The distinction between the terms “coffee shop” and “head shop” has never been muddier than it is today. The same can be said for the distinction between “coffee shop” and “cafe”. To bring some degree of clarity to the situation, the team here at the 710 Pipes online smoke shop has decided to take a close look at what separates the contemporary coffee house from the contemporary headshop. Enjoy.
Some Baby Boomers seem to think they were the first to discover the joys of marijuana. The truth, however, is that human history with cannabis goes back thousands of years. The first culture to document the use of the cannabis plant was ancient China where it was originally used to make practical items. By the time of the Han dynasty, (202 BC – 220 AD), cannabis was being widely used for medicinal purposes and personal non-medical purposes as well. In this post, the team at our Northglenn head shop takes a deep dive into the ancient Chinese relationship with marijuana.
Every year on April 20th cannabis aficionados around the world get together to celebrate their favorite herb’s unofficial holiday. The thing is, even people who’ve been celebrating 420 for years have no idea how the whole thing got started, and more than a few have simply accepted one of the many tall tales surrounding 420’s origins. In this post, the team at everyone’s favorite Denver headshop will set the record straight about the true origins of 420. Let’s begin by debunking the most popular of those myths.
Updated on November 12th, 2024
Vaping is associated with the 21st century to almost the same degree as digital technology. It’s a thoroughly modern phenomenon made possible by various subtle technological advances and anyone who tells you otherwise is just blowing vape clouds up your you-know-what. Or are they?
Most anyone you ask in your local vape shop will be happy to tell you that the whole vape thing is a response to the rise of contemporary cannabis culture. But the truth is vaping has been with us for thousands of years. That doesn’t mean that the ancients had contemporary-looking vaporizers, but rather that they understood and practiced the art of vaporizing using a variety of low-tech methods.
We tend to take our custom glass pipes in Denver for granted, but we shouldn’t. The craft used to create them – glassblowing – is an ancient one that takes years to master, and the story of glassblowing is, in some ways, the story of civilization.
Chillums have existed for centuries, but they just became a popular hand pipe option in the recent past. There are so many reasons to love chillums – from their appealing look to their user-friendly structure. New to chillums and their many perks? Our head shop team is here to review the basics of chillums – to help you buy the right smoking device and enjoy your herb with ease.
In our last article, our head shop writers dove deep into every source on slang to explain thirty-four unique terms for cannabis. This week, we’re concluding our glossary of grass with explanations of twenty-two more entertaining terms.
The American cannabis industry is rapidly growing and evolving with every passing year. With the increased popularity and policy changes surrounding the plant, a number of controversies have also arisen. How much testing do we need before legalizing each form of cannabis? What should the legal age be? Is state-by-state legalization enough, or is Federal legalization an essential step?
Frequent visitors of head shops like 710 Pipes tend to appreciate our mainstays, such as pipes, hookah products and rolling papers. While the love of smoking products permeates popular culture, very few of us are versed in the origins of the staples we rely upon today. We’ve reached deep into the past this week, exploring the respective journeys of tobacco and rolling papers to the popular forms we know and love.
Hemp: It’s Really Blowing Up These Days
Silk, engine fuel, cellophane and…dynamite! Surprisingly, all of these products can be derived from hemp, and arguably that’s just four examples of about 25,000 diverse commercial applications for the hemp plant. Frequenters of the blog (namely my mother) might be familiar with a 1936 article from Popular Mechanics that lauds the surprising prodigiousness of the hemp plant:
Hemp and humanity have cohabited for millennia. In fact, the earliest word for the plant comes to us from China, so far back in time that it predates written history. “Ma” is the oldest word for the hemp plant and, arguably, what infants have actually been attempting to demand from us all along.
The history of China is vast and steeped in legends and mythology. It represents the continuation of a culture so immune to outside influence that it stretches back beyond history to a time before paper or written records of any sort. Today, we’ll skip back before the time of head shops, smoke shops, and vaporizers to look at the invention of paper itself – discovered in the midst of this impressive culture’s beginnings and destined to define the nation’s advancement for centuries to come.
Updated on September 22nd 2023
The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire
For centuries, Great Britain dominated the planet with military superiority, building bases on every continent and joining those continents with international trade. Integral to this system was an advanced Navy, which boasted the cutting edge of technology in both design and structure.
