The Parkway Theater opened on the East Side of Lake Merritt in 1925, at the same time as other landmark theaters in Oakland.
“This was sort of like a lower-end art deco theater, not as grand as say the Paramount or the Grand Lake, they were all built by the same architecture group in the early 1920s,” says Hilary O’Brien, the manager of Ivy Hill Cannabis, located where the Parkway Theater once operated. “This was more like the working man's theater.”
The beloved Old Parkway closed this location in 2009, and after it sat empty for a decade, Hilary’s former boss Bill Koziol proposed a new idea for it. He wanted to create a space where people could buy and use cannabis, where others used to watch movies and drink beer.
Ivy Hill Cannabis is currently located in what was once the Old Parkway’s lobby, where customers would purchase tickets before seeing films. The front counter was once the concession stand, and the back of the dispensary was where the walk-in freezer used to be.
Asia Howard, a bud-tender at the dispensary, explains the different kinds of cannabis to me. She talks about which samples would help me sleep or which would give me a jolt of energy. She references an Oakland distributor that has been providing some of the staff's favorite samples.
“Anything from Oakfruitland is going to be pretty fire,” Asia says. “That’s what I have in my bag right now.”
Asia and her co-workers have a lot of experience with cannabis, either from on-the-job training or as consumers themselves. Customers often list off the reasons they want weed. Their reasons can stem from anxiety, depression, or just recreational use, then the staff tries to find the right sample for their needs.
But out of every employee I spoke with, no one knew the inventory better than Roxy Attaway, one of the Ivy Hill supervisors.
Roxy explains how cannabis can be used for more than just smoking.
“You don't just have to smoke weed. You can use a tincture, an edible, or even a patch.”
Roxy has worked at Ivy Hill for the last year but hasn’t always had a positive experience working in cannabis. She explains an incident where she had a run-in with Oakland authorities and was taken into custody.
“I went to jail for selling weed,” Roxy says. “So when they came up into my hotel room, they found weed. That's why I was incarcerated.”
However, Roxy says that working at the dispensary has allowed her to feel more comfortable working in cannabis, and has created a new community for her to embrace. She is now one of the top sellers at Ivy Hill.
But there is a great deal of work that goes into picking out the shop’s inventory, and that’s the job of the dispensary's manager, Hilary. She sits in her office above the dispensary, behind a large wooden desk with a computer, a walky-talky, and a pile of papers. There’s a serene view of Park Boulevard, and a rainbow flag hanging over the window.
Hilary says that Ivy Hill has an agreement with the City of Oakland to carry local, equity products that focus on marginalized communities impacted by the war on drugs.
“We are always kind of on the lookout for the latest and greatest flower, we're flower focused,” she adds. “Flower that's grown by women, by non-white folks, by local Oakland neighbors and equity businesses, they're gonna get a higher priority.”
Hilary learned about cannabis from the ground up. Before working at dispensaries in the Bay, she was a weed farmer in Humboldt County and worked as a jack of all trades.
“I worked for myself for a decade cultivating, buying, and selling weed.”
This was before 2016, when California voters passed Proposition 64 to legalize recreational marijuana. Hilary worked in a sort of grey zone. Most of what she was growing was for medical dispensaries.
But ultimately, it became extremely difficult for her to maintain a business in the underground market. With decreasing prices of cannabis and an expensive and confusing licensing process required in legalizing farms, she wanted an escape. So she sold her farm, to begin a new career in legal dispensaries.
“I have a little bit of an unusual background, but my expertise from the black market has paved the way for my career in the legal market.”
Hilary has 18 employees at the dispensary but hopes to expand the business, so they can build a cannabis lounge in the former movie theater. She hopes to show movies again and serve food.
Hilary guides me through the gorgeous 16,000-square-foot building, I see the original projector room and vintage red seats. There’s an Egyptian-style molding surrounding the movie screen and an orchestra pit that sits underneath the stage.
“The plan was to keep this sort of bar seating the way that the Old Parkway had it. To have a dab bar so you could come and get a cannabis drink."
But the dream to make the theater of the Old Parkway into a cannabis lounge is on hold for now. Due to a lawsuit against the dispensary’s former ownership company, they are now under a receivership, which is basically a court-appointed ownership.
Hilary says that until they receive a new owner, they won’t be able to renovate the theater.
"My hope, my secret, and not-so-secret hope is that somebody sees the big vision with this place and buys it because they want to do the big vision,” she says. “Renovating the theater, making this the first restaurant entertainment complex theater cannabis lounge that's ever existed. Legally.”
The Original Parkway sign sits on top of the building, and it reminds me of why I love Oakland. Everything here is changing, but there will always be some remnants of the past.
Ivy Hill Cannabis is located at 1834 Park Boulevard in Oakland.
