1967 kmz (Google Earth) file

Well, here it is at last, the crazy sister to this blog, a Google Earth file listing all the venues the Dead first played in 1967, i.e. no venues from 1966 even if they played there in '67. Lots of venue info, venue/concert specific photos, links to other great blogs (that'd be YOU dear followers of this blog).
Download the file from the Google Earth users forum, or download the kmz file directly from here.

1966 venues are here

Now make sure you turn on 3D buildings and if you can't do that then turn on your love light. Or at least turn on the person standing next to you. And quit yer playin' pocket pool!

Palm Garden, 310 W. 52nd St, NYC

The Dead played Palm Gardens on 12/22-24/67.

Palm Gardens, at 310 W. 52nd St. in Manhattan, was originally known as Palm Garden and had been a two-story dance hall as far back as 1922 (see Certificate of Occupancy here). The 1922 Certificate of Occupancy indicates both floors were ballrooms, with room for 500 persons on the first floor and 200 persons on the second. Interestingly, the 1923 and 1924 COOs indicated the first floor was a theater (theater and ballroom in 1924) holding 280 people and the second floor was a theater (and ballroom in 1924) holding 20 people. According to the 1927 COO the building once again had room for 500 on the first floor and 200 on the second. I'm not sure what to make of the reported capacity in '23 and '24. Perhaps there were structural issues that caused the city to limit the number of people, or perhaps for a few years in the 20s there were more restrictive occupancy rules.

It had been known as Palm Garden(s) since at least 1936. Palm Gardens was BIG - at some point it could hold over 1000 people.

The hall was not only a ballroom but frequently served as a venue for musicians' union meetings and speeches as noted in many issues of Billboard.

Palm Garden in 1939:

Photo by Percy Loomis Sperr, photos from the New York Public Library's digital image gallery

A view of the interior (sort of), 1944:

Photo from the US Coast Guard's history of the destroyer escort USS Joyce (that's the crew and their dates in the photo). Pdf at www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/Joyce.pdf

Some of the notable people who performed/spoke at Palm Gardens:

1928 - Voodoo, an opera by the African-American Harry Lawrence Freeman opened. It was the first opera by an African-American to be presented on Broadway.

Nov. 1, 1955 - The 29-year old "rebel leader" Fidel Castro spoke to an audience of 800 Cuban exiles and "a few observers under cover", a reference to the FBI and CIA who were keeping tabs on Castro. Castro was on
a speaking tour of the US to call on exiles to help finance a revolution. Apparently at Palm Gardens that night money poured in from enthusiastic Cubans. [1]

Oct. 27, 1957 - Coltrane performed with Monk at an evening concert at Palm Gardens. He also performed an afternoon concert there on the same day with Donald Byrd, Art Taylor, Tommy Potter and Red Garland.
[2]

April 8, 1964 and January 7,1965. Malcolm X gave speeches at Palm Gardens for the Militant Labor Forum, "The Black Revolution" in '64 and "Prospects for Freedom in 1965" in '65. Interestingly, the audiences for
these speeches were primarily white. The entire texts of these two speeches are available in the book "Malcolm X speaks: selected speeches and statements" by Malcolm X and Georger Breitman. You can read
parts of this book, including the speeches, at Google Books. [3]

Dec. 22-24, 1967. The Grateful Dead play the Palm Gardens! See the Village Voice ad here

Various dates in 1967: Palm Gardens was home to The Group Image. I'll say no more except to direct you to the awesome blog It's All the Streets You Crossed Not So Long Ago.

On March 28, 1968, shortly after the Dead played there, the Cheetah, the well-known club at 53rd and Broadway, moved into the Palm Gardens building. At some point the Cheetah became a popular Latin-American
dance club that helped popularize Salsa to mainstream America. The film "Our Latin Thing", recently restored and available at fania.com, documents an August 21, 1971 concert by the Fania All-Stars, a continuously revolving line-up of entertainers that recorded on the Fania Records label. Fania Records was the leading salsa record company of the time. As stated in an August 2011 NY Times article, "In the history of salsa music and Fania Records, which for many years were all but synonymous, “Our Latin Thing” and the Cheetah show occupy a singular position. It took another Fania All-Stars concert, this time for a crowd of more than 45,000 people at Yankee Stadium in 1973, to alert mainstream English-speaking America to the vast commercial potential of the Latin music market, but it was the Cheetah performance that may have been the ensemble’s artistic pinnacle." Read the article here. There are also videos titled "Live at the Cheetah nightclub 1973" here.

