Day 3

Biggest sales day. Felt like we were on the floor of the NY Stock Exchange at some points because everyone was buying BC Chillums, especially Americans to take home. It's definitely the easiest thing to take back to the states.


You just unscrew the bowl and the butt piece at the bottom and keep them in one part of your bag or your carryon, and the rest in your check-in. People were excited especially when we told them in the summer months, if you go boating or hang out by the pool, just buy the biggest jug you can, like the giant juice things you get at Costco or Sam's Club, and pull hits out of a swimming pool. This alone can give you the BEST 4th of July party.

The best thing was being challenged by people when they didn't believe that not only were we going to get them fucked, we were going to do it on less weed than you would put into a pipe or bong. There were so many seasoned smokers who would respond to us when we told them that this tiny pinch of weed is going to get them blasted because of the Chillum: "I've been smokin' weed for 25 years. Nothing gets me." We would look at them and say, yeah right. Because 5 minutes later, they would stumble by and give us a wobbly thumbs up if they weren't sprawled out on the couches below us. That is the power of the BC Chillum gravity bong. It just doesn't waste any weed because all of it gets pulled into the container and all of it goes right into your lungs like a shotgun.

In the afternoon........Catastrophe. Julia shotguns half a pure joint of Utopia Haze and takes herself out of the game for a few hours.

It started with a judge from Ontario asking if the BC Chillum can be used with joints. David and Julia confer and believe that yes, it should be possible by taking off the bowl and sticking a joint directly into the chillum. While it's quiet, Julia asks for the joint that Eduardo from Team Barney's Farm is smoking and experiments.


We stuck the joint, roach in first while it was lit, then pulled the bottle up. The joint incinerated in about 4 seconds (see above) leaving a tower of ashes. Meanwhile, the bottle filled with smoke that looked as creamy and solid a milk. Evil, evil milk. A crowd had formed to watch and we tried to get people to do it, but even the tough guys had enough good sense to know this would be some powerful shit. So Julia takes it upon herself to finish the experiment. She only gets abouty a quarter of the hit because it's just too thick. She goes into an immediate coughing spell with tears down her face, and pain in her chest that would last for a good 10 minutes. Things are fine for like 2 minutes. And then she sits down and can't stand up for the next 3 hours, orbiting somewhere in space. She hadn't felt this blasted since one of the first time she got high and hallucinated she was in Braveheart! It was a pretty mindblowing trip.

David spends much time reassuring her while she sits silently and stares, doe-eyed. Amount of work being done in the BC Chillum booth severely nose-dives. Julia is not aware of this time lapse, only that her feet feel like she's wearing moon boots and only that Utopia Haze, when shotgunned through a BC Chillum is no fucking joke. The first clue should have been when the smoke inside the jug looked like a meal.

Later, she sees one of their previous victims, a big black dude from NYC that the Barney's shuttle driver had brought right over because the guy wasn't convinced anything could get him as high as this guy was claiming. He was standing and watching the concert looking dazed. Julia walks over and asks him how he's feeling. It's been a good 4 hours since he took his hit. He shakes his head and says, "That was somethin' else." Julia tells him that she just shotgunned a joint and couldn't stand up for hours. He laughs and says that he's been standing because he couldn't sit down! They commiserate for a bit about how one of the effects is that your feet feel like your walking through mud but you do get a high that just gets keeps lifting you until you float around. The dude was pretty impressed.

The show ends and after a quick meal, Team BC Chillum heads down to the DNA Party featuring Dilated Peoples, a sick party with hash popcorn that was a great time. We get hugs from people who'd done hits that day, telling us we gave them one hell of a time. It makes us happy to know we did our jobs.

Day 2

The bin was leaking so we weren't able to pull from the Big Baby. We had a great day of meeting people and lining up our "victims" on the couches below us. I remember one big dude in dreads that David gave a bong hit to. I saw him on the couch an hour later looking blaaaasted. He didn't even look conscious of the room. I went back to the booth and told David one of his boys was on the couch completely spaced. He laughed and said the guy had been noticeably happier after he took a hit. Utopia Haze is getting a lot of good buzz.

We are finding ourselves making out too much in the afternoons when they put music on.

It's highly unprofessional.