Throughout recent years surrounding cannabis legalization, a rather volatile (if quiet) debate has continued to echo down the halls of established mainstream media outlets. One question lies at the heart of the controversy – what social impact, if any, do cannabis dispensaries have on their surrounding communities? The United States and most other countries have had head shops, pipe shops and smoke shops for decades, many of which cater to the cannabis-friendly. For this reason, the concern seems almost strange. At last, the numbers are in to put this issue to rest – so put down that bong and take a look.
We all know that the founding fathers were industrious and pragmatic men. Benjamin Franklin literally wrote the book on practicality – with his famous work “An American Life” still quoted to this day.
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”
It should therefore come as no surprise that some of our nation’s most honored founders were enamored with a plant that was equally practical, industrious and versatile – hemp.
What is Incense?
The word “incense” is derived from the Latin word “incendere,” meaning “to burn.” And for several millenniums of human history, we’ve done just that. “Incense” refers to a specific bound material which is burned to produce a number of rich fragrances, and not the fragrance itself. While our modern definition is rather narrow, many experts believe that other flavorful items like cedars, berries and roots have been burned throughout human history to produce the same effects. Like anything that’s withstood the test of time, the use of incense has evolved and improved over its many millenniums of history. Better yet, you can pick some up at 710Pipes’ Denver or Northglenn smoke shops and burn an homage to that rich history tonight. Below we’ll explore the most fascinating aspects of incense’s history and its uses across the globe.
The oldest water pipe known to historians is around 2,400 years old. These relics were made entirely of solid gold, and used exclusively by Scythian tribal chiefs, who prevailed over territory that eventually became modern-day Russia. That’s right – there’s a solid gold bong predating the invention of the wheelbarrow.
The year was 1938 and a new contraption had just been patented that would remove months of dry rotting required to separate fiber from the hemp plant. What had, for millennia, been a seasonal process to rot the fiber out of the hemp stalks, had now become an afternoon of labor; a development that had huge implications for a number of already prosperous industries, from paper production to fuel.
Updated on July 19th 2023
As cannabis legalization continues to sweep the US and the world by storm, a surrounding market for ways to consume cannabis has continued to emerge from the woodwork of the underground and underappreciated, and into the spotlight of mainstream marketing. As a result, a surprising number of innovative new devices continue to appear in the realm of water pipe designs. It’s pretty sweet.
The last few decades have seen an impressive rise in the investigation of cannabis’s potential for medicinal value as well as it’s suspected potential for abuse. Given the thousands of years that cannabis has been in the human pharmacopoeia, however, it isn’t surprising that the debate about the plant’s influence has been of major interest to politicians before. The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission was set up by the British Empire over one hundred and twenty years ago to assess the then-popular concern about the herb’s proliferate use among all classes of Indian society, who’s ancient and wide-spread social incorporation of the plant seemed to pose a possible threat to the stability of British imperial rule.
Tobacco has played an important role in the history of the United States. From the Colonial plantations that allowed American trade to prosper, to the decades where doctors would prescribe tobacco for weight loss, the plant has proliferated in popularity and remains a major aspect of society today. Artifacts that celebrate this extensive and interesting history are now in vogue, and demand top dollar by tobacco enthusiasts and antique collectors alike.
To those who have smoked herb for some time, the dab rig will look strangely familiar. It resembles the venerable bong, except that dab rigs are smaller and often feature more elaborate designs. The dab rig resembles the bong because form follows function and the function of the dab rig is the same as that of the bong: to filter (in this case) vapor through water to remove heat and impurities.
Glass as we know it has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. There is so many things that we do in our day to day lives that wouldn’t be possible without it. For instance, waking up in the morning going into the kitchen, turning on the light, making yourself a cup of coffee and turning on your television to get the daily news while simultaneously checking your phone to see if you missed anything over night. If glass had never been invented this whole scenario would change.
Where 420 Began
The term 420 has been well known around the world for decades as the symbol for marijuana. How this term was coined has several different origin stories from it being the police code for pot, to some kind of symbolism for Hitler’s birthday, or for being teatime in Holland. However, none of these stories are actually true. It was coined by a small group of teenagers in the 70s.