Actor. Musician. Host. Writer. Dinner Guest.
A VERY CORPORATE DEAD AND CO. EXPERIENCE…
By Zach Selwyn June 26, 2024.
1
We were somewhere around Barstow at the edge of the desert when my traveling companion had to pull over to take his blood pressure pills.
Also I had to pee. And the Mini Cooper we had taken on this for our journey into the desert was running low on gas. And the left windshield wiper didn’t work, so we needed to clean the bugs off.
Plus I needed to reapply my sunscreen, because my arm was getting a little red on the right side.
In the trunk of the car, we had an orthotic pillow, my knee brace in case we walked too far, a bunch of ibuprofen, a laptop with a broken screen, a pre-rolled joint in a plastic black container and some bananas and water in case I was hungover the following day. My toiletry kit was full of generic Propecia and cholesterol pills, Loreal Under Eye Cream and Trader Joe’s Green Juice alongside a single bottle of nine dollar red wine that had been left at my house four nights earlier.
Still, the Mini Cooper rolled along like an electric roller skate on the highway, carrying me and my new acquaintance Savage towards Sin City to see the last bastion of what was left of the mighty Grateful Dead in a $2 billion stadium known as the Sphere.
This was definitely not the same road trip I had taken 30 years earlier when I last saw the Grateful Dead in Las Vegas, carrying four ounces of dope and a three foot bong we had named “De La Soul” because it was “3 Feet High and Rising.” The times had changed. Life had arrived. My hair wasn’t to my back anymore, the hand-made leather sandals I wore every day had been replaced with Amazon flip-flops and I had two children at home.
Savage, yes that’s his real name, still looked very much the part of a true music lover and outlaw Dead Head. He sported long, full Sam Elliott-like hair and a handlebar mustache beneath a killer vintage flat brim beaver felt hat. A pack of Reds poked out from his shirt pocket and he was blasting some early 70’s New Riders of the Purple Sage over the radio. I barely know this character, but so far he seems like a good road trip buddy… He’s got the wheels, a beat up Epiphone acoustic in the trunk and seems to be drumming along rhythmically to the beat of the tunes he’s playing. Savage is not a close friend, but more of an acquaintance. We met at a school fundraiser. I liked his look. He came to my band gigs. And anyone who compliments me on my music normally passes my acid test for being a worthy road trip adversary.
Meanwhile, I had resuscitated my original 1995 Grateful Dead Las Vegas Silver Bowl T-shirt from the depths of my drawer, recalling the last time I had driven to Sin City to see what was then the dying embers of the Jerry Garcia Grateful Dead. At that time, I had traveled by van with 15 friends, including my college girlfriend, and we all split a huge suite at a Bally’s hotel. We got so stoned in the room that we missed half of Dave Matthews Band’s opening set, and Dave was the best group going at that time. Still, by the time we made it into the Silver Bowl parking lot, the drugs were everywhere, Shakedown Street was flying with multicolored human beings tripping, laughing, passing nitrous balloons around and speaking in a language I had never heard before. Miracles were desired, free hugs were offered and trunks of VW busses revealed simpler lifestyles that pre-dated the popular #VanLife trend that is going on these days on Instagram by nearly three decades. This was Burning Man before Burning Man. The festival life before Coachella.. This was the desert. It was 108° and workers hosed down the crowd from the sidelines and we danced on a dusty stadium floor kicking up more dirt than a Mad Max film. Medics tended to dehydrated druggies in trip tents and there were multiple overdose incidents all around us. As the night passed, we went back to Bally’s where my girlfriend and I tried to make love on a couch where four other guys were sleeping at the same time. That didn’t end well. We were too young to gamble, too old to have any money to afford our own hotel room and it was a beautiful snapshot of my youth awash in psychedelics, a few “kind beers” and more marijuana than the late Bill Walton’s carry-on suitcase.
.
Now 29 years later, I was going to the desert again. This time as a man in his late 40’s who was thinking that by this time in my life, I should have been able to afford a nicer suite than the one that Savage and I had booked due to my financial limitations. It was called the Mardi Gras. It cost us $92 for the night (Including the $5.00 resort fees) and sits on the wrong side of Las Vegas. Judging by the images on the website, it looked like a three-story flop house with moderate New Orleans decorations and two separate happy hours. But more of that later.
It’s not that I haven’t had any success in my life, but this past year has been extremely rough, especially with the strikes and the death of Hollywood for actors, writers and filmmakers who exist on the same level I do. Whereas I once would make a very nice living hosting TV and doing voiceover jobs, the whole industry has dried up, leaving an entire generation in shambles struggling to pay mortgages and rent. Myself included. Luckily, my music has carried me through on many occasions but I never thought that I would be almost 50-years-old sitting on the passenger side of a 2012 Mini Cooper, driving to Vegas with a guy that I had only met a few times through our kids’ mutual schools… Yet here we were.
For the first hour into the ride, Savage had been delivering a master class in storytelling. His tales made me feel like I was listening to a live podcast from a man who lived a brilliant, adventure-fueled rogue life. From his days working for Bill Graham Presents in San Francisco setting up Grateful Dead shows to watching his friends have dalliances in bathroom stalls with pop stars of the 1980s to breaking his back and shoulder in competitive skateboarding tournaments while sponsored by Vector in the early Southern California pool scene… He claimed he helped Owsley build the Wall of Sound. He explained how his silk-screening business lead to his design being used on an official Dead tour shirt. He manned the bar at the legendary Powerhouse Bar next to a motorcycle club in Hollywood as a 28-year-old drifter, helping bikers defend the establishment from the rioters of 1992… He took acid and saw the Dead for the first time when he was 12-years-old. He watched Bay Area rock stars who were worldwide touring acts cruise his high school parking lot looking for “chicks.” I was traveling with history and I relished every crazy tale he told.
His brother had originally bought the Sphere tickets, but could not go. He offered them to Savage. Savage offered one to me. It was a fair exchange for becoming his sounding board for storytelling.
From being Eskimo Brothers with some of the biggest rock stars in the world to turning down Elite Models in the 90’s, story after story- mile after mile – Savage tore through his adventures like a pirate regaling his tales of the sea, replete with yarns of wenches, treasure, celebrities, criminal activities and money come and gone.
In comparison to his tall tales, mine seemed tame and boring.
“I used to smoke weed with Rob Thomas from Matchbox Twenty!” I bragged. “Nicest guy!”
He stared at me and laughed before telling me about riding Harleys with two motorcycle gang members and how they paid him with a bag of speed to be the getaway driver when they robbed a liquor store.
Here was Savage, a living legend doing time as a family man in Hollywood, sharing stories that nobody could ever imagine were true. I was lucky enough to be his wingman, rattling towards Las Vegas anticipating what would be his first Grateful Dead show since Jerry Garcia died in 1995. Savage once swore that he would never see the Dead again once Jerry passed in 1995, but this was the Sphere and this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see them play in what is supposedly the most mind-blowing and visually stimulating concert spectacle in the world today.
But first, we had to stop for blood pressure pills. Doctor’s orders. As his 60th birthday loomed in the distance, so did the threat of heart disease, high cholesterol and a lifetime of partying catching up with him. We popped into the gas station outside of Barstow, used the facilities, filled up the Mini Cooper and decided to get back on the road.
But first… he had to smoke a few cigarettes. I sat back in the passenger seat and sipped the kombucha I had brought along for the ride.
