It was Thursday December 29, 1983. I was going to my first Grateful Dead shows. Well that was the plan. Actually I had no real plan. I was 17 and I and two friends were driving from LA to San Francisco to attempt to see the Dead on New Year’s Eve. We had no tickets, no place to stay and really no idea what we were doing.
As I was driving my 1975 Toyota Corolla away from my dad’s house in Universal City, the car was making a weird sound. My dad later told me when he heard the car, he didn’t think we had a chance of making it the whole way to San Francisco, about eight hours away.
I picked up my two buddies Fred Delafield and Sean Runnette in Westwood. Fred had long hair, usually in a pony tail. He kind of had a biker look. He resembled Pig Pen from the Dead. Sean was tall with long blond hair, funny and super nice. A theatre kid that wasn’t always “on”.
About two and a half hours into the drive, just before Santa Barbara, my car broke down on the freeway. I walked to an emergency phone to call for a tow truck.
In those days, we had no cell phones. There were emergency call boxes all along the highways so people could call the for a tow truck or the police. Most of the gas stations had a garage with a mechanic. We explained to the guy were heading up to San Francisco to see the Dead and we needed to have it fixed ASAP. Several hundred dollars later, we were back on the road.
We arrived at the San Francisco late in the evening around 10pm. As I said, we had no place to stay. The only thing I could think of was my Grandma and Grandpa lived in a small apartment in the Richmond District. I called and woke them up from a phone booth at the Safeway across the street. I can still hear my grandmother’s “just woke up” upset voice, “David?”
They agreed to let us sleep there that night but I knew they were upset. It was a small one bedroom apartment for 3 teenage boys and one of them being a giant. They had a “magic couch” that folded out into a bed. It took up most of the living room. Sean and Fred slept on the floor. Sean was well over 6ft and my grandfather had one leg and used crutches. He would wake up every morning around 4am to make coffee. We were all worried that he would trip over Sean in the dark. He didn’t. The next morning they fed us and my grandpa gave me some cash and we headed over to the San Francisco Civic Auditorium.
I am struck by how different the adults behaved, or at least in my family, in these situations, compared to how most would these days. Even though we had no tickets, nor a place to stay, not even a resemblance of a plan, neither my dad or my grandparents ever tried to stop us. Not once did they voice an objection.
As we turned off the highway to the auditorium, I really did not know what to expect. I certainly was not prepared for the 3 day carnival of weirdness that surrounded the Dead shows. Right away we saw hippies walking the sidewalks with signs,
”I need a miracle ticket.” – referencing the Dead song I need a miracle. They were everywhere. Floating across the streets, buying beer in 7-11, in the park buying and selling food, t-shirts, and acid. Deadheads, as they did in every city the band played, took over.
We spent hours hanging out in the park, meeting some old hippies along the way. One was named Gypsy. He was much older than us 17 year olds, maybe in his thirties. I kept saying that the Dead were to us what Guy Lombardo was to his parents. We had no idea who he was talking about, but we went with it because we thought he could help get tickets or at least score us some brain (LSD). After a while we realized he was full of shit and so we ditched him.
Then, we headed to a party at the Holiday Inn, just a few blocks away. We partied there for a just long enough to see a guy doing nitrous pass out and fall face first into a glass coffee table. That was our cue to split. We wandered around the streets looking for tickets. Things were looking bleak, but then, just five minutes before the doors opened, a girl approached me and asked if I wanted a ticket. She sold it to me for face value, which was the way things were done back then. Dead culture was all about helping your fellow deadhead, not making money off them. My friends had similar experiences, and we all ended up with tickets.
Just before we went in, we each took a hit and a half of acid that we got from a friend of Gypsy. I don’t know if it was a different era, or we were just naive or lucky, but we never had any issues with “bad acid” – meaning, bogus hits or ones laced with speed. Once entering the building, we found our spot and sat down and waited for the show to start. It had been about an hour since we took the hits and we did not feel a thing. Fuck Gypsy! It must have been bogus acid.
