Don’t try telling Grateful Dead fans Las Vegas ain’t got no heart. Especially on Shakedown Street — the homegrown, grand-bazaar tailgate that has occupied a conference room of the Tuscany Suites & Casino for the last 12 weeks as Dead & Company rocked the Sphere for 30 shows.
This iteration of Shakedown Street is markedly different from those of years past, trading an open-air magic-mushroom market and chorus of nitrous canisters for the bings and dings of slot machines and an air-conditioned hotel lobby.
But it might not have happened at all if it weren’t for a crew of four peripatetic Bay Area Deadheads working to achieve the impossible: organizing more than 100,000 Grateful Dead fans over a summer in the desert.
Last summer, as Dead & Company’s farewell tour came to a close at Oracle Park in San Francisco, the adage “Jerry’s dead, Phish sucks, get a job” was beginning to ring true for the denizens of Shakedown Street, who had to reckon with saying goodbye to the age-old tradition of the outdoor market.
This year, however, when John Mayer’s Grateful Dead redux announced that it would make the pilgrimage to Las Vegas for a 30-show residency at the Sphere, Dolores Park resident and Deadhead clothing slinger Molly Henderson called her Marin-based compatriots Jay and Liora Soladay, saying she was having sleepless nights over the optics of Shakedown Street operating among the blazing temperatures and high prices of Sin City.
“We took a very big financial risk in terms of signing contracts early on, and we didn’t know if people would come if it would be successful,” Henderson said. “We were nail-biting until the 11th hour with those permits. And with the late announcement of the residency, we really had to hit the ground running.”
Hot as a pistol but cool inside
Temperatures exceed 100 degrees throughout Las Vegas summers, and parking spaces are at a premium in the periphery of the Strip. Renting a Vegas hotel lobby on a van-life budget is prohibitive enough without the pile of permits and licenses needed to execute a large-scale trade-show booth.
The trick, the crew of merry pranksters said, was finding an indoor site within walking distance of the Sphere that would be affordable for a band of renegade organizers who would have to communicate via social media to those making the pilgrimage that a Shakedown would indeed be happening.
Henderson has owned Noel Mae Designs — a caravan business that sells its “lounge fashion” clothes exclusively outside concerts — since 1989. The Soladays’ business, Jayli (a portmanteau of the couple’s first names), is located 30 miles north of San Francisco in a dusty Point Reyes Station parking lot. It sells self-described “hippie clothing” in town and, more popularly, on the road.
Since 1993, the couple have traveled to Grateful Dead shows selling their wares, which are categorized into “Phish clothing” and “Grateful Dead clothing” — though the company has a license only for the latter.
The trio linked up with Rob Shatzer, a Deadhead and tie-dye flipper based near Las Vegas. Originally from Vacaville, Shatzer estimates that he’s sold more than 10,000 veggie burritos across hundreds of parking lots in the United States.
With boots on the ground in Vegas, Shatzer acted as a liaison to scout the right place for Shakedown Street to thrive.
Each partner had responsibilities within the effort. Henderson and the Soladays took care of permits, taxation and contracts, while Shatzer managed entertainment, sourced fencing and security and spread word of the event.
Last fair deal in the town
The team first contacted the Venetian, which is not only the second-largest hotel in the United States but has an indoor tunnel leading directly to the Sphere. But, according to Henderson, the price was tens of thousands of dollars per day.
Next came the Destruct-a-thon — an arena off the strip used for explosive fights between human-controlled robots. But that venue, too, proved cost-prohibitive, Shatzer said.
The options were starting to look bleak for the ragtag vendors, who feared their dream of a proper Shakedown would be quashed. Then, Liora remembered a small hotel off the strip she had stayed at decades before that had an extensive number of ballrooms.
After securing copious permits and licenses (a few ended up being unnecessary), dozens of security guards and infrastructure, the proprietors were given the green light by the owners of the hotel.
