It’s 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Civic Center, and as politicians and City Hall staffers in suits make their way to work, they are confronted with an unusual crowd sprawled across the sidewalk.
In flannel and scruffy beards, with lawn chairs unfolded, coolers cracked, and joints lit, these early-birds are lined up outside Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. This is more than a queue for a concert, though; it’s a morning ritual, a reunion, and for many, a way of life.
Phish is in town.
At the front of the line are the diehards, the ones who’ve traveled thousands of miles for a band that hasn’t had a mainstream hit in its three-decade run but still sells out arenas with no opener, no setlist, and no promises beyond the music itself. Most of these people are well past middle age.
All the way in front is Matt Bittmann, a 41-year-old from Milwaukee whose Patagonia jacket and close-cropped hair might place him closer to a Potrero Hill product manager than a jam-band devotee. But don’t be fooled — he’s been chasing Phish since 1998.
“I don’t keep track of how many shows I’ve been to anymore, but I know I’m somewhere over the 300 mark,” he said. “The best show is always the next show.”
But his most memorable show already happened.
In 2015, he watched Phish frontman Trey Anastasio play Jerry Garcia’s role in the Grateful Dead’s “Fare Thee Well” show in Chicago.
“I had recently stopped using heroin, and I realized there, while Trey was playing, that I didn’t want to use drugs anymore,” he said. “Ever since then, I’ve been back on being addicted to Phish and off heroin.”
Bittmann traveled to San Francisco to see Phish with seven friends, some of whom arrived at 7 a.m. to be first in line. The group had met at various Phish shows over the last decade, and every time the band announces a tour, they can count on seeing one another on the road. They came from San Diego or the East Coast, and one all the way from Stockholm.
A few feet away, Tracy Callard, a 60-year-old lawyer, greets old friends with hugs and laughter, swapping stories like postcards from a road trip that never ends. She first heard Phish on a bootleg tape in the early ’90s, sandwiched between Grateful Dead jams. After 34 years of Phish shows, she’s seen it all, including naked people running through the crowd.
Callard came from Wichita, Kansas, to meet up with a friend from Los Angeles, whom she met at a Phish show. In fact, she knew nearly everyone who had gathered early Tuesday and Wednesday, because they see one another at every show.
“I know it sounds like an Amway conference or something, but people will see me and yell, ‘Hey, Wichita!’ Phish is like a small town that moves from city to city,” Callard said.
She loves Phish because it’s a family that unites around one thing and has stayed the same since she first saw the band in 1991.
“The only thing that’s changed is everyone’s a hell of a lot older,” she said. “Nobody’s looking for acid — people are asking for Tylenol and ibuprofen out here on the line.”
Harry and his friend “Marco Esquandolas” had been waiting in line since 8 a.m. (Three people in various sections of the line gave the last name Esquandolas, insisting they were all related. It appears the name “Marco Esquandolas” is a character in Phish lyrical lore and a moniker Phish Heads often use when talking to reporters.)
Harry has long black hair and a beard flecked with gray. Rangy and puckish, Esquandolas sports graying orange hair and a big smile. If you squint, the pair nearly pass as Jerry Garcia and Trey Anastasio. Esquandolas even lives in Vermont — where, of course, the members of Phish are from.
They’re both 70 and have been buddies for a decade. Like many other Phish Heads in the line, they met at a show. Esquandolas estimates he’s been to nearly 700 Phish shows since 1992, when he caught the band at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City.
“I didn’t know what I was in for,” he said. “Big balls were bouncing around the room.”
Esquandolas went to one of the most legendary Phish shows, when the band played for seven hours straight, from sunset to sunrise, to ring in the year 2000.
When asked if he stayed up for the entire show, he smiled.
“I haven’t gone to sleep yet.”