Grateful Dead Fans Descend On San Francisco For Three Days Of Shows

Here are the morning’s top stories on Friday, August 1, 2025…

• This weekend, San Francisco will once again become the center of the deadhead universe. That’s because it’s the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. Dead & Co., the band’s latest iteration, will be playing three shows in Golden Gate Park, starting Friday.
• Kamala Harris’ decision not to run for California governor has opened up the field ahead of next year’s election. 
• Duplexes will no longer be an option for homeowners starting to rebuild in L.A.’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
• California lawmakers are poised to ban the sale of new Glock handguns.

Fans Pour Into SF For Grateful Dead’s 60th At Golden Gate Park

Fans of the Grateful Dead are pouring into San Francisco for three days of concerts and festivities marking the 60th anniversary of the scruffy jam band that came to embody a city where people once wore flowers in their hair and made love, not war.

Dead & Company, featuring original Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, will play Golden Gate Park’s Polo Field starting Friday with an estimated 60,000 attendees each day. The last time the band played that part of the park was in 1991 — a free show following the death of concert promoter and longtime Deadhead Bill Graham.

Certainly, times have changed. A general admissions ticket for all three days is $635 — a shock for many longtime fans who remember when a joint cost more than a Dead concert ticket.

Formed in 1965, the Grateful Dead is synonymous with San Francisco and its counterculture. Members lived in a dirt-cheap Victorian in the Haight and later became a significant part of 1967’s Summer of Love. That summer eventually soured into bad acid trips and police raids, and prompted the band’s move to Marin County on the other end of the Golden Gate Bridge. But new Deadheads kept cropping up — even after iconic guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death — aided by cover bands and offshoots like Dead & Company.

2026 Race For CA Governor Goes Into New Gear And Directions

After months of uncertainty, the race to become California’s next governor started Thursday. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ decision Wednesday to bypass the 2026 contest pushed the campaign into a new phase, lacking its biggest potential star and the presumptive early favorite. Harris’ formal exit opens the door for additional candidates to venture in, while scrambling a crowded field with no dominant candidate.

Democrats remain favored to hold the seat now occupied by term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a state where Republicans have not won a statewide election in nearly two decades. Democrats hold a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over registered Republicans statewide. “The starting gun just popped,” said Democratic consultant Andrew Acosta, calling it the first truly wide-open governor’s race in over a quarter-century. “The race is on.”

LA Mayor Bans Duplexes In Palisades Burn Zone

Duplexes can no longer replace single-family houses in the Pacific Palisades as rebuilding begins for the more than 5,000 homes destroyed by the January fire.

On Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered a ban on duplex projects in the Palisades. The move came after an order the same day from Gov. Gavin Newsom that granted local governments permission to suspend a state housing density law in burn zones.

The law at play, Senate Bill 9, allows single-family homeowners across the state to build duplexes and split their lots, potentially creating up to four units of housing on land previously zoned for one unit. In the city of L.A., 72% of residential land is zoned for single-family homes.

In a statement Wednesday, Bass said: “SB 9 was not originally intended to be used in the rebuilding of a community that was decimated by the worst natural disaster L.A. has ever seen.”

California May Soon Ban Selling New Glocks

The Democrats who control California’s Legislature are poised to ban the sale of one of the most popular types of handguns, like the one owned by arguably the state’s most recognizable Democrat, Kamala Harris.

Assembly Bill 1127 aims to prohibit gun shops from selling new Glock-brand handguns and various off-brand imitators, because the guns can become fully automatic if a criminal inserts a converter, commonly known as a “Glock switch,” into the weapon. The switches can be made illegally on a 3D printer.

Supporters say the bill targets only a narrow category of guns that are increasingly used in violent crimes. But critics argue the proposal opens the door to broader restrictions on all semi-automatic handguns. That, they say, potentially includes other popular models like the one Gov. Gavin Newsom recently got as a gift from a conservative podcaster. Newsom hasn’t indicated whether he’ll sign the measure.