Marijuana – Jason's Blog – Work in Progress

Being a connoisseur of popular culture that often turns a self-reflective mirror on the land of its origin — Hollywood and California as a whole, I’ve heard every joke about the Golden State.

I know all about the country’s perception that CA is a safe haven for crazy health-nut vegans, sunrise surfers-turned-CEOs, nerdy tech moguls living life in their slide-filled Silicon Valley offices and high-price juice shops, stoners riding skateboards down the beach promenade and, of course, fashion-conscious movie stars making the exact same schlock which perpetuates these views.

When they aren’t starring in Marvel films.

Well I’m here to report that all of these stereotypes are, in fact…

Entirely correct.

Even as a 21-year-old native to the west coast, I’ve never quite been in a place that screams ‘California liberal kookiness’ quite as much as Lazy Acres Natural Market.

This place is a Whole Foods-esque supermarket born and raised right here in the Golden State, and I swear it’s the one place you need to bring anybody from a fly-over state to assure them that everything the T.V. says about California is true.

So first off, most of the products are the kind of low-everything, non-GMO, gluten-free products you’d expect to see.

My favorites were these knock-off versions of popular candies

Sour Blast Buddies, Sweet Fish and… Gummy Bears. Not trademarked I guess?

However, it’s much more fun to look at some of the individual portions of the store beyond generally ‘normal’ things like rows of fruit or 20 bottled water brands.

For instance this chain-specific juice bar/coffee shop:

Or this absolutely massive collection of nuts:

Every creed of nut is in this store. I didn’t know there were this many kinds of nuts!

I also didn’t know I could say nut this many times in one place without bursting into laughter.

Maybe the laughter was suppressed by trying to figure out this bizarre self-filling water station:

Because you know. When I’m looking for “deionized” or “high pH alkaline” water, I want to go to my local supermarket and fill up a jug using a machine that looks like a mutated soda or ice cream dispenser.

That’s definitely one of the weirder things here.

Slightly less weird, but also very Californian, is the fresh sushi bar:

A sushi bar in the middle of the supermarket.

Sure, why not.

That sushi bar is actually a part of the larger ‘kitchen’ section of the store, where they also sell sandwiches and salad bars full of hot food like mac n’ cheese. Right next to some cafeteria tables and a private room where cooking classes are held.

Oh but don’t worry, ladies and gentlemen, I saved the best for last.

After everything I’ve shown you, is there any part of a supermarket you think Lazy Acres is missing? Merchandise to show the world you belong to their unique brand, perhaps?

Well yes, that exists.

An Instagram account?

Wouldn’t be a hipster, vegan supermarket without letting fans interact with overproduced brand advertisements over social media.

Or maybe, just maybe…

You think they’re missing a massive beehive right in the middle of the store.

Well, if you thought so, you’d be wrong.

Because they already have it:

Not the Bees!

Look, I’ll be honest with all of you right now. When this place opened up in the shopping center over by my house, I didn’t have a particular desire to go in. We only happened to be there tonight to buy dinner.

Looked a little bougie. Real expensive, healthy supermarkets aren’t exactly uncommon in California, so I’d seen plenty and didn’t expect much.

But when I saw a god damn case full of bees in the middle of the store? I lost my mind.

Why would anyone want to go to this place for a second time after they find out there’s an actual, legitimate chance for bees to be released on an unsuspecting urban population in the middle of an enclosed space?

It’s just wild.

If nothing else, I can complement Lazy Acres for having nice counters around the edges. The meat, seafood and bakery sections all had good selections:

Secret Mom and Aly cameo~

Plus I got a really nice meal out of the kitchen area!

Yet unfortunately, alongside the craziness of the bees, it also introduced me to this monstrosity…

So I’m pretty sure everything balances out and I will never go back to this crazy place.

California hath bested me.

I had an interesting full-circle kind of experience today.

