It was a cold, Friday night in New York City, and I was at my friend’s place, chilling. It was a place for us to sleep over and hang out at that night, so we could spend the whole day in the city, and even the day after that. We had also bought a lot of weed, so it would be a really chill sesh on top of that. Immediately as we entered the apartment, one of my friends broke out his backpack, and inside was stashed his store-bought gravity bong.
Gravity bongs are usually extremely easy to make, which is one of the main reasons why this is such a great piece (it’s incomparable intensity is another). But if you can get a store-bought gravity bong, that’s even better. Usually home made ones waste a lot of weed and aren’t as powerful; when it’s glass both of those problems are easily solved. That was one of the reasons why I was so grateful we had glass.
So, needless to say, we stepped outside on his porch and started packing. Then we all took a couple of hits and packed again. I can’t really remember how many times we repeated this process, but it was a lot, especially because we were all committed to getting extremely high that day. And with a gravity bong, you normally will. I would say a gravity bong is one of the most powerful pieces out there, if not the most.
The physics of a gravity bong are actually kind of simple. You have a container full of water, and another container inside that container (also full of water, but this is the container you would attach your piece to). You then light up the weed and pull the container with the weed out of the one with the water, and the water pulls the smoke through. There are many different variations of this (the first time I smoke a gravity bong, it was made out of a Sunny D bottle. We put a plug on the bottom and filled the bottle with water, and then when we lit the bowl (made from the cap) we pulled the plug out and the bottle filled up with smoke), but most of them follow the same basic principle.
The thing I think a steamroller resembles the closest is taking shots of moonshine. It’s going to be a little unpleasant, a little overwhelming at times, but at the end of the day, you’re going to be happy you didn’t take that twelve-pack of natty ices, because when you’re done smoking it, you will find yourself fucked up. I’m pretty sure I have never heard anyone take a hit from a steamroller without first saying the words, “fuck it,” “shit,” or “why not?” before doing so. I think steamrollers are especially nice because of the way they overpower and just leave you coughing. When you take a hit from one of them, you are committing.
For those of you who don’t know what a steamroller is, let me try to explain it to you. Here is a picture of a basic steamroller.
This piece can be a little more overwhelming than your standard bong because it doesn’t have any water or ice to filter out the harsh nature of the hit. You are basically taking an amazingly large bowl hit. The bowls for steamrollers are usually bigger than those for bongs and bowls, so you will get larger and more hits from them. Finally, a lot of times you won’t really know how big of a hit you are taking, so you will keep on pulling, and then find yourself with too big of a hit. “But comon, fuck it” you say, “I’ll take it anyway.” So you rip it, and get really fucked up.
This happened to me in senior year right before my first tennis practice. I had already taken one or two hits, and my throat was feeling tender, but I decided to take another one. I started ripping it and soon I was distracted because I was high. However, I had not stopped hitting the steamroller. Eventually I remembered what I was doing, and took in the hit and coughed excessively for one or two minutes because I was really overpowered by the piece. So, I was handed a beer and I chugged it.
(All ratings are on a scale of 19 to 73)
The TJ Pearce is a breakthrough in joint architecture thati discovered in April 2009, but it was most probably figured out by others before then. One day I was rolling and I realized that I had barely any bud left, not nearly enough for a full joint. When this happens to most people, they would usually put tobacco in it to make a spliff. I didn’t have any tobacco because I don’t smoke cigarettes. As I was looking around my room I realizedI had about a pound of tea my friend had bought for me back in February. I’d previously joked about putting it into a joint but never had because I never needed to; also, my friends had always been skeptical of the idea. “Smoking tea can be unhealthy,” they would say. The idea of inhaling potentially toxious fumes from tea made them nervous, so nervous that they needed a cigarette to calm themselves down. But those friends weren’t there, so I rolled the tea and weed together into a Tea J. Thetea was delicious and it burned slowly. I also found that drinking water after every hit made the taste of the tea more pronounced. I was ecstatic about my invention and the next time I hung out with friends, I insisted on it. Soon they were won over and one of them recommended naming it after T.J. Pearce, a character who used to go to my old school.
A T.J. Pearce, when it comes down to it, is basically an augmented spliff for those of us who don’t like tobacco. If you have the right type of tea, it burns slower and tastes better than your typical J or spliff. Even though you get less high, the process by which you get high is substantially more fun. I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to use the right type of tea. Don’t use any of that commercial shit, especially Lipton. If you use shitty tea, you’ll get a shitty T.J. Pearce.