“We signed the contract, none of us knowing at all if it was going to work,” Liora said. “We knew it was a big risk. You know, we had to put lots of money down for the room. And we were like, ‘Are people going to be freaked out that it’s an indoor Shakedown?’ Because it’s traditionally a renegade event in a parking lot.”
Next, the group had to figure out how to spread the word about the official Shakedown venue to fill it with vendors so they could make back the thousands of dollars in deposits. To that end, they flurried Deadhead forums, Facebook groups and Instagram pages and recruited help from Zane Kesey, son of Ken Kesey, owner of “Furthur,” a bus the Dead used to tour in that was the subject of books and movies — who blasted the message to his large social media following.
With almost 400 applicants and around 50 vendors participating for all 30 days, Shakedown Street in Las Vegas has been a monumental success. Anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people have come each day over the last month.
“I’m sure [the Venetian] is just kicking themselves now, knowing how successful it’s been,” said Liora. “They were just, you know, a big corporation, and what they wanted to charge us was just like an insane amount, and it was kind of their mistake — big time.”
Still, while Shakedown Street historically operates in a kind of international waters, with police and security turning a blind eye to drug use, scalping and other forms of trade, the Bay Area organizers had to work in concert with the Tuscany’s security to ensure there was no drug-dealing — at least not in plain sight — in the ballroom of the casino hotel.
A ripple in still water
Shakedown Street stems from the 1978 Dead song of that name and entered into Deadhead argot in the early 1980s, according to musicologists, though the praxis has existed much longer. It’s become a standard, such that for every Dead show — or Dead spinoff-band show — there will be a Shakedown Street somewhere in a parking lot nearby.
Like all great marketplaces, Shakedown Street thrives on an atmosphere unique to its attendees. Excitement for the show builds, stories are traded, prices are bartered, and reality falters.
In addition to hedonism, the economy of Shakedown Street is driven by the hope of scoring a ticket, or a “miracle” in Deadhead vernacular (in Vegas, a “Spheracle”); a shirt; or some goodies.
Elijah Funk and Alix Ross — who started selling and trading their hand-printed T-shirts at Dead & Company shows in 2016 — have become veritable fashion moguls through Shakedown Street, with collaborations that run the gamut from Marc Jacobs to Hollywood production company A24. Their clothing company, Online Ceramics, deals not in clay but in Dead-inspired T-shirts that combine handmade tie-dye Deadhead fashion with streetwear accents.
The results are undeniable, gaining praise from Mayer himself, now a friend to the dudes.
“I think of Online Ceramics like a band, and the T-shirts are the albums, and I want to collect all of them,” the musician told The New Yorker.
The two haven’t missed a tour yet, and their booth can be seen at each Shakedown Street, with a crowd of eager buyers at every show and, without fail, a sign saying, “Will trade for tickets” on their table. Funk said that although the vibes at the indoor Shakedown are different, the energy remains the same.
“When I heard rumblings about this kind of organized Shakedown, I was like, ‘There’s no way in hell this is going to work out,’” he said. “It’s usually just kind of this anarchist, outdoor, food, drug, drink, T-shirt market. This is just obviously a really different animal, and to get everyone mobilized, you have to get a vendor’s license for Nevada, all this stuff, and everyone did it, and it appears that it’s gone without a hitch. I think what Jayli has done over there is super impressive.”
What a long, strange trip it’s been
Much has changed about the Grateful Dead since the band first hit the stage in 1965 as the Warlocks. Now, as the group, with just two original members, sunsets its residency at the Sphere on Sunday night, the experience is beginning to feel — not unlike Las Vegas or the “wind” inside the Sphere — like a simulacrum. But through the commercial evolution, one thing has remained in the hands of the people: Shakedown Street.
If the corner of Haight and Ashbury is the Delphi for Deadheads, then Las Vegas is Sodom and Gomorrah — a film negative of what being a hippie is. And yet, clad in a swirl of colors and turbocharged on uppers, the maximalism and capitalism that define the city of Lost Wages have always lived, in one form or another, on Shakedown Street.