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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.