2
The actor Clark Gable supposedly waited out the news of his wife Carole Lombard’s tragic plane crash death at a small saloon 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas known as the Pioneer. It is a relic of a long lost mining town, and the Pioneer has been around for 111 years and has seen its share of brawls fist fights, gunfights, card games, confrontations and drunken min(e/o)rs. Both literal men coming from the underground after seeking precious metals… And minors – as in underage patrons. There are bullet holes in the walls and cigarette burns on the bar from where Gable extinguished his smokes while awaiting news on the fate of Lombard’s plane. Apparently, Gable sat and drank at the bar until he heard that there had been no survivors and then lost his mind once her death was confirmed.
Savage casually informed me that we would be stopping by the Pioneer Saloon for some pre-Vegas beers because he knew the owner.
“He’s the guy who got me out of prison,” he said.
I didn’t press further on that one.
Apparently, his pal had recently purchased the saloon and the general store next-door for a fairly respectable fee, longing to keep the place – and its history – alive. Dubbing himself “Old Man Liver,” he marketed the bar the way it should be, classic, barely touched and unrestored. This is not a Jason Aldean Rooftop Kitchen or a Kid Rock Big Ass Honky Tonk in Nashville. This is the real deal.
“Figured we’d stop at my boy’s place before heading up to check-in” he said. “Maybe we can get your band to play out here for a bunch of aging meth heads and local bikers.”
“Yeah, I’m sure they buy a lot of merchandise,” I said.
The funny thing is in my musical career I have either played for two types of people: Aging meth heads and local bikers… And billionaires in towns like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. In my experience the billionaires spend more money on t-shirts.
We rolled into the Pioneer Saloon about an hour and a half later. The place runs on a septic system, and has no glassware or washable dishes so the beers come in plastic cups. The food was simple and hearty and served on paper plates and in Styrofoam containers. The bar was full of bikers, travelers and Dead Heads making their way to Las Vegas for the show. We saddled up for a couple of pints and a burger with a piece of nopales cactus on it before touring the local cemetery and paying our respects to the residents by playing a couple of songs to the deceased. A few of the graves were shocking… One featured a small hand carved wooden tombstone standing meekly over mis-packed earth flaunting the name PAT CASH. All I could think of was who this poor soul was and how he ended up in a pauper’s grave out here in Goodsprings, Nevada. Then again, there is a part of me that would rather spend eternity out here under a wooden tombstone in the desert rather than be forever interred in Forest Lawn or some monstrosity sitting on the Glendale border.
We walked back to see if Savage’s buddy had arrived at the bar yet, but the bartender informed us that he wasn’t in town. I avoided buying a $10 sew-on patch that featured a cool skeleton dealing blackjack cards only because those types of things just weren’t in my budget at the moment. Besides, I was saving up for the bootleg merch on Shakedown Street outside of the venue.
Shakedown Street is what Dead Heads call the legendary parking lot scene that burns brightly before every Grateful Dead show. This is the place where bootleg t-shirts can be found for seven to ten dollars, veggie burritos whet your appetite and any drug on the planet can be negotiated or found with a proper wink, smile and a handshake. Shakedown Street, as anyone will tell you, is as much fun as the live shows. You meet unruly, crazy people selling vegan burritos to afford getting from town to town… Smoking everything under the sun and wishing each other, “a good show.” In my life, there have been many Grateful Dead shows where the Shakedown Street experience far outweighs the actual concert experience. I figured this would be my last chance to possibly find some pre-show mushroom chocolate and unique handmade Grateful Dead merchandise. That is why I avoided buying any Pioneer Saloon memorabilia.
After sipping a final Modelo in the bar and talking to the woman with a “Don’t Tread on Me” tattoo on her back thigh, we got back on the road. Savage spun a few more tales about drinking gallons of margaritas with the band Night Ranger and how they were close pals. That’s who this dude was. Savage could even make the band Night Ranger seem cooler than shit.
I told him about how I once pulled a 1/50 Luka Dončić cracked Ice Prizm sports card from a pack I bought at a WalMart.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He said. “Baseball cards?”
Maybe it was the two beers, but being in such a historical bar picked up my outlaw spirits. I bought a fresh pack of smokes, noting that I always smoked cigarettes at Dead shows, and I started getting really excited for the night. And I know a cigarette in 103 degree weather sounds disgusting, but when you come from Tucson, Arizona like I do, it just feels familiar sometimes.
45 minutes later, we arrived at our hotel, the Mardi Gras. This place… was disgusting. Our room was a decent size, but smelled like sewage. There was some sort of dried pool of dark liquid on the rug by the sink that vaguely resembled human blood and a three-legged dog was hobbling around the premises. There were no gaming tables onsite, but 15 or so desperate souls sat glued to slot machines begging for that one lucky spin that would change their lives. There were diapers on the floor in the hallway, bad tattoos everywhere and a woman yelling at her husband about not receiving a welfare check for her two young children who were willingly playing on a third story railing that had been partially dislodged from the wall.
Yes my friends, this was not the Wynn- This was the LOSS.
A quick stroll around the hotel balcony later and we finally came into visual contact with the dome of the Sphere. It looked unbelievable. The Steal Your Face logo floated over millions of LED screens, promising a night of mind expansion and adventure which in turn sparked memories of simpler times. That iconic logo was friendly and familiar and was inviting us to come dance in a ring around the sun with one of the greatest bands in the history of the world. I looked up at another large hotel down the way and saw my old friend Theo Von’s face on a 40-story billboard on the side of Resorts World Hotel advertising his upcoming residency. Years ago, Theo and I would play shitty clubs in Los Angeles discussing our mutual admiration for each other. Now he was selling out 10,000 person theaters on the same sacred ground where Elvis once stood… And I was preparing to clean dried blood out of the carpet at the Mardi Gras Hotel.
Savage and I went downstairs and got two $4 beers in the bar and headed for the pool where we met Owen, another Grateful Dead traveler from Canada who had come down to see all three shows for the weekend.
“Where are you from?” Savage asked.
“Vancouver man, how about you?”
“LA, by way of northern California,” Savage said. “This guy is from Arizona.”
This was a common interaction throughout the rest of the night. We asked everybody that we met where they had come from, because the chances of us meeting someone from Henderson, Nevada who lived locally, was zero to none. Owen came down hoping to meet some like-minded friends and take some LSD to watch the show.
“Well, let’s just all get over to Shakedown Street and make this psychedelic dream happen,” I said.
“Oh dude, there is no Shakedown Street at the Sphere,” Owen said.
We laughed at this preposterous statement.
“No, I’m serious,” he continued. “Vegas won’t let you sell anything in the parking lot or on the street so they moved it inside to the Tuscany Hotel – it’s in the ballroom about a mile away from the venue.”
What? NO SHAKEDOWN STREET AT THE SPHERE??
And it was inside a hotel? Hell no. Back in ’95 and I’m sure in ’75… Shakedown was where all the contraband was… Where teenage runaways living in buses braided their pubes into necklaces and sold them for five dollars. I was not going to a Shakedown Street inside a hotel ballroom. Could you imagine? The same place where the Schwartz Bar Mitzvah took place two weeks earlier is now the same place where you buy loose joints? Joints that were most likely curated and logo-stamped by the Dead themselves?
(For the record, even though the Grateful Dead have licensed their image and likeness to everything possible in the world, I don’t think they have a line of weed yet – even though there was a Jerry Garcia strain available for awhile).
