Grateful Dead fans watch a “psychedelic light” show on the Rotunda after a plaque unveiling at San Jose City Hall near the site of the Grateful Dead's first concert, under that name, on Dec. 4, 1965 in downtown San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025. San Jose Rocks lead the campaign for the plaque. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
The plaza behind San Jose City Hall was filled with Deadheads and DJs on Thursday night, as the city distinctively celebrated its historic connection to the Grateful Dead by illuminating City Hall in light show of swirling colors, with the legendary band’s music ringing out in the courtyard.
The festivities marked the 60th anniversary of a momentous night when the band, just having changed its name from the Warlocks, played an LSD-fueled “acid test” at a house on South Fifth Street on Dec. 4, 1965. In the intervening 60 years, the house was moved to make way for City Hall, but a plaque commemorating the spot was unveiled Thursday night. Featuring the band’s famous “Steal Your Face” logo, the plaque will be permanently affixed to the wing’s south wall.
“There’s no acid test tonight, but I’m thinking there might be a little acid reflux, looking around,” emcee Kim Vestal, a longtime DJ now doing traffic for KCBS, told the well-seasoned crowd.
The ceremony leading up to the plaque’s reveal included remarks from the two guys who have been spearheading this effort for years on behalf of nonprofit San Jose Rocks: founder Dan Orloff and former Mercury News sports columnist Mark Purdy. You think it’s hard work trying to get a remodeling permit? Try getting a plaque on city hall commemorating an event where people took LSD (which, as was pointed out several times Thursday, was perfectly legal at the time).
There were a couple of surprise guests, too. Ira Meltzer was a San Jose State student who lived at the house and talked about the wild night, which had Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Bill Kreutzmann providing the music and Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters passing out the LSD-laced sugar cubes.
Another guest speaker was Trixie Garcia, the daughter of Jerry Garcia and Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia. She was born nearly a decade after the night in question — both her parents were there — but said she thought it was wonderful that San Jose commemorated the moment.
“The ’60s changed the world, and what was started here in the Bay Area continues to lead the world and progressive thought and a more mindful way to exist,” she said.
While passerbys took pictures and marveled at the light show projected on City Hall, visitors inside the Janet Gray Hayes Rotunda got to view a collection of Grateful Dead posters owned by collector Bill Guardino and get an up-close look at an original hand-drawn poster promoting the acid test The poster recently sold at auction for $37,500. It also led Orloff and Purdy down a research rabbit hole only to discover that the historic house at 38 S. Fifth St. hadn’t been lost in a fire — as previously thought — but was repaired and moved to North Fourth Street, just blocks away.
So what does it mean that a band long associated with San Francisco played its first show as the Grateful Dead in San Jose? Purdy summed it up pretty well.
“I think the Grateful Dead are really the world’s band, No. 1. And No. 2, I think they are a band that was a cultural force all around the Bay Area,” he said, noting they started out in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, had roots in Berkeley and wound up headquartered in Marin. “But you know what? There’s only one place they played their very first performance. It was right here.”
BUILDERS NEEDED: Valley Health Foundation Executive Director Michael Elliott is seeking help for a good problem. The foundation’s Big Bike Build for its Turning Wheels for Kids program is coming up Dec. 13, and thanks to the support from the Santa Clara Family Health Plan and other groups, it’ll be the biggest one since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, volunteers assembled about 500 bicycles for kids who need them, and this year there are 1,000 ready to be put together and distributed to families for the holidays through various nonprofit and service organizations.
“That is, assuming we can get all those bikes built on Dec. 13,” Elliott said. “That depends on volunteers. We are currently at 50% of what we need.”
The Bike Build will take place at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, starting at 8:30 a.m. No experience is needed, and volunteers are provided with tools, training, food and a T-shirt. You can get more information at www.valleyhealthfoundation.org or sign up to volunteer at eventbrite.com (search for “2025 Big Bike Build).
TRIBUTE TO A COMMUNITY CHAMPION: Loc Vu, a significant leader in the Vietnamese-American community in Santa Clara County who founded the Viet Museum at San Jose’s History Park, died at age 92 on Nov. 29.
A colonel in the South Vietnamese Army, Vu and his family settled in San Jose after the fall of Saigon in 1975 and founded the Immigrant Resettlement & Cultural Center a few years later, providing services including English classes, job training and housing assistance to more than 20,000 immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos over the next four decades.
His work to preserve Vietnamese culture was realized when the Museum of the Boat People and the Republic of Vietnam opened at History Park in San Jose in 2008, distinguished by a replica of a fishing boat similar to those people used to escape Communist Vietnam. Vu collected artifacts for the museum for more than 25 years, picking up some at the flea market and others on eBay. His contributions to the Vietnamese-American community in Santa Clara County were recognized in the U.S. Congressional Record by Rep. Zoe Lofgren in 2015.
BUILDING HOLIDAY SPIRIT: If you’re out hunting for a Christmas tree this weekend, just be glad you didn’t have to build it. The Master Model Builder team at Legoland Discovery Center Bay Area in Milpitas, led by Peter Kochanek-Rogers, spent dozens of hours creating a 5-foot tree made out of Lego bricks. It’s the centerpiece of the Holiday Bricktacular event at the venue at the Great Mall, which includes lots of holiday scenes in Miniland, the Bay Area cityscape made out of Lego bricks.
Kochanek-Rogers placed the first ornament on the tree, a Lego heart he created as part of the Build to Give experience, where guests can also build hearts to help kids in need during the holiday season. The event runs through Dec. 24, and you can check it out at www.legolanddiscoverycenter.com/bayarea.
Originally published at Sal Pizarro