My brother, my sister Rosa, and I climbed down the shaft at Winterland that night. My sister fell at least a third of the way down and landed on my brother, who went down first. I was still on the roof, it was night, and I couldn’t see anything, but had to climb down the […]

I was living in Lagunitas, Calif., in Marin County. We had a big old two-story wood shingled house at the end of the road. I had a baby July 30th, Cheyenne, and counting her, there were around nine people who lived there. Our heat consisted of a wood stove and space heaters. One of the

I spent my formative years at Winterland as I attended UC Berkeley from 1973 to 1978. I particularly loved the upstairs woman’s bathroom which had a large window and a place to regenerate. The ladies were lovely and it was as if we were all in this “Dead-thing” together. Unfortunately, the men’s bathroom downstairs was a

Our major ticket hub was an apartment in the Haight with a wall chart, with all who were assigned a ticket box office there to wait for sales to begin. I was part of a subset of that operation with a few that were waiting in a small number of Central Valley box offices. I

I was there and part of the cone head group. I remember getting tickets through the lottery at the Tower Records store in Serramonte, on Geary and one other store, was it Pacific Stereo? The record store gave out numbers for each individual store to buy either two or four tickets the day before. Then

The closing of Winterland started several days before New Year’s Eve for me. Five friends and I drove to San Diego for two nights of shows at Golden Hall. The entire trip was fraught with interpersonal issues with which I won’t bore anyone, relationships forming, un-forming, and reforming. Funny how often I look back at what were tremendously

All Grateful Dead shows at Winterland were special; “they weren’t the best at what they do, they were the only ones that do what they do.” I remember thinking just how special these shows were going to be. Not that I needed a reminder of this fact, but the amount of people lined up for

Once we heard about the closing of Winterland, our group started putting away a stash of party supplies to get us through that night. We saved for months until we had an ample supply. We had been going to Winterland for years, and the fact that it was closing was very emotional for me. It

Three others and I drove up from the San Fernando Valley the day before NYE, we camped out in Scotts Valley at a campground in freezing weather. When we went to Winterland, we stood in line all day; I remember there was a church on a street across or maybe in the parking lot and

I loved going to Winterland to see the Dead, and I saw them a few times there before it finally closed. The first time was in ’75 for the sort of reunion show (the Bob Fried Benefit) that happened. I was with my older brother David and was a junior in high school. For the closing