It was also at this time that Owen informed us that James Perse had an entire high end Grateful Dead retail store in the Wynn dedicated to Grateful Dead everything. Including $250.00 pickleball paddles. #KILLMENOW.
We went to the room to change, crack the wine I had brought and head to the show and see if we could find anything to alter our state of mind.
But first we had to call our wives and let them know we’re OK.
Yeah, Savage and I are now committed family men with two kids each. We weren’t in Vegas to party. There would be no trips to Treasures, the new gentlemen’s club that had a $150 cover up the street. Plus, checking in with my lady is something I always do on the road – especially since I recently fractured my shoulder during a drunken Memorial Day fall down a steep driveway. Since that accident, I had slowed down my booze intake and I wasn’t planning on drinking too much that night… After all, nobody ever wants to be the drunk guy at the Grateful Dead show… But a few beers wouldn’t hurt and if we could make it to the Tuscany Hotel, perhaps some other mind-altering substances could be found as well.
I cracked the wine and quickly realized that keeping it in the trunk of a car for six hours through the 114 degree Mojave Desert was not a good idea. The cork was popping out and the sweet red liquid had oxidized making it undrinkable. I made a note to bring it back to Costco for a nine dollar refund once I was home. Shit, they take back everything. (As I told you, it’s been a rough year).
We finally began making the .8 mile walk towards the Sphere. This was the most sober I had ever been in the hours leading up to a Grateful Dead show and I began to mildly panic. Luckily, we came across a dangerous looking corner 7-Eleven where an arrest was taking place outside and got some cheap canned beer. As we approached the Sphere, the lack of the Shakedown Street scene was suddenly imminent. In fact the lack of danger and adventure was imminent. There weren’t even any trip tents. Savage was frustrated and began calling out everything that had changed…
Where are the druggies?
Where is the scary guy in the top hat who made devil sticks out of human bones?
Where are the Lot Lizards?
Where are all the Sparkle Ponies?
“Wait – what’s a Sparkle Pony?” I asked.
“That’s what we used to call a beautiful hippie girl – bells on her fingers, rings on her toes… you know? Look at this crowd – this is like a bunch of rich lame white couples wearing brand new tie-dyes… These are more like sparkle donkeys!”
He was correct. This was the “Corporate Dead.” This was Vegas Dead. And not the 1995 Vegas Dead… This was, “Honey, do you want to buy some tie-dye shirts and go see John Mayer’s band the Grateful Dead? Maybe we can see Jersey Boys the next night!”
I would say 75% of the crowd was over 55 and looking way beyond their years. We half-heartedly asked folks for shrooms or better dope… and we scoured the outside of the show for hippies selling anything but made no connections. There was no food, no burritos, no fried peanut butter and jelly sandwiches… No snacks. No kind beers. No acid. No mushrooms. No loose joints. No t-shirts. No buttons. No pins. No alcohol. And definitely no ‘Sparkle Ponies.’
It was at this point that I realized I had only eaten half of a hamburger the entire day. I was suddenly starving, three beers in and well aware that there was no food to be found within a mile or two of the Sphere. We considered going to Tuscany after all, but we were told it had just been shut down to get people over to the show. Luckily a guy with a box of pizza walked up and offered it to me like a hippie angel out of the blue. I reluctantly took the box from him and asked him if he had dosed it.
The guy laughed and said, “Yeah bro, like I’m gonna give you fucking Acid Pizza…”
I dug in, enjoying every bite of this mediocre, crusty and flavorless pizza knowing it was going to save my ass especially if I would be forced to drink $21 beers inside since my mushroom journey was now officially over.
As I ate the acid pizza, sort of secretly hoping it was laced, I watched Savage approach a bevy of individuals and talk about his 30- year Grateful Dead hiatus, his years as a Bill Graham employee and how he may have made out with Mountain Girl as a teenager, but wasn’t sure. (Mountain Girl was one of Jerry Garcia’s early wives). People responded and laughed, the vibe was getting better and we smoked some of Savage’s homegrown weed known as “Los Feliz Loco.” It was a mild but effective strain that he grew himself after reading a recent article in the LA Times about how many pesticides, chemicals and other poisonous items had been recently found in dispensary-bought pre-rolls that had claimed to be “organic.” It was like when they did that undercover sushi expose and found that 90 percent of all sashimi in LA area sushi restaurants was actually tilapia tainted with food coloring.
Still I knew I had my secret pre-roll weapon in my pocket that I was going to save for the peak of the concert. As we puffed away at Savage’s joint, a security guard walked up and warned us to finish smoking outside because if they caught us inside… We would immediately be kicked out.
Excuse me? A Grateful Dead show without a joint or a cigarette being smoked? What have we come to ? What would Jerry Garcia say about that? My guess is that Jerry would’ve never agreed to play the Sphere in the first place.
I was beginning to think that the Dead agreeing to play the Sphere was the concert equivalent of licensing the song Touch of Grey to a Just for Men commercial…
3
After finishing our beers and finding our way inside, we began to notice that this venue resembled the Beverly Center or, as Savage more astutely put it, the newly re-designed LaGuardia Airport. Everything was modern and new, like that Star Wars ride at Disneyland… I half expected Kylo Ren to walk out of the 300 section and order a beer. Half airport, half space port, I thought to myself. Not a lot of charm. As we walked through the halls looking for our seats, I jokingly asked a security guard if he knew where the United Club was. He quizzically looked at me and said, “I don’t understand sir, you’re at the Sphere.”
Sometimes when you’re high you’re thinking just a little bit ahead of everybody else.
We got a couple of $23 beers to get through the set and went to our seats – We were in the 100 section. The lights went down, the stage opened up and I saw maybe two plumes of smoke puff throughout the crowd.
Before I go any further, I need to mention that before I came here, everybody told me that there is not a bad seat at the Sphere.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
The biggest design mistake they made in the Sphere is the overhang. This obstructs the view for close to 1/3 of the audience who are stuck underneath it, unable to see the ceiling. As luck would have it, we were stuck underneath it. And no amount of beer or weed would fix this. Especially because as the show started up, I quickly realized that the only visual I was seeing consistently was John Mayer’s bulging crotch and his $250,000 Audemars Piguet watch, which put a perfect statement on this entire corporate Dead situation. This guy was up there looking like Lil Wayne showing off his fucking wrist to a bunch of aging hippies who grew up telling time by using sun dials. This motherfucker was wearing an Audemars Piguet? Not only that, but all the crotch shot made me think of was poor Taylor Swift being forced to face that thing in a dark Four Seasons Hotel room when she was 22-years-old. Look, I am a huge fan of what John Mayer has brought to the Dead but this wasn’t what I came to Vegas for… I needed visuals. I need something real. John Mayer’s muscular sleeve tattoos and his “Oh Face” was terrifying and got worse as the weed and beer kicked in a little harder.
“We have to move seats,” I said to Savage. “I feel like Mayer’s gonna get me pregnant sitting here.”
Even though the sound was good, we missed the cool San Francisco city visuals, and Savage, being from northern California, wasn’t happy about that at all. We crawled to the floor, puffed on the Los Feliz Loco and left to go head upstairs.
Once we got there the entire experience changed. The sky exploded with flowers and visuals rained down upon us. I finally saw what people had been talking about. If you get stuck under the overhang at the Sphere, do yourself a favor and move immediately. You need to be up top or on the floor.
As we danced in our new seats, happy to have found an open spot, I began taking videos and photos like everybody else and sending them to my friends. It’s kind of hard to capture the vibe on the phone, but I did the best I could and suddenly, nothing could go wrong… until an older couple flanked by a security guard came up and told us that we were in the wrong seats.
