It seems like every time you turn around, another DC dispensary is opening up and declaring that they’re the best place to score top-shelf flower, edibles, and CBD. But they can’t all be the best, right? At Gentleman Toker, we’ve spent years hitting the streets and trying out every DC dispensary around. Want to know what the best dispensary in Washington DC is? We’ve got you covered.
Best I-71 Dispensary Storefront
Best I-71 Dispensary Store Concept
Best Medical Dispensaries in DC
Best I-71 Dispensary Storefronts
Gifted Curators
Gifted Curators has a fantastic vibe, and it’s the first storefront we found in DC that reminded us of West Coast dispensaries. They have an enthralling collection of street art bathed in bright white light, hip-hop playing over the speakers all day, and (most importantly) their happy, upbeat staff. If you told me this space was the magnum opus of some ancient, dragon-blooded Feng Shui master, I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.
Gifted Curators consistently offers a curated selection of cannabis gifts of sterling quality. They only carry flowers, pre-rolls, and edibles. Their website is intuitive and regularly updated, and the online order system works perfectly.
Even if this were a public poll, you’d end up with the same result. The reviews you’ll find on social media for Gifted Curators' gorgeous Adams Morgan shop are positively gushing with praise.
Legacy DC
Legacy is a little newer to the scene but should be on everybody’s radar by now. Conveniently located to two Metro stations at the corner of 14th and U, this art gallery honors DC’s history from the street and cultural perspective. It’s got photos of old neighborhood record shops and graffitied tunnels next to a poster for Mr. T’s movie, DC Cab, and their hip-hop vinyl collection.
The lobby is spacious and inviting. Their inventory is also extremely competitive in quality with longer-established shops. Legacy is well worth a visit next time you’re around the Columbia Heights neighborhood.
Elevated Lounge
One of the most popular I-71-compliant shops to open up in the last couple of years, Elevated Lounge provides an excellent experience for its customers. They have a comfortable indoor space, excellent staff, and a great selection of products. You can certainly tell that Elevated Lounge’s owner comes from the hospitality industry. There’s a sense of community at Elevated Lounge, especially for repeat customers, that you won’t find at a lot of other Washington DC dispensaries.
Elevated Lounge has great options for buying in bulk and a unique selection of flower, pre-rolls, edibles, vapes, and Lounge Budder concentrate. While they specialize in providing tours for DC tourists, they also offer art prints as well.
Best I-71 Dispensary Store Concepts
Good Boy Flower
Owned and operated by a group of passionate minority and LGBTQ+ staff, Good Boy Flower works to give back to the community and create a platform for local artists. They also allow customers to earn flower at no additional cost by submitting story prompts for local author Gil Gallagher or winning their Artist of the Month contest.
Dreamy DC
Dreamy DC has received national attention for its innovative business model. Instead of selling art pieces or stickers alongside their weed gifts, they sell motivational speeches. Call it a pick-me-up to get you high. They might read you words of inspiration from Victor Hugo or Albert Einstein and then give you a fine gift of weed.
Best CBD Dispensary in DC
District Hemp Botanicals
District Hemp’s stunning Dupont Circle location strikes a delicate balance between lavish, minimalist, and natural decor. Awash in light and plants, the boutique atmosphere that District Hemp has cultivated is unmatched across the city, which is all the more impressive for how incredibly spacious our favorite CBD store is.
The peaceful vibe is complemented by a friendly, knowledgeable staff and a staggeringly large selection of hemp product types. Their selection includes flower and their own in-house lines of tinctures, topicals, and concentrates. We’re particularly fond of the CBD coffee they carry, which provides the energy and focus we need without any jitters. The dark roast tastes pretty good, too.
Best DC Edibles
Puff Kings
One of the things we like most about Puff Kings’ great edible selection is that it includes products with a mix of both THC and CBD. The CBD eases the weight of the THC, making for a more relaxing and long-lasting high. It’ll still help you sleep at night, but it won’t knock you out in the middle of the day at responsible dosages.
In our experience, this synergy is also better at relieving pain and anxiety. Some research indicates CBD acts as a neuroprotectant against some of the side effects of THC, such as memory loss. We can’t stress enough what a beneficial combination these cannabinoids make.
Georgetown Kushcakes
Georgetown Kushcakes creates upscale desserts to delight foodies and connoisseurs alike. They concentrate primarily on two products that you’ll find in I-71 storefronts across the city: truffles and gummies.
