Grateful Dead's 60th: Fog and tie-dye greet thousands of fans in Golden Gate Park
The weekend-long festivities are headlined by Dead & Company — featuring Grateful Dead co-founder Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart, alongside guitarist and vocalist John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and drummer Jay Lane — marking a triumphant return to the Polo Field, where the band last played in 1991.
Organizers expect roughly 60,000 fans each day.
Streets near the venue were jammed with colorfully painted vans and vendors on Shakedown Street, a makeshift marketplace along JFK Promenade. Crowds flooded in early to peruse tie-dye shirts, incense and bootleg tapes.
Meanwhile, across town, the city renamed one block of Harrington Street to Jerry Garcia Street, near where the late guitarist grew up in the Excelsior neighborhood.
'Cherish what's valuable, what's significant in life,' said Garcia's daughter, Trixie, at the unveiling.
Despite ticket prices topping $600, longtime fans said the pilgrimage felt vital.
'This is the spiritual home of the Grateful Dead,' David Aberdeen, who works at Amoeba Music in Haight-Ashbury, the neighborhood where the band formed in 1965, told the Associated Press. 'It seems very right to me that they celebrate it in this way.'
Dead & Company, formed in 2015 following the Dead's 50th anniversary, concluded what was billed as its final tour at Oracle Park in July 2023. That tour drew more than 840,000 fans and grossed a record-breaking $115 million.
But the band returned in 2024 for a high-profile residency at the Las Vegas Sphere — and these Golden Gate Park shows may be its swan song.
'There is a lot of excitement, and there will be a lot of people here,' Aberdeen said. 'Who knows when we'll have an opportunity to get together like this again?'
'They are the reason why so many people know and love San Francisco,' he said.
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