“It’s chill brother, we’ll just stay here for a while,” Savage said. “Back in the day, 25 people would crowd into one aisle and no one gave a shit!”
The woman, who I can only refer to as a “Grateful Karen,” piped up.
“Carl! Tell them we paid for these seats!” She yelled.
I had never seen a Grateful Karen before, but let me tell you… they definitely exist. I can only describe this one as being in her early-to-mid 60s, with short gray hair, long jorts and a T-shirt that read “GRAY-tful”. She was carrying a plastic bag with a brand new Dead and Company hoodie inside as well as a $100 rolled up poster. In her left hand she had a 32 ounce Diet Coke with a straw. Her husband was wearing Birkenstocks with socks and had on a flowered shirt to complement his khaki shorts. These two smirked and chuckled as we were escorted from our seats.
“Thanks for calling the manager,” I said to her.
We went back outside to walk around La Guardia. We took a look at some of the posters that were intricately designed and even looked at the silent auction where a guitar was already being bid on at the $7900 level. This spoke volumes about the crowd and energy in that arena. Everything that could be for sale was for sale… I even paid an extra three dollars for a Dead and Co. collectors cup which I’m sure my wife will be throwing out in the next couple of weeks. Eventually we stumbled across a poster rolling station, far from what I’m sure was a joint rolling station 20 years ago.
“Roll Posters, not Joints” I yelled, getting a chuckle from a couple of cute girls nearby.
As I looked up to get a better look at them, the sky suddenly opened up with possibility. These girls were angelic. They were young and beautiful in that casual hippie way that I remembered from my 20’s… They flashed me back to memories of my girlfriend in 1995 playing “air piano” and dancing around in her 90’s babydoll flowered dress to songs like U.S. Blues. I stared at them in awe for a couple of seconds, running every Old Man Has Threesome With Two Hippie Chicks PornHub title through my mind over and over… Until Savage came over and knocked me out of my flesh fantasy.
“Hey bro, you DID find some Sparkle Ponies!” He said.
Staring at these two girls as they danced, suddenly made me extremely nostalgic. I began texting all of my friends who I had seen Grateful Dead shows with in the past, explaining how the world had changed and how there were very few moments that could ever replace what we experienced together back in the 90’s. Back then, we had a saying – It was either myself or my buddy J. Smooth who coined it, but it was simply this:
The 90’s Are Just the 60’s Upside Down.
That was the t-shirt I always wanted to make… But never had the bread to do. As I watched these two girls twirl around Like hippie nymphs inside a mundane corporate forest – it dawned on me that I was in fact… as guilty of being the old guy here as everybody else was…
4
My friend had told me the intermission was long so we made our way out to the center of the sphere to as many strangers as possible. This was the closest it came to a Shakedown experience and we spent 30 minutes or so talking to computer designers from Phoenix, truck drivers from New Jersey, Christmas tree farmers from Portland and accountants from the DC area. I have been told the first sets had been pretty slow for the other Sphere shows leading up to these and that the second set was going to be even better. So, after a couple of conversations we went back into the 200 section looking for any empty seats. And then the lights went down and China Cat Sunflower came up. I reached into my pocket for the pre-roll I’ve been saving for the second set. This was gonna be good.
A quick aside here… As an on-camera TV host and actor I am often forced to do my own makeup. I have been doing this for 20+ years and I keep a bunch of items in my toiletry kit in case a gig presents itself. One of the items is a black make up tube that fills in gray hairs in your beard. Full disclosure… I use it all the time and it comes in handy quite often. Unfortunately, the one place that I didn’t need it, was at this Grateful Dead show. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little plastic black container holding the pre-roll… Only to find it was the fucking beard pen.
I uncapped it, looking down at the ink dabber, cursing my recent luck.
Look, I may have not been as stoned as I would have liked, but damn… my beard was looking dark and full.
Savage brought out the last of the Los Feliz Loco and we burned it openly in the crowd this time saying, screw the laws – if they kick us out they kick us out. The next 45 minutes were spectacular and everything made perfect sense. We danced and sang along, I thought about my beautiful wife, my kids, my friends, my girlfriend from the past and everything in life that made sense and it was magical and perfect. I even began screaming for every John Mayer guitar solo. His watch didn’t even bother me anymore. Savage and I talked about maybe going over to the after party at the Tuscany… We made plans to try and stay for the Friday show the next night… We were dreaming in that way you get at a Dead concert when all of your problems can be solved with the right note of a song. The band finished the set and we walked out of the Sphere with super Cheshire Cat grins on our faces awaiting the next party.
What we found was roughly a mile-and-a half-walk to the Venetian, where people could get Ubers and towncars. Walking through Vegas always kills a buzz, especially when the working girls start yelling out that they will, “Break yo dick off for 50 dollars.” Plus, even though you can drink on the streets, there was nowhere to buy anything. After a good 35 minutes, I suggested we pull the ripcord and just get an Uber back to Mardi Gras. At least they had a late night happy hour and maybe we could run into Owen in the lobby and see if he scored any harder party favors.
Our backs were hurting, our flip-flops were not exactly the most ideal concert choices and I wasn’t about to go for an $18 Miller light at a large casino bar. We got back to the Mardi Gras and walked into that familiar surrounding of despair and desperation, looking not unlike Nicolas Cage’s motel during his downfall in the film Leaving Las Vegas. Grizzled old drunken madmen hunched over slot machines. Middle-aged women at the bar nursed Miller Lites in orthotic shoes. An overweight family was eating slices of pizza out of a shopping bag… It made me very happy we had not found any psychedelics because I would have tripped out. Drinks hit the bar and Savage ordered a breakfast burrito to soak up the booze.
And then it hit me. Savage had said he made out with Mountain Girl? The timing seemed off. By my calculations, she would have been a mother of two living in Oregon by the time he graduated high school. He defended a bar during the LA Riots? Biker clubs don’t let dudes in that easily. And what about him claiming he was there when the Wall of Sound was completed? He would have been in third grade. Suddenly I was thinking to myself, who actually was this Savage guy? This guy holding court in the bar of a fleabag Vegas hotel gulping down a bucket of well whiskey the size of a small bird bath? Did our kids even go to the same school? Suddenly, the 275 mile drive through 110 degree heat the next day seemed daunting… and to top of all that, the acid pizza was wearing off.
“I’m gonna go to bed,” I announced, now feeling somewhat paranoid about sleeping in a room with this guy.
“Nah, man! We’re in Vegas! Did I ever tell you about the time I partied here in the 90’s with the Chelsea Football Club?”
I had heard enough stories for one night. I was cooked. I looked at my phone and had a few Friday kid carpools to drive and an early dinner with a potential job offer. Real life awaited me back in L.A. I shut the lights off by 1:30 a.m. a far cry from my average 6 a.m. bedtime back in the 1990’s. Savage never made it back to the room. The next I saw him was behind the wheel in the morning, his roulette eyes signifying a night well wasted.
This is not the first story I have written about seeing the Grateful Dead or Phish as an older man, but this one felt different. Maybe it wasn’t my favorite show, but this was one of my favorite experiences.
On our way out of town, we passed through the Pioneer Saloon again and stopped in for one final beer before the road. This was about as outlaw as this trip would get… A beer at 11 AM in a bar where men had been shot over $10 card games. I started writing down some ideas and eventually realized that these experiences are always worth it – especially for the art that comes from it. Hell, I even began writing a song about Clark Gable and Carole Lombard on the way home.
