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The appeal begins in the creation of the joint. There is a ritual, a skill at play. You have to take time and care with a joint. You have to know how much the paper can handle, when the weed is evenly distributed, and when it's ready to be flipped over and rolled. The final motion, licking the sticky strip and twisting the joint, is a craft that rewards patience and dexterity. A joint encourages you to take a moment to get it right. Its very nature requires you to step out of the demands of the day—what's happening on your social media, that report due tomorrow, dinner with your significant other's parents—and, for a moment, focus on your hands, your mouth, and your drugs.Disclaimer: As my friends can attest, I suck at rolling joints. No matter how many tutorials I watch on YouTube, my joints always come out spindly and weird looking, like an old miser in a Dickens novel. It's possible that this inability has led me to fetishize Js.Read on Motherboard: How to Make Weed 'Dabs' at Home with a Hair Straightener
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Then there are bongs, the pick-up truck-owning big brother to pipes. My problem with bongs is they reflect a bullying, domineering aspect of pot culture. An immaturity that still clings to marijuana, a reminder of the high school parking lot roots of getting high. The goal is to get as fucked up as possible and, more importantly, to be able to handle getting that fucked up. Bongs represent getting high as something the cool kids do—it's weed as an exclusive club. I don't think weed should be scary, it should be welcoming for anyone to try, but it can be hard to convince someone to smoke weed when you are smoking out of a device that looks likes it should be used for killing aliens.Joints are more transportable than bongs, more subtle than pipes, and more welcoming than both. A joint is an invitation to a community. It's for sharing. They can appear anywhere they are needed: Sitting at the beach or in a field watching a band, suddenly a joint is produced from the backpack or purse of some highly-appreciated soul. That magical moment is a lot harder to imagine with someone pulling out an eight-chambered bong during dusk at a music festival.Read on Noisey: An Interview with the Only Person Ever to Nail the "Smoke Weed Every Day" Line from That Dr. Dre Song
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