The Cheetah remained at 510 W. 52nd until 1973 but in 1974 the building was purchased by Studio Instrument Rentals and became their first east coast office. SIR is
a music entertainment company that continues to thrive nationwide. SIR sold the building to investors in 2004. It and neighboring buildings were torn down in 2004 and replaced by a 40-story luxury (million dollar +)
condo tower. Bleah.

The Palm Garden building in 1974:

Photo from Studio Instrument Rental history
page

310 W. 52nd St. today.

As an aside, from 1895 to 1928 there was a Proctor’s Pleasure Palace Palm Gardens nightclub on E. 58th between 3rd and Lexington avenues (photo here. The building was demolished and in 1928 Proctor opened "Proctor's 58th St. Theatre." I'm not sure if there's a connection between the two. Quite a few establishments such as restaurants and hotels had "palm gardens", rooms filled with palm trees so the names may be just a coincidence (I've found no indication that Proctor was at all associated with the 52nd street venue).

References:
[1] Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution by Thomas G. Paterson. Oxford University Press, 1994.
[2] John Coltrane: His Life and Music by Lewis Porter. University of Michigan, 1998.
[3] Malcolm X speaks: selected speeches and statements by Malcolm X and George Breitman. Grove Press, 1990.

The Cafe au Go-Go

Cafe au Go-Go, 1969

From the west coast to the east. As with the my other posts, this one is more inspired by, rather than focused on, the Dead’s shows at the Café au Go-Go in the basement at 152 Bleecker St, in New York’s Greenwich Village. The GD played the Café Au Go-Go from 6/1-10/67 during their first trip as a band to the east coast and from 9/29 – 10/1/69. Audience recordings exist for 9/29 and 9/30/69.

The Café’ au Go-Go also hosted many other great bands in their early days such as Hendrix, Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, Stan Getz, a high-school age Springsteen and Zappa and the Mothers had a 6 month stint in ‘67 at the Garrick Theater upstairs. But this has already been written about extensively before so I shan’t repeat it here. For a tremendous amount of information on the Dead’s shows there, a listing of most of the bands that played there along with dates, and the club in general hie theeself over to the Rock Prosopography blog. Also check out the excellent It's All the Streets You Crossed Not So Long Ago blog (and if you grew up in the NYC area between the 1960s and 1980s you MUST pay a visit to the "All the Streets" blog!)

The Cafe au Go-Go was located at 152 Bleecker St. and although the building was strictly commercial in nature it had rather prestigious beginnings, having been designed by an architectural firm that became quite prominent in later years.

But first, a little pre-history.

As the initial population center of early Manhattan grew from the southern tip of Manhattan Island people started moving north into what is now known as the South Village. A great deal of construction occurred between the 1810s and 1830s and resulted in blocks of Federal-style rowhouses (multi-story single-family residences). The economic and social conditions of the new residents varied quite a bit but in general these blocks of rowhouses were considered to be elegant places to live. One such four-story rowhouse was at 152 Bleecker. You can see part of it on the left-hand edge of this photo from the late 19th/early 20th century, not looking so elegant by this time.

(photo from the NY Times 3/25/07 Streetscapes column, courtesy http://www.nyhistory.org/ New York Historical Society).

According to the Greenwich Village Society of Historical Preservation (GVSHP, 2006), “Both sides of this block of Bleecker Street (between LaGuardia and Thompson Streets) had rows of red brick houses like what 146 once looked like. 145 and 149 (built in 1832) which are substantially intact, show the best evidence of what the row looked like…This block was once known as Caroll Place.” Although you can’t see much of 152 in the photo above there’s enough of it to see that it was the same kind of building as 149 (across the street from 152), see photo below.

text and photo from http://www.gvshp.org/south_village922.htm

In the next block over, the first row of French style of dwellings in New York was built on the South Side of Bleecker between Thompson and Sullivan (152 Bleecker was two doors east of Thompson). For an excellent overview of these buildings see the Streetscapes link above (but note that the Streetscapes photo caption is wrong – the hotel that replaced the French homes is not the small building with the hotel sign on it at 154 Bleecker, but rather the huge six story edifice across Thompson).

