Furthur - the Lot

I'll cover the experiences from the parking lot over the 3 days of the shows in Eugene.  In the greater scheme, this makes more sense.  Besides, the days kind of run together, so going chronologically isn't really possible.

Shakedown Street

typical owner disposition

The Saturday morning print of the Eugene newspaper declared a successful "bust" of the vending along Shakedown Street.  Now, if you've been to a Grateful Dead-like event, you know what this area is.  For those who have not been so exposed, Shakedown Street is a zone somewhere in the parking lot where a large percentage of the vending takes place.  This zone is usually close to the arena, and is where the highest foot-traffic would naturally happen.  This is not a space designated by anyone.  In fact, it springs up on its own where the first-arrivers think it makes the most sense.  This "bust" had a little effect on the vending scene, though, and actually created multiple mini-Shakedown's as well as walk-about vending.  I liked the walk-abouts.  But even in my touring days, that was how I sold things before dark.  Laying out a sheet or a cooler on Shakedown Street was too high-risk for me back then.  One GDP (Grateful Dead Productions) violation cop, and you could be out hundreds of dollars.  Staff-Pro's usually targetted illegal liquor or drug sales, but from the article in the paper, they were busting everybody for selling anything... except tickets.  Funny how that's turned.

Wares without Art

One of the great contributions the "illegal" vending brought to the event used to be the iconic artistry placed onto T-shirts through 2-4 color silk screens.  This artistry would take a modern icon and "Deadify" it.  For example, one of my favorite shirts from years ago was a Bart Simpson T-shirt where Bart was wearing a tie-die and cut-off shorts.  Under the cartoon drawing was the phrase "Bart it on Down the Line" - playing on the song title "Beat it on Down the Line".  These types of shirts no longer appear at Dead-related shows, and I find that very disappointing.  Disappointing to the point, in fact, that Mike, Ed, Boo and I talked about different creative ideas taking modern cultural references and making T-shirts out of them.  We may just get into the T-shirt business, if we can isolate some time for it.  In the end, I did buy a couple of wood coasters.  These coasters have a Steal-Your-Face in the center or a Tour poster-looking image inside.  I like the creativity in creating a coaster, and they are totally functional!

Belle and Hapy wait for us to return from the show

Tire-kicking
As you may imagine, rolling into the lot as part of a microbus caravan, Ed and I attracted a little attention.  Belle was festooned with a big flag in her luggage rack on the way in on Sunday, and Hapy remained his usual sleeper-looking self the 2 days I drove him in (Fri & Sat).  The looks on the faces of those in-the-know when I passed, though, was pretty funny.  ACVW (Air Cooled VolksWagen) fans know what an ACVW sounds like.  So, when my city-bus sounding microbus passed, a look of confusion followed.  Funny stuff.  By the time we parked, there was usually at least one person wanting to check out our sleds.  As I may have mentioned in the previous post, Ed would park nose in and I'd back in next to him so our sliders faced each other.  This made for a nice little sitting area as we enjoyed our beverages... (yes, staff-pro official, these are coffee's in our coffee cups)...

We met a number of VW folks, over the course of the 3 days.  From the TDI-transplant curious, to BioDieselers, to purists.  The purists wanted to talk to Ed.  I popped the rear hatch a few times, and talked at great length with a guy from Corvallis who is working on a production-able nose-mount radiator for water-cooled engine conversions.  Cool!  I hope to hear more from him about his project.  I may not ave the stomach for moving the rad, but having these kinds of conversations is a great way to learn about improvement ideas.

It was a beautiful 3 days, weather-wise, crowd-wise and music-wise.  The lot wasn't over-burdened with booming stereos, had good Microbus, Vanagon and Eurovan representation and had a good positive energy.  More next time about the ride home....