As legal weed sees the sunlight, heady glass heads back underground

When Alex Vicknair moved to Lansing from Seattle in the mid-‘90s, the local head shops were full of American, artisan-made glass.

“I got here and went into In Flight to sell some glass, and they bought it,” he said, referring to a former East Lansing head shop. “They were like, ‘Sweet, we can get it locally now.’ They were having to get it shipped from all over the country.”

Vicknair built a life blowing and selling glass in Lansing. He met his wife at In Flight, where she was the manager. He built a home studio where he invited other artisans to share their skills.

“It was tight for me,” Vicknair said. “I’d just wake up, empty out the kiln and give it to my wife, and she’d take it to work and bring me back cash that day.”

Eventually, his wife retired to raise their children, and Vicknair was able to support his family by selling glass at local head shops. All the while, he was fostering a scene out of his home studio.

“People from all over the country, we’d just blow glass all night in this shop,” he said. “We’d drink and smoke and eat pizza and share techniques, and that’s the main way there came to be a glass scene here. I was an OG, and I always felt like, ‘Let’s just share techniques and help each other grow. There’s enough money for all of us, let’s work together.’”

That worked out at the time, Vicknair said, but money’s since gotten tighter. Most local glassblowers have moved on to more lucrative markets, leaving the Lansing scene relatively dry. And the head shops that were once excited to have glassblowers in town prefer to order mass-produced, cheap pipes and bongs made by assembly-line workers in China, India and Mexico.

Vicknair hasn’t sold a pipe or bong to a local shop in years. For his part, he said the low-end market doesn’t bother him. The sweatshop labor, high markups and dishonest marketing do, but he understands head shops’ need to cater to customers who want cheap products. The products have some “janky” welds, he said, but they serve their purpose for people who only care about function. He’s content spending his time on unique, complex items “that China can’t rip off, because you’re an artist.”

The rise of mass-produced glassware has made it difficult for people who want to support their local glass scene to do so, though. Most local shops sell few, if any, American glass pieces. People in the market for a Vicknair original — which can run anywhere between $100 for a simple piece that takes a few hours to make to more than $1,000 for a complex piece that takes more than a week — need to reach out directly on Facebook or Instagram, where he posts completed pieces.

The items that once stocked local shelves now sit in a cabinet full of glass, waiting for their next owners. Local creator Fish Scale Glass, who prefers not to have his name attached to his work, shares the space with Vicknair and sells his pieces the same way.

The shift started not long after Vicknair arrived in Lansing, he said. Gas station owners, many of whom were Indian immigrants, began selling cheap, imported Indian glassware as novelty items. When “Operation Pipe Dreams,” the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2003 investigation into shops selling illegal drug paraphernalia, hit, it disproportionately impacted American-made pipe and bong supply chains. Local markets took a hit, head shops began stocking more imported glass, and the booming scene of artisans struggled to recover.

But it’s legalization, according to the two artisans, that’s got the local glass scene “down bad.”

“We all thought making it legal was gonna make glass explode,” Fish Scale said. “We thought we were going to be able to go into the dispensaries and sell our glass there.”

The effect was the inverse, and it happened fast. People smoke out of pipes and bongs less in the era of pre-rolls and disposable vape cartridges, and the flower itself carries some of the status that a heady pipe once did.

That means, ironically, that 2020s Lansing stoners can pick up as much weed as their hearts desire legally, but those who want to support the local glass scene and buy a one-of-a-kind pipe need to do some research and, ideally, know a guy. Vicknair is a good place to start.