02 May 2018
People come up to me all the time and say, “Lane, you’re pro-cannabis. What’s the deal with ash catchers?” And that’s a good goddam question, so I looked into it. Turns out, if you’ve ever smoked a bong, you should have had an ash catcher installed.
A lot of bongs nowadays have ash catchers built-in, but most stoners are buying aftermarket units to equip OEM glass they already own. Either way, it’s an apparatus that sits between your smoking bowl and the bong water and—it catches ash! Simply named items are so satisfying. They’re pricey fuckers, though. Twenty-five bucks for an entry-level, 14mm, no-perc, dry model. You can go up, based on complexity, size and color or whether it has tubes, ports, extra bubblers or a dragon on it.
The point is to prevent ash from contaminating your bong water, because—duh—clean bong water is important. Some ash catchers hold their own water which converts your standard-issue, pinched-throat, beaker-chassis water pipe into a modifed, low-restriction, dual-stage cold-filtered smoking instrument. Much more impressive. Obvs.
Amazon’s got limited selection and a lot of them still use subtle code words like “tobacco” and “Not For Marijuana Use” which is getting cuter and cuter. They’re mostly out of stock, too. One of these days, there’ll be an online marketplace for pot gear. But the good stuff is on the manufacturers’ sites, anyway, and for a pretty penny, too. Meantime, I’m also checking them out in some smoke shops and almost bought one from a guy named JR in Spring Valley. Forty-five bucks for an 18mm, 90-degree percolating model. My bong requires the 45-degree variant, so I left without it, anxiously.
I got back to my place and went straight to my bong for an assessment—not good.
Bits of soggy, blackened cannabis are floating, suspended in rank water made murky from flecks of char. A few wee, green fragments—still unburned—cling to the sides of the glass. The water line is marked by a thick, crusty, dark residue that fades in hue as it inches up the throat of the beaker. It reminds one of the ring in a toilet in a train station. I give the rig a quick shake and suddenly, I have Satan’s snow-globe in my hand. We breathe this? Not me. No more. I deserve better. And my bong will stay so much cleaner!
Of course, I’ll just have to clean that ash catcher instead. Something still has to get dirty, after all. And ash catchers are smaller things to clean. Much harder. God, it sucks to have to clean smoking gear. And fifty bucks is a lot for a guy who’s hard on glass. They really should temper that stuff. Granite counters have been hell on my smoking gear. I’ll probably break the fucking thing in a few days, anyway. Besides, I’m rolling a lot of joints, these days, ever since my bud tender, Ariel, trained me with one of those cigarette rollers Zig-Zag used to advertise and now RAW seems to rule. Joints are way better than bongs: fuller taste and they’re more social. Far more portable, too. We should be more pro-joint.
I drifted. What?
—Michael Lane
