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What Happened to the Bong?

This year's 4/20 will usher countless new stoners into the hazy world of legal cannabis, given the ever-expanding number of states with recreational weed laws on the books. But one thing you're not likely to see amid the ecstatic smokeouts and clouds of stoner jokes is any mention of the humble bong.

Even as pot culture went mainstream over the last decade, bongs remain a symbol of its seedy, black-market past. They're a delivery method that can't help but look outdated and/or needlessly elaborate compared to intuitive technology like vape pens, but also weak and collegiate compared to dab rigs (the crack pipes of weed).

Bongs became synonymous with cannabis in the 1960s and '70s, gradually adapted as they were during the counterculture boom, and encouraged by depictions that presented them as the ultimate avenue to getting high. Like beer bongs (or keg stands, or shotgunning cans of beer, or any number of stunts that rarely seem as cool in hindsight) they're both spectacle and endurance test, a sign of one's tolerance but also sense of adventure. I remember visiting my cousin on Long Island one summer in the late '90s and watching him extract a 6-foot glass bong from the ceiling vent in his bedroom, which struck me as an improbable but ingenious clown-car of a hiding spot. The fact that I coughed for five straight minutes after hitting it (he needed to spark it for me, given the distance between my mouth and the bowl) did little to diminish my awe.

Bongs have more personality than pipes, pens, or edibles. Yes, some people are prone to naming their possessions no matter what they are, and the stunning variety of hand-made, carefully crafted weed paraphernalia these days frequently deserves nicknames like Gandalf or The Green Goblin. But unless you're South Park's Towelie (who prefers joints, of course) you're not going to wring a whole lot of personality from a smokeable USB stick.