According to Moonalice legend, Grateful Dead Night has become a high holy day on the San Francisco Giants’ calendar … and on ours. The Giants are having a rough season, but we fans like to think of it as a transition year.

This is also a transition year for the Dead Heads. Dead & Co played its last show in August of last year, which may have ended an era. Grateful Dead music and iconography live on and the Dead Head scene remains vibrant.

The Haight Street Art Center has stepped up with a new kind of exhibition: Forever Grateful. It consists of the original art for the most iconic images of the Dead, along with some of the band’s instruments and photos curated by Jay Blakesberg … all arrayed around a working, quarter-scale Wall of Sound. There are chairs and cushions so you can hang out and soak in great shows while surrounded by incredible art.

The exhibition runs through Sept 20 at the Haight Street Art Center. The second part of Forever Grateful open Sept 5 at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. It is experiential: with concerts played on the original stage from Terrapin Crossroads, curated by Grahame Lesh, a virtual Acid Test liquid light show, Jerry’s Beemer, the original Furthur bus, which has been in the Kesey’s barn for sixty years, and lots of other mind blowing things. The exhibition is designed by Dead Heads, for Dead Heads.

Our goal is to find a building and create a permanent Grateful Dead museum in San Francisco.

Notes:
Jason Crosby played keyboards