The Greenhouse's party was that night and we decided to crash it. We wanted to go all commando with a travel gravity bong and smoked people out, but we didn't want to piss off the Greenhouse folks by promoting Barney's weed at their party. Personally, I thought...what's the worst that could happen. We get thrown out? David said he's never been thrown out of anywhere so suddenly, it felt like the best idea in the world to go hijack the party. Well, I'd taken a hit of that Utopia Haze through the BC Chillum before I left, so it was a while before the action theme music in my head faded out and whatever hallucination I was in that involved me as some kind of Lone Asian Female A-Team had dissipated. We did walk in and smoke some people out. Some people we recognized so we hung out with them, other people we just offered it to with weed we'd brought. I saw this one guy I remember doing a hit for yesterday. He saw me coming and says, "That gravity bong really messed me up yesterday." Really?, I asked. "Yeah, it totally messed my shit up."

Ky-mani Marley was awesome. Any guy who can passionately sing about fucking like animals tonight and sell it to both men and women has got the magic. We headed up to the balcony, had a smoke out and met a few people who had heard of the BC Chillum but hadn't tried it. People laugh and ask me if I hate my job, smoking people out all day. I tell them the worst part is having to twist people's arms to do it.

Cannabis Cup 2008

Day 1

Team BC Chillum took the Barney's shuttle to the Powerzone and took to flyering the place while Barney's got their booth set up. Barney's Farm, consistent winner of weed/hash categories, has the largest both set up in a prime location on a stage. We would be pulling buckets for them using their sativa entry, Utopia Haze, a strain from Brazil that had the Amsterdam underground buzzing for months. Barney's is known for some killer weed, and supposedly this was the best strain they'd ever had. We were really excited.

Show started at 3 but it took us a bit longer to get the booth set up so we took to passing out flyers in the line. A lot of people were excited. Gravity bongs are old school. It's the shit we used to make in college back in the day, McGyvering crazy tools to get high. I remember it was a joke in college how I couldn't get high, so people were always offering me weed telling me, this is the shit. All I would get is a sore throat. When someone showed me how to build a gravity bong with a standard head shop bowl and a gatorade bottle, it was like a life-changing moment--there was my life before getting high, and there was my life after. I'm convinced the world would be a better place if everyone could get high at least once in their life so they could understand that it's possible to see things from a different perspective.

The show started and immediately we had a big crowd around us. We pulled bongs non-stop and just a pinch of weed, we had seasoned smokers splayed out on the couches below us, their minds in a completely other place.

A gravity bong high is something completely different from a pipe, bong, joint or vaporizer high. You only need a pinch of weed, less than what you would put in a pipe or a joint, and since 100% of the smoke gets pulled into the bottle and you're using water pressure to stream the smoke at your mouth while you inhale instead of suck, it's a more natural way to take in the smoke. Because you're more relaxed by inhaling instead of sucking, it hits your longs in a less forceful way and travels right to your head. The high starts out strong, but then you get a sensation of being lifted for about 20 minutes. Then you float for a few hours somewhere between the moon and infinity. I'm never more curious, creative, open, joyous than when I'm floating after a gravity bong hit. It doesn't hit my body as harshly as a joint or a pipe, but it hits stronger, cleaner and more distinctly than a vaporizer or bong.

We've been pulling them out of a giant glass Jack Daniels jug with the bottom cut off (diamond saw then polished), but I do compare the high to a classy whiskey (my choice, Highland Park 21 year). It starts off intense and smoky...but just as you feel like you're being overwhelmed, it's a smooth, light, cheerful finish.

People loved the taste of the weed and how smooth and distinct the gravity bong hit was. We didn't sell as many as we'd hoped, but it was just the first day and it was great to just get people to try it out and get high.

We loved that so many people were excited to see us, saying that they used to make something like this back in the day. People would get really excited sharing the different ways they would construct gravity bongs. I think every smoker has a nostalgic place in their hearts for GB's if they've ever done them before.

BC Chillum is the brainchild of David and Julia conceived over the juicy months of 2008 in which a whirlwind intercontinental romance turned into the birth of a smoking tool that brings their favorite old school smoking method to the masses. The product of much passionate headbutting, emphatic table slapping and merry making-up resulted in the BC Chillum, unveiled at Cannabis Cup 2008 in Amsterdam, in partnership with Barney's Farm. Pulling gravity bongs using Barney's Best Sativa entry, Utopia Haze, the BC Chillum team set out with only one objective -- to get people high and happy.

This is their story.