Look at the Creation of the World’s Largest Bong
When the bong is finished and on display at a new Las Vegas weed museum, it will be 24 feet tall and weigh 800 pounds.
If you’ve decided to go about creating the world’s largest bong, Seattle is an obvious fit for a construction site.
Work on said bong—which, when completed, will stand 24 feet tall and weigh 800 pounds—began this past weekend as part of the city’s 4/20 celebrations. The brainchild of Jason Harris and a handful of other renowned glassblowing artists, it will eventually be transported in pieces to Las Vegas, where it will be one of the attractions at Cannibition, an “immersive cannabis museum” that’s set to open this summer.
But though Las Vegas (and the rest of Nevada) has had legal weed for the past six months, it doesn’t have what Seattle has: The Pacific Northwest city isn’t just home to a thriving cannabis culture, it’s also what Harris described as the birthplace of the American glassblowing movement.
Tacoma native Dale Chihuly, whose museum sits at the base of the Space Needle, is the figure who brought artistic glassblowing in the mainstream. His work has given rise to a collaborative glassblowing scene and a regional landscape dotted by schools and studios. Harris himself spent years at the Pilchuck glass school up in the northern suburb of Stanwood.
“This all started in Seattle,” Harris said. “Seattle is the main hub. From that one person (Chihuly), it kind of flourished to thousands of people blowing glass… It’s kind of a cultish subculture inside Seattle. It’s a rougher, Seattle look, and feel and smell.”