On the gritty western edge of Mount Clemens there sits a squat, gleaming, fortified building called JARS Cannabis, a branch of a marijuana dispensary chain. Coincidentally, the site once boasted a florist and the smokable form of the weed is often marketed as “flower.”
JARS is one of the busiest retail venues on this patch of Groesbeck north of Cass. Nearby are several vacant storefronts, a few fast-food places, a shuttered bar, a Dollar Tree store, a plasma center, and an abandoned Burger King.
You sense JARS is a cash-only business by the security guard at the front door and, in the corner of the parking lot, an unmarked, four-door, gray sedan with a flashing, orange light on top.
Parking at JARS caused serious debate last year shortly before it expanded from only medical cannabis to include adult-use products. The resolution juxtaposes what sort of business is waxing in this permissive era and what kind is on the wane.
Furthermore, speaking of marijuana, the current bribery scandal at the state capital illustrates how changing a drug’s status from illegal to legal does not necessarily keep out the greedy creeps who turn politics into such a buzz-killer.
Because the empty lot across the alley behind the JARS store is technically outside Mount Clemens, the abutting municipality of Clinton Township refused to allow JARS to extend its paved parking lot to that scrub land. Clinton Township voted against marijuana businesses in 2020.
Thus defeated, JARS instead bought the abandoned Big Boy restaurant next door and tore it down last week for more parking. But for metro Detroiters of a certain era, the demolition of yet another Big Boy is, well, jarring.
This restaurant brand once thrived in this area. Every neighborhood seemed to have one. That’s where you went on a movie date or following a basketball game or maybe after church.
Back in Big Boy’s salad days — the 1970s, perhaps — marijuana, conversely, was illegal, part of an underground economy that might land its participating merchants in prison.
But the odor of illegality still clouds pot politics in new ways. Witness last week’s felony plea agreement by Rick Johnson, a Republican and former speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, and three of his cronies.
Johnson, a farmer from LeRoy and a well-connected lobbyist, pleaded guilty to taking bribes of more than $100,000 to help applicants for medical marijuana licenses while Johnson chaired the Medical Marijuana Licensing Board from May 2017 through April 2019.
His chosen winners got the edge when recreational cannabis was legalized by a statewide vote in 2018. There must be something intoxicating and addictive about the Speaker’s power that hooks these Michigan Republicans on corruption.
Consider one of Johnson’s successors, Lee Chatfield of Levering. He is under investigation for “running a criminal enterprise” involving dirty money, sex, and prescription drugs.
Had Chatfield and Johnson invested their energy, money, and farmland in legal marijuana, they might have enjoyed a gold rush in a growth industry that creates legitimate jobs and generates serious tax revenue in the Great Lakes State.
According to numbers released last week, Michigan sold $1.8 billion of cannabis in 2022. This created $198.4 million in available tax revenues, including $59.5 million to Michigan municipalities, $69.4 million to schools, and $69.4 million to transportation.
JARS operates 25 storefronts in Michigan, Colorado, and Arizona. It recently added recreational marijuana to another branch, on Detroit’s East Side.
Like the shop in Mount Clemens, it originally opened as a medical outlet. Although both may thrive, a cannabis business somehow lacks the ambience of an unofficial community center, as Big Boy used to be in many neighborhoods.
The Macomb Daily last week wrote that the Big Boy on Groesbeck in its prime served as a gathering spot for the business crowd and its working breakfasts; and for families dining together after school or work. Plus, political people hung out there to hash out the Mount Clemens City Commission.
For me, Big Boy restaurants are even more personal. The night I met my wife — more than a half-century ago — we ended up, with a group of mutual friends, at the Big Boy on East Jefferson near Belle Isle. (It’s gone now, too; the marriage continues.)
Although I had a restaurant job I never worked at a Big Boy, but five of my siblings did in various locations in various roles. One of my brothers bussed tables there and later became a cook. He dated one of the women who used to wait tables.
For their 35th wedding anniversary recently, he fixed her a Slim Jim (which, for those who might not know, is a grilled ham sandwich with Swiss). This is not to be confused with the Swiss Miss or the Brawny Lad.
So, next time marijuana gives you the munchies, at least consider the place with the Big Boy statue, that hard, plastic fat kid with the pompadour, wearing red-and-white checkered overalls and proudly hoisting aloft a two-level cheeseburger.
I actually knew people who, for a prank, once decapitated one of those bad boys and hid his huge head in a nearby apartment. But I’ll never squeal, copper. Besides, the statute of limitations has expired on that statue and the dudes who did that deed must’ve been really high.
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