![]() I sold little things that you make out of rolling papers and spin on your fingers."īen also had fond memories of Roger Roach Clip's wire creations, made for holding the final centimeters of a burning joint, and some peacock feather earrings "that were really tremendous." And then all of us started thinking, We have to go to the shows, we've got to sell some shit, so we did. "Everybody knew Sunshine - he's an awesome dude - and he was, like, the first official vendor guy. "It was actually started by a guy named Sunshine selling stickers in front of Winterland ," Ben recalled. ![]() Still, lifelong Deadheads like Ben said that the scene felt just as vibrant and as when Shakedown Street first began. "Where's Shakedown?" many of the old-timers wondered aloud, as they peered around the empty expanse in front of Levi's Stadium. In 2012, The New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten described the Shakedown Street at his first Dead show in 1984 as "the shabby human carnival that had taken over the parking lot and the pavilion: freaks dangling from trees, skulking muppets muttering, 'Acid, acid.'"Īt the concerts this past weekend, even as the spirit of Shakedown Street infused smaller interactions throughout the parking lots, all that remained of a physical Shakedown Street was a small, humming bazaar between two rows of cars, no more than 50 yards long. Shakedown Street has long served as the lovable sidekick to any Grateful Dead concert, a hub of good vibes, both real and chemically induced. In the late '70s and early '80s, fans adopted the phrase to refer to the area in the parking lot where concertgoers and Deadheads could buy, sell, or trade not only mushrooms, pot, and LSD but also art, homemade food, beer, trinkets, tickets, and anything else a partygoer might want when the edges of the world are blurring and the noodling guitar solo in a 20-minute jam is wafting in from the show.īetween the late '70s and the mid-'90s, the thousands of concertgoers and thrill-seekers without tickets showing up to Shakedown Street could overwhelm local law enforcement in whatever town the band pulled into each week, so as to effectively suspend prohibition and allow an open drug trade. Legend has it that the place now known as Shakedown Street existed as a nameless phenomenon before the band released a 1978 song and album called Shakedown Street. "They almost always buy when they hear me say that."īen found his tickets and was peddling band photos and homemade marijuana macaroons at the traveling, concert-adjacent circus slash freewheeling marketplace known as Shakedown Street, one of America's oldest and most storied places to buy drugs. "When it's ganja treats, the line 'Just like mother used to make' cracks chicks up," Ben said. The following afternoon, in the hours leading up to the Sunday show, the grinning 60-year-old once again begin traversing a parking lot full of graying locs and more luxury SUVs than VW microbuses, introducing himself to new strangers every few minutes. ![]() As showtime drew closer, suddenly lots of people in the lot seemed to have free extra tickets, and Ben got to see the surviving members of the band play for one of the last times. Other fans had panicked over ticket lotteries and complained publicly after being shut out of the band's five final "Fare Thee Well" concerts before they settle into retirement, but Ben came to Northern California's Levi's Stadium planning to do just what he's now spent decades doing in Dead show parking lots: selling whatever he could to pay for drugs, beer, and gas, and trusting that the universe would bring him a ticket. A miracle helped Ben get into the Grateful Dead show last Saturday.
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