By the mid-19th century this area of Bleecker Street was a center of wealth and fashion. However, by 1870 this area had deteriorated significantly. In the late 19th century the Bleecker Street area was notorious for its rowdy nightlife. In 1890 the newspaper The Press wrote an article about the area describing it as “a long lane of corruption and drunkenness. On both sides of the street are low dives where men and women of the lowest order are received as welcome guests.” Across the street in the basement of 157 Bleecker was Frank Stevenson’s Slide, a saloon characterized as not only the “lowest and most disgusting place on this thoroughfare,” but “the wickedest place in New York.” (GVSHP, 2006)

By this time most of the buildings in this area were tenements. Tenements were multi-family buildings without then-basic amenities such as indoor plumbing and gas lights. When 152 Bleecker was built in the 1830s obviously such amenities didn’t exist. I can imagine that when they became more prevalent in newer buildings the generally well-off citizens of Bleecker St. would have moved out of the older buildings so as to enjoy the delights of them new-fangled gas lamps and pissing indoors. Without the basics the older buildings would not have been very desirable except to those who could only afford to rent such ill-equipped buildings. And to make up for lowered rents landlords would have rented out each floor as a separate family unit. But note: I could be talking out my ass here. I’m not a historian by any means – this analysis of the downfall of a neighborhood is all just supposition (or is that suppository? Like I said, talking out my ass)

Anyway, this lack of basics combined with the small lot size (25 ft wide x 125 ft long) and relatively large building size led to intolerable living conditions in the neighborhood and elsewhere. In an effort to relieve some of the squalor the first Tenement House Act was passed in 1879 which primarily banned windowless interior rooms in new tenement construction. Further reform came with the 1901 Tenement House Act. In addition to requirements for new construction it also required changes to older buildings such as new lighting and addition of one toilet for every two families.

Based on NY City public records the 1830s building at 152 Bleecker was demolished in 1903. It’s interesting to consider that perhaps the owners of this building were unwilling to make such changes and decided to replace it with a newer non-residential building (for the building that housed the Café Au Go-Go was strictly commercial in nature). The new building, the one that eventually hosted an amazing crop of musicians, was built in 1904, was six stories tall and was designed by the architectural firm Buchman and Fox. Buchman & Fox later went on to design many prominent NYC buildings that still exist, such as the Times Square Building at 229 W 43rd and the World's Tower building at 110 W 40th St. (and there's your "prestigious beginnings" which ain't a whole lot really but still kind of interesting).

There is scant information on what sorts of businesses operated at 152 Bleecker between 1904 and 1960, though newspaper articles hint at a jewelry shop in 1926 and a sign manufacturer, a glass and mirror novelty shop and awning manufacturer in the 1930s.
The photo below shows 152 Bleecker in 1940 (next building in from the corner). Note the hotel sign in both this photo and the 1969 photo below.

photo courtesy of NY Public Library Digital Library

However, in 1963 the New York Times reported that the landlord of 152 Bleecker would be building two “cozy playhouses, one on top of the other” there. The basement theater was known as the Baby Broadway and the upper theater was called the Little Broadway. But in less than a year the Café Au Go-Go opened on Feb. 7, 1964, with a performance by the comedian/actor/left-wing activist Professor Irwin Corey. At some point a screen or facade with the cafe's name was put on the front of the building.

A 1969 Certificate of Occupancy indicates that the cellar (the Cafe Au Go-Go) was licensed as a theatre, cabaret and toilets. The first floor was the Garrick Theater, site of Frank Zappa's infamous 6-month, 2-shows/night, 6-nights/week stay (see the Rock Prosopography link above), second floor was the projection room, and the third-sixth floors had a "factory on each story."

Suffice it to say that, as mentioned above, the Café Au Go-Go was host to some of the greatest musicians in the business such as Hendrix, the Dead, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Coleman Hawkins, Max Roach, Paul Butterfield, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker and more. Several of the performances there were recorded and are commercially available (Blues Project, Stan Getz, John Lee Hooker and a blues compilation). The Café was also the site of the infamous arrest of comedian Lenny Bruce on charges of obscenity.

