I used to work in Soho, a place renowned for its Sex Shops, a hot mess of porn videos, poppers, lingerie, live show, kinky boots, “intimate accessories” etc.

The area had critical mass. Everyone was out for a good time, take your pick, no judgement or shame walking through a door with beaded curtains strung across. You couldn’t see into the shops. It was a private zone. You take your chances.

Were the opaque windows and beaded curtains to protect the outside world from looking in (youngsters, those of a delicate disposition)? Or to give privacy from the outside world to those brave souls who ventured in?

Fast forward a lifetime, and I am walking past Big Rich’s on Main Street several times a week. I never went it, but I often thought, “Who goes in there? Who’s there now?”

There was no critical mass, no sensibility that it belonged between a wedding dress shop and Bill’s Glass. No welcome, no placehood in the community. It was invisible, unknown. A gnarly place, eventually reconditioned as a RMT / physio studio.

This week, idly window shopping in Vancouver, I hit a storefront with blacked out windows and a flashing neon OPEN sign.

For market research purposes, I took a deep breath, opened the door, and went inside the cannabis store.

This Much We Know.