Cirrus Social Club Wants to Give You a Queer Place to Smoke

Cirrus Social Club plans to redefine what a cannabis sesh can look like. Cirrus Social Club, opening in 2024, prioritizes service, comfort, and memorability to make smoking weed a new and beautiful experience.

Cannabis can immensely improve the quality of one’s life, both in physical and mental health. Arend Richard, the founder of Cirrus, attests to this in his experience with weed, saying medical cannabis “really improved my health quality of life” as he dealt with a blood cell disease called Mastocytosis.

Along with the physical benefits, cannabis can have a positive impact on mentality. Particularly for queer people, ganja can be incredibly healing. Regarding weed’s benefits, Arend says, “It helps my mental health a lot. It really helped me sort of bridge the gap of growing up as a gay person in an extremely conservative family where I wasn’t accepted. It kind of helps me shed a lot of those labels and look at the world in a different way. And I just had a huge passion for cannabis. I just feel like if more people consume cannabis, it would be a much better place. It’s really hard to be an asshole when you smoke weed.”

Richard is taking his passion and optimistic outlook on cannabis and putting it into action through Cirrus. Cirrus is a luxury cannabis lounge rooted in the community. Richard explains some of his priorities in opening Cirrus, saying, “Cirrus is about three elements. Number one, creating a comfortable and timelessly beautiful environment where maybe cannabis hasn’t been seen or consumed before to kind of change the perception of what cannabis looks like, where it can be consumed, and who it’s for. We also focus heavily on service. So whether you’re a first-time consumer or a sophisticated stoner, our staff is highly trained in the art of the sesh to make sure you have a memorable experience. And that’s the third aspect, we want to make sure everyone leaves with a memorable experience that  they take with them for the rest of their lives.”

“Cirrus will be a monumental business.” There are no other similar businesses open in Colorado doing cannabis lounges at this level. It will change the Denver cannabis scene, but its uniqueness also brings struggles in finding investors. When asked about the most challenging aspect in the process of opening Cirrus, Richard says,

“I think just the hardest part has been trying to explain to investors the value that’s here because there’s nothing like it that we can point to to say, ‘Look, it’s going to be like this.’ So it’s, it’s a little bit more of a risk for them because they don’t have a model to go off of.”

Richard has faced several setbacks while working on Cirrus, though he says he persisted through these challenges by “believing in (himself) when no one else would.” This self-motivation and persistence mirrors that of the queer community. Richard says inclusivity and community are important factors in creating Cirrus.

“If you go to a cannabis trade show, like half of the booths have half-naked women trying to get people to buy things from them, which, you know, whatever floats your boat; I’m not here to criticize anybody else. But I think that there’s another fraction of people on this earth, queer people, who want to find a safe space where we feel like we belong, where we love spending time, and that’s really important to me to bring to the world.”

His identity as a gay man plays a considerable role in his hope for what Cirrus can do for the world. He notes the relationship between the cannabis industry and queer people by saying, “Queer people really led a charge for cannabis legalization and normalization in the 80s during the AIDS crisis because it was something that was helping patients in a way that nothing else was.”

Richard takes queer history into account and hopes to add to the relationship between queer people and cannabis by making Cirrus outwardly inviting of queer people. He says, “It’s really exciting to be on the forefront of this new industry of cannabis hospitality as a gay man. And I really hope that Cirrus sort of carves a very significant wedge in this industry to kind of show the world, like, this is what the gays are going to bring to the table.”

Richard is incredibly qualified to change the cannabis hospitality industry. He has an extensive background in customer service and marijuana education. He founded and was the CEO of WeedTube, the largest cannabis social media platform ever created. He shared a deep passion for both service and cannabis and regarding Cirrus says, “This is it. I want to bring my food and beverage customer service love with my love of cannabis; I want to bring people sesh experiences that can change the world. And so that’s kind of how I got started with Cirrus.”

Outside of Cirrus, Richard  has an array of impressive accomplishments. He wrote two gay novels, “expanding representation.” He grants insight into these novels by saying, “I wrote two gay sci-fi books called Being Found and Finding Home. I wrote them for my 15-year-old self who desperately searched the library for a main character in a fiction novel that I could relate to. And so I wrote that book in 2020. There are two in the series. Now I’m working on the third one. And we would just love for more queer people to find out about this story so that they can feel represented.”

Cirrus will be a monumental addition to Denver coming this year, giving people a first-class sesh experience surrounded by beauty community, and great cannabis.

by Kendall Mcclain