Way back when, during my time at Redondo Union High School working under the advisor Mitch Ziegler (who I will affectionately call Zeus since good habits are hard to kill), I participated in a number of write-off competitions.

The competitions essentially featured speakers standing in as important figures for an important story topic, where students had the chance to listen to a presentation before asking question through a press conference. All of the information gathered in a limited amount of time would then have to be written into a substantial article, also within a given time limit, to be judged by a panel of experts.

When I took part in then, the write-offs came in a number of forms. The main ones were full-scale competitions at state or national journalism conferences. I participated in a few of those in high school and actually got some awards:

However, the important kind of write-offs for this particular blog post were the practice, local-level competitions that Zeus would put together at Redondo Union using professors as speakers and alumni as judges.

If that weren’t enough of a hint, let’s get to the point.

As a now three-or-so-year alumni, I hopped on the opportunity to act as a judge at the practice write-off competition held this morning when Zeus asked who would be available in our alumni Facebook page.

The opportunity was actually offered a couple of weeks ago, but it was cancelled that day and pushed off until now. Luckily, I was still available to come in, so I wound up having the chance to give back to the place that gave me my start in journalism.

Now… Where to begin with my discussion of the day…

I suppose we can start with the place.

As my lovely (hopefully not too distorted) panoramic picture shows, the side of the competition I presided over was held in my alma mater’s lovely culinary arts room – which is stationed right next to the journalism room, I might add.

I’ll be honest, I never spent a lot of time in there despite that close proximity. The one time I did I was doing a write-off I participated in, if I recall correctly. So it was interesting to be sitting in there, listening to the presentation/press conference and just kind of taking everything in.

It really is a lovely set-up.

I probably should have taken some culinary classes during my time here, in hindsight.

But that’s a tangent I don’t really need to get into right now.

This write-off’s topic was an interesting one. The speakers were an imaginary school’s principal, journalism advisor and newspaper editor in chief speaking to the crowd about an issue of the school’s paper that was subject to prior restraint for addressing marijuana.

That was the news and opinion set-up at least, but since that was the one I sat in on as the news judge it was all I saw. I did hear the sports story was about an ultimate frisbee team and the features story was about a student entrepreneur, but I can’t offer much more past that.

After everyone had finished asking questions (with some key ones missing to be fair, as a couple of the other judges and I discussed amongst ourselves), the kids had an hour to put everything together.

During that time, the rest of us got to sit around, eat bagels and just talk about life. It was actually pretty interesting just in that one other person I used to work on the High Tide with, Zach Hatakeyama, was there as well. Pretty cool to get the chance to catch up with him a little.

Once that period of writing ended, it was up to us to start judging as all the kids went off to eat or… Do whatever they did.

As the news guy, I wound up with four news stories to edit and judge.

To be completely honest right off the bat… They varied in quality. At least one was really great, but the rest were all across the spectrum.

The thing that was great about it nonetheless, however, was the fact that no matter how good any one person’s story was, I was able to offer them advice on what to improve on for the future:

That was really the best part about this whole thing in my opinion. Like I mentioned earlier, these write-offs wound up meaning a lot to me personally, so being able to give back and help the next generation of journalists improve was awesome.

Plus… I got to put shiny stickers on certificates.

Then I got to watch everyone’s excited faces as they got handed those shiny sticker-adorned certificates:

But that’s not all. Everyone who participated in the write-off today will be moving on into the state level competition because of how many competed in each category, which is just great. I feel all the better about providing some of my multiple-years-removed expertise knowing that they’ll be able to apply it at a much larger venue soon.

And finally, as if that weren’t enough to explain why this was a great afternoon… Zeus took us out to lunch for helping him out.

Really you can’t go wrong with a good burger and catching up with some old friends.

I’d even say it made up for the fact that he forgot to tell me what time to show up this morning.

P.S. – I was smart enough to know what time the older version was, so I did still show up on time. Just in case anyone was concerned.