assistant took my blood pressure; so I did not think about the test.

“Wow, 116 over 70,” she said happily. “Your blood pressure just keeps getting lower and lower!”

They can all trundle their pillboxes away and come back to me when they actually start practicing medicine again.