Glass.Vegas Smoke Shop Award

Glass.Vegas & Smokin Smitty’s Presents: The Smoke Shop of the Year Party

The Best Shop of Glass.Vegas 2018

Let it be hereby known that your shop has been nominated; Congratulations! We have compiled our online fanbase from both Instagram and Facebook and spent countless hours tallying tags & reposts. Your shop has made it thru to the final qualifying round. If you are chosen, your shop will be awarded the Glass Vegas “Smoke Shop of the Year” Award. A choice selection of “World Series of Glass” winning artists will travel to and throw a massive glass party at your shop. Live Glass demos plus giveaways w/ DJ’s and lots of media coverage. The entire event will be filmed and made available to you. To win, you must be present at the 2018 Glass.Vegas Expo.

In the Summer of 2017, hundreds of shops across the country received an epic scroll revealing their “Smoke Shop of the Year” nomination. Josh and Melissa, of Smokin Smitty’s (@smokin_smittys) in Bozeman Montana, took this as a sign of things to come and prominently displayed the scroll among glass greats with the intention of bringing home the title. Fast-forward almost a full year later, to a beautiful Saturday afternoon in August smack dab in the Smokin Smitty’s Smoke Shop parking lot, a magical day fit for a true celebration of the glass art community and award the highly coveted “Smoke Shop of the Year Award” to none other than Smokin Smitty’s!

The Glass.Vegas team (@glassvegasexpo) really wanted to provide a lot of value to the winners of the World Series of Glass (WSOG) at their expo and wanted to encourage and thank the stores that truly give back to the industry. Glass.Vegas is run as a close family business with the goal of treating the glass industry like their very own family. To complete the contest in the fairest possible way, every artist on the show floor got a QR code sticker for “secret voting” that allowed each glass artist to share with the Glass.Vegas team their experience of a buyer. This way, Glass.Vegas could identify and acknowledge the true supporters of the industry and the show. The voting results were compiled in two categories: The general size of an order, and an experience rating given by the artist of their encounter with the buyer. It was important to them to incorporate the experience rating in an effort to adhere to their uncommon “RespectB4Profit” mantra. HicDogg of Arizona (@hicdogg), TammyBaller of NYC (@tammyballer) & Bob Harley Dawg of DawgHouseGlass in Illinois (@dawghouseglass) were among the winners from the World Series of Glass and Demo Artists that got to be a part of this amazing journey.

Once announced, the Glass.Vegas team got to the difficult task of laying out an epic journey for the WSOG Winners to fly into and travel from Salt Lake City, Utah in an RV across multiple states and thru Yellowstone National Park all the way up to Bozeman, Montana for the ultimate big bash at Smokin Smitty’s. Like a reality TV show, they were followed by the camera crew, Reb3llion9 (@reb3llion9) who will be releasing their upcoming 4-part YouTube video series chronicling all the shenanigans from start to finish! The 1st official stop began with the gorgeous Borosyndicate Glass Shop in Salt Lake City (@borosyndicate) for a quick hang out & Meet’n’Greet. The next morning, the crew then made their way over to Christian Merwin’s SLC studio (Wasatch Glassworks AKA Nectar Collector Shop) (@nectarcollector710) where HicDogg got to show off his work-in-progress Collab with Christian. An intriguing and interesting concept involving magnets and parts that are removable and usable both together and separate. They are certain that their “Slayed Dragon Nectar Collector” will blow your minds. Look for it at the Glass.Vegas Expo in 2019. Next, everyone piled back into the wrapped RV complete with artist faces smeared across the camper, ‘Puppy-Baller’ greeted everyone at the door, plus an enormous Glass.Vegas flag that just couldn’t quite fly properly. They had middle of the night encounters with state troopers, a broken + overflowing toilet and even a dead-end road with sheer cliff drop offs that didn’t stop (most of) them from reaching a beautiful Friday white water rafting adventure at the top of Yellowstone. They even had time to peek at old faithful. After arriving in Bozeman, the crew attended a secret Friday night party at Smitty’s house where they got to play a “guess the glass artist” Dab Bar game. Dustin, the O.G. (@officialgenius) himself scored the highest. They say that the journey is as meaningful as the destination, and this definitely was the case for this group of glass hooligans. Amy Short (@amyshort15) from Glass Vegas dubbed it as “The most awesome community building experience she’d ever had”. It brought out the creativity between the artists to help them plan their epic Collab, which they decided to do together for the live demo during the event.

Now Smokin Smitty’s from the outside could be considered a “Hole in the Wall” by the average, untrained eye, but walk into this beautiful smoke shop with the attached glass gallery gloriously showcasing a robust variety of the top glass artists in our industry and you’ll see... seriously this shop is stacked; which goes to show that Josh, AKA Smitty himself, is a true connoisseur of glass who really knows his stuff. Melissa, Smitty’s wife, is the business woman behind the operation. Together, they create a power couple that has made Smokin Smitty’s a force to be reckoned with. This powerhouse duo are so on top of things that they even had gifts for everyone when they arrived in Bozeman. “Teamwork makes the dream work”, and indeed it did, as they were able to create a much more successful event with their combined efforts, which in turn brought big business to the shop and was a super fun time for all who attended.