If this was my one and only trip to the Sphere, I am glad that I got to see the remnants of the Grateful Dead. I will probably go back if Pink Floyd or Oasis reunited with original members or something ridiculous like that, but I’m not gonna count on it. Even if the Dead and Co. come back for another residency next year, I will most likely go, making sure that I am a little better prepared.
The only thing I can say for sure, is that next time, I won’t be staring at John Mayer’s crotch…
Check out Zach’s New Album “Country Linen” streaming everywhere now!
https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/39PZMOuSqUTiqLSnmO2FY5?utm_source=generator
I had been at the Great Wolf Lodge for roughly an hour when a drunk and angry ex-firefighter threatened to kick my ass at the indoor water park. He was pissed off at me for disrespecting the “sanctity” of the Great Wolf Lodge… I am 100 percent serious. Let me start at the beginning…
Spring Break. These are two of the most beautiful words in the English language… if you are a child. To parents, these words concur up feeling of hopelessness, anguish and despair. And for some reason? Today’s elementary school kids get two whole weeks off for “Spring Break…” TWO WEEKS! When I was a kid we got TWO DAYS. In college we only got a week. And as far as I recall, it wasn’t even a thing in high school.
But sure… the rigorous schedule of counting, handwriting and connect the dots can be so gruesome and torturous for a second grader – that a two-week vacation at the end of March is exactly what the school nurse ordered… So, if you’re like me, you suddenly begin scrambling to find activities for your kids to do during this gratuitous vacation. So, you make plans…
You drop $75.00 to go see shitty movies like Sherlock Gnomes.
You gain 12 pounds by not being able to go to the gym on your regular schedule. And, in some extreme cases, you agree to take your kids to the GREAT WOLF LODGE for two days…
Which is exactly where I found myself last week, riddled with anxiety as I nibbled on a chicken finger ten feet from a wave pool full of screaming children. Praying for death.
If you have never heard of a Great Wolf Lodge, let me put it this way… Consider yourself lucky. With 13 locations across the country, the kid-friendly indoor water park is to people like me the end of the fucking world. Known for its indoor water park and “wolf-themed” decor, the franchise has drawn families from far and wide to spend their entire monthly paychecks on shitty food, arcade games and the guarantee that you will contract the Norovirus within three spins in the “Lazy River.”
I mumbled something under my breath as I loaded the car, preparing to journey down to the hotel with my wife, our second grade girl and my very unenthusiastic pre-teen who was pissed because he was missing roughly 48 hours of the video game Fortnite.
The drive down was actually somewhat exciting. I was anticipating the water park summer days of my youth, when I met a cute girl in line at the snack bar, chatted up an 8th grade crush and passed a Sony Walkman around with my buddies listening to Straight Outta Compton. Those days were nothing but innocent and fun… and I was hoping my kids might make some amazing memories of their own…
When we arrived, however, my entire demeanor changed. After looking for a space in the self-parking garage for 30 minutes, I was met with the sudden reality that there were a lot of people here during Spring Break. I mean, a lot of people. Like, thousands. And all of them had kids. Small, sweaty, stinky, gross, fat, weird, uninhibited kids…
My first moment of clarity happened when I was presented with a pair of felt “wolf ears” as I entered the lobby.
“HOWL you doing today!?” A bubbly 20-something dude named Bryan asked.
“PAW-SOME!!!” I responded sarcastically.
“Woah! Someone’s got the Great Wolf spirit!” He screamed. “AWWOOOOOOOO!”
I looked around at the hundred of fathers traipsing through the lobby wearing these ridiculous wolf ears… The looks on their faces all read the same: FAILURE.
There is a certain look a man knows when he runs into another man at a place like the Great Wolf Lodge. It is a look of defeat. Of mediocrity. Of deficiency. Like we all expected to be the dads who take our kids in Hawaii or something, but ended up at the Great Wolf Lodge in Anaheim. I recognized this look on every man’s face I encountered.
We checked in and got to our suite, which we were sharing with another family we knew from from LA. Everyone changed into bathing suits to go hit the indoor water park. A small part of me was hoping it would be a fun day, and after all, as long as they had a jacuzzi I figured I could kill a few hours relaxing and hanging out with strangers.
There was no jacuzzi.
And the water park was massive. And loud. And it smelled like feet.
“Daddy! Come in the lazy river with me!” My daughter squealed.
I took a deep breath and stood up. I took off my shirt and walked over towards the lazy river. The first thing I noticed about the water park was that somehow, I had THE BEST BODY THERE.
In my 42 years, I have never been the “ripped” guy at the pool. Ever. Even when I was 18 I had the beginnings of a dad bod and now, at my age, I had been keeping trim and eating well to the point where at the Great Wolf Lodge in Anaheim, California, I was a SWIMSUIT MODEL. Seriously. I was 30 pounds lighter than the average man. My wife, who has always been in terrific shape looked like Hannah Jeter posing for Sports Illustrated. We were “Anaheim 10’s…” and pretty proud of it.
As I strutted around my new Adonis-like physique, I watched as my daughter slowly dipped into the lazy river among what seemed like hundreds of other kids. I put my leg in, noticed it was much colder than I had anticipated, and began walking around the river behind her.
And then some kid’s fleshy leg rubbed up against mine under the water. I froze. It was like in Star Wars when that Dianoga Monster rubs up against Luke in the trash compactor. A gross little bare human leg rubbing against my inner calf. I stopped to gather myself. I felt like a part of the #metoo movement. I was rattled… And then another kid wrapped himself around my chest for support as he floated by… I shuttered. Looking around, I suddenly became keenly aware of little yellow swirls of urine accumulating in certain areas. I also counted three loose Band-Aids and numerous clumps of hair floating in the water. A few more kids hit me with inner tubes as they raced by and finally, when a little girl wiped her snot off of her face and tossed it into the water beside me, my afternoon at the water park was OVER.
“Baby, I’m getting out,” I yelled as she floated down the river.
Her frown broke my heart, but the place was already too much for me. I was done. I had been at the Great Wolf Lodge for less than an hour.
After drying off, I noticed the small line of men waiting for beer. I grabbed my “Wolf Band” which had my credit card and room number on it, and bought my first beer of the day. It was 3:30, but if I was going to get through this place, a buzz was certainly needed. Looking around, I noticed that day-drinking was certainly the norm here, like the way it is in airports when people order beers at 7:00 in the morning and nobody thinks twice about it.
After paying, I turned around, noticing three men behind me waiting for drinks. Two of them had “Lakeland County Fire Department” shirts on. The other was shirtless, proudly showing off a fading Tazmanian Devil tattoo from the early 90’s… I toasted the guys with my beer.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “What happened to us? We were all once virile men… with dreams, passions, desires… goals. NOW? We’re on vacation at the fucking Great Wolf Lodge. What the fuck, am I right!!?”
Suddenly, the shirtless man took a threatening step my way and got directly in my face.
“Are you disrespecting the LODGE, bro?” He asked in an accusatory way.
I wasn’t sure if he was serious. I laughed.
“Sounds like you are,” he continued aggressively, the vapor of liquor prominent on his breath. I felt scared. I backpedaled.
“No, man.. I was just, you know – joking-“
I was taken aback. If I said the wrong thing here, there is no doubt in my mind that this guy would start throwing punches. And whereas a pool fight might be the perfect excuse to get banned from the Great Wolf Lodge forever, I decided to lay off. Meanwhile, his friends tried to calm him down.
