Urkle Berry (Hybrid)

Urkle Berry (Hybrid)​

Appearance: 4/5
This plant carries a deep, rich shade of green on its outer leaves that steals focus away from its finer details. Upon closer inspection, one can see thin orange veins accenting the pods, as well as the fine fuzz growing on the inner leaves. While turning it, there’s even a faint sparkle from crystals sprinkled along the surface.

While it’s a lovely looking plant, its beauties are hidden in plain sight. The glancing view is rich but unremarkable. So be sure to give this flower a closer look, if you really want to admire its finer properties.

Aroma: 4/5
The scent given off by this flower is a very sweet bouquet. To us, it smelled like dipping your nose into a jar of strawberry preserves. There were hints of berries, and it was definitely sweet, but in that concentrated, artificial way carried by a processed jelly - instead of a fresh batch of fruit.

Taste: 3/5
Urkle Berry burned with a light smoke that was easy to inhale and left a strong, perfumey aftertaste. Whatever gave off that preserve aroma was leaving us with an artificially sweet flavor profile. While this could be great, like a Jolly Rancher, the taste fell short of that greatness, but was still enjoyable to some degree.

Effect: 5/5
While this strain of Urkle Berry didn’t give us the giggles (unlike the real Urkel), it did give us a very powerful high. This is a Hybrid strain, but felt it leaned heavy on the Indica spectrum of smoke.

At first, we were feeling focused. All our distractions were gone, and our attention was rapt on the subject at hand. But our attention proved fickle, and soon we realized we had spent the last hour fleeting from one thing to the next. Intent on it for a while, then moved by distraction to something else that required our immediate attention.

This was fairly unique to us. Usually, we find strains that keep us focused on doing something, not ones that specialize in breaking our concentration every so often. But it absolutely got us high, and made us feel good, so we can’t really complain too much.

Urkle Berry (Hybrid): $20/g, $55/8th

Urkle Berry is a powerful Hybrid strain that delivered effects so strong that they could not be contained by merely one activity. We did a whole bunch of things after smoking this strain, and would recommend it for social situations, or reducing social anxiety. Either way, the last thing you should expect to be doing on this strain is sitting still.

How bad does an experience have to be in order to swear off an establishment completely? For us, it has to be pretty bad. And our visit to Hollywood Holistic wasn’t enough for us to turn away from one of the best (and only) dispensaries in “Thai Town.” We still got some killer bud, and the truth of the matter is that everybody has a bad day sometimes. Whatever happened here, we can shrug it off - for now. In short, there’s too much grief (and good bud) in the world to get hung up on one awkward interaction.

Address:
5419 W Sunset Blvd
Hollywood, CA 90027
Phone number: 323-499-1522
Hours: 10am - 10pm, 7 days a week 

Hollywood Holistic Dispensary

In the world of retail, sometimes a bad experience with an employee can ruin a shopping trip. That happened to us on our last visit to Hollywood Holistic.

We checked in at its infamous, standing-room-only waiting area. The Security Guard invited us inside. We entered the showroom and saw the budtender talking with a delivery person.

“Hey, can you have them wait outside while I take this delivery?” the budtender asked.

Immediately, the Security Guard asked us to leave. Seconds later, we were in the waiting room again. Whoops.

A few minutes later, we were allowed back into the showroom. The delivery person was gone, and it was just us and the budtender. We greeted them, making a joke about how it was finally our turn. They smiled, but did not seem amused. Looks like our joke went up in smoke.

Whoops again.

We started looking over their selection of flower. The budtender stood by waiting, but offered no help or assistance. We asked about a particular flower, and they brought out the jar for closer inspection. It looked good, but not great. We asked if there was another Sativa they could recommend. They shrugged, “That one is pretty good.”

We nodded. It might have been the truth, but it wasn’t very helpful. Nor very friendly. Backing away from the flower, and the whole Sativa concept, we started glancing over the Indicas. We asked about a particular strain.

“That one sucks,” they muttered.

Our budtender wasn’t giving us the cold shoulder, but they certainly weren’t being helpful or enthusiastic.

Since we weren’t feeling particularly welcomed at this store, we decided to pick a flower based on name alone and get the hell out of there. The budtender took the jar over to the scale. To weigh the amount, they grabbed a pair of wooden tongs to handle the flower. Making a last crack at friendliness, I mentioned that I thought the tongs were cool.

“Yeah, they are cool,” they stoically replied.

The budtender then informed me that this was one of the last shops to do things “the artisanal way.”

Whoo, boy, I almost laughed. Nothing can sound more pretentious that describing one’s own methods as “artisanal.” But it made sense. Given our interaction, it seems as though their manners must have also been imported from the old country.

Regardless of the experience, we paid for our plant and stuffed a few dollars into the tip jar on our way out. Not to brag or high-road anyone; in our other life, we work for tips, so we always tip, no matter what. But we definitely weren’t feeling like there was too much to tip about today. Luckily, things improved once we got home and burned up our purchase -- a Hybrid strain called: Urkle Berry.