So we decided to take some we got from a different source. I took two hits this time. About five minutes later, I noticed these circles in the floor that were spinning. OH FUCK! I was coming on. That meant the first dose had worked and now I was going to be on four and a half hits. Way more than I had ever taken!
The lights went out, and suddenly, my friends were nowhere to be found. We were all together, but then we weren’t. Before I knew it, I was on the balcony, overlooking the backstage area. I sat there, tripping pretty hard, looking at all of the Hell’s Angels in the their leather jackets and their leather pants. With beer head on their mustaches, arms around each other they swayed to the music of the Dead from the side of the stage. At that moment, it clicked and I had an epiphany. The San Francisco Hell’s Angels were gay. OMG! Of course. How cool was that. This macho, band of motorcycle outlaws were sweet men loving other men as they quietly danced to the melodic music of the Grateful Dead. I had to go tell my friends. For what seemed like hours, I searched everywhere in that arena. As I said earlier, when you try to find someone, you never do. You have to just give in to the universe and let them find you.
After the house lights went on and I fell out of the auditorium, still flying high, I thought going to the room we partied in at the Holiday Inn before the show, would be a good place to look for my friends. It was around 1:30am and the streets of downtown San Francisco did not have quite the same happy hippy vibe it did earlier. The stream of deadheads loafing through the dark to the hotel, stuck together like a small pack of puppies in a dangerous forest. Once we glided into the hotel lobby, the weight of worrying about the dangerous monsters in the dark alleys just lifted. The bubble of good vibes once again protected us.
I was the last person to stuff into the packed elevator. I was standing right by the door, just staring at those three rows of buttons stretching from 1 to 30. Suddenly, it hit me—I had no idea which room or floor the party was on. So, I decided to let fate take over and just pressed a number. As we stopped at different floors and people got off, I glanced around to see how many were still in. It was just three guys. They smiled, and in a slightly unsettling way, asked, “It’s just us left. Would you like to go to the bar on the top floor with us?” The elevator door opened, and I bolted out.
My cosmic journey was just starting as I floated down the hall. I put my ear up to every door, listening for a party. It never occurred to me that this hotel was full of deadheads and there were probably many parties. After a few rooms, I heard some loud music. I knocked and someone let me in. I had made it! Now I could relax.
There must have been 30 people in that small room. Every space was filled with someone playing guitar, taking a bong load, eating some chips, making out, or like the girl I sat next to, absorbed into her sketchbook. I sat and leaned back against the wall and watched her make magic with her sharpie and she had created a fascinating world. Eventually we began talking as she drew. For hours I watched her. At one point when I got up to go to the bathroom she warned me, “Never look in the mirror or at your hands when you are tripping on L.” I had never heard that and of course as soon as I got into the bathroom, that was the first thing I did. OMG what a mistake. She was right. Don’t do it! I told her of my mistake when I sat back down next to her. She said “I tried to warn you. Looking into the mirror at your face when you are on acid will take you down a really dark rabbit hole.”
At some point I looked around at all the people in the room and realized my friends were not in there and that this was not the party I was looking for. Of course it wasn’t. Why would I expect to just find the room? Because I was trippin’ my balls off, that’s why. Just then, the door opened and in walked my friends. They had met some people who knew some people at this party. If you stop looking for the people you want to find, you will just run into them.
We stayed the night in that hotel room, along with 20 other people. Nobody got any sleep. We did manage to get tickets for the next two nights. I refrained from any drugs so I could really enjoy the shows. The Neville Brothers opened up for them on one night and David Crosby, fresh out of prison, played with them on New Year’s. On Saturday night we could not find a place to sleep so we slept outside next to my car. The next day the drive home was beautiful. Sunny blue skies and Joni Mitchel’s Clouds playing on the radio. I forced Fred and Sean to give me some gas money and we had no car troubles.
