{"id":5615,"date":"2021-09-19T23:30:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T23:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=5615"},"modified":"2021-09-20T02:07:02","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T02:07:02","slug":"shakin-on-shakedown-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2021\/09\/shakin-on-shakedown-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Shakin’ on Shakedown Street"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It was my first Dead and Company concert.\u00a0 It seemed to begin on the Number 7 Flushing bound train with thousands of Deadheads.\u00a0 I might have been the youngest person on that IRT car by forty years.\u00a0 At Willets Point in Queens, a rainbow mob flooded out of the subway like a school of tie-dyed sardines. Some looked like they could have just hopped off the Volkswagen bus from Woodstock; weed and chakra bowls in hand, they wore their flower crowns, long hair and ungroomed white beards with pride. Indeed, the 1960s counterculture survives and thrives on The Dead & Company Tour. This time, the Summer of Love receives a 21st century twist\u2013the Beats and the hippies unite with tattooed, pink-haired millennials and graying middle aged Americans for one thing and one thing only: to groove to their favorite band. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fieldston history and English teacher Bob Montera has been to around 250 Grateful Dead concerts over a fifty year span.  \u201cA Dead show begins when the tickets are announced, when you call your friends and the Deadhead parents of your students, when you get your tickets,\u201d he describes. \u201cIt\u2019s the weeks of talking about the show, finding out about their other shows, watching the postings on line, [and] making lists in your mind of what you think you will hear. It’s the journey to the hall or stadium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first concert Bob went to with his daughter, Rose, was at Citi Field in 2015, the year Rose became a Deadhead and graduated from Fieldston. On this tour, however, they saw The Dead at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts on September 2nd. \u201cRosie helps me to see it all in its wonder and charm.\u201d  And that includes parking lot life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosie told him she \u201cwanted to see he wanted to see \u2018the shakedown.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe what?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The shakedown.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLike Shakedown Street? The Parking Lot?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Dad oh Dad.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What used to be \u201cthe parking lot\u201d or a \u201ctailgate party\u201d has become Shakedown Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Citi Field parking lot is like a flea market on acid, or in the words of Bob Montera, a \u201ctransitory travelling village, almost like a medieval fair.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sophia Gutierrez (V), also attending a Dead show for the first time, sets the scene from the August 20 concert at Citifield: \u201cAnything you could possibly want and need was available inside the trunks of colorful and charmingly decrepit VW vans and school buses parked in the legendary lot across from Citi Field\u2013chakra balancings, homemade kombucha, every tye-dye combination imaginable, classic American barbeque style fare, an assortment of expertly crafted drug paraphernalia and all of the best dead songs blasting from speakers\u2013which served as fuel for the anticipation of everyone to enter the stadium and get lost in one of those groovy 15 minute jams.\u201d \u201cThere was even a tent set up by Fieldston students,\u201d she observed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are bizarre happenings.  \u201cRose was transfixed by a fellow standing but nodding out with a finger pointing to the heavens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What’s that?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018He needs a miracle….a free ticket….you will see them everywhere. And they usually get in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands of people and dogs flock through an array of multicolored tents selling everything imaginable. Most vendors sell band merchandise\u2013t-shirts, posters, tapestries and drug paraphernalia\u2013bearing signature Grateful Dead art. The crowd wears their bears, lightning skulls, skeletons and roses like uniforms. If not Grateful Dead art, vendors sell other band art or cannabis leaf designs. Montera recounts how he \u201conce sold \u2018imported California dyes\u2019 for a friend—-Makes me laugh to this day.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food vendors sell craft beers and cuisine from all over the world. A woman weaves her way through the crowd openly advertising her homemade edibles. Other lone dealers sell joints and mushroom brownies. All around, people are inhaling nitrous oxide from balloons and every few seconds, a pop pierces through the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone at Shakedown Street seems to be friends. Whereas other tailgates may feel territorial, with different friend groups huddled around their respective vehicles and tents, there is a strong sense of community at this concert. Peace and love are in the air. Old friends run into each other and relive concerts from the past and strangers discuss their predictions for the setlist. It\u2019s like \u201ca village square, a \u2018Fieldston quad\u2019 where you link up with old friends.\u201d \u201cBut remember,\u201d Montera adds, \u201cIt\u2019s only a prelude, a small set piece in something larger. It\u2019s an appetizer.  The music is the meal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA Dead show is a generous and kind place, energizing and calming in equal parts. It always takes you by surprise and you find yourself lighter at the end of it. You learn to give more away in life and you give it away more freely.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bob signed off his account with a lyric from Truckin\u2019<\/em>: \u201cWhat a long, strange trip it\u2019s been.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Grateful Dead, for so many people, is a way of life\u2013a distinct subculture frozen in time, and yet oddly alive and doing well with a new generation of jam band fans. At these concerts, modern conventions of fashion, behavior and music fade away into a slow, colorful jam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was my first Dead and Company concert.\u00a0 It seemed to begin on the Number 7 Flushing bound train with thousands of Deadheads.\u00a0 I might have been the youngest person on that IRT car by forty years.\u00a0 At Willets Point in Queens, a rainbow mob flooded out of the subway like a school of tie-dyed sardines. Some looked like they could have just hopped off the Volkswagen bus from Woodstock; weed and chakra bowls in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[319,318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[410],"class_list":["post-5615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5615"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5645,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5615\/revisions\/5645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5615"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}