This summer I bumped into a family friend in his 80s wearing a needlepoint belt stitched with the dancing bears. I asked if he was a Deadhead. “No,” he said, laughing, completely unaware that he was wearing Grateful Dead merchandise. “I just thought the bears were cute.”
A few weeks later, a woman in her 30s pulled up a photo on her phone to show me her favorite T-shirt, featuring an oversize green dancing bear. She had never listened to the band. Couldn’t name a single song. That’s when I realized the Grateful Dead no longer needed the Grateful Dead.
