Photo Baron Wolman

We knew Garcia was cool all along but a lot of other people are waking up to that lately, wonderfully and improbably. Some merely cover songs and glow in the residual benevolence but others, like Akron/Family, have connected in a deeper way, representing an entirely different legacy for the Grateful Dead.  

Part I: In Which the Hipsters Find Their Lovelight

The Lorimer Street subway station in Brooklyn is 2,912 miles from the front stoop of 710 Ashbury, and is the hub between the trendy neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Park Slope. There, at nearly any hour, one can experience the latest in hipster fashion: the fabbest T-shirts, sideways haircuts, half-ironic haberdashery, facial hair, novels du jour, vintage glasses, or any other indicator one might seek.

It is also there, last year, that a seemingly unlikely piece of graffiti appears at the end of the platform. “Now It’s Your Turn To Get Ahead!” the ad for a vocational school reads in encouraging yellow letters, and that’s exactly what the artist does, tagging the Grateul Dead’s Steal Your Face skull over a smiling Asian woman in surgical scrubs.

“Uptown toodle-loo!” she now sings from one speech bubble, like a victim of The Joker. “Half a cup of rock and rye…” from another.

Want to read more? There are three ways to get the goods: 1) Pick up a copy of the August issue with JERRY GARCIA on the cover at a newsstand near you; 2) subscribe to Relix by clicking HERE ; OR 3) get a lifetime digital subscription to Relix for FREE!  All you have to do is go to www.relix.com/digital and register. 

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