This one's for the Deadheads....

One more excerpt from Free.  This one's especially for all my fellow tourheads...ah, don't it bring you back...

There’s nothing like the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show. It’s a whole culture of its own, above and beyond the rest of the world, boasting its own food, dialect, attire, values and mores; an intricate tapestry of people from all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life. Music wafts from everywhere: Dead, Phish, Bob Marley, and various other groups that can range from classic rock to new age, from jazz to alternative. Odors linger in the air: pungent tomato sauce for spaghetti or chili, buttery grilled cheese, the ever-popular veggie burrito.

The cars lined up in rows vary by make and model, although there are a lot of VW buses, campers, vans and RVs. They are decorated with stickers and slogans, and tapestries hang from windows. License plates claim a multitude of states, from North to South, from East to West, although tonight there will be more from New Jersey than anywhere else. I haven’t seen Chuck’s bus yet, but I know they’re here because they passed us yesterday on the road. Eric and Mark had agreed to go to will-call every hour on the hour until they found each other. Eric left to meet him about forty-five minutes ago.  I’m going to hook up with him at 6:00 in front of the venue, to let him know if I found a ticket or not.

Right now I’m on Shakedown Street, which is the name given to the strip of the lot dedicated to vendors. You can buy just about anything here:  food, clothing, jewelry, artwork, stickers, beer, soda, books, pipes. Vending is illegal, and sometimes security will give vendors a hard time and confiscate their stuff. This sucks— it’s like the cops swooping down and taking away your paycheck. But mostly those of us selling legal merchandise are left alone. I find it’s safer to walk around with my hemp, rather than setting up shop on the strip. Besides, I get bored sitting in one place for so long.

I haven’t sold anything yet, but I’m not worried; it’s early, and most of the townies aren’t here yet. Most of the people here already are other vendors, and we don’t buy much except for food and beer, or other necessities. It’s the people who live here who want to buy stuff, kind of like tourists in Mexico or someplace like that, except that here the products are coming to them instead of the other way around. I expect to make at least fifty dollars tonight, but if I’m lucky I’ll make closer to a hundred before I stop to try and score a ticket. I want to have enough money to buy one if I have to; this is the kickoff of summer tour, and I definitely want in the show tonight. I also want to find a ride to the next show, which is much easier when you have gas money to kick down. But right now I’m just kind of wandering, looking for people I know.

I decide to cross the venue to the other parking lot, just to check it out. Later on this area will be filled with people—people in line waiting to get into the show, and others selling and searching for tickets. A lot of people, myself included, will be looking for a “miracle,” or a free ticket. There are various ways of doing this, but the most popular is to walk around with your finger in the air to show that you want one ticket, and announce that you need a miracle. Hopefully, sooner or later someone will give you a ticket into the show—no strings attached. It’s a phenomenon that I have witnessed at no other  groups’ concerts—not that I’ve really been to many other groups’ concerts—and I’m not sure why there are so many free tickets floating around. But I’d estimate that I have gotten into about sixty percent of the shows I’ve seen absolutely free, and about twenty percent for half price or less. I haven’t paid full price for very many shows at all, which is good, because they can be pretty spendy.

There are other ways to get into shows for free. Sometimes people slip by with counterfeit tickets, or stubs from previous shows, but that’s pretty rare. I know a girl who swears she can get in by “making herself invisible” and walking right past the people at the gates. That has never worked for me, and to be honest, the night she demonstrated it to me it didn’t work for her, either. Sometimes someone inside the venue will open an unused door, letting whoever happens to be on the outside in, but that’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time. It happened to me last spring in Canada. As I walked alongside the venue, the door just flew open, and I ran up the stairs into the show and disappeared into the crowd before security even knew what was happening. But you can’t count on that. I’ve had the most success by far with miracles.

Of course, when all else fails, you can try to break into the show by going over or under a fence or by rushing the gates. Last year at Deer Creek I got caught up in a mob of gate-crashers. I found myself running for a chain-link fence and climbing like mad, security hot on our tails. I was almost to the top, my heart pounding quickly with fear and exhilaration, when the whole fence toppled backwards under our weight. I barely got out from under it and away before the guard caught me. Thinking about it later, I realized how stupid it was; how easily someone could have been hurt. On top of that, it was an act of vandalism—we tore that gate down! But at the time I was so caught up on getting into the show that none of that even occurred to me.

The other parking lot is virtually empty. I haven’t seen any of the kids I know from tour. Some of them probably blew it off because it was New Jersey, and just about everybody seems to hate Jersey. I don’t mind it—at least not here in the parking lot of Giants Stadium. The only place I won’t go to see a show is Iowa, and I don’t think I have to worry about the Dead playing there anytime soon. 

I’m walking around the venue just to check it out—I’ve never been here before—when a man approaches me. “Need any tickets?” he asks. He’s looking around nervously, like he’s selling crack or nuclear weapons or something.

I smile engagingly. “I need a miracle.” He is wearing a T-shirt and jeans, with short hair and a mustache. He looks like a shyster, like your typical scalper, and I’m not expecting him to give me a ticket. But he looks at me for a second and then pulls one out of his pocket.

“What the hell, kid, maybe you’re good luck,” he says as he hands it to me.

I can barely believe it—it’s not even 3:00 p.m. yet, and I already have a ticket! I thank him, and he smiles and says, “No problem. Enjoy the show,” as he walks off. Goes to show, you can’t judge a book by its cover.