CHICAGO — When the Grateful Dead’s long, strange trip comes to an end this weekend with a series of farewell concerts at Soldier Field in Chicago, it will give devoted fans one last chance to commune with the band in a sea of tie-dyed glory.
Some specialty retailers are already seeing sky-high sales as Deadheads converge on the city and gear up for the 50-year-old band’s swan song.
One such outlet is the Sunshine Daydream Hippie Shop, a suburban, 17-year-old psychedelic storefront that has been selling all things Grateful Dead like there’s no tomorrow.
“The people I’ve been seeing the past few weeks are mostly older people I’ve never seen in the store before,” said Mark Paradise, 49, the store’s owner and a dedicated Deadhead. “The No. 1 thing they’re buying is T-shirts, because they don’t have a tie-dye or anything with Grateful Dead on it and they don’t want to look, for lack of a better term, square.”
Paradise, who grew up in Chicago, began hawking Grateful Dead merchandise at the band’s Midwestern concerts in the 1990s while still holding down a day job in marketing. He became a full-time Deadhead retailer in 1997.
Located in a shopping center along U.S. Highway 12, the store has windows adorned with Grateful Dead art and incense wafts through the open front door. Inside, tie-dye shirts, blacklight posters and a plethora of Grateful Dead merchandise covers every corner of the small store, and every possible use of the band’s logos and images.
“We have everything Grateful Dead,” Paradise said. “We have Hot Wheels cars, coffee cups, lanyards, patches, tapestries, bandannas, T-shirts, and then just a lot of the little stuff – their stickers and key chains.”
Paradise, who was married wearing a Grateful Dead yarmulke, patrols his colorful shop in a blue dancing bears Hawaiian shirt and Grateful Dead ball cap. He is eager to engage customers in concert tales, of which he has many. The Dead provide a constant soundtrack for the store and his life, but he has expanded beyond them to get by, which he fully expects to do when the band tours no more.
An assortment of non-Dead merchandise is sprinkled throughout the shop, diversifying the offerings, and Paradise said sales, the majority of which have migrated to his website, will not go to pot anytime soon. While the store is redolent of a 1960s head shop, Paradise doesn’t sell any smoking paraphernalia.
Boosted by the farewell tour, supplies of certain items, like the official 50th anniversary tie-dyed T-shirt, are running low. Among the higher-end items still on hand is an original framed tour poster promoting a 1966 Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. It carries a $300 price.
Paradise said sales have been getting busier every week since the start of June, with 95 percent of his customers planning to attend at least one of the three Chicago concerts. The other 5 percent, he said, don’t have tickets and are “just caught up in the vibe.”
The promoter of a three-day Grateful Dead art show this weekend in Chicago is expecting similarly robust sales.
“There’s going to be a lot of money floating around town between the concert posters that are available inside the venue … and my show,” said Pete Mason, founder of PhanArt, which is putting on the event.
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