Rockler now a weed dispensary

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D_W

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(OK, the woodworking store isn't, but rather the location here is now that).

I live in western PA in the United States. Think sheffield of the new world (there are still a few mills left here, but nothing like the old days when steel and coking was literally done in the city).

Up the road from me was a rockler store (knowing that, you can get a pretty good idea where I live). I don't think Rockler makes it to the UK, but it's no big deal if you're into hand tools - I had much difficulty, despite literally being minutes away, finding anything worth buying there. They did have liquid hide, but the last two times I bought it, the bottles were set up and I got fed up. I tried getting hinges there when I did my kitchen, but a cabinet supply specialist on the internet was literally half price for blum. Half. Same with guides.

So it wasn't a great loss a couple of years ago when the store moved. But the banner from the last sale was still up on the property last I looked, and then today, the store has a new sign up, was completely repainted cleaned up (must've been in a matter of a week or two) and there's a big weed plant with some kind of name about nutritionals, and then a big sign stuck in the grass "DISPENSARY!".

I did have some luck buying from rockler when I first started, partly because I needed little bits and bobs that I'd just make now, and partly because their business has changed (they used to have hock irons and other things like that, but no longer). The store does still exist, but entirely on the other side of the city. And a little over a year ago, I did manage to get giant bench bolts from them (and made a rock solid loft bed for my daughter, who sleepwalks (I made it so that it would be difficult to climb over with provisions to later cut the highest rail off when she sleeps like a civilized person).

Woodworking to weed. Weed has become popular here in the states as the virtue laws (just like gambling) fall with the opportunity to tax it. But, that said, even when I was in school, I never met a single person who actually got busted for it unless they were caught for something else AND literally had weed on them. The cops knew which drugs were actually causing trouble, and weed wasn't one of them - even in a rural area they had that mindset. I never tried it, I"ll admit. Afraid I might like it.
 
Wasn’t till I got to the last paragraph that I realised what sort of weed you meant lol.
Funnily enough I’m in PA at the mo and ordered a jig from Rockler this morning! Coincidence or what!
They were stupidly difficult about me using a Brit card to pay for a delivery to a US address though,
 
I never tried it, I"ll admit

Nows your chance david!! 😆 just make sure youve got some nice food kicking around for when you get the munchies 🤣😉 i once woke up on someone else's sofa and there were darts in the ceiling above me 🤔 there were a few dart holes kicking around and the board wasn't near 🤷‍♂️ they were less complicated times 😅
 
Wasn’t till I got to the last paragraph that I realised what sort of weed you meant lol.
Funnily enough I’m in PA at the mo and ordered a jig from Rockler this morning! Coincidence or what!
They were stupidly difficult about me using a Brit card to pay for a delivery to a US address though,

In thought you guys found this side of the ocean a bit terrifying! What part of pa are you in?

Other than having trouble finding much to buy at the brick and mortar store, I only ever had one really odd experience there. I was in a hurry and got there at exactly 9 am, and I went in. They opened at 9. The rear entrance was open and I got right to the middle of the store and one of the employees walked up to me and said, "How did you get in here?". I pointed to the door, and he said "we're not open yet, you have to go back out" . It was a couple of minutes after 9 and I showed him my phone and said, "door says 9, it's after that now". He literally said, "We don't open until 9, and you have to go back out and he walked me to the door and locked it". I'm sure he opened it 2 minutes later, but I didn't wait around to see. He just wanted to win something that I didn't even know was a contest.
 
Some people are ar..holes. Lancaster county, a few hours away from Pittsburgh? But Pam’s son is there so I have visited a few times, it must have been something when it was in its heyday,
Picture of the press on display as a testament to earlier times. Ian
18C62658-4C27-4B82-9E14-83650351E56C.jpeg
 
I just looked at this province's website for the licensed pot shops and it shows Saskatoon as having 17 but I would swear there are a lot more. S'toon only has about a quarter million people and they can be found in most every strip mall. Personally I have no interest in walking through their doors.

Pete
 
I just looked at this province's website for the licensed pot shops and it shows Saskatoon as having 17 but I would swear there are a lot more. S'toon only has about a quarter million people and they can be found in most every strip mall. Personally I have no interest in walking through their doors.

Pete

I'm on a fairly large retail corridor (but thanks to the hills in pittsburgh, you can literally be out of line of sight and out of audible range of corridors just by living on a hill where the hillside deflects all up and away). But there's probably 5 dispensaries on my street now. "CBD" shops are everywhere - not sure how many of those will last. For a while before, it was vitamin shops (those are sketchy propositions, offering "cures" without calling them that and lots of "memory enhancers" and such for $40 a bottle.). When you walk into a store that probably has a 20K a month rent and four employees and two customers, it makes you wonder what you're actually getting (a lot of markup).
 
