Art Credit: The Sensitive Girls Cookbook

The close of Women’s History Month has us rethinking both the power language and perceptions of drug dealers with this deliciously sticky recipe by “the original pot brownie lady”. Hell, the first ingredient listed is, “Magic”.

Why there isn’t a Netflix documentary on the life and times of Meridy Volz, artist and creator of the infamous “Sticky Fingers Brownies”, we’re not entirely sure (hint, hint Netflix). After digging into the vaults of the 1970’s San Francisco ganja scene, we learned that Volz’s story was anything other than that of your average narcotics kingpin. Or shall we say, queenpin?

Why’d Meridy name her pot brownies “sticky fingers”, anyway? Well, that part was an accident. After accepting the business from another hippie queenpin who sold coffee, little breads, and “just one dozen pot brownies in a special bag” each day at Fisherman’s Wharf, Volz, who knew a lot about pot, yet little about baking, forgot an imperative ingredient in her first batch: the flour!

Meridy Volz in her hippie days. (Photo courtesy of Alia Volz)

Legend has it that Volz, a “flower child, the real deal hippie”, evaded her only federal drug indictment in 1969 because she refused to open a package on the grounds that it was addressed to someone else, “a federal offense,” she exclaimed. That “someone else” was a 6-month old baby, Volz’s cousin’s child, she told Criminal podcast in a 2016 interview. Way to use language to stick it to em’, Meridy!

In their heyday, 10,000 of these infamous pot brownies were sold every month out of a San Francisco warehouse. Ten THOUSAND. In the nineteen-seventies! Indeed the Women’s Rights Movement was beginning to make strides, but a woman bringing in that type of income, at that time, was revolutionary.

You may be wondering what ever happened to Volz? Well, with all that pot brownie money, Volz was able to retire to Desert Hot Springs, CA, where she still lives and paints today. Fret not, though, Volz made sure to leave the secret recipe on the final batch for connoisseurs to enjoy for years!

Copy of the last batch of “Sticky Fingers Brownies”.

What’s more feminist than that? Thanks, Meridy!

Whipping up the recipe/personal highlight, I almost feel, at least in a microscopic way, that I’m part of the movement Volz accidentally created.

“Power to the People” read the packaging on the final batch of microdosed pot brownies to circulate SF and beyond. I wonder, though, is the current racial, gendered, and socio-economic climate in cannabis the “power to the people” in which Volz spoke of? Every day, legal pot brownies are being sold while men and women, mostly minority, sit in jail or prison for cannabis-related convictions. To make matters worse, cities like Los Angeles have yet to fund long-promised social equity programs meant to give back to the very communities the war on drugs harmed so deeply.

We contacted Volz for her ponderings on the matter and will update if there’s a response.

Art Credit: The Sensitive Girls Cookbook

To hear more about this feminist icon and brownie guru’s story, check out her interview on the popular podcast, Criminal, recorded at WUNC in 2016.

Now go get sticky and whip up that delicious pot brownie recipe.