“Don’t get into another fight, Jim,” his friend told him.
Another fight? Holy shit… this guy Jim was out here kicking dad’s asses all day.
“No, man, I was just joking around, you know…” I mumbled.
“No, I don’t know, bro,” he said. “I’m a retired firefighter… I don’t back down from shit.”
And then, suddenly, there was an extremely loud wolf howl coming from the wave pool – This was the signal to swimmers that a fresh set of waves was about to begin… 200 kids screamed in delight as the call of the wolf echoed through the waterpark.
AWOOOOOOO! AWOOOOOOO!
“Ohhhh shit, what’s that?” I asked the guys.
“That means the waves are starting up…” Jim said. “That’s the call of the Lodge, bro… you better embrace your inner wolf… because like it or not? You made the decision to come here.”
He was right. I could make the most of this experience and embrace my inner wolf… or make myself suffer.
“Hey man, I’m sorry – it’s my first time here… I was just making a bad joke…”
Jim calmed down. His whole demeanor changed and he became aware that he was not in the octagon, but was at the Great Wolf Lodge. If he had wanted to kick my ass, he would have… but my honesty seemed to have chilled him out.
“Screw it,” he said. “Sorry to get up in your face, bro… come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”
Jim and his pals bought me another beer and I returned back to our deck chairs and told the story to my wife and her friend. They weren’t interested. They were concerned about something much more important.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Apparently, another mom had just told my wife that Pink Eye was going around the lodge that weekend… The woman’s two kids had been infected on the water slide and her husband was in the hotel room with his eyes swollen shut.
“Welp, I’m fucking out of here,” I said.
I took my beer upstairs and went to the bar to watch a baseball game. As I walked back through the water park, I began observing a few things.
I never realized how many adults have tattoos of their children’s baby footprints.
I had no idea that BIG DOGS Clothing was still a thing. There were also a lot of “Exercise…Eggsercise…Eggs are sides… Eggs are sides for Bacon” t-shirts and ‘water pun’ shirts. Like a picture of a snail holding up a seashell to his face beneath the words “SHELL-FIE!”
Finally, the majority of these adults seemed fine eating garbage for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One dad in line at the snack bar even highly recommended the pork nachos.
I thought we were in Anaheim. Somehow we ended up in Wisconsin.
Upstairs, I found a few other dads watching the Dodgers game. I made some new friends – including a pest control guy from Alhambra and a Target general manager from Riverside. We drank a few beers and talked baseball. As a way to make my new pals laugh, I recognized Bryan, the same guy who had checked me in earlier, eating on his lunch break. I approached him.
“Hey Bryan, quick question… do they have a Great Wolf Glory Hole up in this piece?”
The bar got silent. My new pals hid their laughter. Bryan did not seem amused. Within 30 seconds the bar manager tapped me on the shoulder.
“Just a reminder, sir…” He warned. “This is the Great Wolf Lodge… not the Great Wolf of Wall Street Lodge.”
My afternoon concluded in the arcade, where the kids have given up on video games requiring any sort of skill in favor of games where you spin a wheel,… and win tickets. It’s not even a challenge. It’s just a prize wheel. When I arrived, I found my daughter hoarding what looked like 15,000 prize tickets.
“I’m saving up for the stuffed wolf!” She said. I saw the wolf on the wall. At any CVS store across the country, this dumb little stuffed animal would cost $3.99. My wife told me they had already spent $60.00 trying to win it. I went back to the bar.
That night, after ordering pizza to our room, my wife and I shared some wine as the kids fell asleep. At that moment, we heard a rustling in the hallway. Peeking outside, I noticed two security guards dragging a very drunk man from his room.
“How long has he been drinking today?” They asked his wife, who looked terrified.
“Since brunch, I think,” she said.
“We’ll take him to the first aid area and get him some fluids… We’ll check back in 30 minutes.”
I asked the lady what had happened.
“It’s just my dumb husband… every time we come to this place he gets blackout drunk.”
“That makes two of us,” I said, raising my wine glass.
She shut her door on me.
The next day we were set to check out. I was excited to get home and back outside – as we had been indoors for roughly 18 hours straight. The Great Wolf Lodge is like fucking Vegas in that way. You have no reason to ever leave the place… I started packing and preparing to head back to LA.
“Wanna meet us at the pool?” My wife said.
“We’re not leaving?” I said.
“I figured the kids would want another day at the pool,” she said. “I mean we paid for it.”
And just like that, we did a second day at the water park. At this point I officially gave up. I began day-drinking at 11:00. I howled every time that dumb wolf noise started in the wave pool. I contemplated buying a Great Wolf Lodge t-shirt in the gift shop that was on sale from Halloween (Or as they put it… HOWL-ween…)
Deep down I knew that finally, I had reluctantly embraced my inner wolf.
I looked around the pool again. I was a little bloated from the first day and slightly hungover. I was no longer had the best body there. I was one day into my “Midwest” period.
I went over to our deck chairs and ordered the pork nachos…
WATCH ZACH’S NEW SERIES “ONE MINUTE MUSIC MINUTE” at OLE TV! @oletvofficial
By Zach Selwyn
I can vividly picture the scene taking place on a Newark, New Jersey street corner in 1922… Prohibition is hanging heavily over every boarded up bar and single family household on the block. The streets are full of the penniless, making bedding out of old jackets on the grey and crunchy dirty sidewalk snow. Children are wrapping up nightly stick ball games to return home for dinner as the streets darken with denizens of the nightlife and small time hoods…
And then suddenly, out of the darkness, trotting up in a horse-drawn buggy, appears Rabbi Levi Zalman, who is suddenly swarmed by scores of men from these homes looking to procure the finest bottle of bootleg wine they can get their hands on. Money is exchanged, prayers are said and the men race home to their families. With every sale, Rabbi Zalman mutters, “Baruch Hashem.” (Blessed be the name of the lord). When it’s all over, Rabbi Zalman rides away a very rich man…
Of course, Rabbi Levi Zalman is not a Rabbi at all. In fact, he is Jack Joseph Brauer, an out-of-work shoe peddler from East Jersey City who has just unloaded his Government-relegated weekly supply of booze for a shade over $5,000.
He is also my great-great grandfather. This was his “congregation.”
Ratified in 1920, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution – which is America’s only Amendment to later be repealed – federally prohibited the manufacture, transportation and sale of alcohol. Of course, this was one of our biggest failures in our short history, and led to the golden age of organized crime, corruption and sheer madness across the country.
Doing some research (And I am not the first to report this – just giving you some background) Jewish households were allowed a certain amount of wine per household per year. To top that off, if you were a Rabbi, and you lead any type of “congregation” (12 members or more) you were allowed to get as much wine as you wanted for religious purposes at any time you desired… So guess what happened? A lot of “new Rabbis” suddenly started showed up.
“There were fake Rabbis everywhere,” my grandmother told me years ago before she died. “If you knew 12 people, that was a congregation… why do you think so many people started converting to Judaism during the 20’s? FOR BOOZE.”
So, when Jack Brauer’s shoe business got hit with hard times in the early 1920’s, he bought some religious robes, sported a fake beard and marched up to the proper Governmental distribution center and bought as much alcohol as he needed… He flipped it in two days and kicked off a successful six-year-run as the biggest “Rabbi Bootlegger” in Newark, New Jersey.