The gummies come in exotic flavors like pomegranate, lime, and tangerine. The everyday truffle lineup is Chocolate Chip, Milkshake, Mint Chip, and Peanut Butter, but they also release seasonal flavors like Pumpkin Spice and Red Velvet Cake.
Georgetown Kushcakes typically uses distillate for their edibles for guaranteed potency, which we can personally attest to. But they also released a collaborative truffle project that used live hash rosin.
District Elixir
District Elixir is one of our favorite DC edible finds because their products are full-spectrum, flower-infused, and strain-specific. They also take great strides to accurately measure dosing despite the inherent challenge.
They offer classic baked goods like snickerdoodles, ginger snaps, and chocolate chip cookies in mini- and full-size options along with their cannabis syrups packed in medicine droppers. That’s a really great detail because once you’ve figured out the right dose for you, you can dial it in with extreme precision.
Syrups can be added to drinks to work as an edible, and District Elixir suggests adding them to hot beverages like coffee or tea. But they’re sweet enough that you can drink them straight.
Best DC Head Shop
Glasshouse Gallery
There is no shortage of places to pick up a pipe and rolling papers in DC, including many of the I-71 storefronts themselves. So why go to a separate head shop? In the case of Glasshouse Gallery, the answer is simple—they’re the best place to find bongs and rigs that are as much about form as function.
Featuring the work of the hottest names in glass-blowing from across the East Coast, Glasshouse Gallery sells transcendent, psychedelic art that you can also smoke out of. If you want fine American glass to smoke from—since we highly recommend that you ditch any cheaply produced, widely available Chinese-made glass products—then go to Glasshouse Gallery.
For the largest and most intricate pieces, the price for these delicate works dictates that you’d have to be insane to actually smoke out of them. They belong in a museum! Or, y’know, on your shelf at home to admire.
Best DC Weed Tours
Elevated Tours
If you’re looking for a richly informative tour led by a professional, experienced guide, we suggest you check out Elevated Tours. Every trip with Elevated begins with a smoke session in their charming lounge before you see the monuments. The tour ends, if you wish, with a trip to their Glover Park I-71 storefront.
Lucky Chuckie
We really enjoyed our most recent trip with Lucky Chuckie Tours. Whether you’re visiting our fair city for the first time or are a long-time resident that has neglected to visit the National Mall in a while, it’s well worth your time to take a ride with Lucky Chuckie.
For starters, they’ll give you some flower-infused edibles and a massive blunt to smoke during the tour, which lasts around an hour for the basic package. Speaking of packages, Lucky Chuckie is happy to build a tour to your exact specifications, so you’re not limited in any way to what sights you’ll see in DC. We found their guides to be especially insightful about local events and places that we might want to explore on our own.
If you’re looking for even more cannabis gifts, no worries! Lucky Chuckie Tours offers a menu of gifts to check out when you join the tour and a pitstop at the end to pick up your order.
Strain Hunters
Heady Club
Heady Club stands out as our favorite I-71 delivery service for one simple reason: They offer fresh, aromatic ganja glistening with trichomes at a fair value.
Never complacent, they offer a mix of dialed-in menu mainstays, like MAC 1 and Purple Punch, alongside cutting-edge genetics like Runtz Cake. They even keep a few CBD flowers in stock! Their pre-rolls are made to order from any strain on the menu, and they’ve got a great selection of concentrates.
Their site is also simple and straightforward to use. And, of course, you can expect friendly, professional service from the staff at Heady Club.
Green Kings
Here’s a mission statement you can get behind: No mids, no shake, only top-shelf. That’s what Green Kings seeks to offer its tokers. Their website makes it easy to find their current offerings, and getting delivery of their top-shelf product is simple. They also have a selection of edibles and concentrates, so you can mix things up every now and then.
District Chiefer
If there’s anyone out there who loves smoking the finest herbs as much as we do, it’s District Chiefer. Bag chasers will love the constantly-updated selection of designer strains at an excellent value from this I-71 service. So will dab enthusiasts looking for premium extracts like Zugatti’s Diamonds and Cold Cure Live Rosin. District Chiefer’s site is simple and direct, and their delivery is smooth and speedy.
