Dead & Company: Third-gen Deadheads ‘pilgrimage’ to the Panhandle and set up camp

Love what you read? Love that it was free?

Mission Local will never have a paywall. All our articles are free for everyone, always. Help us keep it that way — donate to our end-of-year fundraiser to make Mission Local free for your neighbors.

Donate today!

On the Tuesday morning Mayor Daniel Lurie signed legislation banning RVs from parking for more than two hours on city streets, a line of vans was parked around the perimeter of the Panhandle.  

Had the vans’ inhabitants heard about the new law? Were they okay? 

“How could we not be good?” beamed 25-year-old Alexania, who’d traveled from Wisconsin for the three day Dead & Company concert in Golden Gate Park this weekend.

As it turned out, all the vans belonged to Deadheads, many of whom had driven from out of state to set up camp early this week. 

The RV crackdown was news to them. Come to think of it, they hadn’t really considered the city’s parking restrictions or permit regulations at all. Most everyone’s plan had been to show up and go from there.

Show up they did. On Thursday evening, concertgoers around the Panhandle estimated that 30 to 40 people had been sleeping there since Monday. They’d come to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary by listening to covers from Dead & Company, a band former Grateful Dead members created in 2015.

It would be, as Nylah from Portland put it, a weekend of “amazing beautiful friends making music.” 

Loyal Deadheads follow Dead & Company on tour around the country. Still, they say traveling to San Francisco, the birthplace of the Grateful Dead’s lead singer Jerry Garcia, is special.

It’s like a “pilgrimage to the mecca,” said Stella Blue.

Blue, a college student from Maine, was “grandfathered in” to the Grateful Dead by her parents. As was Audrey Heinze, who had brought her daughter along on a nearly month-long road trip from Pennsylvania to San Francisco for the show. 

Many of the car-campers are third-generation Deadheads, like the two dozen 20-somethings sprawled in the grass at the Western end of the Panhandle beside roses, crushed yerba mate cans, and a copy of “The Practice of the Wild,” a collection of meditative essays. 

Collectively known as “the kids,” they’re a group of friends who met on tour and became a family, said Jada Jules, a 22-year-old from Indiana.

Jules’ dad toured with the Grateful Dead from 1993 to 1995, the year Garcia died. “Go on your own journey,” he advised his daughter. So Jules went on her first tour in 2023, sleeping in her Subaru until she met her boyfriend and upgraded to a camper. The experience, she said, gave her the “power to walk through life.” 

Jules pays for life on the road by picking up odd jobs and selling art while her boyfriend, a musician, plays side gigs. All the kids have found “little niches of trade work,” she explained. 

“Music and love will guide you through,” Jules added with a smile both earnest and serene. “We just want to give back to the world as the world gives back to us.”

Madeline listened as she smoked a bong. The river guide opted to fly in from Ohio because she earns a steady income, which, she says, “is rare” among the group. 

Two men stood next to their blanket. “Have you read ‘On the Road?’” Dan from Montana asked Sawyer from Massachusetts. 

Sage, meanwhile, sat crosslegged in her van atop stacks of cushions, playing guitar and singing softly to herself.

After I took her photograph, Alexania asked if she could take photos of me. Then, departing with a hug, she ran over to twirl to the music being played by her friends.