It’s impossible to discuss the Café au Go Go without consideration of the nature of Greenwich Village in general. The Bleecker Street area and surrounding blocks have long been a center of Bohemian culture (for lack of a better term). There were many other music venues, most notably the Village Gate, the Gaslight, and Café Wha’ and the area was a haven for writers, poets, and musicians such as Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Theodore Dreiser. But much has been written about this area and this time and I'll leave it to better authors than I.

The Café shut its doors in 1969 when owner Howard Solomon sold it. Richie Havens, a regular at the Cafe, may or may not have bought it from Solomon. By April 1971 the popular coffehouse the Gaslight moved from its home on MacDougal St. to 152 Bleecker (they opened with Miles Davis!) where it was known as the Gaslight at the Au Go-Go and then the Gaslight II. This club stayed open until at least March 1973. I don’t know what filled the basement space or any other space in the building in its last few years other than “an extremely weird club called Cockroach Art” that was in a loft at either 150 or 152 in the mid 70s.

Based on a 1977 Certificate of Occupancy and other City records (permits for elevators), it looks like the building was torn down in 1977 and replaced by condos and shops. I find this somewhat surprising as the building currently there (which occupies 148-154 Bleecker) just doesn’t look like 1970s architecture to me (then again, I’m not much of a student of architecture either, just more of a keen observer).

I have no idea what is currently in the basement at 152 Bleecker but the current (2010) occupant in the 1st floor is a nail salon. I wonder if the clientele there have any clue about the ghosts that lurk around them...

And here's what it looks like today:

image courtesy of Google Street View

Sources of information:
Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), 2006. The South Village: A Proposal for Historic District Designation, Report by Andrew S. Dolkart. Available from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, www.gvshp.org

GVSHP, South Village Virtual Tour, http://www.gvshp.org/south_village922.htm

NYC Dept. of Buildings, retrieved 4/15/10 from http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/html/home/home.shtml

New York Public Library Digital Library, http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/index.cfm

New York Times, May 17, 1895, "In the Real Estate Field" column.

NYT, May 10, 1963, p. 36

NYT, March 25, 2007, "Streetscapes", retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/realestate/25SCAP.html

Office of Metropolitan History, retrieved April 2010 from http://www.metrohistory.com/searchfront.htm

Unholy Modal Rounders 1975-1977, retrieved from archive.org, April 2010.

Village Voice, May 23, 1963, p. 16. Retrieved from Google news search

A Diversion - playing around with Google's Search Stories Creator

If only...
(best in full screen view)

Huh?

Well blogger went screwy for some reason and changed the order of my posts. The Stockton post is now below the FDGH post.

The Cheetah Club, Venice, CA

The GD apparently played the Cheetah in Santa Monica (actually just over the line in Venice) only on 4/30/67. See Corry Arnold's brief post on the Lost Live Dead blog

The Cheetah, previously the Aragon Ballroom, was located at the Pacific Ocean Park Amusement Pier in Venice, CA. Besides the Dead other bands such as The Doors, Alice Cooper, Pink Floyd, Love, The Mothers of Invention, The Seeds, Buffalo Springfield and others played there. It closed in 1968.

photo from Sunset Sunshine at Flickr

The Cheetah was yet another dance club in a line of dance clubs in this building that had been operating on Lick Pier since the 1920s. When Lick Pier opened it was 800' x 225' and had the ballroom plus several amusement rides. The future home of the Cheetah was built in 1922, as the Bon Ton Ballroom, and the interior of the huge 22,000 sq. ft. ballroom was decorated in a modified Louis XV motif. According to Jeffrey Stanton's excellent Venice History page, Carlyle Stevenson and his orchestra "entertained nightly and all day on weekends." And aren't you lucky? You can hear Carlyle Stevenson's El Patio Orchestra play "By the Light of the Stars" over at archive.org! While you're there download a GD show or two or ninety.

