The trailer for the Nash Bridges reunion just dropped before Saturday’s premiere, and it might be worth tuning in just to see Willie Brown in a pot dispensary.

Your No. 1 movie at the U.S. box office right now is a Ghostbusters sequel. The most anticipated movie of the holiday season is a Matrix sequel. And television knows where its bread is buttered too, as nostalgia-soaked sequels and reboots are a far surer bet than creating original work these days. And so your most anticipated non-football television event of Thanksgiving weekend is the Nash Bridges reunion movie that was shot right here in San Francisco, premiering at 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 27, on the USA Network, and whose trailer is seen below.


It appears to be a sort of a Miami Vice meets Grumpy Old Men with a very conspicuous San Francisco backdrop. Don Johnson is seen clearly hanging outside Bimbo’s 365, fishing off piers near the Embarcadero, and recklessly driving his Barracuda near the Caltrain station. The apparent premise is that there’s some sort of tech money-related mass murder spree that only ol’ Nash and Cheech Marin coming out of retirement can solve in a world… where the SFPD office has devolved into some sort of startup environment with standing desks and Sensadome exercise ball chairs. There’s clearly an “Old folks vs. Millennials” vibe to this thing, tailored to a demographic that does not realize that Millennials are now entering their 40s.

Screenshot: Youtube

But what do we have here? There’s a Willie Brown cameo set in a marijuana dispensary! In the dispensary, we hear Joe (Cheech Marin) say, “I wouldn't pass the drug screening, man, I’m high most of the time.”

According to the Chronicle, Da Mayor responds, “So am I!”

Screenshot: Youtube

A closer look shows that what is presented in the show as “Joe’s Barbary Coast” dispensary is in fact the Barbary Coast dispensary near Sixth and Mission Streets. The pot products shown all mimic the branding of that real-life dispensary, so management there must be quite pleased with the exposure.


And the city at large should be too. The Chronicle estimated in May that shooting of the two-hour, made-for-TV movie generated $1.5 million for the local economy. And it’s representative of a post-lockdown TV and film production boom here in the city, among other visible franchises like the Shang-Chi shoot, and the releases of blockbusters shot here before the pandemic, like The Matrix: Resurrections and Venom 2.


The Nash Bridges movie is currently just a two-hour TV movie, and is not yet a weekly episodic reboot of the show. It plays at 9 p.m. Saturday on the USA Network, then repeats again at 11 p.m., before that network returns to its regular programming of nonstop Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes.

Related: The ‘Nash Bridges’ Reboot No One Asked For Is On Its Way [SFist]

Image: Peacock