Political Junkie: Starbuckses versus Pot Clubs
Here we are, stepping blithely into Trimeth/Essefficist/SFist Tokes territory, to report that Supervisor Sean Elsbernd (no iPod) has announced that he's calling for a moratorium on pot clubs in the city, because "right now, we have almost as many pot clubs in this town as we do Starbucks."
Really???? Is that true? Are there really pot clubs on every single corner of an intersection like the Starbuckses downtown? Will Starbucks make the next logical move, which would be to buy out all the pot clubs too? Is there really that much freed-up commercial space in the city? Is this true, or is Mr. Elsbernd exaggerating to make a point?
Okay, we've done some research on this. Results after the jump.
Okay, the Chron says there's "40 or so" pot clubs open now. So how many Starbuckses are there in SF?
The internet really is amazing. So we went to Starbucks.com and used the handy-dandy "search by location" database, searching in a radius of within 10 miles of City Hall (you know, 7x7, we figured that would encompass the whole city). And we got...... 72! (Entries numbers 72 73 to 98 are in like Sausalito and Daly City).
We're going to call this one an exaggeration. There's almost twice as many Starbuckses as there are pot clubs! We leave it up to you to determine if this means that there are too many pot clubs in the city -- or if there's too many Starbucks. For what it's worth, Elsbernd thinks we need around eight. Pot clubs, not Starbuckses.