Some people are ar..holes. Lancaster county, a few hours away from Pittsburgh? But Pam’s son is there so I have visited a few times, it must have been something when it was in its heyday,
Picture of the press on display as a testament to earlier times. Ian
View attachment 122775

You're about 4 hours away from me - and a lot of turnpike fees. Lancaster/york (I grew up in that direction, but further down in a Civil War town) was an old industrial/ag/combo area. There's still a lot of distribution and such around there as it's between Washington DC and NYC, and just west of philadelphia. But people in eastern PA aren't friendly like they are in Western PA - it's just a cultural difference.

In Western PA, people will ask you how you are and wave. In Eastern PA, if you talk to someone for a while, they'll get to telling you how they are and then walk away. Not everyone is rotten in the east, but the disposition is different (Philadelphia was voted as having the ugliest women in the US, and most rude, too :)). Lots of pa dutch influence in the Lancaster area, and there's not a whole lot of small talk (some of my ancestors were dutchy - some amish/mennonite and some protestant). It's a totally different kind of culture, but that will probably wear away as the internet makes everything the same. For now, though, there is still influence from the dutchy background - which is being a little suspicious of people who are friendly for no reason.
 
Well so glad my Pam isn’t one of the ugly ones from Philadelphia! (No she’s not from around here at all,) lol. Amish are definitely different in every way. Can’t imagine not having electricity but they seem to manage ok.
 
D_W
never visited France then.....if u want rude people.....
with or without Brexit....hahaha.....

No - but I'm good friends with someone who worked at Williamsburg for years and saw hundreds of thousands of tourists. His view was the French tourists were the worst ( this isn't piling on, just what he relayed ). He said the culture (maybe this was then) was just rude, belitting what he was doing, being dismissive or abrasive.

He also (if you're watching patterns) said that german tourists always wanted to know all of the details and were kind of flat faced about everything -they just wanted to analyze and examine things.

I don't remember what he said about the English, but I think he was fond of England from having traveled there at the end of sheffield's heyday.
 
Well so glad my Pam isn’t one of the ugly ones from Philadelphia! (No she’s not from around here at all,) lol. Amish are definitely different in every way. Can’t imagine not having electricity but they seem to manage ok.

They're interesting if you get to know some of them. But things go across the board. You can meet Amish or Mennonite folks who will permanently cease communication with you at the smallest off color comment, and you can meet others who want to talk cars (they ride in them, so they form an opinion). I know an old bachelor trim carpenter who is pretty outspoken (he's amish through and through but the culture doesn't have a whole lot to keep bachelor's busy as the typical amish household is without outside influence and communal in the evenings).

On our land, we always had trouble with amishmen sitting in trees hunting - places you couldn't imagine a human could climb. They're not real big on property rights as far as hunting goes, but they will leave if you ask....

....and be back later.

If you're used to being in store aisles with folks with deodorant on and daily showers - you may notice something!

The bachelor I mentioned wanted to give me the what's up about how much better quality amish clothing was than "English" (non-amish for the folks in the UK -they would call the French 'English'), and he whipped open his coat to show me his shirt and I got a wall of onions. "Jeez Abner, that's pungent".

That was the day before my best friend's wedding - I was his best man. His Mrs. called Abner that night (Abner has a shop phone). "ABNER - TAKE A SHOWER TONIGHT AND WEAR DEODORANT TOMORROW". I could hear him rebut (Amish folks do like to argue sometimes), or just start and she slammed the phone on him. He still smelled like onions at the wedding, but he was great fun to talk to. Smoked little cigars like one would smoke cigarette to avoid the cigarette taxes and had a brown circle in his front teeth the size of a US dime.

Great fun - I do remember that he though the RX-8 was the ultimate car and often watched TV at night as long as he was in someone else's house.

He had a successful cabinetmaker brother who built a new shop. The next year, Abner built himself a shop, too - a foot longer. There's more fundamental human nature things going on among them (tattling, etc, but also genuine deep human kindness and respect in some cases, too) than we would be caught doing. The fact that Abner could say his shop was bigger than his brother's was of huge value to him.
 
(I'm probably about 10% or so amish lineage, almost entirely german and swiss regardless of anabaptist or protestant, though. Still hear german at family funerals sometimes, even though the family isn't amish and has been located here since the famine in the 1700s - the one in the palatinate. One side was mostly that, the other was urban - all got booted from both places for not being Catholic of all things.
 
Some people are ar..holes. Lancaster county, a few hours away from Pittsburgh? But Pam’s son is there so I have visited a few times, it must have been something when it was in its heyday,
Picture of the press on display as a testament to earlier times. Ian
View attachment 122775

What on earth were they pressing???
 
From memory, 6” battleship armour plating. It’s quite something to see, the scale of it takes some getting used to, just left out as a monument at the back of a Home Depot (B&Q) don’t suppose it’ll rust away any time soon! Ian
 
My wife is from the east end of the state, too, ian. But she's pretty harsh sometimes and fits the stereotype.
 
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