
The new high-end head-shop concept that opened inside Barneys New York’s Beverly Hills flagship last month is about more than $950 blown-glass bongs, $1,575 herb grinders and a concierge to help you order THC-containing vaporizer pens and pastilles for home delivery. It’s a high-profile harbinger of where cannabis-related retail — and most likely the luxury department store space — is headed in the era of legal marijuana.
The 300-square-foot space that opened March 21 on the fifth floor of the department store at 9570 Wilshire Blvd. — it’s dubbed the High End — is elegantly appointed and stocked with a range of upscale smoking accessories such as hand-crafted stash jars from Siemon & Salazar; imported French rolling papers by Devambez (a gift set, complete with matchbooks, rolling tray and vermeil joint-packing tamper, will set you back a cool $8,850); functional jewelry (necklaces from Good Art Hlywd that double as vape-pen lanyards and a lip-shaped Carole Shashona ring that converts into a stylish joint holder); hemp-derived CBD beauty and wellness products; and an assortment of vintage Hermès and Gucci ashtrays.
Most notably, it also features an on-site representative from Beboe, the Los Angeles-based luxury-level cannabis brand and partner on the project. That person will explain the company’s products to the canna-curious and help him or her place an order for home delivery. (And no, you can’t use your Barneys credit card — we made sure to ask — because the orders are actually placed through a third-party delivery service called Emjay, which launched in L.A. with the Barneys/Beboe partnership.)
Retail focused on the discerning dope-dabbler demographic has been part of the Southern California landscape for a while. Mister Green — an East Hollywood boutique where $319 vintage Tiffany Elsa Peretti lighters, $95 crystal-shaped ceramic pipes and $149 bottles of Hippie … fragrance sit cheek by jowl with coffee mugs and Nalgene water bottles emblazoned with the words “bong water” — opened two years ago this month. Then there’s Higher Standards, an elevated take on the traditional head shop that opened in New York’s Chelsea Market in late 2017 and recently opened its third in-dispensary pop-up shop in the Los Angeles area, offering a tightly edited mix of smoking accessories and gifts ($379 USB-powered dab rigs, $128 joint-rolling machines and $98 Jonathan Adler jars labeled “ganja,” among them).
Published: April 05, 2019

Founder & Interim Editor of L.A. Cannabis News