July 05--Talia O'Brien had no problem getting to the front row to dance and sing along to Saturday's Grateful Dead concert.
Nevermind that the Pittsburgh teen was more than 5 miles away from Soldier Field, which was hosting the second of three 50th anniversary Dead shows. O'Brien was one of about 300 Deadheads who paid $18 to watch a live broadcast of the concert on a 7-foot-by-12-foot screen at City Winery in the West Town neighborhood.
It was Soldier Field lite for Deadheads unable to score sold-out tickets to Saturday's show but seeking camaraderie with other fans while dancing along to what is being billed as the penultimate time the four core remaining members of the Dead -- Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart -- will perform together. Their final show is Sunday.
"We tried very hard to get tickets today," said O'Brien, 18, who said she and her parents have tickets for Sunday's show but came to City Winery Saturday because they saw a screening of the Friday concert there and enjoyed the feel of the show.
City Winery and Lincoln Park's Park West and aliveOne are some of the local venues streaming this weekend's Dead shows.
Fans also were able to purchase live broadcasts through YouTube and TV providers to watch the concerts at home. About 150,000 individual concert streams had been sold as of Saturday afternoon for all three Chicago shows and the two anniversary concerts last month in Santa Clara, Calif., concert spokesman Jon Bleicher said.
That figure does not include showings at music venues such as City Winery or movie theaters around the country, including about a dozen in the Chicago area, Bleicher said.
At City Winery, Deadheads danced in front of the concert screen while some of the less-mobile fans sat in chairs and clapped along to the music. The concert room was nearly dark but never quiet as fans cheered, whistled and sang.
For those in attendance, the views of the band were likely better than at Soldier Field and there was no need to wade through the 70,844 Deadheads at the stadium Saturday -- an attendance record for post-renovation Soldier Field -- and clouds of cigarette and marijuana smoke to get to the front row. The lines for the bathroom were also much shorter.
"This is the next best thing," said Cincinnati resident Natalie Gillespie, who said she had tickets to the Friday and Saturday shows but sold them because of scheduling conflicts.
Gillespie, a Dead fan since the early '90s when she was in high school, is no stranger to watching the Dead remotely. She said she live-streamed the band's Santa Clara concerts from a tent in her backyard with more than a dozen friends as they grilled bratwursts and boiled seafood.
But while she enjoyed the laid-back spirit of these DIY concerts, she said she's looking forward to attending Sunday's show at Soldier Field.
"(Sunday's) the night I really want to go see anyway," said Gillespie, 37. "If we had gone to all three nights, we would have been pretty exhausted."
