Issue 43 · 2026-10-31

Do You Have a Smoke

Five college women packed a late-sixties white Mustang with a red leather interior and pointed it down the New York State Thruway toward Manhattan.

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SET I — Cold Open: The Cream-Puff Mustang

Five college women packed a late-sixties white Mustang with a red leather interior and pointed it down the New York State Thruway toward Manhattan.

Peasant skirts. Genie pants. Crystal jewelry. Chinese slippers. Cigarettes. Snacks. Study materials. Orange Windowpane. The cassette deck was loaded. The drive was eight hours each way from upstate New York, and they meant to do it more than once in the same week.

She was nineteen, a college sophomore, and she wrote it all up years later on her own blog. She goes by TrippingDelightFantastic. No legal name on her About page, so that's what I'll call her.

It was October 1980. The Grateful Dead were in the middle of eight nights at Radio City Music Hall, an acoustic set and then two electric sets. They'd just come off fifteen nights at the Warfield in San Francisco and two at the Saenger in New Orleans. She still shows the ticket stub. Fifteen bucks.

She called the car a Deadhead clown car. I can't top that, so I won't try.

SET I — Act One: The Kitchenette

They'd gotten good, she wrote, at guessing which hotel the band would use. They pooled what money they had and filled rooms past the legal count. After one of the Radio City nights they were in a fancy boutique hotel around the corner from the hall, eyes wide, ready for more. Somebody told their little crew the band was hosting a mini-screening of the simulcast in a party suite, and letting a small bunch of Dead Heads in.

On the elevator up she saw a couple of older Deadhead women. Forty, she guessed then. West-coast vibe, long graying hair, flowing clothes, mellow as a closed door. She told her friend that if she ever made it to that age, she wanted to age that gracefully and still be seeing the Dead. She wrote the rest of that thought later, once she'd become one of those women herself.

The suite wasn't much. Small kitchenette. Living room. Bedroom and bath. About twenty-five people sat cross-legged on the floor watching the simulcast of that very night's show. She peeked into the kitchen.

Jerry was leaning against the counter, talking to a couple of people. She slipped in and made herself small.

He asked if she had a smoke.

She lit up with him. Then she asked about her favorite new tune, Althea, still in the pile with Lost Sailor, Saint of Circumstance and Alabama Getaway. She wrote out the opening step-down the way it lived in her head: B-minor to A-major to E-major to A-major. She felt a personal connection to the lyric. She'd learned that Althea also meant Rose of Sharon, her namesake.

Jerry answered as genuinely as he could, she wrote, given that Hunter was the lyricist. He talked about Hunter's metaphors and allegory, and Hunter's habit of writing unrequited love and the drama between people. Then he took her friend's questions about acoustics and sound waves (the friend was an audiology major) and stood by the simulcast for a while, nodding and laughing and chain smoking.

Kind. Relaxed. Personable. That's her whole list, and it's a good one.

SET I — Act Two: The Elevator Going Down

When she and her friend left the suite to meet the rest of their crew, Bobby and Billy were stepping off the elevator to join Jerry and watch the tape. They asked the two women what they thought of the show, and they listened. Come back later and hang out, they said.

They never made it back that night. She wrote the reason the only way a nineteen-year-old can: all the reasons that arise when you are nineteen and dumb and do not have your priorities straight. She enjoyed the ride anyway. She closed the post promising a second meeting, after a Cleveland show, or maybe Pittsburgh. The kitchenette is the night we've got.

A photo on her page is captioned Jerry Garcia 10/31/80. The date is Halloween at Radio City: closed-circuit television on the East Coast, an FM broadcast, Franken and Davis between sets. She doesn't say which seat she had or which song was playing, so I won't either. What she named was the kitchenette, the smoke, and Althea.

SET II — The Room the Tape Already Knew

Here's the rest of that Radio City week, from the record.

Eight nights, October 22 through 31, 1980. Acoustic set to open, two electric sets after, the same format the band had just run at the Warfield. JerryGarcia.com and Dead.net have the Halloween setlist: Heaven Help the Fool, Sage and Spirit, Little Sadie, Monkey and the Engineer, It Must Have Been the Roses, Cassidy, Bird Song into Ripple to close the acoustic set; Jack Straw through Deal in the middle; Don't Ease into Lost Sailor into Saint of Circumstance into Franklin's Tower into drums into Fire on the Mountain into Not Fade Away into Stella Blue into Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad into Good Lovin'; Uncle John's Band for the encore. It was the last Heaven Help the Fool, the last Sage and Spirit and the last Little Sadie. Closed-circuit TV. FM.

Bob Minkin, writing later about the run, remembered sleeping on the street for tickets, scoring four nights, and a security guard by the stage who let him shoot. Open Culture and the later Shakedown Stream notes put Franken and Davis in the breaks and the Halloween feed into movie theaters. Pieces of the run became Dead Ahead on video. The Warfield and Radio City acoustic nights fed Reckoning. The electric nights fed Dead Set.

Althea had come out that April on Go to Heaven. By Halloween it was still new enough that a nineteen-year-old could walk into a kitchenette and ask the guitar player about it without it sounding like homework. He pointed her to Hunter and kept smoking. That's the part she kept, and I'm glad she did.

DRUMS/SPACE — Three Documents

So, three documents.

Her blog: Radio City week, October 1980, a cream-puff Mustang from upstate, a boutique hotel around the corner, twenty-five people on the floor, Jerry on the kitchenette counter, do you have a smoke, Althea, Hunter's metaphors, an audiology major's acoustics questions, Bobby and Billy at the elevator, come back later, never did.

The public record of Radio City: eight nights, acoustic into electric, Halloween on closed-circuit and FM, Franken and Davis in the breaks, and Reckoning, Dead Set and Dead Ahead on the shelf afterward.

And a February night earlier that same year, Jerry's own band in a SUNY gymnasium out on Long Island, still playable here: Sugaree into Catfish John. How Sweet It Is. Sitting Here in Limbo. That's All Right Mama; That's What Love Will Make You Do into Masterpiece into Tore Up into I'll Take a Melody into Harder They Come; Midnight Moonlight to close. Same state the Mustang drove across. Same year the kitchenette happened.

Her blog won't tell you which seat she had, and no setlist will tell you who was leaning on that counter. Put them together and you get the week: a borrowed cigarette and a question about a song that still felt new.

ENCORE — Stony Brook, February 1980

For Jerry's band in New York State the same year he asked a nineteen-year-old for a smoke, go to February 24, 1980, at the Gymnasium at SUNY Stony Brook. Sugaree to open, Harder They Come late, Midnight Moonlight to send everybody home. It plays here: February 24, 1980, Stony Brook.

Then go read her post. It's still up, smoke, Althea, and the elevator that almost brought her back.

Sources / Further Reading

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