A few years later, when the American Jewish Committee began cracking down on the large number of fake Rabbi’s, my great-great grandfather Jack was NOT on the suspected fraud list. In fact, he continued to support his family until 1931, just before the Amendment was repealed. How? He had the third largest congregation in New Jersey at the time. (Even though it was 95 percent FAKE.)
Now, according to the three part documentary Prohibition by Ken Burns, other religions had these loopholes as well. In fact, Priests were ALSO able to purchase liquor for religious ceremonies. Of course, the government could actually reference records to determine if someone claiming to be a Priest actually was a Priest. But Rabbis? There was NO WAY OF TELLING WHO WAS A RABBI.
According to writer Daniel Okrent, “Rabbis were suddenly showing up everywhere. Irish Rabbis, Black Rabbis…” Nobody ever doubted their religious claims.
As is turns out, my grandmother was correct. In the 1920’s, Jewish congregations increased in membership by like, 75 percent. In short? BOOTLEG LIQUOR BUILT MODERN DAY JUDAISM. In fact, I don’t think you can reference a time in history when more NEW Jews suddenly showed up out of the woodwork to embrace Judaism in our nation’s history. No wonder we say prayers over the wine…
A few years ago, my grandmother Florence passed away. Readers of my stories should be familiar with our adventures together in her later years, which included a trip to the Ace Hotel, smoking medical marijuana and leafing through her old photo albums so she could announce who was presently, “Dead.” When she passed, it was a sad moment, and a week later, our family went through her home to get rid of old useless items…(My grandfather’s 5000 VHS tapes of classic movies) and save valuable ones… (My grandma had always claimed that she had hidden “thousands of dollars in cash” all over the house and that it was our job to find it when she died.)
Of course, knowing this, we tore open her home like Jesse Pinkman looking for hidden cash in that drug dealer’s condo in the film El Camino…
My mom and I found some money, but the “thousands of dollars” my grandma promised turned out to be something more like 220 bucks. We also uncovered a lot of jewelry and a stamp collection valued at about $39. So, if you’re the new couple that bought the place? If you ever find some ungodly wad of $100 dollar bills in a crawl space, hit me up…
Aside for a few of my grandma’s stray Vicodin, which I squirreled away in a jacket pocket, the only other item in the home that really intrigued me was my grandmother’s birth certificate. On it was listed her parent’s names and occupations – (Ruth Brauer-Kaplan – housewife. Jacob Kaplan- Dentist) – as well as her GRANDPARENT’s names and occupations… What intrigued me was the job description as reported to the state of New Jersey by JACK JOSEPH BRAUER –
His job: RABBI.
“Wow so Grandma’s story was true?” I asked my Uncle Steve who was helping my mom go through Florence’s old belongings.
“Yes indeed,” he answered.
“So was he really a Rabbi?” I asked.
“Do you know what a ‘Rabbi’ was back then?”
“I’m guessing a bootlegger?”
“It’s great getting to know your family, isn’t it?”
I went into the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of wine. I toasted my grandma on her final journey and raised my glass up to Jack Joseph Brauer – my great-great grandfather who kept so many families buzzed during the dark years of Prohibition…
“Baruch Hashem,” I said.
STREAM ZACH’S NEW SONG “Red Fuckin Wine” NOW!
This past weekend, I decided to have a yard sale. It sounded like the perfect idea. A fun and social way for me to unload the over-crowded boxes that had been shoved in the back of my garage and turn them into some serious cash. After all, who wouldn’t want to buy my old snap button western shirts I once wore on tour with my band? Or my vintage t-shirt collection that ranged from soft 1970’s Wild Turkey Bourbon logos to an original Rick Springfield Working Class Dog Hanes Beefy-T? Or even the dozens of valuable beer coozies I had collected rifling through Goodwill crates across the country that I just never used? And what neighborhood fashionista wouldn’t jump at the chance to own a pair of my wife’s designer leather pants for a steal at $100? Or any of the hundreds of blouses she had earned working in the fashion industry for twenty years? The way I saw it, my yard sale was more of a vintage pop-up shop than a junk sale – and I was expecting nothing but a hipster, gypsy crowd with millennial money in their wallets and a dream of buying an old suede fringe vest on their minds.
Oh how wrong I was.
The Craigslist ad I had placed stated that the sale would begin at 7 o’clock in the morning. However, a crowd of freakish haggling ghouls began showing up at 5:30, knocking on my pre-dawn door asking me if I would give them a sneak peak into my wares before everybody else arrived. Some came by van, others by bike. One man, I had assumed by the sleeping bag he carried, had camped out on our sidewalk the night before like we were about to release tickets to a One Direction concert. Suddenly, having a yard sale became somewhat frightening but I thought of all the time it would save me having to deal with ebay and those pesky fees, shipping costs and trips to the post office.
Our first early morning visitors were two Spanish-speaking men who were very interested in knowing if we had any “tools for sale.” Having only owned a screwdriver, some nails and a hammer in my illustrious DIY carpentry career, I calmly told them no – before inquiring if they would be interested in a brass Jackson Browne belt buckle.
“No, gracias,” the older gentleman said. He took a look at my daughter’s rusty Frozen decorated bicycle before driving off.
The guy with the sleeping bag asked if we had any bedding and/or pillows for sale. I told him no, and asked him if he’d be interested in a Jane Fonda Workout vinyl record.
No sale.
Our next visitor arrived around 6:00 a.m. She was an older, haggard bag lady who had over 45 satchels draped off of her weathered bicycle. In the knapsack that was slung around her shoulder she carried an actual brass tai-chi sword that she insisted on wielding in front of my son in a terrible re-enactment of her early morning lesson she had just taken in Griffith Park. After frolicking around the sidewalk like Westley in The Princess Bride for 25 minutes, she finally walked in and inquired about buying some iron rods and curtain rings we had recently taken down from our inside windows. Originally, these rods were purchased for $300 when my wife was doing some interior decorating to her old home in Laurel Canyon. Feeling generous, I offered her the rods and rings – with the curtains included – for $200. She stared at me as if she was about to run me through with her weapon. She mumbled something beneath her breath and eventually moved onto the junk table I had assembled in the back corner. She picked up a set of hippopotamus salt-and-pepper shakers and giggled while examining them.
“These are fun,” she exclaimed.
“My mom brought me those from Morocco,” I told her, lying. In reality they were Goodwill purchases I had used as a prop in a film I had made with my brother in 2011.
“Could you do ten bucks?”
Again, she laughed and twirled around the yard and started speaking what seemed like French to nobody in particular. She wrote her name down in a tiny notebook she had hidden in her stocking, ripped the page out and handed it to me. As she pressed it into my palm, she whispered, “Call me when you realize you’re asking way too much money for everything.”
I looked at the slip of paper. Her name was Laurette Soo-Chin-Wei Lorelai.
Around 7:15, the floodgates began to open. More and more groups began appearing, asking for mainly larger items such as furniture and floor lamps. I was somewhat amazed that no one had snapped up the Crosley turntable, the Pablo Neruda collection of poetry or the coffee table book Nudie: The Rodeo Tailor. After 45 minutes, I was beginning to wonder if that sword-carrying woman was correct… Was I charging too much?
I quickly Googled Yard Sale Etiquette.
According to yard sale laws, the average price of most of your items that are not bulky or still in the packaging – should be around $1.00. My average item was in the 5-10 dollar range, and in my mind, totally reasonable. It wasn’t until I made my first sale that I had a change of direction for the rest of the afternoon.
