A record shop wants to attach a pot dispensary for the extra cash

When Rasputin Music, a record store on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA, faced a 75% drop in sales over the summer of 2013, they responded with a creative solution: build an ice-cream sandwich shop inside the store.

One block south of Rasputin, Amoeba Records is feeling the same squeeze. Marc Weinstein, the co-founder and co-owner of Amoeba, told the Daily Californian Ameoba hasn’t been profitable in a few years. Their answer? Applying to build a medical marijuana dispensary inside the store.

Via the Daily Cal:

Berkeley is currently host to three legal medical marijuana dispensaries. In 2010, Berkeley voters passed Measure T, which allowed for the creation of a fourth dispensary.

If Amoeba is chosen to receive the permit, it plans to pull merchandise from its current jazz and classical room, consolidating the store into one main space. The jazz and classical room would be converted into a completely separate building, creating two separate storefronts rather than incorporating the dispensary into the main music store.

Now, you may be thinking: hmm, record store, music, weed, Berkeley… hmm. But no!

“There have been, culturally, connections between cannabis and music making … that’s not our point,” Weinstein told the Daily Cal.

Okay, so, no.

Co-owner David Prinz told the East Bay Express a medical marijuana dispensary could help keep them open and enable them to “do some amazing shit.”