c/o Flower Power Dispensers
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Flower Power Dispensers, the brainchild of Angelo Kitkas, is planning to open the first week of April at 22 West 66th Street (between Central Park West and Columbus avenues).
Born in Greece but a resident of Queens since he was eight years old, Kitkas is a licensed electrician who has been in the illegal marijuana delivery business for decades. He was arrested twice for cannabis offenses – though one of those offenses was having just over a gram on him – and served seven months of jail time in 2004. In 2023, Kitkas was awarded the license for the legal dispensary through the CAURD program (Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary) which offers people who were convicted under prior cannabis laws a chance to open the first dispensary licenses in NY.
“I’ve been dreaming about running my own legal store ever since I opened my first delivery business in 1997,” said the 44-year-old Kitkas, who lives in Astoria with his wife and two children. “We always talked about how we’d run our store once it’s legal.”
Kitkas himself will source the store’s product from local distributors and vendors. Products will include everything from traditional flower to edibles, vapes, drinks, tinctures, topicals and more.
“I will try every product before it goes in the store,” said Kitkas, who added that he’s currently looking for a certain strain of Sour Diesel, a New York favorite. “I want to curate a sort of ‘Best of New York.’ I won’t have anything in the store I wouldn’t use. I’m not sure if anyone is doing the due diligence we are.”
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Flower Power Dispensers sits at the base of The Europa, a luxury condominium less than a half block from Central Park. The space will feature a concierge and kiosks for customers looking for a quicker experience, as well as displays and “budtenders” who will cater to browsing customers. Budtenders are product experts who are trained on a regular basis by their distributors and vendors. A delivery service will be available roughly a month after the store’s opening.
The space will take design queues from the neighborhood. Kitkas wants to host a mural competition for local art school students and showcase the winning design in the store.
With Kitkas obtaining the license through the CAURD program, 4% of the store’s taxes on revenue will go back to the local community. But Kitkas wants his business to benefit the community in other ways, so he plans to hire locally and said the store has already received more than 1,000 applications. Current openings for a Budtender and Cannabis Marketing/Social Media can be found on Glassdoor.
“We are here to be a part of the community,” said Kitkas, who added that he fell in love with the location after one visit. “The neighborhood has been so welcoming. We want to help the community in any way we can.”
The store will be open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday through Sunday (though it’s pickup only between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.; the store is fully operational beginning at 10 a.m.). For more information visit the website here.
That stinks, literally
It’s POT, not cigarettes.
Great. Nothing improves a neighborhood like a weed store. Add a check cashing place and a methadone clinic and you’ll get the best of the best.
Let me guess. You voted for Reagan, bought into the whole cannabis leads to harder drugs myth, and think nothing about the alcohol you consume.
Thank you. Such a nonsensical comment from Adam
I love booze- it makes me feel good.
Well said Adam. This is the last thing we need. In reality we need to get rid of all the illegal stores as well. (Hopefully in due time). @washingtonpost
Adults who use marijuana daily are 25 percent more likely to have a heart attack than those who don’t use it, according to research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association and funded by the National Institutes of Health.
I think the bigger issues is w/normalization and the feedthrough to other drugs when use starts in adolescents. Progressives once more at the forefront promoting recidivism.
So none of the others are legal? They’re all over the place.
If the city knows they’re all illegal, why don’t they have a sheriff padlock the door, as happens to many many other businesses all the time?
The whole idea of making it legal was that it could be regulated. If they aren’t going to regulate it, what’s the point?
And letting the illegal ones stay open is completely unfair to Mr. Kitkas, who took the trouble to do things legally, and will have unfair competition.
Finally! This is great news. Very happy that I won’t need to go down or across town anymore. Kudos to the owner for doing a solid for the neighborhood. And to all the naysayers who are commenting, please. Get over yourselves. “Check cashing place & a methadone clinic?” Seriously?
That’s too far to walk to and probably a lot more expensive. I’ll just stick to my favorite illegal weed store thanks.
Yes. With you.
Who needs or wants to pay for “budservers”, girls in Givenchy, mahogany and leather in a posh joint when we already got little low class cheap LED’s and Huka headshops all up and down Broadway uptown?
I’d prefer to buy legal I guess but you’re right, these places go upscale and the prices follow. I want my legal weed store to look like a Costco.
Your concerns are noted.
Pro or con, whatever your feelings are toward a weed store on any block, in any neighborhood in the city, one thing it’s going to attract… thieves and robbers, namely, folks who want their weed for free and will case the joint, brandish firearms and tie up the staff to get it. Kitkas needs to protect his people, property and product and hire armed security guards during store hours otherwise, it’s almost a guarantee…he will be robbed and even vandalized. Does he really want to encourage all that?
That hasn’t happened at any other other legal stores.
Legal doesn’t mean good. It’s a sad commentary on what is happening to our neighborhood. Sad, very sad.
Wake up!
You all irritate me as much as Trump.
Facts NOT ALT facts!!
Here you go:
FACT :
“ receiving a dispensary in a neighborhood causes a reduction in crime; specifically, an additional dispensary per 10,000 residents is associated with a reduction of 17 crimes per 10,000 residents per month.”
THINK. RESEARCH. LEARN. Before you post Stupid ignorant comments like, “I feel like…”, “I believe…” or worse…
DO SOME HOMEWORK and RAISE US ALL UP!
Share your “facts” with the victims of store robberies and shootings between the two “dispensaries” that opened up on Broadway/Amsterdam between 71st and 70th Street over the past two years before printing your fairy tales about reductions in crime. As if such a thing could ever be linked to the opening of a dispensary. Defies all common sense. Yes, please do some homework before trying to establish causality where there is none.
These statistics are from a peer-reviewed journal known as Regional Science and Urban Economics. Asserting anecdotal evidence about two illegal dispensaries — which is not what’s at issue here — does not refute the data. As to causality, the problem isn’t that people who claim dispensaries reduce crime can’t show that the reduction in crime is caused by the dispensary. The problem is that people who claim dispensaries INCREASE crime are just, well, wrong. Maybe the dispensaries are not the cause of the concomitant reduction in crime, but whatever the reason it turns out that adding dispensaries simply does not appear to cause the increase that you seem to expect.
“There’s 1400 of these places”, NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell testified at a City Council hearing Wednesday on the spread of the stores selling unlicensed cannabis or untaxed tobacco products.
“These places” are demanding police protection while paying no taxes and vending illegal hooch. You think an illegal joint is gonna call, “Help!” to the cops? The banditos operate and target on this assumption.
A large percentage of these illegal vendors are supplied and controlled by China mafia. Fentanyl is also involved.
The federal response, however, has been muted due to dynamic, changing state regs and low grade enforcement interest.
It’s great that legal joints will be replacing illegal ones- targeted crime on these “Smoke Shops” will fall off as they go away. We may see less fentanyl around, too.
The benefits of legal weed are vast. And who on earth doesn’t want legalization? This ain’t prohibition, is it?
Look up that NYT story about the China mafia. Yesterday’s news. You’ll enjoy it. I bet it was interesting to do
Sounds groovy. Source?
If you legalize something that certainly reduces crime.
The article about Flower Power Dispensers opening on the Upper West Side is truly inspiring. It shows how Angelo Kitkas turned his passion into a legal business, despite facing challenges in the past. I appreciate how the store aims to contribute to the community by hiring locally and supporting neighborhood artists. Learning about the CAURD program that helped Kitkas get his license makes me see how laws can change to give people second chances. This article helped me understand that legalizing marijuana can create opportunities for entrepreneurs like Kitkas and benefit local communities. It’s great to see a positive impact being made in New York City!