The August 18th Event wasn’t short on entertainment; Raffle tickets for awesome giveaway prizes (each of the artists donated prizes) were given out to paying customers at the smoke shop, delicious food trucks rolled up to the party, there was a Meet’n’Greet signing by World Series of Glass 1st place solo winner LaceFace (@lacefaceglass), multiple live radio remotes attended the event, and a bunch of other awesome glass artists came out to support; Fiona Phoenix Fire (@fionaphoenixfire), Jessica Boggs Glass (@jessicaboggsglass), Cherry Glass (@cherryglass), Slugworth (@slugworthglass420) Conrad Glass (@conradglass101), Dinelle (@yoganji), Jason Gianchetta (@bigcheese) Lore Glass (@loreglass), Rummel Glass (@rummelglass), Head Waters Glass (@headwatersglass), High Country Glass, and Graffiti Artist; Jay Meere (@jaymeericle) did a live painting of the Smokin Smitty’s Logo that is up in the shop now! It turned out to be a super well attended event, people drove out from all over to surprise and support the glass art community. Kai from Burning Snow (@burningsnow406) dedicated his time and efforts toward setting up the demo area for the event with the help of Gooch Glass (@goochglass). HicDogg, TammyBaller, and DawgHouseGlass chose to create a Collab piece for their demo after traveling together.

These dedicated glass rockstars ended up staying an extra 5+ hours after the event had ended, with a full audience, to complete their event piece and then headed back to Smitty’s for the afterparty. Tammy Baller was having such a good time, she didn’t want to fly home. They literally picked her up and put her in a vehicle at 5am and sent her to the airport. The next day, the rest of the crew took the long drive back in the afternoon just to take it all in and revel in the remarkable experience they each had. Not only did everyone involved have a fantastic time, but it was a great marketing opportunity, and created lifelong friendships that stemmed from this bonding journey. In Amy’s words, “This is what the industry is all about… coming together, caring for each other, loving one another and getting to know each other on a real level even if you started out as strangers.”

Here is a proper description of the official Collab piece as written by Glass Artist, HicDogg:

“When me, Tammy and Bob Dawg got together to try to decide what we would create, we had to figure out how we could all fit in to each other’s style. Tammy’s is capable of making just about anything and me and Bob Dawg felt a bit more limited in our scope of work. We discussed a lot of things and finally settled on a red riding hood -from da hood- and big bad wolf concept. Bob Dawg and I would make an evil forest wall with some of Bob Dawg’s sculptural teeth elements to be next to the tree and Tammy made the red riding hood and tree. I made the body for the big bad wolf and Tammy made the face. We wanted the wolf to look like a man in a wolf costume and it was somewhat inspired by the book “Where the Wild Things Are”. We had a few mishaps and red riding hood found out the streets were hella hard when she fell and broke half way through the demo. Tammy remade her at home later and then shipped it to me. I took the work home and added some plant life to the evil forest wall Bob Dawg and I made. It’s currently in my studio display case and will be taken and displayed at Glass Vegas 2019; then sent to its proper home, Smokin Smitty’s.”

The Glass Vegas team had an amazing year, but they couldn’t be more stoked to share the newest creative surprises they have in store for Glass Vegas 2019! They will be adding a Beer Garden and food area. The big hit from last year, the “Backyard” will be expanding with secret surprises. The ever-exciting Boro Derby will be back, and a Glass Orchestra made of functional glass musical instruments will be played on stage. Everyone is invited to join in on the fun and participate by creating/playing their own glass instrument. To solve any issues that came up last year, they’ve also incorporated some practical changes like an expanded and redesigned registration setup, more room between aisles to walk around, seats set up at the stage, and an increase in security. They’ve done just about everything possible to improve the show to WOW everyone yet again!

A Huge Thank You is to the entire Glass.Vegas team including Amy Short (Show Manager) (@amyshort15) & Skye Jones (Social Media) (@hatetoseeyougo), Ted Campos (Creative Director & the diligent RV Driver) (@tedcampos), Dustin Amato (The Official Genius, Glass Vegas Social Media & Marketing Backbone) (@officalgenius) and Jack Long (Owner of Dope Ass Distributors & Member of the Glass Vegas team) (@dopeassglasslv). An extra special thanks goes out to Melissa & Josh from Smokin Smitty’s, who were so appreciative and excited for the opportunity that was presented that they took on the challenge to help so much in preparations and set up for the event. Of course, The biggest shout out is to LeeAnne Short, who is the owner and creator of Glass.Vegas – without her... we all would be lost.

For more information about the upcoming show, visit their website www.glass.vegas and to see all the fun from the Smokin Smitty’s epic road trip & parking lot party, check out the website www.blown.vegas.