Lick Pier in 1925, the Bon Ton Ballroom is the red-roofed building behind and to the left of the Lick Pier sign. Picture from the Pacific Ocean Park Amusement Pier website

I'm not sure how long Carlyle performed there but it was still called the Bon Ton Ballroom in 1931. However, by 1936 it was known as the Lick Pier Ballroom and in 1942 it became the Aragon Ballroom. By the 1950s people seemed to be more interested in TV than in an old-fashioned amusement park (thus beginning a long slow decline...). At some point in 1951 one of the orchestras to play there attracted only eight couples. The doors were about to shut but the manager decided to hire Lawrence Welk and his orchestra, who had entertained dancers there in 1946. That turned out to be a huge success and Welk's performances were weekly broadcast over local TV (later to be picked up nationally by ABC). Welk left the Aragon in 1961 for ABC studios at the Hollywood Palladium.

The ballroom remained the Aragon until February 1967 when it was remodeled and renamed the Cheetah Club. Based on a Google news search it appears the club closed sometime around or after June 1968. There are no further references to it until 1969 when an 8/3/69 LA Times article mentions the "defunct Cheetah Club". At that point the city was discussing ways to demolish the entire pier and all the buildings on it. A fire took care of that for them. I'm not sure what was in the building after 1968 - it was probably empty - but it burned up along with Lick Pier in a May 1970 fire while thousands watched. It was one of the last nails in the coffin for this area which, like the area where the Family Dog at the Great Highway was located, had been an amusement park since the 1920s.

It still looks like a nice beach though...

(Most of the information for this post came from Jeffrey Stanton's Venice History page and the Pacific Ocean Park Amusement Pier website. Both are excellent resources and I highly recommend checking them out).

Family Dog at the Great Highway

Hmmm...about time to actually post something here. We'll start with the Family Dog at the Great Highway in San Francisco. Much has been written about Chet Helms and the Family Dog - google it. Corry Arnold has written a great post about the GD, Jefferson Airplane and the FDGH on the Lost Live Dead blog.

The building is long gone but it had quite a colorful history.

Oddly, I've only ever found one photo of the inside of the building during its FDGH days. This is a photo of Stephen Gaskin during his Monday Nite Class which he described as,"...a weekly meeting of up to a thousand or fifteen hundred people where politics, religion, acid, sex, love, etc were discussed openly."


Photo by Robert Altman

This is the only picture I've ever found of the outside of the building
when it was the FDGH.


Looks like a pretty ordinary brick building but it had a rather grand history.

The building was erected in 1885 as the Ocean Beach Pavilion. It was
located down the hill from the famous Cliff House at the northern tip
of San Francisco right on the beach and it was used for concerts and
dancing. It's the building on the right in this photo from the 1890s.


Photo from The Cliff House Project

There are more photos of it at The Cliff House Project

It apparently operated that way until 1929 when it became a very
popular restaurant/nightclub named Topsy's Roost. You can see that the original mansard roofs at the tops of the corner towers are gone but other than all the signage on the front of it it still looks like the Ocean Beach Pavilion. And compare it with the Stephen Gaskin photo above. Looks like a much more happening scene in the 30s!




Photo/Postcard from Playland At The Beach
Check out the slides at the rear of the room. Patrons could slide down from their "coops" to the dance floor. Wheeeeooooo! There are many more similar pics at the awesome Playland at the Beach Site

During this period the hugely popular Playland was built across the
street - see the previous link (Google Playland and you'll find tons of info). It was torn down in '72 and now there are condos there :(

In the 1950s the old Pavilion building became "The Surf Club" which was apparently a dance club but I can't find much information about that. Around 1964 it became a slot car racetrack. Not much left of the grand old pavilion but it's definitely the same building - you can still see the remnants of the towers on the corners.


And then the FDGH. The FDGH opened summer of 1969 and closed in late 1970. At some point before 1972 it became the "Friends and Relationships Hall", another short-lived concert venue. There are a few posters for this venue
around, including this one w/ NRPS and Jerry on 6/3/71

(Thanks to The Jerry Site for the image)

In 1971 it was actually used as the headquarters for an oil spill
cleanup on Ocean Beach.

Outside: http://webbie1.sfpl.org/multimedia/sfphotos/AAB-9972.jpg
Inside: http://webbie1.sfpl.org/multimedia/sfphotos/AAB-9973.jpg

Finally, in 1972 it was torn down.

Photo from the San Francisco Public Library
(the building was next to Skateland)

By the way, there are a lot of sites that say the FDGH was Skateland
first. That's not correct - they were neighbors.

Here's how it looks today

photo from Google Street View