Owners of the medical marijuana collective Have a Heart, which has three storefronts in Seattle, recently opened what might become the model for future private marijuana clubs for recreational use in Seattle.

Have a Heart’s storefront in the University District has a café where medical marijuana patients can consume cannabis – indoors, in a comfortable groovy atmosphere.

Co-owner Ryan Kunkel opened the café because, he said, he’d heard too many stories of how some of the medical marijuana patients from out of town were smoking marijuana in their cars, out on the street or in parks.

“You had your average suburban housewives who need to medicate, so they were doing it in their minivans,” he said. “After I heard more stories like that, I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ We needed to make a place for them to use it.”

So, Kunkel and co. decided to open a cafe-style club for medical marijuana members of its cooperative. You can get a variety of espresso and also “dabs” in the dab bar, those would be hash oil concentrates inhaled from a vaporizing device.

“Patients can go upstairs, take their dab and come down here to hang out,” Kunkel said, sitting on one of the half-dozen comfy couches in the café area, where vaporizing is also allowed.

Kunkel et al. believe they are solidly within a grey zone of the legal system because they only allow vaporizing inside, thus circumventing the state laws against smoking indoors.

And, only members of the collective can get in to use the space, so it is technically a private club … they believe.

When recreational pot is available, where will it be used?

Seattle is looking for some remedy to keep tourists and apartment dwellers from taking their chances on the civil violation front and clouding up the city streets and parks with marijuana smoke.

Entrepreneurs like Kunkel are likely to test the boundaries of the law to open private clubs for recreational use. And, it seems the city of Seattle will be open to that sort of thing.