Best Medical Dispensaries in DC
Herbal Alternatives
One of the OG medical dispensaries in DC, Herbal Alternatives continues to deliver a high-quality experience. As part of its mission of education and advocacy, Herbal Alternatives has its own cannabis library for customers to peruse while waiting in their lobby.
We like their deli-style service that allows patients to check out their selection before they grab the buds with chopsticks and weigh them on a scale. Not only does this provide transparency, but it also allows customers to purchase custom amounts to fit their preferences.
Anacostia Organics
Anacostia Organics is one of the few DC dispensaries open seven days a week. Their outstanding customer service bears mention, as well. Every single time we’ve visited, we have always been greeted and assisted by kind, patient, and helpful people, from security to checkout.
When Anacostia Organics opened in February 2019, they were the first and only dispensary operating east of the Anacostia River. Between Wards 7 and 8, they serve around 25% of the city’s card-holding medical marijuana patients. They also have home delivery to every other ward.
Anacostia is crushing it in every category, and we look forward to watching them grow! That’s a weed pun. We're allowed one per list; it’s in our contract.
Best Medical Cultivators in DC
AltSol
Alternative Solutions is the District’s all-star cultivator and a master of the classics. AltSol’s Jack Herer is some of the hottest fire we’ve ever seen, and their Chemdawg is nearly as impressive. They even revived a classic landrace sativa, Panama Red, and both harvests flew off dispensary shelves!
If it’s “morning flower” you’re after, allow us to introduce Alternative Solutions’ Lemon Skunk. The pungent aroma is an absolute duel between that quintessential skunkiness we all love and an intense citrusy zest. This terpy delight carries through to the taste when smoked and is a great way to fire yourself up for whatever kind of day awaits.
This amazing cultivator has also put out some unique strains, and their cultivation team, led by Nolan & Luke Jenkins, prides itself on their pheno-hunting when seeking the perfect plants for AltSol’s novel cultivars. In 2021, Alt Sol brought us Fog Jam (Blackwater OG x Mai Tai Jelly), Tiger Rose (Blood Orange x Topanga Zkittelz), and Viper Cookies (Girl Scout Cookies x Viper) among their offerings. For those of you looking for high THC strains, Fog Jam and Viper Cookies both consistently test between 29–31% across successive batches.
Abatin Wellness
One of our favorite DC medical marijuana cultivators, Abatin Wellness products are available at Takoma Wellness Center, even to non-patients. Their greenhouse-grown line of Kashmir flowers is fantastic, and they also carry vape cartridges. They boast the most diverse genetics library in DC, along with an advanced cannabis lab with a microbiology and chemistry unit which monitors their plants.
District Cannabis
District Cannabis is to DC medical dispensary edibles what AltSol has been to flower. Carrying the town on its back, this cultivator has kept shelves stocked with gummies, chocolates, capsules, and lozenges. We appreciate them for stepping into the treacherous kitchen space (we’re talking D.C. regulatory nonsense as much as we are about the perils of hot and sharp things flying about). They also make some excellent RSO products.
In our opinion, District Cannabis has produced some of the most medically beneficial strains of flower, too. Let’s start with their Gelato Cake, which consistently tests between 28–31% THC. This fruity, floral, frosty flower is exactly what I find myself sinking into after dinner. For people with serious pain management issues, insomnia, and those looking to relieve daily stress (which could include just about everyone), this is your strain.
District Cannabis’s Charlotte’s Web x Harle Tsu is a 1% THC: 21% CBD flower great for folks with chronic gastrointestinal issues, severe pain, inflammation, and even seizures. Their other two “indica-dominant” flagship flowers, Cherry Chem and Deep Line Alchemy, are both impressive in their own rights and regularly test around 30% THC.
If you’ve got the impression that District Cannabis wants us all to be sacked out on the couch praying FX will host another top-to-bottom Simpsons marathon, we should mention that they also grow a nice, peppy Sour Diesel.
Hottest Gear
Peace in the Air
A lot of apparel brands have launched under the auspices of I-71, but the Grindstone gear available at Peace in the Air’s storefront is on another level. They offer an extensive selection of hoodies, tees, hats, outerwear, and more for every gender. Their designs are fresh, bold, and free of cannabis references, so you can flaunt your hipness to the game in a most inconspicuous fashion.
Those hoodies and jackets are plush AF. The fact that you can get great weed gifts while you’re there is just icing on the delicious cake that will be you, rocking your Grindstone gear down 18th Street with the confidence of a BeeGee.
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