Living in a world where the best medical (and soon to be recreational) marijuana is grown in our backyard, it’s easy to feel slightly overwhelmed with all the storefronts that San Francisco has to offer. Here’s a list of the top three dispensaries you can visit to get top shelf medicine which reaffirms the fact that California is, indeed, the Mecca of marijuana.

Sparc

Sparc is one of San Francisco’s premier dispensaries and offers a wide variety of products and services to its patients. It is located in the heart of SoMa and offers an hour of free validated parking at the SoMa Grand Garage. And if you decide to skip the headache of finding parking in the city, the club is easily accessible by foot from the Civic Center BART station.

It also happens to be one of the very few locations where you can enjoy your medicine inside the facility. However, you are limited to consumption in the form of vape. There is a row of tables and benches with very expensive Volcano Vaporizers for use.

The storefront offers a very chic and elegant look, both on the outside and inside. The exterior of the building displays a precipitating grid of patterned glass and steel which is meant to loosely resemble the molecular design of marijuana. Meanwhile the interior of the location is dressed in concrete and reclaimed wood.

In fact, the dispensary received a prestigious award in 2011 for Excellence in Interior Architecture from the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architecture.

Aside from the design of the establishment, Sparc separates itself from other competitors with the services it offers. They host a weekly game night where you can revisit your childhood by playing games like Battleship, Clue, Sorry, and Uno.

They also host a monthly Jazz series where patients can enjoy two hours of live music, and is used as an alternative place for people to go instead of a bar or nightclub. But more notably, it offers weekly acupuncture services for patients to relieve the stress one can endure from life’s daily grind.

Barbary Coast

Barbary Coast is just a few blocks down the street from Sparc, conveniently located a block away from the Mission Street Garage. This is another establishment that distinguishes itself from the rest as the interior resembles an old-school saloon.

The architecture of the building achieves the look of a modern day tavern with its exposed brick wall, as well as Victorian era couches and bar stools where patients can sit at the bar and physically flip through the pages of the menu. This is a nice touch seeing as most dispensaries show their menu on a brightly lit 4K television.

The flowers are contained in mason jars and the budtenders will scale out the product in front of you, which is becoming a rare sight these days as other dispensaries pre-weigh the product to reduce the waiting time during peak hours. They also carry over 20 strains at all times and offer a wide variety of edibles, concentrates, and pre-rolled joints.

Another reason why this establishment is held in such high regard is because they offer high quality medicine that is unmatched by its rivals. They also have an amazing rewards program where you can get freebies after a certain price point. And if you’re a first time patient, they’ll hook you up with a free joint and edible.

They also have daily specials where patients are able to purchase a quarter ounce of flowers for $35, which is pretty cheap if you’re aware of the hefty price tag that comes along with medical marijuana.

Medithrive

Medithrive could be considered the Apple store of dispensaries. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the building from the outside. However, once you walk in through the door, you’re presented with the opportunity to check out the density and freshness of the product under a magnifying glass.

Every strain that Medithrive offers is encased in a glass jar with bright lights shining against the product to showcase its beauty. It is conveniently located in another heavily populated area of the city where finding street parking is next to impossible. The easiest way to get to the dispensary is via the 16th Street BART station.

The dispensary closed its doors in 2011 but continued to offer its services in the form of a delivery service. But it reopened in 2015 after a half million dollar renovation that catapulted the business to become one of the main destinations for patients to get their medicine.

Medithrive also gives its patients some great deals when ordering products at their store. For example, they have a special where you can get two $25 eighths for $45. Sure, it’s only a $5 discount but think about the munchies you could get with that extra $5.

They also have a deal if you purchase two full price eighths, you get the third eighth for free. They don’t have a first time patient freebie but they do give you a nice package with rolling papers, a lighter, and other accessories. And if you come in with a referral on a Saturday, you can get a 20 percent discount on your purchase.

One thing that all three dispensaries have in common is the fact that they present you with an experience that you can’t get from other storefronts. They really do take pride in removing the social stigma that comes along with smoking weed and strive to educate their patients about the health benefits of any given strain.