In 2007 or so, I had bought my son a collectible Star Wars denim jacket with R2-D2 and C-3PO sewn on the back at a trendy Farmer’s Market for $45. Even though he had probably thrown up and peed on it a few dozen times during his toddler-hood, I felt that $30 was a fair asking price. When I mentioned this to the interested woman who had been measuring it up against her own 3-year-old’s torso, she scoffed and hung it back on the rack.
“Ay de mi!” She said in Spanish.
Determined to make my first sale, I decided to bargain with her.
Now, I come from a long line of world-class bargainers. My mother and late grandma used to waltz through Canal Street in New York City with peacock-like confidence, able to nudge an unwavering vendor into dropping the price on an imitation Louis Vitton handbag from 500 dollars to roughly 50 cents in under three-minutes. Together they played the street like silver-tongued Jewish barter hounds, satisfied only when departing the area with 3-5 purses, imitation Rolexes and fake Prada luggage beneath their arms. They have been taking me to the secret inner space of fake handbags since I was about two-years-old and as far back as I can remember, they were the Ronda Rouseys of price negotiating… In fact, I recall one legendary trip where my mother actually made a profit while buying a purse.
Throughout the years, I have mastered the talent myself, but mainly when talking down a woman who once offered to cornrow my hair on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. I have also, never really been the haggled, only the haggler… Nevertheless, I felt that my family history had prepared me to challenge this woman over the Star Wars jacket to the very end… and I would not give in.
“Maam, could you do 25?” I asked.
“How about one dollar,” she said.
“What?” I screamed. “This is Star Wars! Like, collectible!”
“Senor, I will give you two dollars.”
At this point I knew my grandmother was watching down from heaven like a boxing trainer watching her prizefighter take hits in the ring. I refused to back down, so I just slowly lowered my price until she agreed. I decided I would not go lower than 18 dollars.
“20 bucks,” I said.
“3 dollars,” She barked,
“18?” I pleaded.
“Adios, senor,” she said, walking away. Oh my God! What was wrong here? Had I lost the sale? Was I going to be stuck with this jacket in my garage for the next 30 years? Like most hoarders I thought to myself, maybe when my son has a kid of his own, he will give this to him… but I knew that was a long way off. Finally, I surrendered. Mainly as a way to break the ice and make my first sale of the day.
“Maam? 3 dollars is fine,” I said. The lady reached in her wallet.
“How about two?” She offered.
I paused. I looked up at grandma, undoubtedly shaking her head in disappointment from that great Nordstrom’s Rack in the sky.
“Fine,” I said. She pressed two wrinkly dollars into my hands and just like that, I was $42 in the hole, but I had made my first sale of the day.
As the day wore on, my prices dipped lower and lower. I sold a handful of action figures for .25 cents a piece, a stack of vintage T-shirts for a dollar each and had the day’s biggest score when an unopened buffet dish that we had received for our wedding in 2004 went for $4.00. Nearly every item of clothing I was selling dropped in price by 99% by noon. My wife’s leather pants went for two bucks. The Rick Springfield shirt went for a dollar, as did the Mumford and Sons shirt, some Jack Daniel’s glasses and a silver booze flask that had an engraving of a man bass-fishing while naked. As the yard emptied, my wallet grew fatter and fatter – albeit with one-dollar bills – until I found myself exhausted, bored and anxiously wanting to count the bankroll in my pocket. My guess was that I had made $100 or so, based on the flurry of quick deals I made unloading the DVD collection, stacks of children’s books and my unbelievably large collection of novelty trucker hats… which had sold to some professional tree service men who had been working on a job a few blocks down. (Which might explain why if you drove by Franklin Avenue last weekend, you saw six guys on ladders wearing hats with My Other Car is Your Mom on them).
The most disgusting sale of the day went to the three ladies who argued over who would get to wear my wife’s used LuLuLemon Yoga pants. In retrospect, I probably could have sold them to some perverted Japanese businessmen in a vending machine for $60 a piece. Instead, I settled for – yep you guessed it – a dollar.
A crisis struck when I sold my son’s old Nintendo Wii console for ten bucks. Originally, he had wanted $100 for it… Which is 90 dollars more than what the smug bastards at GameStop will give you for the same item. Convincing him that I was a master salesman, I let him give me the Wii to sell at the yard sale instead. Sadly, I buckled early and let it go for $10.00 and I threw in some accessory called a Skylanders Portal. Not even sure that the console worked, I was just happy that I had made a double-digit sale. My son was not thrilled at all.
“You’re the WORST!” He screamed at me. “That was worth at least 300 dollars!”
One thing that kids fail to recognize is how fast technology loses value in today’s ever-changing world. Still, there was very little convincing him that I had struck a decent deal and he continuously stuck his head out the door and screamed at me for my “epic fail.” Ultimately, I ended up giving him the ten bucks even though I was the one who had bought him the original console for $275 back in 2010. Screw technology.
Around 4, the traffic had dwindled down to some neighbors, who we basically just handed items for free to get the stuff off of our property. Although it seemed like a bunch of things had been sold, I was still staring down a massive pile of clothes and books and toys and albums and knick-knacks and just straight up garbage. I prayed for some Saudi billionaire to walk in with a briefcase full of cash and just tell me he was taking the whole lot for $50. Alas, it looked as if my day was over. I cracked a beer and peed on a cactus.
And then, like a boll weevil out of a nearby hedge, Laurette Soo-Chin-Wei Lorelai re- appeared, tai chi sword in hand, pushing her bike in my direction with a Cheshire cat-like simper on her face.
Like a panther she strutted around the sale, inquiring about every single item remaining. She decided to mention that she was a regular on “the scene” and that she could tell you what was going to sell the minute she sets foot in someone’s rummage sale. She offered to help me whittle down my items to try and resell the next day for the bargain price of 10 dollars an hour… I relented. All I was thinking was “get the hell out of my yard.”
I started gathering everything that was left over and throwing them in boxes. She suddenly slid next to me, holding the iron curtain rods, the rings and the hippopotamus salt-and-pepper shakers from earlier.
“Ready to make a deal?” She asked.
“Lady,” I said. “Give me five dollars and go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
She handed over a bill, pressing it into my palm and stared directly into my eyes.
“Told you so,” she said.
That night I didn’t finish cleaning up. I was too wiped out. I left the majority of my once valuable wardrobe out for whoever in the neighborhood wanted it. A few things disappeared, which I didn’t even care about. It might be cool to see the neighborhood homeless guy wearing my old Blues Traveler T-shirt.
The next morning I threw all the remaining crap into my car and drove it directly to the Out of the Closet Thrift Store. I shoved it into a filthy back room along with thousands of other donations. As we unloaded all the boxes and unsold clothes and books and toys, they asked me if I thought the huge haul of stuff was worth more than $500. After all, a big donation would serve as a great tax write-off at the end of the year. Unaware of this little loophole, I figured that, yes – this crap was definitely worth more than $500.
They gave me a slip to present to my tax preparer and I drove home, satisfied that I had at least made a donation that would help me out financially.
As for my bankroll, I finally had the chance to count my earnings at the end of the sale. For nine hours of bargaining, labor and sweating under 100-degree weather, I had made a grand total of $47.
Somewhere up in heaven, my grandma was shaking her head in disappointment…
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CJ FEGAN challenges one of our Immortalizers tonight in an epic taxidermy battle – Tune into AMC on the west coast at 10:00 p.m. and mount up!
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Thx for tuning in! –
Zach Selwyn 