Ken Kesey\u2019s legendary \u201cFurthur\u201d bus will be on display at Golden Gate Park as part of a new Grateful Dead exhibit, and a restoration effort could eventually put the psychedelic relic on permanent display somewhere in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n
The exhibit, Forever Grateful\/Golden Gate Park<\/a>, opens Saturday at the County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park and recreates the sights, sounds, and atmosphere of the San Francisco counterculture that helped give rise to the Grateful Dead.<\/p>\n As the Associated Press reports<\/a>, Ken Kesey\u2019s 1939 International Harvester arrived in San Francisco after years in storage on the Kesey family farm in Oregon, taking 12 hours to truck to the city. The bus, which Kesey and his Merry Pranksters famously drove across the country during a 1964 psychedelic road trip, will be a focal point of the exhibition alongside Jerry Garcia\u2019s 1973 BMW 3.0 CS, which has never previously been displayed publicly.<\/p>\n The Golden Gate Park exhibition, running through October 25, will also feature photographs from the Grateful Dead\u2019s many concerts in the park, along with a screen-printing station and immersive experiences including a psychedelic liquid light show. Actors from New York-based experiential theater company Third Rail Projects will guide visitors through parts of the exhibit, including a mirrored tunnel and small-group experiences intended to spark conversations between strangers, per the AP.<\/p>\n The Haight Street Art Center is also taking part in the exhibition through September 20, featuring the bands\u2019 guitars and a functioning quarter-scale replica of the Grateful Dead\u2019s \u201cWall of Sound,\u201d the enormous speaker system designed in 1974 by the band\u2019s sound engineer and LSD pioneer Owsley Stanley.<\/p>\n The Furthur bus, which became closely associated with Kesey\u2019s \u201cacid tests,\u201d psychedelic parties that featured the Grateful Dead in its early days when they were known as the Warlocks \u2014 as chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test<\/a> \u2014 got its name from a misspelled destination sign. <\/p>\n According to the Chronicle<\/a>, the original Furthur deteriorated while sitting on the family farm, prompting Kesey and his crew to paint a second, slightly newer bus in its likeness at some point in the ’90s. That bus, whose name was spelled correctly as \u201cFurther,\u201d has since been restored and remains in the barn.<\/p>\n The bus now in San Francisco is believed to be the original Furthur, despite a \u201cFurther\u201d placard currently displayed with it. Dennis McNally, a former Grateful Dead publicist and consultant to the exhibition, confirmed to the Chronicle that the evidence tracing the bus back to Kesey\u2019s original is solid.<\/p>\n \u201cThe focal point is the Furthur bus. And Furthur is a call to action. Never stop creating, never stop exploring, keep going further,\u201d said Kelly Harris, executive director of the Haight Street Art Center.<\/p>\n Furthur is unlikely to make the trip back to Oregon anytime soon. The Chronicle reports that the Haight Street Art Center has partnered with the Furthur Down the Road Foundation<\/a>, a nonprofit founded by Kesey\u2019s daughter-in-law Stephanie Kesey, to raise money to fully restore it and find a permanent Bay Area location for display.<\/p>\n