Wear flowers in your hair … and take the bus: San Francisco fetes Grateful Dead concerts with tie-dye

The Guardian

25-07-2025

The summer of love is pulling back in to San Francisco – aboard three tie-dye and paisley-wrapped trains and buses.
Designed to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead's formation, the city's Muni transit vehicles will double as transport for concertgoers attending a three-day Dead & Company series at Golden Gate Park.
'There's no better place to celebrate 60 years of the Grateful Dead than right here in San Francisco, and now that legacy is rolling through our neighborhoods literally,' Mayor Daniel Lurie said at a press conference on Tuesday.
San Francisco public transit wrap campaigns are usually funded by advertisers – but the city financed these three Grateful Dead-inspired vehicles from Muni's marketing budget, in part because the city expects the concerts to bring huge numbers of tourists and spending to the Bay Area.
Founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, just two years before the summer of love, the Grateful Dead quickly attracted a dedicated fanbase, who called themselves Deadheads. Though the original lineup disbanded in 1995 with the death of singer and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the band's members continued performing together with projects like Dead & Company.
When Dead & Company performed in San Francisco in 2023, the single show generated $31m for the city's economy. This year, the city is banking on the band's 1-3 August appearances bringing hundreds of thousands of fans to the home of Haight-Ashbury and 1960s counterculture.
General-admission tickets for the three-day festival start at $635, but VIP passes are already being resold on StubHub for upwards of $7,000.
Even Muni is selling limited-edition tie-dye T-shirts to celebrate.
'Our bars and restaurants will be packed, our hotels will be booked, our neighborhoods will come alive, and there will be more revenue to fund the services that benefit all San Franciscans. When we make space for creativity and celebration, the whole city benefits,' Lurie said in a statement on Tuesday.
The 'Psychedeli-bus' and 'Trippy Train' will serve as festival transit – but are also scheduled to run along the 5 Fulton, 7 Haight/Noriega and N Judah routes.
The city is hoping the themed vehicles will boost enthusiasm for public transit, at a moment when Muni's financial future looks uncertain. Muni ridership is at its highest levels since 2019, but the transit agency is facing a $322m budget deficit.
'We have proudly served passengers for decades, getting them to and from where they want to be,' Julie Kirschbaum, director of transportation at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said in a statement announcing the buses. 'Helping connect people to major moments that make San Francisco so special is at the core of what makes Muni so special.'